initial commit of ebook 8118HEADmain

17 files changed, 90389 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/8118-0.txt b/8118-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73ba056
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8118-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12839 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn: His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Redburn: His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2003 [eBook #8118]
+[Most recently updated: March 25, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Project Gutenberg volunteers and Blackmask Online
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN: HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Redburn:
+His First Voyage
+
+by Herman Melville
+
+Being the Sailor Boy
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+In the Merchant Navy
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN’S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM
+ CHAPTER II. REDBURN’S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+ CHAPTER III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+ CHAPTER IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+ CHAPTER V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+ CHAPTER VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+ CHAPTER VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+ CHAPTER VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+ CHAPTER IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+ CHAPTER X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+ CHAPTER XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+ CHAPTER XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+ CHAPTER XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+ CHAPTER XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+ CHAPTER XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+ CHAPTER XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+ CHAPTER XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+ CHAPTER XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM BOOK
+ CHAPTER XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+ CHAPTER XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+ CHAPTER XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN
+ CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+ CHAPTER XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+ CHAPTER XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO’s MONKEY
+ CHAPTER XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+ CHAPTER XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+ CHAPTER XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+ CHAPTER XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS
+ CHAPTER XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
+ CHAPTER XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN
+ CHAPTER XXXII. THE DOCKS
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+ CHAPTER XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+ CHAPTER XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+ CHAPTER XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+ CHAPTER XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+ CHAPTER XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HTHER AND THITHER
+ CHAPTER XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+ CHAPTER XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+ CHAPTER XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+ CHAPTER XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+ CHAPTER XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+ CHAPTER XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+ CHAPTER XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+ CHAPTER XLIX. CARLO
+ CHAPTER L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+ CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+ CHAPTER LII. THE EMIGRANTS’ KITCHEN
+ CHAPTER LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+ CHAPTER LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+ CHAPTER LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON’S CAREER
+ CHAPTER LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
+ CHAPTER LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+ CHAPTER LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+ CHAPTER LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+ CHAPTER LX. HOME AT LAST
+ CHAPTER LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+ CHAPTER LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN’S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM
+
+
+“Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it’s just the thing—take it, it will
+_save_ the expense of another. You see, it’s quite warm; fine long
+skirts, stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets.”
+
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the _eve_ of my departure for the seaport.
+
+“And, Wellingborough,” he added, “since we are both short of money, and
+you want an outfit, and I _Have_ none to _give,_ you may as well take
+my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can
+get.—Nay, take it; it’s of no use to me now; I can’t find it in powder
+any more.”
+
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
+York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:
+
+FOR BREMEN.
+
+_The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed
+her cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of
+May.
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip.
+_
+
+
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like
+this, suggested volumes of thought.
+
+A _brig!_ The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn
+craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+
+_Coppered and copper-fastened!_ That fairly smelt of the salt water!
+How different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
+green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river
+before our house on the bank.
+
+_Nearly completed her cargo!_ How momentous the announcement;
+suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins,
+and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber,
+with which my river experience was familiar.
+
+_Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May-and_ the newspaper bore date the
+fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
+an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
+so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+
+_For freight or passage apply on board!_ Think of going on board a
+coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking passage for Bremen! And
+who could be going to Bremen? No one but foreigners, doubtless; men of
+dark complexions and jet-black whiskers, who talked French.
+
+_Coenties Slip._ Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be
+lying there. Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of
+grim-looking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled
+roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned
+coffeehouses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt
+sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
+Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
+residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
+large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
+remembered the _yo heave ho!_ of the sailors, as they just showed their
+woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of
+their crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
+sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
+
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer
+in Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the
+well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell
+my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the
+masts bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about
+going up into the ball of St. Paul’s in London. Indeed, during my early
+life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but
+with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long,
+narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange
+houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look
+of rainy days and Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have
+rainy days and Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the
+boys went to school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt
+collars turned over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their
+papas allowed them to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much
+disliked, for boots looked so manly.
+
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
+into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
+fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up
+and down the streets, and how grocers’ boys would turn back their heads
+to look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a
+man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church,
+as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+
+“See what big eyes he has,” whispered my aunt, “they got so big,
+because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at
+once caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it.”
+
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I
+am sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was
+out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home.
+But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never
+saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and
+several times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown
+still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
+
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
+foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes.
+We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
+from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
+grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
+could be doing with themselves now.
+
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father’s, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.
+
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.
+
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
+castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
+
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
+than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
+used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
+them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
+
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
+
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
+and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of
+a great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three
+boats sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
+
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
+brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
+with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
+doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had
+been printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine
+library edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded
+backs; and many a time I gazed at the word _“London”_ on the
+title-page. And there was a copy of D’Alembert in French, and I
+wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should
+ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book,
+which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I
+so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant we
+had.
+
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me,
+that he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely
+believed; for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been
+born in a foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in
+America.
+
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
+bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
+other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
+entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
+hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
+no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
+my subsequent rovings.
+
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days
+of the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
+
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one
+of my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
+tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
+admiration of my father’s visitors in the capital, became the wonder
+and delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many
+of whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see
+the ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which
+they were accustomed to give it.
+
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks;
+and often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else
+was inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark
+indoors, that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was
+very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the
+hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon
+something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always
+been in want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a
+sort of insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all,
+in order to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of
+the kind to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and
+after that, the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond
+my reach, and until I should recover my reason.
+
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
+it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd’s
+ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the
+Highlands, full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were
+trying to dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one
+had ever thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost
+a hundred years.
+
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
+ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
+till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
+people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
+little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
+like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
+the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little
+chaps, and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for
+all that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
+oath.
+
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
+over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
+was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder;
+the cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
+steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate
+of glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at
+him; while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
+quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
+head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
+
+The name of this curious ship was _La Reine,_ or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of
+glass dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
+whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
+and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment,
+till I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest
+danger in the world.
+
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
+
+So much for _La Reine._ We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,—but I will
+not have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a
+cocked-hat, lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a
+calamitous sea under the bows—but I will not have him put on his legs
+again, till I get on my own; for between him and me there is a secret
+sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch
+the very day I left home to go to sea on this _my first voyage._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+REDBURN’S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+
+
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted
+with me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and
+perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard
+times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly
+before my time; all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and
+at that early age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.
+
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing
+patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take
+none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as
+December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there
+is no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the
+warmth of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter
+enough even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must
+be uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let me go
+on with my story.
+
+“Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can,” murmured I, as
+she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my
+safe arrival in New York.
+
+“And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I’ll be back in four months—it will be autumn then, and
+we’ll go into the woods after nuts, an I’ll tell you all about Europe.
+Good-by! good-by!”
+
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage
+advice above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning
+me again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I
+would; for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself,
+when he sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,—he
+was in ill health then,—and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and
+the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with
+comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother’s rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and
+I thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in
+your hand!
+
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel
+all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has
+fallen; and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after
+ripeness, with him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never
+again can such blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave
+such a scar that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a
+hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs
+which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the
+gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a
+thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to
+sieges and battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first
+shock of the encounter.
+
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.
+
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain’s office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day,
+owing to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to
+pay for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a
+dollar did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat
+was off, and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing
+to any body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged on
+deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If
+I had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them
+of my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain’s clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on
+my leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his
+object in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and
+silent, and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have
+spoken and told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my
+dollar, and then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He
+did not wait a great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff
+voice, very unlike his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar
+party, demanded my ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded
+the money; and upon my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry
+voice that attracted all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the
+storm. The devil in me then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my
+frame, till it tingled at my finger ends; and I muttered out my
+resolution to stay where I was, in such a manner, that the ticket man
+faltered back. “There’s a dollar for you,” I added, offering it.
+
+“I want two,” said he.
+
+“Take that or nothing,” I answered; “it is all I have.”
+
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted
+that such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume
+the buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon
+me.
+
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I
+pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat
+man, with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on
+his, gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him,
+and he looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming,
+he pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead.
+I then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.
+
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range,
+for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons
+starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at
+that time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac
+feelings, of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have
+been, indeed; and much more than that.
+
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle,
+marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was
+wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+
+Such is boyhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+
+
+From the boat’s bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother’s directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John’s Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a
+drink of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were
+playing dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They
+winked, and asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy
+day, but I only gulped down my water and stalked off.
+
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother’s friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+
+“What do you want?” said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+
+“I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor.”
+
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing
+who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his
+fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me
+that day.
+
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, and returning to the table, found that the
+interval had been well improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler
+was spread and I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil
+that had been tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till
+at last I entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.
+
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to
+bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly
+believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal’s.
+
+Next day, my brother’s friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get me
+a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very
+handsome one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an
+elegant looking mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort
+of sideboard some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was
+only Britannia ware highly polished.
+
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.
+
+“Good morning, sir,” said my friend.
+
+“Good morning, good morning, sir,” said the captain. “Steward, chairs
+for the gentlemen.”
+
+“Oh! never mind, sir,” said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his
+extreme civility. “I merely called to see whether you want a fine young
+lad to go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a
+sailor; and his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one
+voyage, and see how he likes it.”
+
+“Ah! indeed!” said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+“He’s a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?” added he, affectionately patting my head. “It’s a hard life,
+though; a hard life.”
+
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin,
+and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying
+to frighten me, and I answered, “Well, sir, I am ready to try it.”
+
+“I hope he’s a country lad, sir,” said the captain to my friend, “these
+city boys are sometimes hard cases.”
+
+“Oh! yes, he’s from the country,” was the reply, “and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator.”
+
+“But his great-uncle don’t want to go to sea too?” said the captain,
+looking funny.
+
+“Oh! no, oh, no!— Ha! ha!”
+
+“Ha! ha!” echoed the captain.
+
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he’ll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.
+
+“Well, my lad,” said the captain, “I suppose you know we haven’t any
+pastures and cows on board; you can’t get any milk at sea, you know.”
+
+“Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven’t.”
+
+“Yes,” cried my friend, “his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business.”
+
+“Embassador extraordinary?” said the captain, looking funny again.
+
+“Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant.”
+
+“Ah! indeed;” said the captain, looking grave and bland again, “then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?”
+
+“Certainly,” said my friend, “and he’s only going to sea for the humor
+of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he _will_
+go to sea as a sailor.”
+
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five)
+was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the
+kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of
+creating a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.
+
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand
+tour with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the
+handsome captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that
+_he_ himself would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for
+the privilege.
+
+“Ah!” said my friend, “that reminds me of business. Pray, captain, how
+much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?”
+
+“Well,” said the captain, looking grave and profound, “we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that’s your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!—Upon my soul, a fine sounding name.”
+
+“Why, captain,” said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, “that won’t
+pay for his clothing.”
+
+“But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that,” replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.
+
+“Oh! yes, I forgot that,” said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish. “His
+friends will of course see to that.”
+
+“Of course,” said the captain smiling.
+
+“Of course,” repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+
+“You are quite a sportsman I see,” said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand
+opportunity to befriend me.
+
+“Yes, he’s quite a sportsman,” said he, “he’s got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It’s cheap.”
+
+“Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations,” said the captain,
+“so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England.”
+
+“Yes, perhaps that _would_ be better, after all,” said my friend,
+pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. “Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?”
+
+“Only three dollars a month,” said the captain.
+
+“And I believe,” said my friend, “that you generally give something in
+advance, do you not?”
+
+“Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices,” said the
+captain, with a bow, “but in this case, as the boy has rich relations,
+there will be no need of that, you know.”
+
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that
+it would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
+
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and
+as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, “Well,
+Redburn, my boy, you won’t get home-sick before you sail, because that
+will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea.”
+
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times,
+and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with
+a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my
+shooting-jacket. And so we left.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+
+
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and
+there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I
+was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in
+a great flapping sou’wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy
+monkey-jacket, “Twig his coat, d’ye see the buttons, that chap ain’t
+going to sea in a merchantman, he’s going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty—look here—how d’ye sell them big buttons by the pound?”
+
+“Give us one for a saucer, will ye?” said another.
+
+“Let the youngster alone,” said a third. “Come here, my little boy, has
+your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?”
+
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best
+of the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they
+can’t mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I
+tried to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put
+down my name and beat a retreat.
+
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day
+I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece
+for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street
+with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a
+hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a
+strange-looking shop, with three gilded balls hanging over it.
+
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to
+him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told him
+that was just what I wanted.
+
+“Ah!” said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will not
+try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, “I thought it was a
+better article, it’s very old.”
+
+“Not,” said I, starting in surprise, “it’s not been used more than
+three times; what will you give for it?”
+
+“We don’t _buy_ any thing here,” said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, “this is a place where people _pawn_ things.” _Pawn_ being
+a word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he
+replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their
+fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+
+“And pray,” said I, “how much will you let me have for my gun, by way
+of a pawn?”
+
+“Well, I suppose it’s worth six dollars, and seeing you’re a boy, I’ll
+let you have three dollars upon it”
+
+“No,” exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, “it’s worth five times
+that, I’ll go somewhere else.”
+
+“Good morning, then,” said he, “I hope you’ll do better,” and he bowed
+me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.
+
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging
+over a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of
+picket-fence, running all along from end to end, and three little
+holes, with three little old men standing inside of them, like
+prisoners looking out of a jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of
+things, piled up and labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and
+swords, and canes, and chests, and planes, and books, and
+writing-desks, and every thing else. And in a glass case were lots of
+watches, and seals, chains, and rings, and breastpins, and all kinds of
+trinkets. At one of the little holes, earnestly talking with one of the
+hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a faded silk gown and shawl,
+holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I drew near, she spoke lower
+in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and looked cross and rude;
+and then some more words were exchanged over a miniature, and some
+money was passed through the hole, and the woman and child shrank out
+of the door.
+
+I won’t sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young
+man in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust
+through to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that
+came along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety
+of fish.
+
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, “one
+dollar.”
+
+“What about one dollar?” said I.
+
+“That’s all I’ll give,” he replied.
+
+“Well, what do you want?” and he turned to the next person. This was a
+young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.
+
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, “None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don’t deal in them things here.”
+
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who
+had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his
+pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+
+“Where did you get this ring?” said the pawnbroker.
+
+“I want to pawn it,” whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+
+“What’s your name?” said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+
+“How much will you give?” whispered the other in reply, leaning over,
+and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a
+little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket;
+all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question which
+embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain
+number in Broadway.
+
+“That’s the City Hotel: you don’t live there,” said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+
+“Oh! well,” stammered the other blushing scarlet, “I thought this was
+only a sort of form to go through; I don’t like to tell where I do
+live, for I ain’t in the habit of going to pawnbrokers.”
+
+“You stole that ring, you know you did,” roared out the hook-nosed man,
+incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man’s character for life. “I’m a good mind to call a
+constable; we don’t take stolen goods here, I tell you.”
+
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man;
+who looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a
+night-cap, with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the
+pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.
+
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more
+from them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a
+great many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular
+occasion for mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and
+rich, to treat people so cavalierly.
+
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the
+curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.
+
+“Ought to have taken it when you could get it,” he replied. “I won’t
+give but two dollars and a half for it now.”
+
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money
+and departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS
+BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+
+
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my
+promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in
+buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which
+I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and
+two or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny left,
+so I walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into the
+water. The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost
+desperate again, and didn’t care what became of me. But if the penny
+had been a dollar, I would have kept it.
+
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones’, and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I
+had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and
+thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so
+bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward, when
+I expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very
+keen, and I said to myself, “Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can,
+for this may be the last supper you will have.”
+
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a
+towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and
+then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see
+what sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got
+into the shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about the face,
+which I found was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool upon my
+skin. After that, I took a pair of scissors and went to cutting my
+hair, which was very long. I thought every little would help, in making
+me a light hand to run aloft.
+
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the
+house with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate
+again.
+
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to
+sea that day.
+
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to
+Mr. Jones’ again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So
+I concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+
+“What do you want, Pillgarlic?” said he.
+
+“I’ve shipped to sail in this ship,” I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+
+“What for? a tailor?” said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+
+I answered that I was going as a “boy;” for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.
+
+“Well,” said he, “have you got your traps aboard?”
+
+I told him I didn’t know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn’t
+brought any “trap.”
+
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.
+
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn’t be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.
+
+_“Where’s_ your clothes?” said he.
+
+“Here in my bundle,” said I, holding it up.
+
+“Well if that’s all you’ve got,” he cried, “you’d better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that’s the
+place you’ll live in aboard here.”
+
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow
+of the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him
+for a light.
+
+“Strike your eyes together and make one,” said he, “we don’t have any
+lights here.” So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which smelt
+so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After waiting
+patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last
+perceived I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes
+stuck round the sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which
+I at once supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that
+method of appropriating their “Trunks,” as I afterward found these
+boxes were called. And so it turned out.
+
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my
+bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that
+the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and
+walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the
+forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary, and went into
+a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on, and not looking
+very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better place, for fear of
+being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel very hungry; and
+seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think what a fool I
+had been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but a
+penny apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never
+saw doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in,
+and ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little
+by drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere that this was a
+good plan to follow in a case like the present. I did not feel thirsty,
+but only hungry; so had much ado to get down the water; for it tasted
+warm; and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the negro had been drinking
+some spirits out of it just before.
+
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some
+more water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop
+twice, till night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it
+had been raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could
+not help thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in
+that damp and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to
+lie on but the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such
+thoughts, I gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough
+outside and in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I
+had just been eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward
+I unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon
+as he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a
+curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew
+not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me
+he was an English boy, from Lancashire.
+
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her
+last voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to
+work very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to work his passage back.
+
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but
+found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I
+asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn’t
+traveled any in America and didn’t know any thing about the rivers
+here. And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he showed no
+surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times more
+stupid than before.
+
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best
+to get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud,
+for me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the
+place, my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt
+damp and clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening
+to the Lancashire boy’s snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to
+go on deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would
+never come.
+
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left
+the ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But
+this made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was
+dizzy; and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I
+dropt on a heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best
+to rally myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and
+walk off. Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my
+friend’s house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it
+was, only it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk
+in such a state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND
+SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+
+
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the
+rigging, and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and
+went to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the
+captain came up the side, and began to order about both of them.
+
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father’s, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, “Do you think
+we take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking
+at sea; don’t let the ‘old man’ see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can.”
+
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty
+of tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as
+a tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me
+feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus,
+for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief
+mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him, would
+have knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.
+
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a
+great hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out,
+“Ashore with you, you young loafer! There’s no stealings here; sail
+away, I tell you, with that shooting-jacket!”
+
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.
+
+“A sailor!” he cried, “a barber’s clerk, you mean; _you_ going out in
+the ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn’t been
+shipping any more greenhorns like you—he’ll make a shipwreck of it if
+he has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few dollars in seamen’s
+wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of farmers and
+clodhoppers and baby-boys. What’s your name, Pillgarlic?”
+
+“Redburn,” said I.
+
+“A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it; haven’t
+you got any other?”
+
+“Wellingborough,” said I.
+
+“Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn’t they call you Jack,
+or Jill, or something short and handy. But I’ll baptize you over again.
+D’ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is _Buttons._ And now do you go,
+Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d’ye hear;
+there’s them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now.”
+
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?
+
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey
+orders, and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel,
+or spade, or something else to work with.
+
+“We don’t dig gardens here,” was the reply; “dig it out with your
+teeth!”
+
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen,
+which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the
+“jolly-boat,” was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them
+almost close together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck.
+I managed to crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins
+against the seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along
+to the stern, where the pig-pen was.
+
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to
+his comrades, “Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you ’bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say.”
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal
+ashore.
+
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I
+found it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as
+it looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as
+well as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a
+dry spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed
+with an oath, “Didn’t I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else?
+Do what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!”
+
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was
+my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me
+_why_ he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this,
+he flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his
+order like a clap of thunder.
+
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave
+reasons for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they
+command it, so that the motto is, _“Obey orders, though you break
+owners.”_
+
+I now began to feel very faint and sick _again,_ and longed for the
+ship to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be
+having something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on
+board, and as for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they
+were _“riggers,”_ that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day in
+getting ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for
+yielding to the kind blandishment of one of these _riggers, I_ had
+swapped away my jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own,
+thinking to secure a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my
+chance, and while people’s backs were turned, I seized a carrot from
+several bunches lying on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my
+shooting-jacket, went forward to eat it; for I had often eaten raw
+carrots, which taste something like chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me
+a good deal, though at the expense of a little pain in my stomach.
+Hardly had I disposed of it, when I heard the chief mate’s voice crying
+out for “Buttons.” I ran after him, and received an order to go aloft
+and “slush down the main-top mast.”
+
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood
+staring about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the
+mate had turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I
+followed after him, and asked what I must do.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?” he shouted.
+
+“You did,” said I, “but I don’t know what that means.”
+
+“Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!” he exclaimed to himself. “A
+fine time I’ll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you, youngster.
+Look up to that long pole there—d’ye see it? that piece of a tree
+there, you timber-head—well—take this bucket here, and go up the
+rigging—that rope-ladder there—do you understand?—and dab this slush
+all over the mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls on
+deck. Be off now, Buttons.”
+
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to
+ascend a ship’s mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have
+felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint,
+the bare thought appalled me.
+
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I
+could not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of
+food; so rallying again, I took up the bucket.
+
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of
+it was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several
+times about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and
+slipping off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the
+“top,” the clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about
+between my legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the
+“top,” I came to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that
+overhanging impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last,
+with much straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the “top;” and
+then, trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the
+road was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was
+obliged to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more.
+I only recollect my safe return to the deck.
+
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage
+passengers, besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to
+anchor, and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was
+on board but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one,
+in Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back
+in the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they
+felt in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.
+
+“Ay, ay,” muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats and
+swaggered on deck, “it’s your turn now, but it will be mine before
+long. Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I’ll do the yawing after
+the anchor’s up.”
+
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on
+board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped
+him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their
+appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of their
+drink.
+
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner
+fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my
+long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with
+eating and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and
+potatoes which the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and
+though this left the whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found
+that I could eat little or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint,
+but not hungry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+
+
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and
+all hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could
+not help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they
+suffered from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in
+which they had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors
+breathe nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all
+alive and hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.
+
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south
+point of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor’s Island,
+and pointed right out for the Narrows.
+
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then,
+there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.
+
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be
+forced to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the
+Atlantic Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability
+he ever would.
+
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my
+heavy-heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the
+first day of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must
+elapse before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might
+happen to me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and
+thought how often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure
+enough that some luckless day or other, I would certainly fall
+overboard and be drowned. And then, I thought of lying down at the
+bottom of the sea, stark alone, with the great waves rolling over me,
+and no one in the wide world knowing that I was there. And I thought
+how much better and sweeter it must be, to be buried under the pleasant
+hedge that bounded the sunny south side of our village grave-yard,
+where every Sunday I had used to walk after church in the afternoon;
+and I almost wished I was there now; yes, dead and buried in that
+churchyard. All the time my eyes were filled with tears, and I kept
+holding my breath, to choke down the sobs, for indeed I could not help
+feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in the world would have felt
+just as I did then.
+
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so
+many beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the
+beautiful fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing
+if instead of sailing _out of_ the bay, we were only coming _into_ it;
+if we had crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and
+my heart leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really
+entering that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far
+distant, that it seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would
+I see New York again.
+
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
+sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking
+about the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and
+how that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when
+the ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to
+Franklin-square where they lived; and how that they would have a good
+dinner ready, and plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I
+say this kind of talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider,
+as I did, that before any thing like that could happen, we must cross
+the great Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back
+again, many thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this
+much I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to
+the Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used
+words that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind
+to me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
+
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.
+
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like
+this of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not
+a soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great
+Atlantic Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down
+to the water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly
+believe, as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or
+any place like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world.
+It seemed too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that
+there could really be cities and towns and villages and green fields
+and hedges and farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of
+sea, and away beyond the place where the sky came down to the water.
+And to think of steering right out among those waves, and leaving the
+bright land behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and
+foolhardy; and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by
+me, who could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered,
+how many times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I
+had never dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought
+him a marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who
+could not by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how
+could I credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered;
+had ever sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky
+and water line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and
+Marseilles. It was too wonderful to believe.
+
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
+quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
+all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
+Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain,
+with white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in
+Russia, and who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff,
+when Captain Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in
+Asia to St. Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this
+of my uncle, because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen,
+and his white hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an
+impression upon me, that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw
+him during this one visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the
+White Sea some years after.
+
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water
+was a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this
+grove, in a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the
+fort, dark as night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults,
+twisting and turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of
+green grass and sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in
+the middle of the castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing,
+or ruminating under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf
+frisking about, and trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering
+among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting
+out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black
+goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet
+lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he
+were watching for a ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see
+him even now, and though I have changed since then, the black goat
+looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be
+as old as Methusaleh, and have as great a memory as he must have had.
+Yes, the fort was a beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to
+build a little cottage in the middle of it, and live there all my life.
+It was noon-day when I was there, in the month of June, and there was
+little wind to stir the trees, and every thing looked as if it was
+waiting for something, and the sky overhead was blue as my mother’s
+eye, and I was so glad and happy then. But I must not think of those
+delightful days, before my father became a bankrupt, and died, and we
+removed from the city; for when I think of those days, something rises
+up in my throat and almost strangles me.
+
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful
+fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now,
+with what it was when with my father and uncle I went there so long
+ago. Then I never thought of working for my living, and never knew that
+there were hard hearts in the world; and knew so little of money, that
+when I bought a stick of candy, and laid down a sixpence, I thought the
+confectioner returned five cents, only that I might have money to buy
+something else, and not because the pennies were my change, and
+therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and
+had vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in
+the city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she
+used to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was
+the ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some
+boys who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.
+
+About sunset we got fairly “outside,” and well may it so be called; for
+I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left
+us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat,
+who to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of
+the captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart
+talking with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave
+him some newspapers.
+
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the
+little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell
+to me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got
+into the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the
+schooner made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and
+waving their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of
+America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME
+OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+
+
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on
+the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were
+going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a
+stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate’s
+turn came to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But
+it was not me;— no; and _I_ noticed, as they went on choosing, one
+after the other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so
+much as looked at me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into
+their faces, for it was dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves
+away so in their jackets. But the sailors, especially the stout
+good-looking ones, seemed to make a point of lounging as much out of
+the way as possible, and slouching their hats over their eyes; and
+although it may only be a fancy of mine, _I_ certainly thought that
+they affected a sort of lordly indifference as to whose watch they were
+going to be in; and did not think it worth while to look any way
+anxious about the matter. And the very men who, a few minutes before,
+had showed the most alacrity and promptitude in jumping into the
+rigging and running aloft at the word of command, now lounged against
+the bulwarks and most lazily; as if they were quite sure, that by this
+time the officers must know who the best men were, and they valued
+themselves well enough to be willing to put the officers to the trouble
+of searching them out; for if they were worth having, they were worth
+seeking.
+
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate’s next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+_I_ was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next
+column, like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in
+addition.
+
+“Well, Buttons,” said the chief mate, “I thought I’d got rid of you.
+And as it is, Mr. Rigs,” he added, speaking to the second mate, “I
+guess you had better take him into your watch;—there, I’ll let you have
+him, and then you’ll be one stronger than me.”
+
+“No, I thank you,” said Mr. Rigs.
+
+“You had better,” said the chief mate—“see, he’s not a bad looking
+chap—he’s a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself,
+you know, Rigs.”
+
+“No, I thank you,” said the second mate again. “Take him yourself—he’s
+yours by good rights—I don’t want him.” And so they put me in the chief
+mate’s division, that is the larboard watch.
+
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood,
+just like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing
+that had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what
+I had come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.
+
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-“You, Bill?” and Bill answered, “Sir?” just as if the second mate
+was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man in
+such a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had
+been quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him _Mr._
+Rigs during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this _Mr. Rigs_ was a
+great merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was
+not very long in finding out, that at sea all officers are _Misters,_
+and would take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling
+them so. And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be called
+_sir_ when addressed—Yes, _sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir;_ and they are as
+particular about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though
+their titles are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and
+Sir Joshuas in England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his
+tides are the only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a
+puppyish life indeed. He is not deemed company at any time for the
+captain, though the chief mate occasionally is, at least deck-company,
+though not in the cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to
+breakfast, lunch, dine, and sup off the leavings of the cabin table,
+and even the steward, who is accountable to nobody but the captain,
+sometimes treats him cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails
+are reefed; and put his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and
+keep the key of the boatswain’s locker, and fetch and carry balls of
+marline and seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging;
+besides doing many other things, which a true-born baronet of any
+spirit would rather die and give up his title than stand.
+
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could
+not eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked
+to have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.
+
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to _tea_ aboard
+of a ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we
+were told it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from
+eight o’clock till midnight.
+
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
+matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about
+the head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one
+of the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses
+very civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and
+spend the night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said
+something about my mother not being aware of my being out; which
+enraged me not a little, that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly,
+should dare to take such a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort
+of blasphemy, and it seemed like dragging out the best and most
+cherished secrets of my soul, for at that time the name of mother was
+the center of all my heart’s finest feelings, which ere that, I had
+learned to keep secret, deep down in my being.
+
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor’s words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
+the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
+his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
+hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
+and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
+his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady’s sailor, for in his
+broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the
+Hook, which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the
+hook-nosed men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that
+came along. He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a
+good-looking fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a
+new silk handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the
+vertebral bones of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers
+were of clear white duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and
+a tarpaulin hat bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon
+streaming behind, and getting entangled every now and then in the
+rigging; and he had gold anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one
+of his fingers, which was very much worn and bent from pulling ropes
+and other work on board ship. I thought he might better have left his
+jewelry at home.
+
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
+from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
+how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
+he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
+about, and go to bed again, and get up again—there was no telling how
+many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his
+country, he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland
+baby was sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said
+to be a day old.
+
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
+that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
+which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
+wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
+only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book
+meant to tell lies. But I don’t know exactly how to explain what I
+mean; but this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till
+I saw this Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland,
+only made me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from
+Greenland to be in my company? Why was he not at home among the
+icebergs, and how could he stand a warm summer’s sun, and not be melted
+away? Besides, instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from
+his ears; and he did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge
+muff; things, which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all
+Greenlanders.
+
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the
+night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor
+and cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back with a
+brown jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon
+as the brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it,
+for it smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be full of
+Jamaica spirits.
+
+“Now, Buttons,” said he, “one little dose of this will be better for
+you than a whole night’s sleep; there, take that now, and then eat
+seven or eight biscuits, and you’ll feel as strong as the mainmast.”
+
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples
+about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not
+ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of
+which my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer,
+and kept the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him.
+There was three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he
+brought in his accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove
+on the river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society’s money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him
+as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the
+side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits
+would now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that
+when I signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert
+a little clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness.
+And I would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in
+future; and then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of
+breaking their pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with
+me. And a hard thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken;
+especially as the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed
+burnt my mouth so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after.
+Even when I had become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the
+sailors could really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it,
+besides the Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, _to
+taper off with,_ as they called it. But this tapering off did not last
+very long, for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs
+were tossed overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the
+spirits I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could
+have had a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well,
+and perhaps much better. But that was not to be had at that time of
+night, or, indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called
+_coffee,_ which was given to us every morning at breakfast, was the
+most curious tasting drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like
+coffee, as it did like lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally
+as cold as lemonade, and I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and
+dropt ice into his coffee. But what was more curious still, was the
+different quality and taste of it on different mornings. Sometimes it
+tasted fishy, as if it was a decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it
+would taste very salty, as if some _old horse,_ or sea-beef, had been
+boiled in it; and then again it would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the
+captain had sent his cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and
+yet another time it would have such a very bad flavor, that I was
+almost ready to think some old stocking-heels had been boiled in it.
+What under heaven it was made of, that it had so many different bad
+flavors, always remained a mystery; for when at work at his vocation,
+our old cook used to keep himself close shut-up in his caboose, a
+little cook-house, and never told any of his secrets.
+
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for
+all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don’t believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico’s in New York. It was well for him
+that he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from
+seeing his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at
+one of his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him.
+What induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out;
+but I suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some
+real estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have;
+and though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and
+adding another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any
+change in the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in
+that respect as before.
+
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I
+did; and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for
+breaking my bond, which I would not have done except in case of
+necessity. But the evil effect of breaking one’s bond upon any occasion
+whatever, was witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened
+the way to subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet
+carried no apology with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+
+
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather
+cloudy, it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain
+enough to count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it
+was not very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth
+as a sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held
+so steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes,
+and scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a
+lighted long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but
+few words to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of
+thinking to attend to, which in truth is the case with most seamen the
+first night out of port, especially when they have thrown away their
+money in foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For
+when ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in
+their way, as the sailors they command.
+
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
+mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
+It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a
+little higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began
+pulling upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no
+words to it, only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark
+night, and far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and
+made me feel as I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin
+of mine, with black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the
+piano. I almost looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit
+afraid. But I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never
+touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike
+up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting
+forward very well, the mate would always say, _“Come, men, can’t any of
+you sing? Sing now, and raise the dead.”_ And then some one of them
+would begin, and if every man’s arms were as much relieved as mine by
+the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a
+cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath
+expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing
+well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal
+of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before shipping a
+man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope.
+
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
+and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
+about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you
+and I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost
+was a volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most
+struck me was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each
+other, and would fall into long and violent disputes about who was
+keeping the Foul Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether
+the King of Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the
+bar-maid of a particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes;
+with many other mooted points of that sort.
+
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
+chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
+to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle
+ashore; and also by way of _tapering off,_ as I mentioned a little
+while ago. But I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to
+sea with them, instead of spirits and cigars.
+
+Ned, for that was the man’s name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter
+at a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the
+Temperance Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did
+afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I
+declined; with a good deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that
+the cigars were real genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he
+said, and had them made there under his own eye. According to his
+account, he was very particular about his cigars and other things, and
+never made any importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a
+voyage himself direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be
+had that he wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama
+for his hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to
+Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to
+say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his
+halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that
+the Russian hemp is the best; though that is not wit which needs
+explaining.
+
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
+united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
+biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck
+before the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness,
+and finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
+themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing
+on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
+pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and
+another ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived
+their true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a
+parcel of wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe
+affliction to associate with them.
+
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but
+more with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and
+kind dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had
+made outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved
+wickedness for the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in
+Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had
+once heard in a church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called
+them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to poor lost
+children, babes in the wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors’ Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
+seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for
+their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good
+sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on
+deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them:
+so I did not disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at
+discovering that he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by
+his side.
+
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men
+went into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take
+a “swig at the halyards,” as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them “to taper off” handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then.
+Yet this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to
+them, then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they
+turned about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
+
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate’s Own, he could lend them to
+me.
+
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
+his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him
+more and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was
+grateful that I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it
+was, to feel wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing
+to confess to myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors,
+so much as my education, which I had received from others, that had
+made me the upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to
+be. And it was now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency
+and satisfaction in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had
+previously associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that
+there was little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself
+with my neighbors.
+
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
+upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
+him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
+was far from being vain and conceited.
+
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
+some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
+forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
+astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his—tit for tat,—I
+inquired of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant;
+and whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down
+to the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant
+dreams; and in asking these questions I was particular to address him
+in a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I
+did not deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all
+things together, and not going into particulars. But to my great
+surprise and mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed
+aloud in my face, and called me a “Jimmy Dux,” though that was not my
+real name, and he must have known it; and also the “son of a farmer,”
+though as I have previously related, my father was a great merchant and
+French importer in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh
+and joke about me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me,
+and if I had not felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt
+very much like a fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling
+foolish, which is very lucky for people in a passion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
+MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+
+
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
+horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
+came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
+hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
+I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
+
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
+and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
+the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
+uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
+forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
+about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
+ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
+loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
+but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of
+the sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into
+his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
+suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
+the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent
+place, and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so,
+in a fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
+
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn
+and almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world,
+and the sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been
+mine, had I been safe back at Mr. Jones’, or still better, in my home
+on the Hudson River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at
+the folly which had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best
+friends, that is to say, my mother and sisters.
+
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
+more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it
+worse, was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened.
+And they took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I
+had entered upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea,
+and they were used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the
+suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as
+frightened as I did; and besides that, and what makes their being
+frightened still plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any
+presence of mind, they could have prevented his plunging overboard,
+since he brushed right by them. However, they lay in their bunks
+smoking, and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising me
+as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as not to hold the
+wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and
+never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running
+brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest
+puddle of rainwater.
+
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
+and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor’s life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew
+that I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of
+it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in
+me, but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They
+asked me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the
+bread out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman’s
+place; and asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since
+I was a gentleman with white hands; and if I ever _should_ be, they
+would like nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a
+mutiny. And one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a
+good deal more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him
+ever after, for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he
+would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging
+near _him,_ he would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he
+swore too, with an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was
+so unforeseen; and then I could not believe that they meant what they
+said, or that they could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I
+help seeing, that the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless
+boy, on the very first night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of
+almost any enormity. I loathed, detested, and hated them with all that
+was left of my bursting heart and soul, and I thought myself the most
+forlorn and miserable wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man,
+thought I, if to be a boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and
+wept, and my heart cracked within me, but all the time I defied them
+through my teeth, and dared them to do their worst.
+
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship’s bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+
+
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as
+the watch was called again. It was now four o’clock in the morning, and
+when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east.
+The men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without
+speaking, and some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell
+off like little boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was
+broad day, and an order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub
+was dragged into the waist, and then one of the men went over into the
+chains, and slipped in behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and
+leaning over, began to swing a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and
+in that way with much expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to
+fill the tub in a very short time. Then the water began to splash about
+all over the decks, and I began to think I should surely get my feet
+wet, and catch my death of cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told
+him I thought I would just step below, till this miserable wetting was
+over; for I did not have any water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had
+died of consumption. But he only roared out for me to get a broom and
+go to scrubbing, or he would prove a worse consumption to me than ever
+got hold of my poor aunt. So I scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back
+was almost broke, for the brooms had uncommon short handles, and we
+were told to scrub hard.
+
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of
+water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He
+must have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines
+love to point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him
+with full buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over
+the deck, with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of
+a scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the
+world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse
+than my mother’s house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+
+At eight o’clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend
+to tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I
+should have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for
+my own part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no table to
+sit down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide
+every thing themselves. But so it was.
+
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house
+with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having
+no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little
+tub called a “kid,” was passed down into the forecastle, filled with
+something they called “burgoo.” This was like mush, made of Indian
+corn, meal, and water. With the _“kid,” a_ little tin cannikin was
+passed down with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put
+the kid between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like
+an old landlord mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole
+in the middle of the mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all
+the world like a little black pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other,
+with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after
+stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down
+their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very
+good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I wasn’t
+sure.
+
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little
+_burgoo_ toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready
+open to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was
+about, knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned
+my manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn’t that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to
+eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon,
+for he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.
+
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But _my_ side was scraped clean, so I got
+no _burgoo_ that morning.
+
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to
+be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard
+biscuit, very sociably, over each other’s heads, which was very
+convenient indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first
+four or five days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much
+about it, only it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to
+bring a fine comb and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward
+over the bulwarks every evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+
+
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the _burgoo,_ called upon them in a loud voice to cease their
+clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I
+shall have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I
+will here try to describe him a little.
+
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor.
+He was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I
+have on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald,
+except in the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was
+stuck over with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out
+shoe-brush. His nose had broken down in the middle, and he squinted
+with one eye, and did not look very straight out of the other. He
+dressed a good deal like a Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary
+sailor-rig; wearing a pair of great over-all blue trowsers, fastened
+with suspenders, and three red woolen shirts, one over the other; for
+he was subject to the rheumatism, and was not in good health, he said;
+and he had a large white wool hat, with a broad rolling brim. He was a
+native of New York city, and had a good deal to say about
+_highlanders,_ and _rowdies,_ whom he denounced as only good for the
+gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a _highlander_
+himself.
+
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was
+a great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict
+him, or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful
+was, that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have
+no doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now,
+I could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with
+him; such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and
+withal was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have
+run from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye,
+that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights
+it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no
+beard, and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might
+have seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own
+account, he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he
+first went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And
+according to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of
+dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had
+served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a
+diabolical relish used to tell of the _middle-passage,_ where the
+slaves were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and
+dead were unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning,
+before washing down the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner,
+which being chased by an English cruiser off Cape Verde, received three
+shots in her hull, which raked through and through a whole file of
+slaves, that were chained.
+
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
+man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
+got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
+would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged _“shampoo,”_ for the sake of
+their money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the
+straits of Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to
+make him point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
+
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.
+
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
+the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
+Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
+out of the world by wasps and hornets.
+
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
+he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
+to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I
+sometimes fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable,
+broken-down condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in
+consequence of his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with
+such malevolence as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my
+mother so thought me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea,
+and shook off my low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in
+my cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas
+_he_ was being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his
+vitals, and was more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will
+not put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even
+now, I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.
+
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his
+eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship’s
+helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called
+for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy
+duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for
+assuming them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in
+poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place
+was to be jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of
+spasmodic exertion under strong inducements, which every one knows the
+greatest invalids will sometimes show.
+
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+_sogering,_ as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a
+desire to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though
+this Jackson was a notorious old _soger_ the whole voyage (I mean, in
+all things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging
+back), and in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have
+passed unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call
+him to account in any way; or to let him so much as think, what they
+thought of his conduct. But I often heard them call him many hard names
+behind his back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been
+tenderly inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood in
+mortal fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him like so many
+spaniels; and used to rub his back, after he was undressed and lying in
+his bunk; and used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some
+cold coffee for him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of
+tobacco, and mend his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and
+tend, and nurse him every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling
+on them, and found fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those
+who did the most for him, and cringed the most before him, were the
+very ones he most abused; while two or three who held more aloof, he
+treated with a little consideration.
+
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship’s company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
+know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
+in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
+would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
+that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
+from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
+crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
+butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being
+abused and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially,
+because of his great strength and fine person, and particularly because
+of his red cheeks.
+
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an
+_able-seaman,_ was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man
+in the eyes of a ship’s company; I mean, when he ships for an
+_able-seaman,_ but is not able to do the duty of one. For sailors are
+of three classes—_able-seaman, ordinary-seaman,_ and _boys;_ and they
+receive different wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship’s
+company of twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if
+they prove to understand their duty every way (and that is no small
+matter either, as I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to,
+and thought much of by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence
+their very pea-jackets, and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
+
+But you must not think from this, that persons called _boys_ aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
+called a _boy,_ and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a _boy_ means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
+enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a _boy;_ and boys’ work
+is put upon him.
+
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson’s
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor’s
+age just like a horse’s—by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened
+his mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the
+light came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while
+he looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a
+baboon peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just
+as if I had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to
+cut his throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the
+lather on, to be shaved. For I watched Jackson’s eye and saw it
+snapping, and a sort of going in and out, very quick, as if it were
+something like a forked tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were
+longing to kill the man; but at last he grew more composed, and after
+concluding his examination, said, that the first man was the oldest
+sailor, for the ends of his teeth were the evenest and most worn down;
+which, he said, arose from eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this
+was the reason he could tell a sailor’s age like a horse’s.
+
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+_say—come, boys, let’s laugh;_ and they did laugh; and declared it was
+a rare joke.
+
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out,
+whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to
+them that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes
+from others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to
+tell the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that is, when
+his back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a grave face;
+when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or otherwise,
+they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking perplexed enough;
+till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and
+idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had
+purposely put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look
+grave, too; even when he was telling something that ought to split
+their sides. And with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed
+them all to scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips began to
+glue together at the corners with a fine white foam.
+
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every
+body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him
+some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart.
+Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened
+at him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling
+him Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some terrible thing
+at last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up; for the captain
+would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward again.
+
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly
+all hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink
+off during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more
+submit to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good
+their oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old
+way; so that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt
+of Jackson’s wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up
+a little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson;
+yet in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.
+
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to _greenhorns_ and _landsmen,_
+who know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think, that an _able
+seaman_ is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little boy.
+And the able seamen in the Highlander had such grand notions about
+their seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen received
+diplomas, like those given at colleges; and were made a sort _A.M.S,_
+or _Masters of Arts._
+
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew
+that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and
+indeed endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid
+Jackson’s evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe,
+set many of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak
+out for me before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of
+Ishmael in the ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began
+to feel a hatred growing up in me against the whole crew—so much so,
+that I prayed against it, that it might not master my heart completely,
+and so make a fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
+over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
+hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
+I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been
+in during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
+could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
+blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
+forbidding.
+
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go
+out on the bowsprit, and lay down between the _manropes_ there, and
+look over at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have
+been almost happy for a time.
+
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
+least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
+could now look around me, and make observations.
+
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
+at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the
+sight of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All
+round us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to
+be seen but water—water—water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not
+the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize
+till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
+boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
+squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
+I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
+lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
+great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
+
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind
+my little brother’s face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle.
+It had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy
+little wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a
+pasture; and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it
+wanted to be patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with
+hearts in them, that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we
+sailed in among them, scattering them under our broad bows in
+sun-flakes, and riding over them like a great elephant among lambs. But
+what seemed perhaps the most strange to me of all, was a certain
+wonderful rising and falling of the sea; I do not mean the waves
+themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and swelling and sinking all
+over the ocean. It was something I can not very well describe; but I
+know very well what it was, and how it affected me. It made me almost
+dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes off it, it seemed
+so passing strange and wonderful.
+
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to
+hear myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of
+the deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some _stun’-sails_ ready to
+hoist aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and
+these stun’-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away
+out beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water,
+like the wings of a great bird.
+
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing
+the name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I
+felt very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or
+what I was; every thing was so strange and new.
+
+While the stun’-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
+
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
+with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
+managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like
+a fool as at first.
+
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can
+not imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going
+into a barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, and dress
+in strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their
+own names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a
+thing by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a
+landlubber. This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to
+draw some water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I
+thought I had committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great
+passion, and said they never had any _pails_ at sea, and then I learned
+that they were always called _buckets._ And once I was talking about
+sticking a little wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew
+out again, and said there were no _pegs_ at sea, only _plugs._ And just
+so it was with every thing else.
+
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
+names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
+to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have
+remarked what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed
+mixed and entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very
+smallest of these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are
+very lengthy, like the names of young royal princes, such as the
+_starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line,_ or the
+_larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line._
+
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship’s ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the
+classes of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names
+there are in the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons
+and anatomists give to the various parts of the human body; which,
+indeed, is something like a ship; its bones being the stiff
+standing-rigging, and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage
+all the motions.
+
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
+which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
+very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
+breathing each other’s breath, owing to the vast multitude of words
+they use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But
+people seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many
+names, seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should
+not be surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in
+the world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
+
+At last we hoisted the stun’-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as
+soon as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse,
+and the breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking
+off the foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and
+timber seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with life and joy;
+and I felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be
+glad to bound along so round the world.
+
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded
+to all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and
+on with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious
+throb at the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my
+heart, as if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood
+ran tingling along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+
+Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
+briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
+very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the
+globe, let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with
+an eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
+
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval,
+we were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
+chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+
+Miserable dog’s life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and
+set to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as
+if I were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and
+make a speedy end to this abominable voyage!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+
+
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.
+
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good
+humor, and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to
+appreciate the difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I
+was thrown. Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special
+manner take me under his protection, and prove a kind friend and
+benefactor to me; as I had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to
+their crew; and so they are; but such fathers as Solomon’s precepts
+tend to make—severe and chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of duty
+overcomes the sense of love, and who every day, in some sort, play the
+part of Brutus, who ordered his son away to execution, as I have read
+in our old family Plutarch.
+
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother’s friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.
+
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.
+
+When two or three days had passed without the captain’s speaking to me
+in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not
+expect it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that
+might have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it
+more proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he
+might be offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender
+feelings. So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second
+dog-watch, when there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call
+and see him.
+
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off
+some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of
+my red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck
+ones, and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my
+shooting-jacket, I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made
+quite a genteel figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not
+have looked so well in a drawing-room.
+
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make
+of it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told
+them no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to
+pay my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed and
+shouted, as if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so very
+simple in going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some of
+them tried to dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson, who
+sat looking on, cried out, with a hideous grin, “Let him go, let him
+go, men—he’s a nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and
+raisins for him.” And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits
+of coughing seized him, and he almost choked.
+
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands,
+and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the
+mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I
+thought it would never do to present myself before a gentleman that
+way; so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which
+my mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was putting them on,
+Jackson asked me whether he shouldn’t call a carriage; and another bade
+me not forget to present his best respects to the skipper. I left them
+all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the cook-house, when the
+old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched
+my hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought
+his eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and
+with a voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by playing such
+tricks aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to let go of me,
+or I would complain to my friend the captain, whom I intended to visit
+that evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl round, that I thought
+the Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me forward, roaring out
+I know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing round the
+windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson
+asked me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went,
+I would not take a friend along and introduce him.
+
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that
+night, I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to
+call on the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the
+fact, that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance
+of sea usages.
+
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin
+during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return
+to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a little
+pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm, where a
+watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half hours by,
+with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was. And it
+used to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through the
+pane of glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the proceedings
+in the cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for
+dinner, or the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little
+mahogany stand, or playing the game called _solitaire,_ at cards, of an
+evening; for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as
+will ere long be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose
+society he did not dislike.
+
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be
+making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made
+his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked
+very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I
+thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.
+
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as
+he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very
+pleasant day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into
+such a rage; I thought he was going to knock me down; but after
+standing speechless awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his
+head and threw it at me. I don’t know what impelled me, but I ran to
+the lee-scuppers where it fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a
+bow; when the mate came running up, and thrust me forward again; and
+after he had got me as far as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I
+was crazy or not; for if I was, he would put me in irons right off, and
+have done with it.
+
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that
+I had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by
+him and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told
+me if I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again
+presumed so much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into
+the rigging, and keep me there until I learned better manners. “You are
+very green,” said he, “but I’ll ripen you.” Indeed this chief mate
+seemed to have the keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some
+sort, seemed too dignified personally to protect his own dignity.
+
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.
+
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after,
+a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his
+nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the
+poop, began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men
+aloft all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the
+street.
+
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy’s. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and
+his boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but
+a shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their
+gloss, and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a
+sort of miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might
+have been owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of
+dye while at sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while
+ashore, a gentleman on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have
+treated another gentleman as he did me.
+
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+
+
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain’s old clothes, I may
+as well speak of mine.
+
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had
+greatly rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be
+warm and pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be
+like a summer excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt
+water, and a change of scene and society.
+
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and
+a belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers’, whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+_“long togs,”_ as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the
+life I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my
+pantaloons were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction,
+particularly about the seat, owing to their not being cut
+sailor-fashion, with low waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So
+that I was often placed in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the
+rigging, sometimes in plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen
+exposed in the most inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
+
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
+very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.
+
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
+in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try
+them on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
+spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
+a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
+he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
+for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing
+and blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted
+with him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
+intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
+have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with
+a row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was
+a great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
+precisely in that way.
+
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
+deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
+“twig” them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
+of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
+very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
+genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
+from my cousin’s, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
+
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.
+
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home.
+They had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had
+had a pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out
+when I walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see
+me, and I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at
+them during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a
+word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted
+them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high
+heels, which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several
+times came near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them
+shrink in such a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the
+instep; and I was obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very
+heart. The legs were quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees,
+and the edges were mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call
+them my _“gaff-topsail-boots.”_ And sometimes they used to call me
+“Boots,” and sometimes “Buttons,” on account of the ornaments on my
+pantaloons and shooting-jacket.
+
+At last, I took their advice, and _“razeed”_ them, as they phrased it.
+That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
+feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
+made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
+wore straps on the ice.
+
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved
+a real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a
+rain storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down
+on deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered,
+and lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
+
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
+kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought
+of them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
+obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like
+an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a
+crucifix.
+
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
+that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like
+going to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and
+knife, fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter
+with a steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon
+iron pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave
+me a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much
+disposed to rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was
+drinking; and it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts
+were deprived of all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a
+labor to me. And I was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup,
+three times a week, which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
+and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
+calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
+In time, my wretched “long togs” began to drop off my back, and I
+looked like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the
+wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home
+would have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged
+myself in my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that
+degradation and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a
+galling mockery, when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell
+all inquiring friends, that Wellingborough had gone _“abroad”_ just as
+if I was visiting Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr.
+Jones had hinted to the captain.
+
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the
+sea.
+
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
+view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
+and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
+sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
+as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
+saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
+looking out of his cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain
+in a green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
+
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
+these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
+the sea-air from the cook’s funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
+and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
+of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
+
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
+in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
+harder.
+
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in
+an elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass
+trumpet to his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation,
+_“Where from?”_
+
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
+
+_Hamburg!_
+
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.
+
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains
+during their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective
+“poops” toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying
+their behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments,
+and drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting
+each other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great
+Atlantic Ocean was a puddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+
+
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at
+middle watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+
+The order was given to loose the _main-skysail,_ which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the
+forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I
+have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the
+skysail; called _moon-sails,_ and _skyscrapers,_ and _cloud-rakers._
+But I shall not believe in them till I see them; a _skysail_ seems high
+enough in all conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that,
+seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to
+brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out;
+when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these
+cloud-defying _cloud-rakers._
+
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch
+sailor came up to me, and said, “Buttons, my boy, it’s high time you be
+doing something; and it’s boy’s business, Buttons, to loose de royals,
+and not old men’s business, like me. Now, d’ye see dat leelle fellow
+way up dare? _dare,_ just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up, now,
+Buttons, I zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons.”
+
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it
+was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing _boy’s business,_
+as they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up
+I went, not daring to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were,
+to the shrouds, as I ascended.
+
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the
+_Jacob’s Ladder;_ and they may well call it so, for it took me almost
+into the clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself
+hanging on the skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and
+curling my feet round the rigging, as if they were another pair of
+hands.
+
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far
+out upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my
+lofty perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all
+round, by beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the
+midnight clouds; and every second, expected to find myself
+falling—falling—falling, as I have felt when the nightmare has been on
+me.
+
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank
+in the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over
+which I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round
+the truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost
+frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at such a
+lofty and solitary height.
+
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship’s motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.
+
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I
+could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the _gaskets,_ or lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready,
+sung out as I had been told, to _“hoist away!”_ And hoist they did, and
+me too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they
+were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was,
+going up higher and higher; the yard rising under me, as if it were
+alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at the time, I was in a
+good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I could not see well
+enough to feel afraid—at least on that account; though I felt
+frightened enough in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and made
+good the saying of old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard
+from the rigging is a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely;
+whereas old tars are less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something
+like a compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate,
+he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves
+some mention.
+
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe,
+and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea.
+His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a
+red shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever
+saw.
+
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable;
+and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and
+imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.
+
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when
+we got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American
+Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American ships, Max
+prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if
+he could, would have been very glad to have passed himself off for a
+born native.
+
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting
+discredit upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my
+wardrobe, by loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like
+many other well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also
+betrayed some anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when
+the ship’s company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my
+awkwardness in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety
+on that head.
+
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about
+my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a
+finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+THE COOK AND STEWARD
+
+
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at
+the foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were
+dripping with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were
+standing on the roof of a house in a shower.
+
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
+of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
+he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
+imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family
+friend, Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted
+tasseled cane, between churches, as he used to; and whether he would
+inquire about myself.
+
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
+Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
+to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began
+to think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
+school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
+cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
+name of _the doctor._
+
+And _doctors,_ cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
+serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
+green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jalap do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off
+a powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by
+a surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And when
+you die by a pill-doctor’s hands, it is never with a sweet relish in
+your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics,
+and used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat
+over his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled
+and covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little
+leather strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the
+water in which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes
+when I found this book was the Bible.
+
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky
+studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five
+feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the
+pipe of which stuck out of the roof.
+
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read;
+and big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till
+they hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it
+was no wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious
+passage in the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read,
+he called me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over,
+demanding an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could
+explain; not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left
+him poring over it still.
+
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to
+be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a
+committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their
+natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed
+black hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon
+him, and remained conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more
+than an hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the
+sliding doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and
+preaching; and after that a psalm was sung and a benediction given;
+when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great
+perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of
+cold, wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and
+make his fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then
+dashing into his stove.
+
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did
+rip a little, for it would have tried old Job’s temper, to be set to
+work making a fire in the water.
+
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket
+before the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into
+the door for a knocker; and wrote his name, “Mr. Thompson,” over it,
+with a bit of red chalk.
+
+The men said he lived round the corner of _Forecastle-square,_ opposite
+the _Liberty Pole;_ because his cook-house was right behind the
+foremast, and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard.
+When a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he _“takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street.”_
+
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward’s, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by
+the name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when
+Mr. Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that
+turban at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair,
+just like the large, round brush, used for washing windows, called a
+_Pope’s Head._
+
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests,
+and buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black,
+which, with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a
+serious young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.
+
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something
+he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more
+like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring,
+and was always calling your attention to something, and pointing at it
+with his ornamented finger.
+
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the _“Three Spaniards,”_
+and _“Charlotte Temple,”_ and carried a lock of frizzled hair in his
+vest pocket, which he frequently volunteered to show to people, with
+his handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these
+two, the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the
+cook-house, leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to
+keep from falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they
+would stay till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about
+the events that had happened during the day in the cabin.
+
+And sometimes Mr. Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a
+chapter for the edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad
+profligate and gay deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful
+indiscretion. He would read over to him the story of Joseph and
+Potiphar’s wife; and hold Joseph up to him as a young man of excellent
+principles, whom he ought to imitate, and not be guilty of his
+indiscretion any more. And Lavender would look serious, and say that he
+knew it was all true—he was a wicked youth, he knew it—he had broken a
+good many hearts, and many eyes were weeping for him even then, both in
+New York, and Liverpool, and London, and Havre. But how could he help
+it? He hadn’t made his handsome face, and fine head of hair, and
+graceful figure. It was not _he,_ but the others, that were to blame;
+for his bewitching person turned all heads and subdued all hearts,
+wherever he went. And then he would look very serious and penitent, and
+go up to the little glass, and pass his hands through his hair, and see
+how his whiskers were coming on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM
+BOOK
+
+
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I
+thought I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a
+_bull’s-eye,_ or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into
+the deck to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I
+often found myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull’s-eye
+had not suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in
+walking the deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still
+worse, sometimes a coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay
+there till I dressed myself and went up to remove it—a kind of
+interruption to my studies which annoyed me very much, when diligently
+occupied in reading.
+
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole,
+where we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest
+time I had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my
+back, during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.
+
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they
+had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with _Delirium Tremens_ in great
+gilt letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on the
+subject of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in the
+sailor book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in New
+York.
+
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great
+profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones,
+who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top shelf,
+where it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that although
+I was going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good
+education; and that there was hardly any situation in life, however
+humble and depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in
+it to store his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And
+he added, that though it _did_ look rather unfavorable for my future
+prospects, to be going to sea as a common sailor so early in life; yet,
+it would no doubt turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate,
+if I would only take good care of myself, would give me a sound
+constitution, if nothing more; and _that_ was not to be undervalued,
+for how many very rich men would give all their bonds and mortgages for
+my boyish robustness.
+
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined;
+and though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused
+the book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and
+unforeseen attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to
+retrieve the poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do
+in the world.
+
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at
+the back: _“Smith’s Wealth of Nations.”_ This not satisfying me, I
+glanced at the title page, and found it was an _“Enquiry into the
+Nature and Causes”_ of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to
+look further down, I caught sight of _“Aberdeen,”_ where the book was
+printed; and thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country,
+must prove some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very
+kindly, and promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page
+number one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist
+and body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the
+philosopher’s stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even
+pitch and tar to silver and gold.
+
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as
+I commenced the first chapter, entitled _“Of the causes of improvement
+in the productive power of labor.”_ Dry as crackers and cheese, to be
+sure; and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only
+getting initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened
+to me. So I read on and on, about _“wages and profits of labor,”_
+without getting any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I
+drank some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up
+for lost work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at
+home, lettered on the back, _“The History of Rome”_ was quite as full
+of matter, and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr.
+Jones had ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering,
+that he had to get on a chair when he reached it down from its dusty
+shelf; _that_ certainly looked suspicious.
+
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect:
+_“Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods,_ 1798.” So it
+must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones’ father; and I wondered
+whether _he_ had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever
+read it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say, never
+read their own books; writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so
+sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it
+for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes
+waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book could not have
+been the cause of that.
+
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor,
+and his Dream Book.
+
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
+used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an _Irish Cockney._ By which
+I understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in
+London, somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue
+that I could hear.
+
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou’west
+cap flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he
+looked like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too,
+like a walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war’s-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the
+battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another
+incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be
+dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some
+eel soup, for a spell against the scurvy.
+
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a
+fortune-teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house
+was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.
+
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from
+some cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition
+state made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down
+in a fray.
+
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
+all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling
+him an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
+apothecary’s, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done
+for him.
+
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he
+called _“Trafalgar Oil_ for restoring the hair,” _price one dollar;_
+and told him that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have
+the desired effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called _“Balm of
+Paradise, or the Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen.”_ These
+high-sounding naval names delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there
+must be virtue in them.
+
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a
+young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in
+the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to
+his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large
+bottle, conspicuously labeled, _“Balm of Paradise.”_ It seemed from the
+text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil,
+and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of
+bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet, seized the precious
+bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed again, getting up in the
+morning without knowing any thing about it. Which, indeed, was a most
+mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how the
+engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was
+ignorant, and where there were no bystanders.
+
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck
+to it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be
+crowned with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this
+gradual change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to
+expose him to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same
+principle that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising
+whiskers. He would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any
+change yet; and if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth,
+there was a very great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his
+hair with oil, operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet,
+and want of a brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild
+horse’s mane, and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue.
+Besides his collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself
+with several boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor
+doctor in New York, who by placards stuck on the posts along the
+wharves, advertised to remain standing at the northeast corner of
+Catharine Market, every Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and
+twelve in the morning, to receive calls from patients, distribute
+medicines, and give advice gratis.
+
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but
+at breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as
+they do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the
+boarding-houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along
+with the pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of
+toothpicks. But they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western
+country.
+
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of _horse
+salts_ (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to
+sea without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also,
+take this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain
+storm. But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor
+themselves with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in
+this connection, some really frightful stories might be told; but I
+forbear.
+
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the
+death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you
+from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board
+this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently
+turned into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and
+smoking like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for
+then, I bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof
+to bodily ill.
+
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner
+of his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red
+cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.
+
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon
+Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor.
+Hence it was entitled the _Bonaparte Dream Book;_ for the magic of it
+lay in the interpretation of dreams, and their application to the
+foreseeing of future events; so that all preparatory measures might be
+taken beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and
+satisfactory every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means
+of figures, in some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was
+facilitated by a set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something
+like the Logarithm Tables at the end of Bowditch’s Navigator.
+
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this _Bonaparte Dream Book_
+of his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in
+his own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before
+taking his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his
+bunk before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet,
+and a bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin scratching his
+oily head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down strokes on his
+chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.
+
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.
+
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his
+bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice—“Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!”
+
+“What benches?” growled Max—“What’s the matter?”
+
+“Benches! benches!” screamed Blunt, without heeding him, “cut down the
+forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment’s coming!”
+
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his _benches;_ till,
+shortly after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind
+would stand or sit at the Last Day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+A NARROW ESCAPE
+
+
+This Dream Book of Blunt’s reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+
+It was the larboard watch’s turn to remain below from midnight till
+four o’clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out
+again about three o’clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he
+was desirous of at once having interpreted.
+
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on
+the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him
+and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship’s company flying on
+deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.
+
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out _Luff! Luff!_ to some one in the dark water before the ship.
+In that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black
+hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so
+near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind,
+the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of _Luff! Luff!_
+that our own mate, was raising.
+
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys
+jerked out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our
+jib-boom thumping against our bows.
+
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been
+injured; for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging
+mixed with ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar
+with another jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against
+emergencies.
+
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on
+board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our
+vessel was terribly reprimanded by the mate.
+
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet
+their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels
+coming together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the
+middle watch of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like
+fighting elks, sink down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in
+death.
+
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a
+good breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in
+about seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to
+behold. All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard
+anchor was gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while
+every one of the lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same
+direction; so that she now carried small and unsightly _jury-yards._
+
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus
+shattered, but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her
+gay and gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which
+she now entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I
+had known at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high
+spirits, and was brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed
+from head to foot.
+
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.
+
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
+become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
+though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
+them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
+when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
+having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
+that any are near. Then, if they _are_ near, it seems almost incredible
+that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
+the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
+upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
+But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the
+things which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the
+ignorant can only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face.
+And even when experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for
+that day; inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the
+possibility of adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to
+be far too bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and
+fleetest ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have
+been struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do
+some lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed
+to the fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and
+disaster, suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down,
+foundering, into death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+
+
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke
+and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as
+a spit?
+
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks,
+wrapt in a mist, that no London in the Novemberest November ever
+equaled. The chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this
+midnight or midday? So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair
+wind, we shorten sail for fear of accidents; and not only that, but
+here am I, poor Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the
+top of the _“Sampson-Post,”_ a lofty tower of timber, so called; and
+tolling the ship’s bell, as if for a funeral.
+
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from
+our track.
+
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little
+cord attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides
+through my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black
+hat, like the _“bull that could pull,”_ announcing the decease of the
+lamented Cock-Robin.
+
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men
+at both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly
+stirred up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their
+squeals; and no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.
+
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a
+vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.
+
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my
+duty as a sexton. But presently some one cried out—_“There she blows!
+whales! whales close alongside!”_
+
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to _me,_ Wellingborough;— would my
+own brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long,
+black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I
+thought they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of
+flesh! regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated
+continents, when they descended to feed!
+
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I
+lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the
+story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows
+an elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
+
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter’s, they say, and then
+go and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your
+high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale’s belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.
+
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves
+sailing through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small
+craft; and when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor
+saying, intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being _on the
+limits. It is like a fisherman’s walk,_ say they, _three steps and
+overboard._
+
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean
+between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run
+down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their
+lamps trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of
+three hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some
+forty or fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous
+to sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at
+the bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called “arming” the
+lead.
+
+We “hove” our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel’s heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the
+sailors carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of
+the jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it
+went, with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern,
+when the line ran out of the tub like light.
+
+When we came to haul _it_ up, I was astonished at the force necessary
+to perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove
+through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat
+porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine
+the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but
+the sailors did not seem to be much interested by it, calling me a fool
+for wanting to preserve a few grains of the sand.
+
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we
+found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact of our being
+in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the
+drawing of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer.
+In the absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the
+temperature of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the
+ocean, and the temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than
+that of the Grand Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of
+temperature, for which there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen
+impute the fogs on the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why
+there should always be such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that
+I do not know has ever been accounted for.
+
+It is curious to dip one’s finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current
+comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the
+North Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand
+miles, as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean
+breadth being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger
+than that of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of
+Mississippi of hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of
+Florida, running at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN
+
+
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an _ordinary seaman,_ and, for aught I could see,
+performed his duty very well.
+
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by
+his intimate acquaintance with the monsters.
+
+“They ar’n’t sperm whales,” said Larry, “their spouts ar’n’t bushy
+enough; they ar’n’t Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn’t stay up so long;
+they ar’n’t Hump-backs, for they ar’n’t got any humps; they ar’n’t
+Fin-backs, for you won’t catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar’n’t
+Greenland whales, for we ar’n’t off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar’n’t right whales, for it wouldn’t be right to say so. I tell ye,
+men, them’s Crinkum-crankum whales.”
+
+“And what are them?” said a sailor.
+
+“Why, them is whales that can’t be cotched.”
+
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him
+very hard. And ever after, Larry’s judgment was relied upon concerning
+all strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.
+
+This was Larry’s first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
+merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to
+_“blubber-boilers,”_ as they contemptuously style those who hunt the
+leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and
+so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump
+to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might
+otherwise have encountered.
+
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
+the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+
+“Why,” said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, “in _Madagasky_
+there, they don’t wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the
+midships; they don’t have no dinners, but keeps a dinin’ all day off
+fat pigs and dogs; they don’t go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin’
+all the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack
+they make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of ’baccy, too, I tell ye.
+Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!”
+
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.
+
+“And what’s the use of bein’ _snivelized!”_ said he to me one night
+during our watch on deck; “snivelized chaps only learns the way to take
+on ’bout life, and snivel. You don’t see any Methodist chaps feelin’
+dreadful about their souls; you don’t see any darned beggars and pesky
+constables in _Madagasky, I_ tell ye; and none o’ them kings there gets
+their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say.”
+
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+
+“Are _you_ now, Buttons, any better off for bein’ snivelized?” coming
+close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. “No; you ar’n’t a bit—but you’re a good deal _worse_ for
+it, Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn’t have been to sea here, leadin’ this
+dog’s life, if you hadn’t been snivelized—that’s the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it’s spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it’s too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say.” And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his
+whole past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat
+still lower down over the bridge of his nose.
+
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war’s man we had, who
+went by the name of _“Gun-Deck,”_ from his always talking of sailor
+life in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a
+prodigious mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style,
+with a wide, braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he
+particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and
+when we washed down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might
+be, he always took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck,
+turning out his pretty toes to show his charming feet.
+
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida,
+and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through
+the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his
+telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from
+them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
+plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.
+This plate proved his death; for, according to _Gun-Deck,_ he himself
+shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer’s heart. It
+was a rat-killing war, he said.
+
+_Gun-Deck_ had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war’s man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and _Madagasky._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+
+
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us,
+the like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain
+poured down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly
+carry it off the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost
+up to our knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.
+
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.
+
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could
+hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But
+while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me
+look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a
+handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her
+wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish
+kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.
+
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue
+again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam.
+We bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the
+captain in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly
+passed alongside of it.
+
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that
+must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were
+pretty much gone; and here and there the bare _stanchions,_ or posts,
+were left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over
+the deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was snapt off
+less than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered
+remnant looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods.
+Every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway
+yawned into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with
+a rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.
+
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the
+deck, something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the
+relic of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for
+a signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three
+dark, green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but
+otherwise were motionless. I saw the captain’s, glass directed toward
+them, and heard him say at last, “They must have been dead a long
+time.” These were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the
+taffrail for safety; but must have famished.
+
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain
+would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the
+schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so
+much as learning the schooner’s name, though every one supposed her to
+be a New Brunswick lumberman.
+
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did
+not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.
+
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot
+for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+
+“Look there,” said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing—“look
+there; that’s a sailor’s coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons,” turning round to
+me—“how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn’t you like to take a sail
+with them ’ere dead men? Wouldn’t it be nice?” And then he tried to
+laugh, but only coughed again. “Don’t laugh at dem poor fellows,” said
+Max, looking grave; “do’ you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off
+dan de Cape of Dood Hope.”
+
+“Dood Hope, Dood Hope,” shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking
+the Dutchman, “dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned
+and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights.”
+
+“No, no,” said Blunt, “all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft.”
+
+“And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?” howled
+Jackson through a cough. “Don’t talk of heaven to me—it’s a lie—I know
+it—and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek,
+that there’s any heaven for _you?_ Will they let _you_ in there, with
+that tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark
+gulps you down his hatchway one of these days, you’ll find, that by
+dying, you’ll only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you
+Irish cockney! Yes, you’ll be bolted down like one of your own pills:
+and I should like to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway
+maelstrom, like a box on ’em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!”
+And so saying, he went off, holding his hands to his chest, and
+coughing, as if his last hour was come.
+
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and
+mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the
+time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.
+
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his
+tawny skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and
+earth. He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some
+inscrutable curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart
+that beat near him.
+
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness,
+there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and
+touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this
+Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+
+
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried
+out. But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must
+know that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship,
+plying in connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals,
+between the two ports. No: she was only what is called a _regular
+trader_ to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much
+as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in
+all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination.
+Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among
+sailors come under the general head of _transient ships;_ which implies
+that they are here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins’s
+dog.
+
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
+aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship’s reputation for speed. Hence it is,
+that although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in
+the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few
+years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions— like robust young men, who live too fast in their
+teens—and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.
+
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird’s-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and
+many a bright eye sparkled, _now_ accommodates a bluff Quaker captain
+from Martha’s Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the
+Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and
+savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to
+the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of
+leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and
+nonsense across the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad
+quarter-deck, too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often choked
+up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous
+blubber; and every where reeks with oil during the prosecution of the
+fishery. Sic _transit gloria mundi!_ Thus departs the pride and glory
+of packet-ships! _It is_ like a broken down importer of French silks
+embarking in the soap-boning business.
+
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
+five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
+on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.
+
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger—the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
+going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
+concerning the signs of the times.
+
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck
+with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise,
+and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend.
+But looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room,
+where you could see him through the little window, in an irregular
+sitting position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth,
+and his head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound
+meditation, with his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen
+reading; never took a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine;
+never conversed; and never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in
+no need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe.
+Conjecture was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his
+business. The sailors, who are always curious with regard to such
+matters, and criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are
+perhaps aware at the time, completely exhausted themselves in
+suppositions, some of which are characteristically curious.
+
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to
+the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.
+
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes
+confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all
+sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this
+is the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have had an
+inkling of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have
+done.
+
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions,
+this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and
+collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes,
+of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a
+hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the
+skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
+Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of
+salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called _“making a
+spread eagle”_ of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is
+exacted, that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship’s
+company with money enough for a treat all round.
+
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on
+the keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and _he_ such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for
+levying contributions.
+
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way
+up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding
+on with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully
+turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the
+nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he
+must have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.
+
+“Good heavens!” said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, “you will surely
+fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!”
+
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor’s attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the
+passenger, and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and
+foot. The stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last
+violently remonstrated; but in vain; for as his fearfulness of falling
+made him keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from
+any effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome _spread-eagle_
+of, to the great satisfaction of the crew.
+
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of
+his reservedness.
+
+“Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?”
+
+“Spread-eagle, sir,” said the Greenlander, thinking that those few
+words would at once make the matter plain.
+
+“Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?”
+
+“Treats all round, sir,” said the Greenlander, wondering at the other’s
+obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.
+
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor,
+and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was
+suffered to descend.
+
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince’s
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had
+nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked
+stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?—just the girl
+to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;
+her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were
+blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most
+devoted.
+
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain’s charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.
+
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.
+
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity
+of her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady’s guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how
+shabby they look.
+
+But for all this, the passage 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 passengers. 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 shirt
+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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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 molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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 ship 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 passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
+heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
+the ship’s sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
+_between-decks;_ and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
+two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his
+head for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There
+are plenty of passengers 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 ship must be out of sight of
+land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough
+shaking, and threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though
+thin and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing
+their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers
+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 ashore 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 Lancashire 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 ashore at last, without a good-by from any person but
+one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 passage 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 Lancashire 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
+Greenlander 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
+Lancashire 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 oakum. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 repetitions, 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 ship 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 ship
+at sea, and a ship 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 rushing 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 like 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.
+
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention
+of before.
+
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander _“in full fig,”_ with
+bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the
+most vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood
+up to it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his
+right arm stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it
+was glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and
+plunging up and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship
+went roaming on her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many
+sea-fights; and when he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there,
+amputated his left leg, and gave him another wooden one, which I am
+sorry to say, did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if
+he limped. Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and
+touched up one eye, and repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the
+painter came and made his toilet all over again; giving him a new suit
+throughout, with a plaid of a beautiful pattern.
+
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and
+snug with a handsome pension in the “Sailors’-Snug-Harbor” on Staten
+Island.
+
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer
+was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great
+art, upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage;
+for if the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his
+duty, he keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision
+as to its precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may
+be pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for
+John o’ Groat’s; all of which is worse than wasted time. Whereas, a
+true steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a
+bee-line from port to port.
+
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the
+helm, might make the ship _“lurch to”—or “bring her by the lee.”_ And
+what those things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when
+they found themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by
+forever to the moon and stars.
+
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that
+they are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in
+reverence, is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see
+standing at the wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at
+the compass, or looking out to windward.
+
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and
+with one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of
+wind, might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in
+proving last wills and testaments.
+
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who
+might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the
+case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room
+occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of
+cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested with the
+underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark, that of
+the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or
+inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and
+crying out: _“Luff, you rascal; she’s falling off!”_ or, _“Keep her
+steady, you scoundrel, you’re boxing the compass!”_ then hurry down to
+your state-room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your
+stationery and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle,
+like Columbus’ log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are
+drowned in the next gale of wind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+
+
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of
+which I drew on a blank leaf of the _“Wealth of Nations,”_ and studied
+it every morning, like the multiplication table.
+
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; and I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship’s compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the
+helm. It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that
+burned in it by night.
+
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one
+side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had
+I been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed
+them so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds
+within; and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different
+air may be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste.
+Nor must I omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction,
+and a particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of
+cogs and wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked
+something like a printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however,
+did not like it much, owing to the casualties that happened to their
+imprudent fingers, by catching in among the cogs and other intricate
+contrivances. Then, sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would
+lift the ship, the helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman
+revolving round like Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of
+breaking on the wheel.
+
+The _harness-cask,_ also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather
+meat-safe, in which a week’s allowance of salt pork and beef is kept,
+deserves being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of
+the quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain’s smoking-seat, where
+he would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking
+teeth. He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+
+Then the magnificent _capstan!_ The pride and glory of the whole ship’s
+company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty
+it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of
+distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor
+center-table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant
+with brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
+mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain’s lounge, and the chief
+mate’s secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for
+memorandums.
+
+I might proceed and speak of the _booby-hatch,_ used as a sort of
+settee by the officers, and the _fife-rail_ round the mainmast,
+inclosing a little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white
+dog with a blue ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master’s
+daughter, used to take his morning walks, and air himself in this small
+edition of the New York Bowling-Green.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+
+
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more
+consideration, though not at all relaxing in a certain air of
+professional superiority. For the mere knowing of the names of the
+ropes, and familiarizing yourself with their places, so that you can
+lay hold of them in the darkest night; and the loosing and furling of
+the canvas, and reefing topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though
+of course forming an indispensable part of a seaman’s vocation, and the
+business in which he is principally engaged; yet these are things which
+a beginner of ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far
+inferior to many other matters familiar to an _“able seaman.”_
+
+What did I know, for instance, about _striking a top-gallant-mast,_ and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have _turned in a
+dead-eye,_ or in the approved nautical style have _clapt a seizing on
+the main-stay?_ What did I know of _“passing a gammoning,” “reiving a
+Burton,” “strapping a shoe-block,” “clearing a foul hawse,”_ and
+innumerable other intricacies?
+
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
+a regular trade as a carpenter’s or locksmith’s. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
+sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
+where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
+of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
+that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
+sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
+but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
+destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be
+a bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about
+the shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of
+rope-yarns for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of
+millinery, so as to tie graceful bows and knots, such as _Matthew
+Walker’s roses,_ and _Turk’s heads;_ he must be a bit of a musician, in
+order to sing out at the halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set
+dead-eyes in the standing rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable
+him to make a jurymast out of a yard in case of emergency; he must be a
+sempstress, to darn and mend the sails; a ropemaker, to twist _marline_
+and _Spanish foxes;_ a blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the
+blocks: in short, he must be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to
+master his own. And this, perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is
+pretty much the case with all things else; for you know nothing till
+you know all; which is the reason we never know anything.
+
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
+to his calling—_fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers,
+marlingspikes, palms, heavers,_ and many more. The smaller sort he
+generally carries with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas
+reticule.
+
+The estimation in which a ship’s crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely _“hand, reef, and steer,”_ that is, run aloft, furl sails,
+haul ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is _“a sailor-man”_
+which means that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an
+artist in the rigging.
+
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how
+that these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that
+I had only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short
+voyage too; and it was not worth while to teach _me_ any thing, the
+fruit of which instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I
+might belong to. All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles,
+and the use of my backbone—comparatively small though it was at that
+time—by way of a lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when
+wanted. Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I
+was set to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service
+it is a religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something
+or other, never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable
+fatality attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow
+they _would_ drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of
+reserved hammers seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions
+I received from the chief mate for my clumsiness.
+
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron’s Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
+
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in
+the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+
+All but the _“turning out”_ or rising from your berth when the watch
+was called at night—_that_ I never fancied. It was a sort of
+acquaintance, which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a
+thankless, miserable business, truly.
+
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below
+to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied
+limbs, you are started up—it seems but the next instant after closing
+your lids—and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark
+and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the
+forecastle.
+
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least
+the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other
+watch, just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my
+ear—_“Watch below, Buttons; watch below”—_which pleasantly reminded me
+of the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take
+another nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in
+my bunk to the other sailor’s one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen
+contemplating a voyage to sea.
+
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could
+not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on
+deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would
+call the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+
+As thus:—
+
+“Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand,
+bear a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine
+shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
+cold!”
+
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers
+would reply with—“Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don’t be in such a
+hurry, now. You feel sweet, don’t you?” with other exclamations, some
+of which were full of fury.
+
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of
+the ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became
+the wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+
+
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen
+days, employed us about thirty.
+
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
+in sight.
+
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard,
+but could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast.
+Was that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If _that’s_ the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
+have staid at home.
+
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
+say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed
+at it with increasing interest.
+
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
+Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
+thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O’Connell; I thought of my
+uncle’s ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of
+the gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and
+I thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin
+and the Giant’s Causeway.
+
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
+but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
+other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary
+man in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
+probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
+friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
+
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out—“Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain’t ye, my
+beautiful sailors?” And concluded by calling upon us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, “pay
+out! pay out, my honeys; ah! but you’re noble fellows!” Till at last
+the mate asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, “Haven’t you
+enough rope yet?”
+
+“Sure and I have,” replied the fisherman, “and it’s time for Pat to cut
+and run!” and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a
+Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the
+wind, and bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our
+tow-line.
+
+“And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!” cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.
+
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+
+Could this be really Wales?—Wales?—and I thought of the Prince of
+Wales.
+
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?—And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker’s Hill.
+
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
+like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead
+and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had,
+was ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the
+water, and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the
+distance, which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself
+in conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near
+our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New
+York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a
+plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing
+through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner,
+that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve
+other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats,
+who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering
+in Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though, together;
+cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound vessels;
+smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns; till at
+last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different ships,
+and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool
+taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had
+been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for
+here was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he
+soon fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.
+
+After running till about midnight, we _“hove-to”_ near the mouth of the
+Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the
+flood; and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth,
+is quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed
+immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
+shadowy shapes, like Ossian’s ghosts.
+
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while
+the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a
+mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the
+vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous _Bett-Buoy,_
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow,
+according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a
+moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like
+the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of
+dirges for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no one can
+give ear to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far beneath
+it at the bottom of the deep.
+
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon,
+passing two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew
+near the town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.
+
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them.
+There they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good
+and substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends
+had in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.
+
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, “Why, this ’ere is a
+considerable place—I’m _dummed if_ it ain’t quite a place.—Why, them
+’ere houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afriky, all
+hollow; nothing like this in _Madagasky,_ I tell you;—I’m _dummed,_
+boys if Liverpool ain’t a city!”
+
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a _“realizing sense.”_ He was
+accordingly astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of
+consideration for the country which could boast so extensive a town.
+Instead of holding Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of
+Madagascar, as he had been accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to
+that lady with feeling and respect.
+
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to
+kindle no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They
+looked around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as
+you or I would, if, after a morning’s absence round the corner, we
+found ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent
+voyages to Liverpool.
+
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them
+stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty
+years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among
+the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was
+forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of _Sally._
+
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had
+often assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse
+of his; and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of
+seeing her. But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of
+seamen, and their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round
+world over; and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between
+this very Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his,
+for what I thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my
+astonishment, therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming
+with a neat parcel of Max’s shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and
+ironed, and ready to put on at a moment’s warning.
+
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife
+after long separations.
+
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself
+in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down
+into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed;
+having exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled
+ones, and this was precisely what the New York wife had done for Max,
+not thirty days previous.
+
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.
+
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York
+wife, to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and
+equally devoted to the keeping in good order Max’s wardrobe.
+
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg
+had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as
+Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable
+wives never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much
+as a difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being between
+them; and Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many years, he
+had been going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between wife and
+wife with great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic
+welcome on either side of the ocean.
+
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way
+immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject.
+But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and
+after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded
+by asking me triumphantly, whether _old King Sol,_ as he called the son
+of David, did not have a whole frigate-full of wives; and that being
+the case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have just as good a right
+to have two? “What was not wrong then, is right now,” said Max; “so,
+mind your eye, Buttons, or I’ll crack your pepper-box for you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+
+
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up
+the anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming
+against other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and
+about dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in _Prince’s Dock._ The
+hawsers and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go
+ashore, select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord’s
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six
+weeks, as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however—the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch—feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give
+them at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed,
+is but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the
+scurvy. A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with
+immeasurable disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if
+their captains treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and
+run.
+
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time,
+I felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my
+eyes and lungs. As for _stepping_ on it, that was out of the question,
+in the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not
+have an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out
+into the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its
+immortal loam—but not till then.
+
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we
+stopped before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by
+a gilded bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British
+Unicorn and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and
+lamb in the millennium.—A very judicious and tasty device, showing a
+delicate apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors
+in an English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the
+honor and dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon
+a footing of perfect equality.
+
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a
+young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding
+up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort
+of basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor
+standing by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin,
+he answered, “Why, youngster, don’t you know what that means? It’s a
+young jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the
+cuddy.”
+
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
+American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married
+a buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady,
+and not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
+
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among
+the seamen went by the name of _“Handsome Mary.”_ But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables,
+and conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no
+means an Amazon to her husband, if she _did_ play a masculine part in
+other matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
+attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
+about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
+fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
+The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
+thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
+so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
+of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
+upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
+
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.
+
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
+they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
+
+“No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
+    Can hurt me if I wold,
+I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
+    In jolly good ale and old,—
+I stuff my skin so full within,
+    Of jolly good ale and old.”
+
+
+Or this,
+
+“Four wines and brandies I detest,
+Here’s richer juice from barley press’d.
+It is the quintessence of malt,
+And they that drink it want no salt.
+Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
+And water henceforth you’ll forswear.”
+
+
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
+with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
+Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
+paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
+with thy spouse?
+
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs
+pour out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air
+in a vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and
+higher in it.
+
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be
+drank in a fog and a drizzle.
+
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room
+on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a
+courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among our
+crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates
+were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room,
+with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a
+smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was
+horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the
+ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless
+succession of vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the
+apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map
+was hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
+nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
+bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+
+And this is England?
+
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d’Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England?
+Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.
+
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to
+see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is
+not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St.
+James’s.
+
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a
+sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go _round_
+the world, without going _into_ it; and their reminiscences of travel
+are only a dim recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the
+globe, parallel with the Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the
+circle; hover about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon
+wharves and pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland
+to see Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending a car
+overland to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from
+room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, “Supper, supper ready.”
+
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers’ sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed
+against the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack
+putting his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never
+heard.
+
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of
+solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?—the
+sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles’ shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway
+was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers’ slices of head-cheese;
+and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over
+tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
+potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand
+adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper table.
+
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the
+girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing
+to take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was too
+late for tea; but she would get me a cup of _“swipes”_ if I wanted it.
+
+Not knowing what _“swipes”_ might be, I thought I would run the risk
+and try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour
+flavor, as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never
+patronized _swipes_ again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner
+afterward, it was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most
+of my shipmates, who pronounced it good.
+
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this _stripes, as I_
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of
+beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not
+remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that
+_swipes_ was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only
+describe it as answering to the name itself; which is certainly
+significant of something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by
+the poor people about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree,
+accounts for their poverty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS
+
+
+The ship remained in Prince’s Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the
+general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and
+will then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about
+town, and impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after
+the lapse of so many years.
+
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our
+stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the _Arms Hotel_, I believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.
+
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.
+
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad,
+roystering nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have
+delighted in. For company over the cabin-table, he would have four or
+five whiskered sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and
+filling glasses all the time. And once, the whole company were found
+under the table at four o’clock in the morning, and were put to bed and
+tucked in by the two mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our
+woolly Doctor of Divinity, the black cook, that they should have been
+ashamed of themselves; but there is no shame in some sea-captains, who
+only blush after the third bottle.
+
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.
+
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down;
+then we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at
+the rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other,
+never mind how trivial, till twelve o’clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally _knocked off_ at four
+o’clock in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And
+after four o’clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required
+to be on board again till next morning at daylight.
+
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were
+light enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some
+employment for us.
+
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving
+us from that; and all the while the men’s wages ran on, as at sea.
+Sundays we had to ourselves.
+
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships
+in Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure.
+They live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome
+exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month’s advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by
+the time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to
+him; sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most
+abounds in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin,
+which make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.
+
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are
+not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant
+parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and
+attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in the world.
+For in Liverpool they find their Paradise—not the well known street of
+that name—and one of them told me he would be content to lie in
+Prince’s Dock till _he hove up anchor_ for the world to come.
+
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever
+prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given
+before the bane is removed.
+
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character,
+ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless
+and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are
+almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider
+that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
+of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a
+thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard
+even for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on
+crutches; consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the
+better classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable
+and improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must
+very soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very
+promising one.
+
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those
+chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.
+
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels,
+and launched into the docks; though the “Boatswain’s Mate” and other
+clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains
+in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical
+boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of
+ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of
+grog while at sea:—notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the
+relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
+seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance,
+that unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one
+class makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because
+the sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across
+the Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors
+of Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and
+survived to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;—because
+the modem tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off
+some of his shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney
+queue:—therefore, in the estimation of some observers, he has begun to
+see the evils of his condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon
+a closer scrutiny, it will be seen that he has but drifted along with
+that great tide, which, perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made
+no individual advance of his own.
+
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth,
+and glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still
+revolve in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can
+lift _them_ out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be
+bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.
+
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the
+globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks;
+of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the _primum mobile_ of all commerce; and, in short, were they to
+emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing
+would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the
+orators in the American Congress.
+
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth,
+shun him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will
+you throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?—No. You will do no such thing; but
+at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read.
+And the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak,
+more than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is
+useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and
+offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view of them is principally
+had through romances.
+
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up
+from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems
+and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for
+with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as
+hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.
+
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who
+toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and
+tenderly cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father
+of all, and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS
+
+
+Among the odd volumes in my father’s library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
+great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
+studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
+embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
+of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
+others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
+here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
+entitled, _“Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L’Ancien et du
+Nouveau Paris: Miroir Fidèle”_ also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
+marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled,
+_“Itinéraire Instructif de Rome, ou Description Générale des Monumens
+Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur,
+de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Célébre Ville;”_ on the
+russet title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly
+shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee
+of the rock and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the
+houseless foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the
+illustrious twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the
+ground, with locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing
+occupation; a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the
+wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows;
+the work is published _“Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife.”_ There
+was also a velvet-bound old volume, in brass clasps, entitled, _“The
+Conductor through Holland”_ with a plate of the Stadt House; also a
+venerable _“Picture of London”_ abounding in representations of St.
+Paul’s, the Monument, Temple-Bar, Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards,
+the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book,
+in a dusty-looking yellow cover, reminding one of the paneled doors of
+a mail-coach, and bearing an elaborate title-page, full of printer’s
+flourishes, in emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip,
+entitled, in part, _“The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout
+England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by order of His
+Majesty’s Postmaster-General: This work describes the Cities, Market
+and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those at which the Assizes are
+held, and gives the time of the Mails’ arrival and departure from each:
+Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which the stages go, and the
+Inns in the country which supply post-horses and carriages: Describes
+the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Seats situated near the Road, with Maps of
+the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and Margate.”_ It is dedicated
+_“To the Right Honorable the Earls of Chesterfield and Leicester, by
+their Lordships’ Most Obliged, Obedient, and Obsequious Servant, John
+Gary,_ 1798.” Also a green pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an
+intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking like a diagram of the
+Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, “A _Description of York, its Antiquities
+and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled with great
+pains from the most authentic records.”_ Also a small
+scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
+frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
+King’s College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, _“The Cambridge Guide:
+its Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the
+Town and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.”_ Also a
+pamphlet, with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
+higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
+accurate representation of the _“North or Grand Front of Blenheim,”_
+and entitled, “A _Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the
+Duke of Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings,
+Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks,
+and a General Description of the famous China Gallery,_ &.; _with an
+Essay on Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the
+Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park.”_ And lastly, and
+to the purpose, there was a volume called “THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.”
+
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.
+
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from
+the life.
+
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear
+to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years and years ago, my father
+turned over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft,
+pleasing sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and
+forgotten!
+
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
+myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer’s shambles.
+I will, my beloved,—old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf
+from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
+somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
+
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an _18mo;_ it is bound in
+green morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
+tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
+red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that
+he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+
+But let us open the volume.
+
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
+falling air-castles? Ah, no!—these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, _“Drawn at the age of three
+years,”_ and under this autograph, _“Executed at the age of eight.”_
+
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
+the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin’s? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry
+captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin’s ditty are
+mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But
+not so fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
+
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father’s
+hand-writing, the following:—
+
+WALTER REDBURN.
+
+
+Riddough’s Royal Hotel,
+Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.
+
+
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father’s, which he must have made at various times
+during his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued,
+old, midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous
+effacements, it is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I
+must here copy a few at random:—
+
+                                      £     s.     d
+_Guide-Book_                                3      6
+_Dinner at the Star and Garter_                   10
+_Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)_    2     6      3
+_Gratuities_                                       4
+_Hack_                                      4      6
+_Thompson’s Seasons_                               5
+_Library_                                          1
+_Boat on the river_                                6
+_Port wine and cigar_                              4
+
+
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+
+_Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday._
+_Call upon Mr. Morille same day._
+_Leave card at Colonel Digby’s on Tuesday._
+_Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce._
+_Present letter at Miss L——’s on Tuesday._
+_Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday._
+_Get my draft on London cashed._
+_Write home by the Princess._
+_Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt’s._
+
+
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
+British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is _“A
+Plan of the Town of Liverpool.”_ But there seems little plan in the
+confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along,
+a peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
+
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.
+
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in
+all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked
+_“Riddough’s Hotel,”_ the house my father stopped at.
+
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
+the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
+penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
+
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
+foreign land; but attended St. John’s Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.
+
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her
+head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an
+oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
+motto elastically stretched for a border—_“Deus nobis haec otia
+fecit.”_
+
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
+representation of a now extinct fowl, called the _“Liver,”_ said to
+have inhabited a _“pool,”_ which antiquarians assert once covered a
+good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird,
+and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.
+
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.
+
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
+title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
+facsimile:—
+
+_The Picture
+of Liverpool:
+or, Stranger’s Guide
+and Gentleman’s Pocket Companion
+_ FOR THE TOWN.
+ Embellished
+With Engravings
+By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
+Liverpool:
+Printed in Swift’s Court,
+And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
+
+
+
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes _“testimonies of respect
+which had lately appeared in various quarters_ —_the British Critic,
+Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and
+Wales”—_and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new, revised,
+and illustrated edition might _“render it less unworthy of the public
+notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended to
+illustrate.”_
+
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
+of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope _Place, 1st
+Sept._ 1803.
+
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour
+of the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.
+
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
+must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy
+him a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming
+that his noblest epitaph.
+
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:—
+
+_“Where Mersey’s stream, long winding o’er the plain,
+Pours his full tribute to the circling main,
+A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
+Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,
+Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,
+They braved the billows for precarious food:
+Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,
+Their nets and little boats their only store.”_
+
+
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
+and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer’s
+Shipwreck.
+
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his _“Survey of__ the Town”_ are nine thickly
+printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
+of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
+saying, that _“the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is
+at present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will
+no doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as
+this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the
+sweetest delicacy of feeling.”_
+
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
+author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
+that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
+reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
+
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
+style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
+Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
+_“his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled,”_ the poet breaks forth
+like all Parnassus with:—
+
+_“Now o’er the wondering world her name resounds,
+From northern climes to India’s distant bounds—
+Where’er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
+Where’er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves;
+Where’er the honored flood extends his tide,
+That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride.
+Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns,
+And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines:
+’Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow,
+And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough;
+In every clime her prosperous fleets are known,
+She makes the wealth of every clime her own.”_
+
+
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:—
+
+_“And here_ R*s*o*, _with genius all his own,
+New tracks explores, and all before unknown?”_
+
+
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the warmest appreciation of
+the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation which
+gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He is
+called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with
+classical admiration.
+
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the _Doomsday-Book_
+of William the Conqueror.
+
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man
+of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that
+the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
+
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author’s moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves _“her majesty’s poor decayed
+town of Liverpool.”_
+
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, _“On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants,”_ and then skim over page after page
+throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense
+grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in
+population, opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must
+look back upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of
+immeasurable superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness
+at the vanity of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is
+the corner-stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter’s church was built in
+great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however
+imposing, we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the
+grander domes of posterity.
+
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are
+now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad
+boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into
+the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and
+Fourteenth-street; and going still farther south, may exhume the
+present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and
+mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.
+
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
+of this _“Picture of Liverpool,”_ so different from the brief, pert,
+and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I
+shall now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as
+it is entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps
+rare information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous
+town, to which I made _my first voyage._ And I think that with regard
+to a matter, concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far
+better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial
+baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so,
+pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book
+its due.
+
+But how can the printer’s art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader’s eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+
+No! by my father’s sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will _not_ quote thee, old Morocco,
+before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
+would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
+me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing
+from a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN
+
+
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
+that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
+probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
+I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the
+town, as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered
+the columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and
+pored over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I
+was determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content
+with a mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with
+most students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text
+with the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.
+
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.
+
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George’s, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets
+there depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked,
+like the map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I
+could march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the
+most distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+
+Dear delusion!
+
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book,
+fifty years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would
+prove but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I,
+his son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any
+discrepancy, never entered my mind.
+
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird’s-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, _you,_ at least, are all right.
+
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew
+went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince’s Dock’s
+walls; and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to
+compare notes, when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and
+my shipmates were standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling
+their glasses, my infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a
+fort; adding, that it was well worth the intelligent stranger’s while
+to visit it for the purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the
+evening.
+
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle?
+and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet
+not a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one
+small discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so faithfully
+served my own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern
+went by the name of _“The Old Fort Tavern;”_ and when I was told that
+many of the old stones were yet in the walls, I almost completely
+exonerated my guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of misleading
+me.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought
+I, my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down
+lane, even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions “with
+Eastern scrupulosity,” and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman’s pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier,
+to one of the sailor.
+
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them
+not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.
+
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have
+been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken
+sailor passing, exclaimed, _“Eyes right! quick step there!”_
+
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and
+one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon
+me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and
+newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued
+forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the
+street, and commanded me to _halt!_ I obeyed; when scanning my
+appearance pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that
+tarpaulin hat, not being able to account for the phenomenon of its
+roofing the head of a broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship,
+which lay at no great distance; when remarking from my voice that I was
+a Yankee, this faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks
+are extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy
+_“shakings,”_ and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
+out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls.
+And often they will search a suspicious looking fellow’s clothes, even
+if he be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible
+pockets.
+
+But where was I going?
+
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough’s
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and
+then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town,
+according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.
+
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father’s pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.
+
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.
+
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat,
+buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of
+his would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I
+was not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so much
+as thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My own
+father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so much
+as dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me; for if
+it had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never cast a
+thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father’s having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.
+
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on
+my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going
+under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants’ Exchange.
+
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my
+father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch
+at my back, into the paved square where I stood.
+
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow
+the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and
+overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son’s search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.
+
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned
+to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct
+to a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This,
+however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.
+
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated
+upon a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring
+in the arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other
+on a cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral’s brow;
+while Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating
+his bony hand under the hero’s robe, and groping after his heart. A
+very striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look
+at Death without a shudder.
+
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures
+in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes
+of humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his
+knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever
+feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and no
+doubt looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted at
+the time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures of
+captives are emblematic of Nelson’s principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.
+
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town
+was once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution.
+And I remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting
+our house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father’s
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem _(“the Wrongs of Africa”),_ several pamphlets; and in his place in
+Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had
+no small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact,
+that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the
+little arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to
+find Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory’s wreath still hovering
+over his swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the
+four bronze captives still lamented their captivity.
+
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I
+have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to
+let him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so
+called from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and
+turning down into Lord.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for
+the hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined,
+when it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house
+at which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to
+hear my questions and give me an answer.
+
+“Riddough’s Hotel?” said he, “upon my word, I think I have heard of
+such a place; let me see—yes, yes—that was the hotel where my father
+broke his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can’t
+be inquiring for Riddough’s Hotel! What do you want to find there?”
+
+“Oh! nothing,” I replied, “I am much obliged for your information”—and
+away I walked.
+
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book;
+and all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly
+half a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the
+town, than the map of Pompeii.
+
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on
+which I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book
+with the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family
+associations; the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest
+style of art; this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing
+that had guided the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on
+a shop step, and gave loose to meditation.
+
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough’s Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling
+up, they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may
+behold, when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come
+after his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father’s guidebook
+is no guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a
+modern one to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you.
+Guide-books, Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all
+literature; and nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of
+guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the
+thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can
+their posterity trace, amid avenues of modem erections; to how few is
+the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and
+the old ones are used for waste paper. But there is one Holy
+Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will never lead you astray, if you but
+follow it aright; and some noble monuments that remain, though the
+pyramids crumble.
+
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.
+
+No.—Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now
+and then, concerning a Riddough’s Hotel, or some other forgotten thing
+of the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves
+more than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning _“The Old
+Dock,”_ which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place
+without delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right
+direction, at last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of
+sculptured brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from
+incontrovertible tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After
+admiring it awhile, I took out my guide-book again; and what was my
+amazement at discovering that, according to its authority, I was
+entirely mistaken with regard to this Custom-house; for precisely where
+I stood, _“The Old Dock”_ must be standing, and reading on concerning
+it, I met with this very apposite passage:—_“The first idea that
+strikes the stranger in coming to this dock, is the singularity of so
+great a number of ships afloat in the very heart of the town, without
+discovering any connection with the sea.”_
+
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good
+deal of “singularity” about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that
+it was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem
+to have no _connection with the sea!_ However, the same author went on
+to say, that the _“astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for
+awhile, and turn to the left.”_ But, right or left, no place answering
+to the description was to be seen.
+
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted
+for, even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether
+he was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the _“Old
+Dock.”_ The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I
+was apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he whipped his
+well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his silver-laced
+coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the following facts.
+
+It seems that in this place originally stood the _“pool,”_ from which
+the town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound round
+the greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into
+the “Old Dock,” for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago,
+it had been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house
+before me.
+
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern
+traveler standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of
+Gomorrah seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into
+substantial stone and mortar.
+
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into
+your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is
+several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, _“The
+Wars of the Lord”_ quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up,
+Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your
+nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin:
+and be your ship’s mainmast and St. George’s spire your landmarks.
+
+No!—And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I’ll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of the venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on
+the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side,
+covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of
+the noble Derby’s was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the
+water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit—a gull—a sham—a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the
+State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs—point out the vouchers.
+Where’s the tower of Julius Caesar? Where’s the Roman wall? Show me
+Stonehenge!
+
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous
+shooting-jacket of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.
+
+True, true—that’s it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am only a
+common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+
+After a weary day’s walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the
+Baltimore Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer
+of tea, in which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+THE DOCKS
+
+
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince’s Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately
+around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I
+never tired of admiring them.
+
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure,
+I could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.
+
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers
+of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely
+inclosed, and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind
+the great American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron,
+Michigan, and Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures,
+seemed equal to what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.
+
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the “Wet
+Dock,”[1] so called, of the present day; and every thing that is
+connected with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement.
+Even London was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her
+example. In magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool,
+even at the present day surpass all others in the world.
+
+ [1] This term—_Wet Dock_—did not originate, (as has been erroneously
+ opined by the otherwise learned Bardoldi); from the fact, that persons
+ falling into one, never escaped without a soaking; but it is simply
+ used, in order to distinguish these docks from the _Dry-Dock_, where
+ the bottoms of ships are repaired.
+
+
+The first dock built by the town was the _“Old Dock,”_ alluded to in my
+Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since which
+period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now
+flanking the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock,
+like a chain of immense fortresses:—Prince’s, George’s, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King’s, Queen’s, and many more.
+
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their
+valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which
+Liverpool held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon
+its more modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might
+be proud of:—Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names
+upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file
+of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in
+connection with the commerce they defended.
+
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his life. It is well enough
+that over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some
+vast marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having
+lived and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his
+shrunken memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away
+with the marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to
+build such a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon
+his fame, and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are
+built in the closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops
+himself could have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.
+
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the _King’s_
+and _Queens._ At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal
+streets in the village I came from in America, which streets once
+rejoiced in the same royal appellations. But they had been christened
+previous to the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a
+fever of freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting,
+where King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being
+immortalized by the village of L—. A country antiquary once told me,
+that a committee of two barbers were deputed to write and inform the
+distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much
+answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince’s
+Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the
+Atlantic.
+
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest
+of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it
+is mostly frequented by the American shipping. Here lie the noble New
+York packets, which at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and
+here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river,
+the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified
+again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince’s
+Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive
+wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls,
+one of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed
+forms an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise about
+fifteen or twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor when I
+took it in, I will not be certain.
+
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays
+surrounding it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the
+interior from the streets is had through several gateways; so that,
+upon their being closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From
+the river, the entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships
+is only to be had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of
+the river; that is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the
+dock is always at that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river,
+the keels of the ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than
+twenty feet above those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course,
+produces a striking effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense
+ships floating high aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.
+
+Prince’s Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance
+of a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older
+occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs
+worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of
+the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all
+directions:— _“Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer
+alongside the Neptune!”—“Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!”—“Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop
+astern of the Undaunted!”_ And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.
+
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the
+open river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin
+forms a sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie
+waiting their turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this
+basin is obvious; for it would be impossible to _“dock”_ a ship under
+full headway from a voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent waves,
+she first glides into the ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from
+thence into the docks.
+
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the _King’s
+Dock,_ comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at
+an expense of some £20,000.
+
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed
+the seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the
+ships which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King
+William’s war, in 1688, entered the King’s Dock on the first day of its
+being opened in 1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a
+dark little brig, called the _Port-a-Ferry._ And probably, as her
+timbers must have been frequently renewed in the course of a hundred
+years, the name alone could have been all that was left of her at the
+time. A paved area, very wide, is included within the walls; and along
+the edge of the quays are ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary
+shelter for the goods unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the
+bustle and activity displayed along these quays during the day; bales,
+crates, boxes, and cases are being tumbled about by thousands of
+laborers; trucks are coming and going; dock-masters are shouting;
+sailors of all nations are singing out at their ropes; and all this
+commotion is greatly increased by the resoundings from the lofty walls
+that hem in the din.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+
+
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a
+walled town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small
+archipelago, an epitome of the world, where all the nations of
+Christendom, and even those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in
+itself, each ship is an island, a floating colony of the tribe to which
+it belongs.
+
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and
+New Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak;
+Norway her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for
+Honduras and Campeachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under
+the beneficent sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries
+embrace; and yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.
+
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious
+and liberal plan of the _Astor House._ Here ships are lodged at a
+moderate charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of
+departure. Here they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered
+from all weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can hardly
+credit a story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships
+lying in the very middle of the docks have lost their
+top-gallant-masts. Whatever the toils and hardships encountered on the
+voyage, whether they come from Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here
+their sufferings are ended, and they take their ease in their watery
+inn.
+
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince’s
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future
+prospects in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports,
+worn, battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o—spruce, gay,
+and brilliant, in readiness for sea.
+
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid,
+thrifty-looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French
+hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck
+elastic from much dancing.
+
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart’s or Delmonico’s
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board
+its live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be
+tending their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.
+
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a
+pilot-boat, but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails,
+which looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard.
+These little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for
+ships bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of
+those lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the
+carcass of a black buffalo.
+
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;
+and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them
+flying through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and
+a man at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under
+hatches.
+
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any
+of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an
+admiral on a three-decker’s poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much
+of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft
+was none of the largest, it was subject to _him;_ and though his crew
+might only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved
+a triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories
+of Alexander.
+
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his
+hair, as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple
+like this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy
+irruption of cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they
+came rolling forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.
+
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher,
+and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house
+all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had
+an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he
+invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together
+like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.
+
+“He, he,” he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask
+of beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet—“You see, Jack,
+I keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just
+before going to bed, it ain’t bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh!
+Jack?—here now, smack your lips over that, my boy—have a pipe?—but
+stop, let’s to supper first.”
+
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping
+in it awhile, and addressing it with—_“What cheer here, what cheer?”_
+at last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of
+butter. And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the
+pitcher of beer in the center. “Why that’s but a two legged table,”
+said I, “let’s make it four.”
+
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my
+soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+
+“Now Jack,” said he, when supper was over, “now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?—Well then, load away.” And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host’s rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+
+“He, he, my boy,” then said he—“I don’t never have any bugs here, I
+tell ye: I smokes ’em all out every night before going to bed.”
+
+“And where may you sleep?” said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
+a bed.
+
+“Sleep?” says he, “why I sleep in my jacket, that’s the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain’t it?”
+
+“Very funny,” says I.
+
+“Have some more ale?” says he; “plenty more.” “No more, thank you,”
+says I; “I guess I’ll go;” for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale,
+I began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote
+me for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.
+
+“Now, don’t go,” said he; “don’t go, my boy; don’t go out into the
+damp; take an old Christian’s advice,” laying his hand on my shoulder;
+“it won’t do. You see, by going out now, you’ll shake off the ale, and
+get broad awake again; but if you stay here, you’ll soon be dropping
+off for a nice little nap.”
+
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host’s hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the
+large New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every
+thing comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.
+
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their
+fine ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.
+
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch,
+sing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious
+custom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before
+them, as they hie to the land of the stranger.
+
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
+valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America
+has been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish
+the prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all
+nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a
+drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.
+Be he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who
+scoffs at an American, calls his own brother _Raca,_ and stands in
+danger of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a
+bigoted Hebrew nationality—whose blood has been debased in the attempt
+to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.
+No: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand
+noble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a
+world; for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like
+Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
+
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
+and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
+paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
+Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world’s
+as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we
+divide our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and
+people are forming into one federated whole; and there is a future
+which shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old
+hearthstone in Eden.
+
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus’ time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth’s Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God’s good pleasure, and
+in the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the
+harvest must come; and our children’s children, on the world’s jubilee
+morning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the
+curse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they
+shall speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and
+Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the
+regions round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall
+appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+THE IRRAWADDY
+
+
+Among the various ships lying in Prince’s Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a _“country ship,”_ which is the name
+bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
+they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
+wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, _“the King of the
+Oaks.”_ The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of
+cotton. She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of
+India, who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs
+of a higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white
+linen, this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with
+gold lace, a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was
+quite spoiled by his bare feet.
+
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in
+flagellating the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which
+long practice had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped
+away with the tackle-rope, elastic as cats.
+
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently
+pushed it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of
+my motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very
+considerately let me pass.
+
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of
+_kayar,_ or cocoa-nut fiber.
+
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+“kids” full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for
+quite another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in
+Hindostanee, but I found that several of them could also speak very
+good English. They were a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was
+informed made excellent seamen, though ill adapted to stand the
+hardships of northern voyaging.
+
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.
+
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
+of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
+never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
+the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would
+about the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.
+
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England’s prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the _“fancy piece”_ astern
+comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a
+miter; while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a
+figure-head—a dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a
+switchy-looking tail.
+
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done “to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders”—something as work is done in the navy to the music
+of the boatswain’s pipe—the Lascars were set to _“stripping the ship”_
+that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.
+
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars
+hopped about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless,
+showing much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their
+work.
+
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to
+see this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds
+of the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander’s rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as
+the regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on
+board his vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the
+odor from it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied _“Joggerry,”_
+which is a species of weed, used in place of tobacco.
+
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
+most smokers, I sat down by _Dattabdool-mans, as_ he called himself,
+and we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that
+when we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge.
+Indeed, it is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows
+things you never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the
+moon—wholly strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or
+gain an insight into things quaint, curious, and marvelous, drop your
+books of travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great
+commercial port. Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among
+the crowds of mariners from all parts of the globe.
+
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which
+I and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
+account of the _teakwood_ and _kayar rope,_ concerning which things I
+was curious, and sought information.
+
+The _“sagoon”_ as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in
+its greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of
+another kind of wood, the _“sissor,”_ which supplies most of the
+_“shin-logs,”_ or “knees,” and crooked timbers in the _country ships._
+The sagoon grows to an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of
+trunk, three feet through, before a single bough is put forth. Its
+leaves are very large; and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar
+likened them to elephants’ ears. He said a purple dye was extracted
+from them, for the purpose of staining cottons and silks. The wood is
+specifically heavier than water; it is easily worked, and extremely
+strong and durable. But its chief merit lies in resisting the action of
+the salt water, and the attacks of insects; which resistance is caused
+by its containing a resinous oil called _“poonja.”_
+
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
+the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
+the European artisans.
+
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the _kayar,_ of which
+it is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
+well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend’s
+account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
+ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
+hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
+this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the
+_kayar_ is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the
+rind of the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten
+with mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried
+in the sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance.
+The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely
+well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running
+rigging of a ship; while the same causes, united with its great
+strength and buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and
+hawsers.
+
+But the elasticity of the _kayar_ ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy’s shrouds were all of this substance, the
+Lascar told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.
+
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her _kayar_ shrouds with hempen
+ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+
+
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked
+hat among modish beavers.
+
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
+northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
+this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
+these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.
+
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks
+and spars, so that all over it resembles the _“bright side”_ or
+polished _streak,_ usually banding round an American ship.
+
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
+and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
+on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
+leeway at a sad rate.
+
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince’s Dock; and hardly would
+I gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
+still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea.
+In appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
+about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran,
+condemned by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It
+was an antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns,
+anchors, eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those
+of a tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin’s
+head; and by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a
+human ear; and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the
+concussions it had heard.
+
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese
+cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.
+
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and
+hobbled about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a
+deal of swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.
+
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
+a mariner’s church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
+the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
+steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used
+to see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
+Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the _muezzin_ or
+cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
+strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
+account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
+round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
+old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
+found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell
+of the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which
+I ever experienced.
+
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
+one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
+Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
+of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
+them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
+them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
+can procure an audience.
+
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.
+
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to
+the ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged
+upon. And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman
+addressing a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes
+and alleys in the neighborhood.
+
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
+clergy is like their divine Master’s;—not to bring the righteous, but
+sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
+comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
+year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
+hearts of vice: _then_ indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
+with; and a victory gained over _him,_ would entitle them to a
+conqueror’s wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that
+is destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as
+from every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the
+Child Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven;
+even so should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and
+at street corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His
+children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+
+
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the _“Old Church,”_ well known to
+the seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands
+very near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town’s
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
+preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of
+worship on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of
+Walton was a _chapel-of-ease;_ though from the straight backed pews,
+there could have been but little comfort taken in it.
+
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it;
+something like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow
+Bells. _“Wellingborough! Wellingborough! you must not forget to go to
+church, Wellingborough! Don’t forget, Wellingborough! Wellingborough!
+don’t forget.”_
+
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing
+the death’s-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow’s arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:—
+
+HERE LYETH YE BODY OF
+TOBIAS DRINKER.
+
+
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to
+the Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall
+in the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell’s wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another _“sumptuous stall”_ was
+erected for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.
+
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in
+Paris, where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by
+their friends, or till buried at the public charge.
+
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.
+
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of
+persons falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a
+less amount if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old
+men and women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after
+bodies. I observed them principally early in the morning, when they
+issued from their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.
+
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers,
+get their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
+these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
+going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
+starvelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY
+
+
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
+the docks are many very painful sights.
+
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called “Launcelott’s-Hey,”
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed
+to come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where
+I stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
+twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
+run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
+endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
+which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
+crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
+crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
+of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
+shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each
+side. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made
+no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that
+soul-sickening wail.
+
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and
+near; but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children
+lifted its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes,
+and lay motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but
+let fall her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How
+they had crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had
+crawled to die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for
+death was so stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I
+almost regarded them as already no more. I stood looking down on them,
+while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right
+had any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like
+this were to be seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make
+a man-hater of a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were
+they not human beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and
+ears like any queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with
+blood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
+
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.
+
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
+had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be
+taken. “Yes,” she replied, “to the church-yard.” I said she was alive,
+and not dead.
+
+“Then she’ll never die,” was the rejoinder. “She’s been down there
+these three days, with nothing to eat;—that I know myself.”
+
+“She desarves it,” said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
+shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, “that
+Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever married? tell me that.”
+
+Leaving Launcelott’s-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and
+the girls.
+
+“It’s none of my business, Jack,” said he. “I don’t belong to that
+street.”
+
+“Who does then?”
+
+“I don’t know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?”
+
+“Yes,” said I, “but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
+so.”
+
+“There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town.”
+
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
+not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
+in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts,
+hiding away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
+
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
+time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
+irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in
+a loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man,
+a sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into
+the vault.
+
+“Well,” said he, “what of it?”
+
+“Can’t we get them out?” said I, “haven’t you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?”
+
+“You’re crazy, boy,” said he; “do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?”
+
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
+seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough)
+without looking after the whole neighborhood.
+
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called _Brandy-Nan;_
+and begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing
+better, to take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing
+at the miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped
+into the room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the
+girl had gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and
+thrusting it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to
+the lane, I dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls
+caught at it convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the
+sister pushed the other’s arm aside, and took the bread in her hand;
+but with a weak uncertain grasp like an infant’s. She placed it to her
+mouth; but letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like
+“water.” The woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had
+first seen her.
+
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
+tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
+refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to
+the ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I
+hurried to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen
+running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house;
+and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day,
+filled it with water.
+
+With this, I returned to Launcelott’s-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman’s head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to
+withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager
+little babe—the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its
+face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes
+looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls
+who they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly,
+muttering something that could not be understood.
+
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.
+
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
+repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
+prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die
+they must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help
+them. I hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that
+occurred to me as I stood there; but it was this—I felt an almost
+irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting
+an end to their horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I
+think, had I not been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew
+that the law, which would let them perish of themselves without giving
+them one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in
+convicting him who should so much as offer to relieve them from their
+miserable existence.
+
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
+met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each
+side, and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head
+bowed. The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped
+down in the morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped
+that morning remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that
+came from the vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had
+accosted before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that
+the persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have
+them removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it
+was not his street.
+
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to
+whom I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that
+the Dock Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not
+the right place to lodge my information.
+
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
+but at twelve o’clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott’s-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of
+the women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone;
+but my prayer was answered—they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
+shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
+do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
+that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn.
+Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet
+given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we
+not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house
+of the dead?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+
+
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.
+
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in the
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the
+heaps of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.
+
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a
+rope yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New
+York, inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and,
+moreover, as after discharging a ship’s cargo, a great deal of dirt and
+worthless dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish
+accumulated in the appointed receptacles for depositing it within the
+walls is extremely large, and is constantly receiving new accessions
+from every vessel that unlades at the quays.
+
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the
+dirt, and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk.
+Their findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to
+collect, and sell on his own account, all the condemned “old junk” of
+the vessel to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in
+the buckets of rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns
+as possible.
+
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
+and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months’
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
+in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
+how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
+heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.
+
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in
+the streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the
+remarkable army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of
+the day.
+
+At twelve o’clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
+is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
+outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
+the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
+long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
+misery could be furnished by any town in the world.
+
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
+girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
+men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
+young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
+babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
+art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:—
+
+_“I have had no food for three days;
+My wife and children are dying.”_
+
+
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed,
+showing an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour’s time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and,
+_for Heaven’s sake,_ and _for God’s sake,_ and _for Christ’s sake,_
+beseeching of you but _one ha’penny._ If you so much as glanced your
+eye on one of them, even for an instant, it was perceived like
+lightning, and the person never left your side until you turned into
+another street, or satisfied his demands. Thus, at least, it was with
+the sailors; though I observed that the beggars treated the town’s
+people differently.
+
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
+three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
+made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
+had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement
+to infest the dock walls as they did.
+
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case
+of an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and
+rain, occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always
+passing. He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg,
+and dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring
+beggars.
+
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
+him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
+long years. He was an old man-of-war’s man, who had lost his leg at the
+battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
+one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson’s ship, the
+Victory.
+
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets,
+and claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these
+pretensions demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see
+through their disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
+as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
+utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
+prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
+into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
+woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
+garden.
+
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world’s woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+
+
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon,
+in a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
+encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
+kept.
+
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them.
+Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix
+with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside—an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin—proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other’s health.
+
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
+streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
+other parts of the town.
+
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led
+up and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer
+to receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
+words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
+head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
+lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
+effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton’s Invocation to the Sun
+did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something
+like this, drawn out in an endless groan—
+
+“Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon—no more see sun nor moon!” And thus would he pass through
+the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
+him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war’s-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that
+in falling from a frigate’s mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
+He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories
+of pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He
+was a monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
+robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
+quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
+subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
+sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
+business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
+go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the _Old Fort Tavern;_
+and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
+been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
+murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very
+next morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
+tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
+copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
+seamen.
+
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
+which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked,
+from the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing,
+gambling, pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty
+for the infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that
+I should enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and
+resurrectionists are almost saints and angels to them. They seem
+leagued together, a company of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing
+all the malice to mankind in their power. With sulphur and brimstone
+they ought to be burned out of their arches like vermin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+
+
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning
+the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw
+into this chapter various minor things that I recall.
+
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the
+dock walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite
+different announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are
+principally notices of the approaching departure of _“superior,
+fast-sailing, coppered and copper-fastened ships,”_ for the United
+States, Canada, New South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with
+these, are the advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the
+judicious seamen where he can procure of the best and the cheapest;
+together with ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks
+and empirics who prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus
+publicly giving notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable
+Sangrados and pretended Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby
+workhouse-looking knaves, whose business consists in haunting the dock
+walls about meal times, and silently thrusting mysterious little
+billets—duodecimo editions of the larger advertisements—into the
+astonished hands of the tars.
+
+They do this, with such a mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong
+air; such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first,
+you are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements
+to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round
+bounty, and embark in her Majesty’s navy.
+
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for
+the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships,
+going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be
+announced as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor,
+and noble father to his crew, _Lord George Flagstaff._
+
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments
+in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the
+charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these
+placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for
+which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns,
+vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the
+landscape; and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are
+informed, that here is a chance for them to see the world at their
+leisure, and be paid for enjoying themselves into the bargain. The
+regiments for India are promised plantations among valleys of palms;
+while to those destined for New Holland, a novel sphere of life and
+activity is opened; and the companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia
+are lured by tales of summer suns, that ripen grapes in December. No
+word of war is breathed; hushed is the clang of arms in these
+announcements; and the sanguine recruit is almost tempted to expect
+that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be the weapons he will
+wield.
+
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Bruce at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin’s
+Bay and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the
+army as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow
+must groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and
+his Mary.
+
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool.
+Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of
+Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many
+young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to
+penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to carry them over the
+sea, without providing for future contingencies. How easily and
+naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter upon the military
+life, which promises them a free passage to the most distant and
+flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides
+holding out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the
+fullness of time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home
+at all, and embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a
+piece of adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts
+the army recruit to enlist.
+
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.
+
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their
+little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are
+another set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; who
+make strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had
+some state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of
+the commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew’s or a
+pawnbroker’s; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they
+saunter off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and
+family.
+
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I
+fancied him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm
+with my shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned
+round and paused.
+
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat;
+and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card
+with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark
+angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a cunning
+foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But though I
+did not look round, I _felt_ him following me still; so once more I
+stopped. The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an air, that I
+began to fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that perhaps a
+plot had been laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was some
+Monteagle bent upon accomplishing my flight. I was determined to see
+what he was. With all my eyes about me, I followed him into the arch of
+a warehouse; when he gazed round furtively, and silently showing me a
+ring, whispered, “You may have it for a shilling; it’s pure gold—I
+found it in the gutter—hush! don’t speak! give me the money, and it’s
+yours.”
+
+“My friend,” said I, “I don’t trade in these articles; I don’t want
+your ring.”
+
+“Don’t you? Then take that,” he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next
+time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice,
+pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly
+turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels.
+I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so given to
+running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of work to the
+shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.
+
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of
+Sheffield razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock
+gates by the police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and
+board the vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting
+their wares. Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and
+the gilding on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it
+on the spot for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On
+the following Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of
+tormented and tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to
+dress them. In old times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that
+suggested the propriety of a barber’s practicing surgery in connection
+with the chin-harrowing vocation.
+
+Another class of knaves, who practice upon the sailors in Liverpool,
+are the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries among the narrow lanes
+adjoining the dock. I was astonished at the multitude of gilded balls
+in these streets, emblematic of their calling. They were generally next
+neighbors to the gilded grapes over the spirit-vaults; and no doubt,
+mutually to facilitate business operations, some of these
+establishments have connecting doors inside, so as to play their
+customers into each other’s hands. I often saw sailors in a state of
+intoxication rushing from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker’s; stripping
+off their boots, hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and sometimes even
+their pantaloons on the spot, and offering to pawn them for a song. Of
+course such applications were never refused. But though on shore, at
+Liverpool, poor Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he himself is by no
+means exempt from practices, that do not savor of a rigid morality; at
+least according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when
+cool and collected, often manages to evade the Customs completely, and
+land goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the immense duties
+upon it in England, commands a very high price.
+
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.
+
+“Is that all?” asked the officers.
+
+“All,” said the men.
+
+“We will see,” returned the others.
+
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.
+
+“Very good,” said the men.
+
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.
+
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his
+pocket; _that_ he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about
+his person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the
+dock-gates at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance
+of detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing
+by. And though these _“Charlies”_ might suppose there were tobacco
+smugglers passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would
+be as hard, as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand
+darting under a ship’s bows.
+
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we
+came from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate;
+for in Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the
+docks they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners’ mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little
+moral precepts printed in red on the back.
+
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the
+least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with
+such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by
+a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting
+their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay
+stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are
+guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a
+whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine
+truck-horses look—so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often
+I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh;
+though I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their
+language, I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable
+information touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their
+dignified lives.
+
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark
+a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be
+sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the
+mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs
+and horses. They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a
+horse but a species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who
+happens to live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or
+abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there
+is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a
+horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. As for those
+majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think
+of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their
+holy hides.
+
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The
+truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the
+lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large
+warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will
+tranquilly walk away with the whole.
+
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals.
+Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,—not of the same cut and
+color though,—which reach below their knees; and from the racket they
+make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think
+they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get
+any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set,
+who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals;
+now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in
+order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their
+lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended
+their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them
+something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to
+them a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is
+the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended
+in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse
+pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day
+a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the
+water. It was noon, when an interval of silence falls upon the docks;
+and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the horse, and having a mind
+for a chat, cried out to him, _“Back! back! back!”_
+
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the
+water.
+
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince’s, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American
+boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying
+to all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of
+produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned
+into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with these
+inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand, seemingly
+penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July when the
+Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily coming
+over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of
+the street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged
+from Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the
+country; and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the
+corporation, took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+
+“Sing _Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney,”_ cried one fellow,
+tossing his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head
+of the rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+
+
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o’clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily
+for so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who,
+thereby, was enabled after my day’s work aboard the Highlander, to
+ramble about the town for several hours. After I had visited all the
+noted places I could discover, of those marked down upon my father’s
+map, I began to extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a
+committee of one, to investigate all accessible parts of the town;
+though so many years have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my
+report.
+
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world,
+I have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering
+about, up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and
+speculating upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to
+pace along endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on
+the doors, admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a
+passing blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was
+stared at myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take
+on such occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a
+sensation in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a
+family went home to his children with a curious story, about a
+wandering phenomenon they had encountered, traversing the side-walks
+that day. In the words of the old song, _“I cared for nobody, no not I,
+and nobody cared for me.”_ I stared my fill with impunity, and took all
+stares myself in good part.
+
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with
+a wonderful relish.
+
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour,
+in those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the
+street, and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it
+in New York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes;
+and especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing
+along frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who
+clung to his arms and legs; and, in God’s name, conjured him not to
+desert them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and
+drowning himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In
+these haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged
+me unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost
+endless vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these
+miserable streets.
+
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
+the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the “free states” of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute.
+But in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and
+with the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even
+Englishmen; as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords.
+This conveyed a strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded
+me that I was not in my own land. For _there,_ such a being as a native
+beggar is almost unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a
+guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue
+of a vote.
+
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which
+negro-sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his
+head like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in
+respect to him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our
+black steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to
+escape with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to
+them, and the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black
+cooks and stewards of American ships are very much attached to the
+place and like to make voyages to it.
+
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
+degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
+most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
+at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
+in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was
+but recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in
+some things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of
+the principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of
+Independence.
+
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
+by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
+Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
+There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of
+houses with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the
+same elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
+could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St.
+John’s Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to
+see that great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most
+discriminating observer would not have been able to detect any
+difference between the articles exposed for sale, and the articles
+exhibited in Fulton Market, New York.
+
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers’ shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.
+
+It is true, that I often thought of London’s being only seven or eight
+hours’ travel by railroad from where I was; and that _there,_ surely,
+must be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
+bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
+walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
+a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
+church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
+edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
+
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them
+in another.
+
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
+simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
+he pleases; and that even St. Peter’s in Rome is open to him, as to a
+cardinal; that St. Paul’s in London is not shut against him; and that
+the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to
+him, and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the
+better to allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this
+consideration of the hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most
+Christian and charming thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and
+Vatican libraries, for Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes
+farther home than all the sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley,
+and Archbishop Tillotson.
+
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
+land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness
+of any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
+broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
+myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare
+a little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what
+could he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to
+be sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or
+hearing of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always
+some confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I
+used to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret
+meeting on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most
+inconvenient pew in the churches under their charge. However, they
+always gave me a seat of some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken
+bench in the open air of the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the
+attention of the congregation between myself and the clergyman. The
+whole congregation seemed to know that I was a foreigner of
+distinction.
+
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached—just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
+roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
+winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
+my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
+long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
+and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking
+how I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen,
+with high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their
+cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for
+me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the
+immortal plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies.
+But to finish off with that abominable _“swipes”_ almost spoiled all
+the rest: not that I myself patronized _“swipes”_ but my shipmates did;
+and every cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in
+imagination, and even then the flavor was bad.
+
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The
+servant girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose
+dinners were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were
+collectively known by the names of their ships.
+
+“Where are the _Arethusas?—_Here’s their beef been smoking this
+half-hour.”—“Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the _Splendids.”—_ “Run,
+Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the _Highlanders_ .”—“You
+Peggy, where’s the _Siddons’ pickle-pat?”—“I_ say, Judy, are you never
+coming with that pudding for the _Lord Nelsons?”_
+
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
+came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
+end of the Highlanders’ table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared
+himself on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs,
+so as to include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby,
+the boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at
+the head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.
+
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
+of Jackson’s address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
+recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
+disgust, and dined elsewhere.
+
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
+rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George’s-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth’s equestrian statue.
+
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
+but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
+dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and
+decorum prevailed.
+
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much
+toil, or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.
+
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to
+his hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic
+gestures. I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware
+that this youth was a Chartist.
+
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.
+
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the
+town, and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey’s pillars, in the
+shape of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had
+previously seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be?
+Certainly, I had never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish
+arch! surely I remembered that very well. It was not till several
+months after reaching home in America, that my perplexity upon this
+matter was cleared away. In glancing over an old number of the Penny
+Magazine, there I saw a picture of the place to the life; and
+remembered having seen the same print years previous. It was a
+representation of the spot where the Manchester railroad enters the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE _CROSS_ OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in
+a previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days
+after, which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by
+the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable
+legs crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out
+my guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the
+building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the
+opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.
+
+I’m a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be
+treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.
+
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from
+the _London Times,_ which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the
+large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog
+with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine
+apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the
+spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up stepped a
+terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster on his
+back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down some
+papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders, and
+then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons, wheeled
+me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in
+vain; the door was closed upon me.
+
+These Englishmen have no manners, that’s plain, thought I; and I
+trudged on down the street in a reverie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+
+
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green
+hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with
+me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away
+without having a good, long look at the open fields.
+
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.
+
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last—there it
+was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that
+seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I
+breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles
+once respired by Rosamond the Fair.
+
+On I trudged along the London road—smooth as an entry floor—and every
+white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road
+became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field,
+would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little
+dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed
+over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful
+announcement, nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post—
+
+“MAN-TRAPS AND SPRING-GUNS!”
+
+
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were
+not surely _cannibals,_ that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale,
+and lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+
+“A _man-trap!”_ It must be so. The announcement could bear but one
+meaning—that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.
+
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?
+
+And who put it there?
+
+The proprietor, probably.
+
+And what right had he to do so?
+
+Why, he owned the soil.
+
+And where are his title-deeds?
+
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a
+mighty traveler, indeed:—stopped on your travels by a _man-trap!_ Do
+you think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was
+so entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much
+wiser than when you set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not
+having seen more sights, will be _man-traps—mantraps, my masters!_ that
+frightened you!
+
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this
+planet, right down to the earth’s axis, and, perhaps, straight through
+to the antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and
+enter the forbidden Eden.
+
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that
+at last I thought best to pace off.
+
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice
+little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just
+such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was
+viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the bees
+were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.
+
+Any man-traps here? thought I—any spring-guns?
+
+No.
+
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No
+Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They
+gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and
+conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at
+first I almost imagined they might.
+
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.
+
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics,
+drinking ale at a table.
+
+“Good day,” said I.
+
+“Good day; from Liverpool?”
+
+“I guess so.”
+
+“For London?”
+
+“No; not this time. I merely come to see the country.”
+
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.
+
+“Take a seat,” said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife’s apron
+on, I thought.
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of
+which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a
+good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the
+banks of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty
+millions of people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my
+knowledge.
+
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the
+lively conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:—fine old ale;
+yes, English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?— Hurra! what say you?
+let’s have a peep at St. Paul’s? Don’t you want to see the queen? Have
+you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and the
+Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets—who’s to pay the bill?—You can’t beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father’s son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign
+land; you must not turn pauper.
+
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul’s or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+
+Well, well, up heart, you’ll see it one of these days.
+
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames—think of _that!—_here I am—ay, treading in the wheel-tracks of
+coaches that are bound for the metropolis!—It was too bad; too bitterly
+bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on; till at last
+I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with
+broad branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a
+hen gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I
+threw myself and there lay my head, like a last year’s nut. People
+passed by, on foot and in carriages, and little thought that the sad
+youth under the tree was the great-nephew of a late senator in the
+American Congress.
+
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me
+from the field, crying out—“What are you doing there, you young
+rascal?—run away from the work’us, have ye? Tramp, or I’ll set Blucher
+on ye!”
+
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.
+
+“Come, are you going to start?” he cried.
+
+“Presently,” said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got a
+few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me
+as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own
+premises, and said— “Stranger! if you ever visit America, just call at
+our house, and you’ll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don’t
+fail.”
+
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the
+cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to
+hapless young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway,
+sat an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A
+hale matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal
+by his side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were
+leaning out of the window close by.
+
+Ah! Wellingborough, don’t you wish you could step in?
+
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when—is
+it possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+
+“Come, come,” said he, “you look as if you had walked far; come, take a
+bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear” (how my heart jumped), “go fetch some
+from the dairy.” And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and handed
+_me—me,_ the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I could hardly
+drink down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England.
+But I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do
+away at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close
+scrutiny of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I
+declared myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a
+Sunday in the country.
+
+“And have you been to church to-day, young man?” said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+
+“Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know—a most
+excellent sermon—I am much the better for it.”
+
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.
+
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.
+
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post
+like a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers
+in the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of
+them. But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young
+ladies, and vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the
+river Ohio, and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in
+harvest time, the laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand
+strong.
+
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don’t give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you.
+At last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one
+side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins;
+and such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.
+
+And there they sat—the charmers, I mean—eating these buttered muffins
+in plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute
+they grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a
+fine thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my
+friends would stare! a lady from England!
+
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the
+one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in
+the direction where I sat. She certainly _did_ look at my jacket; and I
+am constrained to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen
+in love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of
+the question; for what a looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off;
+but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and
+again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.
+
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I
+live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks,
+I passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll,
+was soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION
+OF THE READER
+
+
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I
+had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of
+a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He
+was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair,
+and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl’s; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
+
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of
+a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper. He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and
+from something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated
+a voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness
+to enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman—a kind
+of pleasure so long debarred me—I smoothed down the skirts of my
+jacket, and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing
+would afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in
+imparting any information concerning America that he needed.
+
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face,
+and at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged
+me to accompany him on a walk.
+
+We rambled about St. George’s Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.
+
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his
+aunt and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry
+thus fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
+
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless
+of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no
+profession or business of any kind to engage his attention.
+
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him
+to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of
+her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
+
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary’s, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and
+empty your glass and your purse as you list.
+
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs
+hie to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling
+sportsmen and dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
+
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a
+_“guinea-pig,”_ a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies
+of the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry’s case,
+inapplicable.
+
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw
+up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks’ dissipation in London, and
+again his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning
+to return home to his aunt, and amend—though she had often written him
+the kindest of letters to that effect—Harry resolved to precipitate
+himself upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With
+this object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for
+Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the
+docks, to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered
+his brain, born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck
+browsers and tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor.
+There was a dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of
+fine coats, which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the
+time, for all past conventionalities.
+
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some
+of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold
+Anchor in Union-street.
+
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all
+anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire
+to which he warmly responded.
+
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application
+to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our
+crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just
+upon the eve of our departure.
+
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to
+which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from
+the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have
+little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding
+them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the
+ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their
+sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they
+well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured,
+through the crimps of the port.
+
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the
+vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga
+was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove
+to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even
+indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a _“boy,”_ at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the
+cheapness of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and
+thus, instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going
+tar, who would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury,
+at the rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that
+by the end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of
+leaving a handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the _harness-cask._
+
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one
+fine morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing
+his virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
+
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain’s
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression,
+that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first
+accosted him in the cabin.
+
+Alas, Harry! thought I,—as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,—that _“gallant, gay deceiver”_ shall not altogether
+cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be
+the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going
+to America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was
+acting a manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a
+sailor, would be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a
+shore, where he must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide
+him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship;
+and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the
+strength of his wages.
+
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all,
+my young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of
+admiration at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward
+to receive my congratulations.
+
+“Harry,” said I, “be not deceived by the fascinating Riga—that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or
+the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when
+he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For _then_ he is another personage altogether, and adjusts
+his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings
+and sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better
+than his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of
+invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows.”
+
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of
+the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told
+him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could
+furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort
+of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any
+mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
+
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the
+precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;—whether he had a
+giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body;
+whether, with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a
+tempest, he felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
+
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and
+confident air; saying that in his _“guinea-pig”_ days, he had often
+climbed the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur
+way; so he made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert
+tumbler in the Highlander’s rigging.
+
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant
+sight of his most unseamanlike person—more suited to the Queen’s
+drawing-room than a ship’s forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to
+himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice,
+and indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our
+friends, for the most part, will _“gang their ain gate;”_ and the most
+we can do is, to hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry,
+whether he had not best cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he
+could procure enough money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as
+a sailor.
+
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and
+as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.
+
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London life; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave
+me the measurement of Madame Vestris’ ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over
+the sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.
+
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his
+aristocratic narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes
+spending funds of reminiscences not his own.
+
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon;
+and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of
+chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade’s array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.
+
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire
+I cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly
+tempted I had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny
+in my pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him
+more, than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but
+mysteriously hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many
+days had passed. But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed
+it to my friend’s good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes
+prompted him to out with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable.
+Besides, would this fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic
+acquaintances, walking down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the
+sleeve of my shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began
+to think, that Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose
+upon my Yankee credulity.
+
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed,
+he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores
+of Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment;
+reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who
+might stare at so singular a couple.
+
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel,
+he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till
+the square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden
+retreat, was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright
+on the hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with
+an ivory-headed riding-whip.
+
+“Who was he, Harry?” said I.
+
+“My old chum, Lord Lovely,” said Harry, with a careless air, “and
+Heaven only knows what brings Lovely from London.”
+
+“A lord?” said I starting; “then I must look at him again;” for lords
+are very scarce in Liverpool.
+
+Unmindful of my companion’s remonstrances, I ran back to the corner;
+and slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the
+steps.
+
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll’s, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal’s. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo’s in Broadway.
+
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry’s, I thought something
+of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be
+done for the young prodigal’s welfare; but upon second thoughts I
+thought best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely
+stepped to the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and
+throwing himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it—a coronet—fell into a
+sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted
+by a regal marabou feather, inside.
+
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it
+would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world,
+just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a
+drive into the country.
+
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might
+decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to
+his visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most
+Noble Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he
+might consider Ickworth his home.
+
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry’s having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of
+the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that
+Harry has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty
+easy address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his
+having consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the
+anonymous earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate
+the slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has,
+he spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon
+to pluck; so _that_ is out of the question;—perish such a thought,
+concerning my own bosom friend!
+
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all
+this, I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences
+of high life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel
+ill at ease in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from
+him; when, in its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the
+unbounded bosom of some immaculate friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+
+
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry,
+who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly
+alter his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and
+sprang down the hatchway into the _between-decks,_ where, in perfect
+solitude, I was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had
+set me, for want of any thing better.
+
+“Hey for London, Wellingborough!” he cried. “Off tomorrow! first
+train—be there the same night—come! I have money to rig you all
+out—drop that hangman’s stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here!
+Come; up you jump!”
+
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+
+London? it could not be!—and Harry—how kind of him! he was then indeed
+what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden
+departure.
+
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had
+hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose
+to conceal.
+
+“But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?” said I; “they will not let me
+go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don’t care
+very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses.”
+
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all
+the time.
+
+“Tut! my Yankee bantam,” said Harry; “look here!” and he showed me a
+handful of gold.
+
+“But they are _yours,_ and not _mine,_ Harry,” said I.
+
+“Yours _and_ mine, my sweet fellow,” exclaimed Harry. “Come, sink the
+ship, and let’s go!”
+
+“But you don’t consider, if I quit the ship, they’ll be sending a
+constable after me, won’t they?”
+
+“What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can’t wait.”
+
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I _did_ take French leave of him. So, without further thought
+of the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship’s bell
+struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the
+rest of the day.
+
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week’s time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
+
+Arrived at the _Golden Anchor,_ where Harry put up, he at once led me
+to his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see
+what clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size—if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.
+
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me,
+arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that
+very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense,
+when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked,
+and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown
+ugly thoughts.
+
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and
+charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent
+for it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we
+turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow
+of the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to
+finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and
+presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+
+“It’s _me”_ said the stranger; and who was _me_ but Harry, who had thus
+metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering
+voice, which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not
+going to turn gentleman forger.
+
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted
+this mode of disguising himself.
+
+“And why afraid of your friends?” asked I, in astonishment, “and we are
+not in London yet.”
+
+“Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can’t you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I’ll tell you all by and by.”
+
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we
+came to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars
+are taken.
+
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
+
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+
+
+“No time to lose,” said Harry, “come along.”
+
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in
+some street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the corners, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.
+
+“Stop,” cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once—“stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house—No. 40 I told you—that’s it—the high steps there, with the
+purple light!”
+
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and
+bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side,
+and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not
+a little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly
+society.
+
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and
+echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I
+started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
+
+The walls were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles—emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver,
+Sienna with porphyry—supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched
+like a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the
+East of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide’s ever
+youthful Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured
+stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas
+lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored,
+porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as
+if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was
+the moon-lit garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers,
+Lorenzo and Jessica, lurked somewhere among the vines.
+
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned
+slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
+
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.
+
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man,
+with snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket—he looked
+like an almond tree in blossom—who seemed to be standing, a polite
+sentry over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered
+about the waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the
+guests.
+
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading
+some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very
+loud voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us,
+and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain
+where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
+
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential
+word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much
+surprised,—I thought, a little disconcerted,—and then disappeared with
+him.
+
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all
+this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my
+head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the
+thought that I was really in London. What would my brother have said?
+What would Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance
+Society, have thought?
+
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a
+little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for
+it was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid
+animation of the London-like scene around me.
+
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden
+visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me;
+and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some
+gentleman as _“My Lord,”_ or _“four Grace.”_ But if there were really
+any lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my
+hearing.
+
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul’s and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry’s
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
+
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.
+So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping
+the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy;
+but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the
+time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I
+kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes,
+and observed that every now and then little parties were made up among
+the gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going
+to a private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word
+_Rouge;_ but he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly
+pale. Another said something about _Loo._
+
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+
+“Come along, Redburn,” said he.
+
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House,
+in the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for
+the night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I
+sprang up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise,
+when he only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by
+three marble Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk’s
+antlers, over the landing.
+
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor’s coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.
+
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.
+
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven,
+like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney.
+And oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into
+plaited serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here
+and there, they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles’ oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringes of
+bullion and silk.
+
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with
+bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
+
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps,
+in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii—in
+that part of it called by Varro _the hollow of the house:_ such
+pictures as Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private
+cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the
+bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas:
+such pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading
+from the left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of
+Aphrodite in Corinth.
+
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance
+of a dragon’s crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold.
+It was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked
+expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His
+marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
+
+“Sit down, Wellingborough,” said Harry; “don’t be frightened, we are at
+home.—Ring the bell, will you? But stop;”— and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
+
+“He’s a knowing mute, Wellingborough,” said he; “who stays in this one
+place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you
+don’t breathe any secrets in his ear.”
+
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.
+
+“Cigars,” said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the
+middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example,
+and make myself happy.
+
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before,
+while leading my dog’s life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander,
+I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, “And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?”
+
+“Upon my soul,” he cried, “you have hit it:—you must have been here
+before! Aladdin’s Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name.”
+
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had
+been quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes,
+his general carriage was firm.
+
+“Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?” said he.
+
+“I am afraid, Harry,” said I, “that when you left me just now, you must
+have been drinking something stronger than wine.”
+
+“Hear him now,” said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,—“a parson ’pon honor!—But remark you,
+Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably
+longer time than before:—I may not be back again to-night.”
+
+“What?” said I.
+
+“Be still,” he cried, “hear me, I know the old duke here, and—”
+
+“Who? not the Duke of Wellington,” said I, wondering whether Harry was
+really going to include _him_ too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+
+“Pooh!” cried Harry, “I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below;
+they call him _the Duke:—he_ keeps the house. I say, I know him well,
+and he knows _me;_ and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we
+have arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and
+sleep here tonight, and—and—” continued he, speaking low—“you must
+guard this letter—” slipping a sealed one into my hand—“and, if I am
+not back by morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the
+letter there;—here, take this paper—it’s all set down here in black and
+white—where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that’s
+done—mind, this is all in case I don’t return—then you may do what you
+please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here’s
+enough to pay all your expenses.”
+
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.
+
+“What’s the matter, Redburn?” he cried, with a wild sort of laugh—“you
+are not afraid of me, are you?—No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you
+would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter.”
+
+“What in heaven’s name do you mean?” at last I exclaimed, “you don’t
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?” and I
+snatched him by the hand.
+
+“Pooh, pooh,” he cried, “let me go. I tell you, it’s all right: do as I
+say: that’s all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!—no, no,” he added,
+vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more—“no, I won’t: I have
+nothing more to tell you—not a word. Will you swear?”
+
+“But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!”
+
+“Not a syllable! Will you swear?—you will not? then here, give me that
+purse:—there—there—take that—and that—and that;—that will pay your fare
+back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend,” and he
+wheeled round his back.
+
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly
+impelled me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the
+white-whiskered old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and
+then introduced me as his friend—young Lord Stormont; and bade the
+almond tree look well to the comforts of his lordship, while
+he—Harry—was gone.
+
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar
+expression, that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he
+withdrew. Harry then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a
+chance to say one word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room,
+saying, “Leave not this room tonight; and remember the letter, and
+Bury!”
+
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then
+rose, and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but
+only heard the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a
+hushed ivory rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped
+back into the room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have
+given the world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my
+old bunk in Prince’s Dock.
+
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the
+house, my limbs seemed manacled.
+
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a
+confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
+
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul—in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London,
+to do this thing?—why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did
+he want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the
+hour he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.
+
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;—would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
+I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
+search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
+sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
+Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
+over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
+the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he’s in earnest; and
+here I am—yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.
+
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
+around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
+never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
+squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
+marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
+myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
+still.
+
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
+upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
+night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point
+of starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was;
+but remembering Harry’s injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town,
+and that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
+
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.
+
+“The letter and paper,” he cried.
+
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+
+“There! there! there! thus I tear you,” he cried, wrenching the letter
+to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. “I am off for America; the game is up.”
+
+“For God’s sake explain,” said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. “Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?”
+
+“Ha, ha,” he deliriously laughed. “Gambling? red and white, you
+mean?—cards?—dice?—the bones?—Ha, ha!—Gambling? gambling?” he ground
+out between his teeth—“what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables
+they are!”
+
+“Wellingborough,” he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
+blazing into mine—“Wellingborough”—and fumbling in his breast-pocket,
+he drew forth a dirk—“Here, Wellingborough, take it—take it, I say—are
+you stupid?—there, there”—and he pushed it into my hands. “Keep it away
+from me—keep it out of my sight—I don’t want it near me, while I feel
+as I do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don’t
+bury them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it’s an invitation
+to hang myself"—and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he
+twitched it down from the wall.
+
+“In God’s name, what ails you?” I cried.
+
+“Nothing, oh nothing,” said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
+calmness—“nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I’m the serenest of
+men.”
+
+“But give me that dirk,” he suddenly cried—“let me have it, I say. Oh!
+I don’t mean to murder myself—I’m past that now—give it me”—and
+snatching it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a
+terrific stab, nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
+
+“There now,” he cried, “there’s something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that’s about all that’s left of me— that’s my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don’t be downhearted; there’s a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don’t
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning”—and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
+
+“And this, then,” said I, “is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I
+did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will
+not regret not seeing the town.”
+
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, “Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly.”
+
+“And why?” said I, in alarm, “what more would you have me swear?”
+
+“Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!” he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips—“never to breathe it! swear!”
+
+“I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do
+not desire it,” said I, “but there’s no need of swearing.”
+
+“Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn,” he added, imploringly.
+
+“Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves
+as soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog
+alive.”
+
+“And what am I?” cried Harry; “but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean
+to offend; if you knew all—but no, no!—never mind, never mind!” And he
+ran to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+
+“Brandy,” whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+
+“Are you not going to sleep, then?” said I, more and more alarmed at
+his wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in
+such a mood.
+
+“No sleep for me! sleep if _you_ can—I mean to sit up with a
+decanter!—let me see”—looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel—“it’s
+only two hours to morning.”
+
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.
+
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the
+lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and
+then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the
+table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into
+his glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the
+spirits seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively
+calm.
+
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his
+shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+
+“Look! it is broad day,” said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of
+the window.
+
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall
+of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince’s Dock and the Highlander.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets
+to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of
+the last thirty-six hours.
+
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our
+journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at
+the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the
+Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the
+mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was
+almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket,
+he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady,
+was shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes,
+appearing once more in our sailor habiliments.
+
+“Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?” said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+
+“Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course—what else?"
+he replied.
+
+“And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?” asked I.
+
+“That’s as it may turn out,” said Harry; “but I have now more than ever
+resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like
+me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf,
+you know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let’s see
+what they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel
+better already. Never say die, is my motto.”
+
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay
+of Prince’s Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days’ time.
+
+“Good!” exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours,
+and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to
+any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had
+absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or
+nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to
+know nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the
+discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly
+believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The
+reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although
+the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was
+not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as
+cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward
+passage.
+
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, “Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good.”
+
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of
+the proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+
+“But turn to, sir, turn to,” added the mate; “here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it’s foul of the backstay—jump!”
+
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.
+
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo
+had been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew’s business to clear away the
+_between-decks,_ extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle,
+for the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes
+were already littering the decks.
+
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed
+than upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual
+number of casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed
+amid-ships, all along the _between-decks,_ forming a sort of aisle on
+each side, furnishing access to four rows of bunks,—three tiers, one
+above another,—against the ship’s sides; two tiers being placed over
+the tierces of water in the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked
+together with coarse planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any
+thing else; especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light
+coming down except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which
+were covered with little houses called _“booby-hatches.”_ Upon the
+main-hatches, which were well calked and covered over with heavy
+tarpaulins, the _“passengers-galley”_ was solidly lashed down.
+
+This _galley_ was a large open stove, or iron range—made expressly for
+emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone
+the emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+
+After two days’ work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into
+the outlet of Prince’s Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go
+out with the tide in the morning.
+
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by’s, and
+God-bless-you’s, between the emigrants and their friends; and the
+cheers of the surrounding ships.
+
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by
+the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit,
+now came a one-eyed _crimp_ leading a drunken tar by the collar, who
+had been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated
+before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in
+port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a
+bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled
+out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely
+helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the
+quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his
+closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered
+on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who
+put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself
+carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him
+till the ship was away from the land.
+
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
+Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
+were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
+policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
+
+A steam-tug, the _Goliath,_ now took us by the arm, and gallanted us
+down the river past the fort.
+
+The scene was most striking.
+
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
+days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
+for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
+merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened
+in the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans;
+and from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song _Ho-o-he-yo,
+cheerily men!_ as the crews called their anchors.
+
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their
+voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing
+America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days
+would be an uncommonly long voyage.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
+
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet,
+all this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled
+agents from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the
+emigrants themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one
+by one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed
+into the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights
+imaginable. The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the
+hearts of the emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to
+escape the uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two
+_“booby-hatches”_ came the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and
+weeping. That irresistible wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the
+stoutest of their number, and the women and children were embracing and
+sobbing in all the agonies of the poor emigrant’s first storm at sea.
+
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
+who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards
+to run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and
+tenderly inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and
+even then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady,
+such ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as
+unendurable, and put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy
+annihilation; all of which, however, only arises from their intense
+anxiety to preserve their valuable lives.
+
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the
+drenching seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley
+on deck? How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a
+first voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just
+as hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter,
+and seventeen servants.
+
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head
+down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened
+cesspool.
+
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
+some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
+prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of
+the quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
+Consequently—even in fine weather—when they come up from below, they
+are crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats,
+casks, and spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the
+officers, for unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
+
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all;
+and to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian
+incursions of the _“wild Irish”_ emigrants, ropes were passed
+athwart-ships, by the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the
+boundary line between those who had paid three pounds passage-money,
+from those who had paid twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers
+themselves were the most urgent in having this regulation maintained.
+
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker’s, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men’s heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
+humanity.
+
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it
+is to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt,
+this circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless
+indignation at these things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+A LIVING CORPSE
+
+
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be
+marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide,
+which had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been
+brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at
+their duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the
+third man yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his
+limbs had been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
+
+His name was down on the ship’s papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But
+the sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to
+understand that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could
+not obey him; when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired
+to the quarterdeck.
+
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel’s clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any
+thing be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself,
+capriciously forbade this proceeding.
+
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the _bowsprit-bitts_—two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship’s keel. An hour or two afterward, some of
+the men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed
+to the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side
+planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to
+extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch,
+to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he
+exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by
+the shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship’s rolling.
+
+“Blast that rat!” cried the Greenlander.
+
+“He’s blasted already,” said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. “It’s a water-rat, shipmates, that’s dead;
+and here he is”—and with that, he dragged forth the sailor’s arm,
+exclaiming, “Dead as a timber-head!”
+
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he
+held to the man’s face.
+
+“No, he’s not dead,” he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment
+at the seaman’s motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped,
+when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
+forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
+cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
+over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
+silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
+like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
+
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
+every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
+curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
+death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
+
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man’s name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.
+
+“Where’s that d—d Miguel?” was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+
+“He’s gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor,” coughed
+Jackson. “Come you down, sir, and look.”
+
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
+rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. “My God!” he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+
+“Take hold of it,” said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; “it must
+go overboard. Don’t stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
+say! But stop”—and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
+partly out of the bunk.
+
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
+sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
+did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
+all serve to soothe me.
+
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month’s advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the
+bill he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a
+corpse on board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a
+live body in a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had
+known of such things having been done before. But that a really dead
+body ever burned in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the
+sailors seemed familiar with such things; or at least with the stories
+of such things having happened to others.
+
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case
+like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me,
+I almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the
+Calvinists, and that Miguel’s earthly end was a foretaste of his
+eternal condemnation.
+
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in
+the bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the
+bunk was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and
+strict orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken
+place to the emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
+
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+CARLO
+
+
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a
+rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded,
+olive-hued velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee.
+He was not above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness
+of his full morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and
+various, that his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye
+like Harry’s tho’ Harry’s was large and womanly. It shone with a soft
+and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of
+humility, deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all
+the ills of life.
+
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady’s arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the
+eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are,
+full of poetry, gushing from every rent.
+
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no
+sire; and on life’s ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince’s Dock, with his
+hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of
+Liverpool, playing the sunny airs of southern climes, among the
+northern fog and drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his
+passage over the Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes
+in America.
+
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+
+“Carlo,” said Harry, “how did you succeed in England?”
+
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing
+back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child,
+he looked up, and said in his broken English—that seemed like mixing
+the potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:—said he, “Ah! I
+succeed very well!—for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay
+and the sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for
+the ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I
+know from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop
+before a house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will
+soonest toss me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and
+merry airs to the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and
+the poor the merry.”
+
+“But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men,” said
+Harry, “who would much rather have your room than your music?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes,” said Carlo, playing with his foot, “sometimes I do.”
+
+“And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?”
+
+“No,” continued the boy, “I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my
+only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off,
+not I; would I, poor organ?”— looking down the hatchway where it was.
+“No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for
+when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but
+they themselves are to blame; for such people’s musical pipes are
+cracked, and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into
+their souls.”
+
+“No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps,” said Harry, with a laugh.
+
+“Ah! there’s the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords.”
+
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
+vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
+and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
+gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
+went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
+
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
+be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia’s horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars—never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from
+a beggar’s hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
+
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew’s-harp may be so played, as to awaken
+all the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on
+a moon-lit sward of violets.
+
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
+
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.
+
+But look! here is poor Carlo’s organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.
+
+Behold the organ!
+
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
+melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
+we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
+almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
+buried.
+
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic
+order; in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!—what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!—what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!—But stop! ’tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.
+
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air—a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here’s
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes;
+and while I list to the organs twain— one yours, one mine—let me gaze
+fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;—’tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching—all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes,
+the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded
+damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm
+around me.
+
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband—soft, dulcet, dropping
+sounds, like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging,
+martial air, as if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and
+swordhilts, called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
+
+Again—what blasted heath is this?—what goblin sounds of Macbeth’s
+witches?—Beethoven’s Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg’s, demons dire.
+
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard—some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep
+dipped in silver gauzes.
+
+All this could Carlo do—make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take
+me; and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound,
+and bowers of song.
+
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
+
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same
+wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure
+greatly needs the artist’s repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+
+His York Minster’s West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton’s
+heaven, it turns on golden hinges.
+
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and
+gilded columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out
+come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of
+martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass
+on, and disappear.
+
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors,
+among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some
+emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back
+the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
+
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.
+
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.
+
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy,
+with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous
+box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling’s door!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+
+
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
+sailor.
+
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
+even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but
+carried you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you
+up with your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
+glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is
+it, that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.
+
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
+you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
+to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
+fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
+like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
+embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish
+the world.
+
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
+same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
+show like a zebra, banding with elks.
+
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
+Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander’s crew, looked not unlike
+the soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen,
+bounds through Caffrarian woods.
+
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked
+him before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every
+one knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even
+sailors are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and
+for a time, abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my
+friend a cold and unsympathizing civility.
+
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
+the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
+every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
+money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
+him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
+
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his
+familiarity with lofty life, only the less qualified him for
+understanding the other extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade
+once came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers,
+and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.
+
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
+crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
+spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
+before, even as a _Guinea-pig_ in an Indiaman; for the slightest
+acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
+it would seem, from enacting this folly.
+
+“Who’s that Chinese mandarin?” cried the mate, who had made voyages to
+Canton. “Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
+in a trice.”
+
+“Sir?” said Harry, starting back. “Is not this the morning watch, and
+is not mine a morning gown?”
+
+But though, in my refined friend’s estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate’s, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+
+“It is too bad!” exclaimed Harry to me; “I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;—and I suppose your Hottentot of a
+mate won’t permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I’ll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!”
+
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
+want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
+pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
+
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.
+
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out
+by the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection
+of silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what
+they thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing
+that, by abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the
+gamblers. Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his
+browsers, to test the color of his calves.
+
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
+easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship’s
+company, the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an
+irresistible necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade
+the constables.
+
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our
+tar. What else can bring them to sea?
+
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning,
+was put down for a very equivocal character.
+
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
+one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged
+to mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
+mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
+or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid’s
+tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
+if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
+to his no small astonishment,—but just as I had predicted,—Captain Riga
+never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
+the little experiences of a greenhorn’s career solely in the hands of
+his officers and crew.
+
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
+any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
+coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
+that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
+of the watch would be engaged _clewing up a t’-gallant-sail,_ that is,
+pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
+aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the _belaying-pin, so_
+that when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he
+would be inordinately fidgety in making fast the _clew-lines,_ and
+would be so absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the
+hitchings round the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after
+doing so much, to mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got
+there. However, after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of
+their getting loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a
+prodigious hurry for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing
+others in advance, would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he
+had been cut off from the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
+was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
+would do: _he could not go aloft;_ his nerves would not hear of it.
+
+“Then, Harry,” said I, “better you had never been born. Do you know
+what it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no
+doubt you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say
+that you had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship.
+But you only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very
+soon find yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a
+tree.”
+
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, _his
+nerves could not stand it;_ in the course of his courtly career, he had
+drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
+altogether too many Havannas.
+
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
+morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
+short signal halyards.
+
+“Sir?” said Harry, aghast.
+
+“Away you go!” said the mate, snatching a whip’s end.
+
+“Don’t strike me!” screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+
+“Take that, and along with you,” cried the mate, laying the rope once
+across his back, but lightly.
+
+“By heaven!” cried Harry, wincing—not with the blow, but the insult:
+and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept
+him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken
+head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy’s bulk into the officer.
+
+“Captain Riga!” cried Harry.
+
+“Don’t call upon _him”_ said the mate; “he’s asleep, and won’t wake up
+till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!” he added,
+flourishing the rope’s end.
+
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing
+there no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only
+resource, he made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the
+main-top in a trice. I thought a few more springs would take him to the
+truck, and was a little fearful that in his desperation he might then
+jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such
+things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and
+looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber;
+and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out
+for him not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. “Up you go, sir.” But
+Harry said nothing.
+
+“You Max,” cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, “spring after him, and
+help him; you understand?”
+
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
+bump against the base of Harry’s back. Needs must when the devil
+drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went
+my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards—, hardly bigger than common twine—were flying in the
+wind. “Unreeve!” cried the mate.
+
+I saw Harry’s arm stretched out—his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
+even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
+
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.
+
+At the time, he went to the mate—since he could not get speech of the
+captain—and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship’s company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
+himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in
+New York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave
+him a blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a
+sailor on board a ship, and _always_ a sailor for that voyage, at
+least; for within so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate
+on terms of any thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered
+about at his pleasure.
+
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased,
+but go aloft again he _could_ not, and _would_ not. He would do any
+thing else but that.
+
+This affair sealed Harry’s fate on board of the Highlander; the crew
+now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led
+a miserable life indeed.
+
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
+finding one’s self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you
+lead, and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such
+a sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon
+would be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and
+kicked without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth
+of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of
+these evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange
+constitutional nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become
+as a hunted hare to the merciless crew.
+
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed—how was it, that he could now yield
+himself up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt?
+Perhaps his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not
+undertake to explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and
+there are passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the
+common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of
+themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds, till at last, after a three days’ fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called _“Channel weather,”_ and
+the last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain
+sight, and all the rest was broad ocean.
+
+_Land ho!_ was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the
+north. At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway,
+thinking America itself was at hand.
+
+“Where is it?” cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. “Is _that_ it?”
+
+“Aye, it doesn’t look much like _ould_ Ireland, does it?” said Jackson.
+
+“Not a bit, honey:—and how long before we get there? to-night?”
+
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants,
+when they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their
+own native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in
+a steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
+
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have
+no adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as
+a place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to
+see how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours
+together, looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see
+New York city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand
+miles distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
+
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice—“Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!”
+
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.
+
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
+would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
+and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and
+play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who
+blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music
+by furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward,
+when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from
+the cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the
+gentlemen and ladies.
+
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes,
+by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo’s,
+for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or
+thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the
+other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling
+to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely
+unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest
+interest, were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most
+part, the gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could
+to my little Italian’s organ.
+
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any
+tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at
+one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such
+or such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and
+some ladies, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to
+Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo’s organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+
+“Yes, ladies,” said the captain, bowing, “by your leave, I think
+Carlo’s organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig
+running after its dam.”
+
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were
+all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo’s music.
+
+“Carlo”—said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the
+quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place
+during my watch on deck:—“Carlo”—said I, “what do the gentlemen and
+ladies give you for playing?”
+
+“Look!”—and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield—three English pennies.
+
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that
+the natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and
+steerage-passengers, regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at
+least, of my not feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
+
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her
+own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt.
+Not because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.
+
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked
+as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a
+short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the
+calf, but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable
+about him but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not
+remember it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the
+time, as if its owner was laboring under the mumps.
+
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the
+rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee
+of the _spanker;_ or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing
+the emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of
+the upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help
+them to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to
+see Niagara Falls.
+
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four
+heavy files of the _London Times,_ and other papers; and he spent all
+his hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg
+crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all.
+That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied.
+He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then
+were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
+
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies
+are like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+THE EMIGRANTS’ KITCHEN
+
+
+I have made some mention of the “galley,” or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in
+the steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a
+pretty large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough,
+considering the number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire
+was only to be kindled at certain hours.
+
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and
+in all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the
+captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well
+go to law with the Czar of Russia.
+
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving
+of the spray over the uncovered “galley.” Whenever I had the morning
+watch, from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling
+up from below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after
+bits of rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner
+would the fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and
+children; each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a
+great tumult ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the
+more quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other’s pots and pans.
+
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed
+to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a
+great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his
+appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose
+coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in
+its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to
+him; and with that, he turned aside.
+
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed,
+made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no
+sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The
+boy snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about
+the fellow’s bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary
+hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy,
+who by this time, however, had decamped.
+
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but
+scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of
+the most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very
+hardships to which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them,
+only tends, by imbittering their tempers, to set them against each
+other; and thus they themselves drive the strongest rivet into the
+chain, by which their social superiors hold them subject.
+
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate’s command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.
+
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called _mush;_ by the Dutch is known as
+_supaan;_ by sailors _burgoo;_ by the New Englanders _hasty-pudding;_
+in which hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials
+for a sort of epic.
+
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.
+
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than
+the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages,
+Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
+
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would
+sometimes take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him,
+like an Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion,
+and eating his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk
+bottle, and smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer
+made time jog along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and
+wife in some imaginary section of the ship, called the _second cabin,_
+which was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who
+was young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers’-boys fall in
+love with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and
+happy.
+
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do,
+from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their
+double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he
+would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial
+commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady
+was not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks
+would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun.
+The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a
+dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the
+mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided
+them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.
+
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him—
+
+“Billy, my dear;” and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+
+“Billy, my love!”
+
+The bow went faster and faster.
+
+“Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let’s make it all up;” and
+she bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.
+
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour
+or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed,
+which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass
+from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+
+
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner
+of Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:—“It _happened, that in
+each family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little
+disparity in point of age or of strength.”_
+
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.
+
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like
+as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms
+seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to
+form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness,
+all six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other;
+yet, the O’Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the
+O’Regans. The former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve
+around their mother’s waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit;
+whereas, the O’Regans were “broths of boys,” full of mischief and fun,
+and given to all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
+
+Early every morning, Mrs. O’Regan emerged from the steerage, driving
+her spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and
+made her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up
+from the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes,
+and the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in _shampooing_ them, though it was haphazard sort of
+work enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to
+fasten on a stray limb.
+
+“Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it’s you, Teddy,
+you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don’t be mixing your legs up
+with Pat’s.”
+
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O’Brien would be standing on the boatswain’s locker—or
+rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel’s bows—with a large old quarto
+Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and
+reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O’Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O’Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that
+haunted us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs.
+O’Brien purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul
+wind for the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
+
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted
+her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.
+
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion
+was curiously manifested.
+
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her,
+began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of
+the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The
+widow gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then
+ducking in the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and
+springing from the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs,
+biting and striking at him: which, the before timid little O’Briens no
+sooner perceived, than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and
+the amazed seaman found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out “enough!” and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O’Briens obeyed, the
+three O’Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+
+“There now, you rascal,” cried the mate, “throw overboard another
+Bible, and I’ll send you after it without a bowline.”
+
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the
+vessel. That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and
+reviewed by the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular
+interest in them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of
+them show in public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and
+questioning their nurses.
+
+“And were you all born at one time?” asked an old lady, letting her eye
+run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+
+“Indeed, an’ we were,” said Teddy; “wasn’t we, mother?”
+
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was
+taken up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers,
+which resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny
+apiece.
+
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to
+me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples
+of the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?
+
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for
+the particular benefit of twins?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND _PIG-TAIL_
+
+
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their
+tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in
+the end.
+
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices
+paid for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the
+greater portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to
+surrender the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of
+the Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks
+out, on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.
+
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at
+sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called
+_“High-low-Jack-and-the-game,”_ which name, indeed, has a Jackish and
+nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco,
+which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they
+play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander’s crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into _“chaws.”_
+
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially
+if they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to
+be boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the
+forecastle by those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on
+deck, and make a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there
+was a great deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of
+nigging and cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were
+exchanged.
+
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but
+very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky;
+and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become
+exceedingly torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the
+four suits might have seceded from their respective clans, and formed
+into a fifth tribe, under the name of _“Tar-spots.”_
+
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The
+modicum constituting an ordinary _“chaw,”_ was made to last a whole
+day; and at night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same
+_“chaw”_ was placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to
+do duty in a pipe.
+
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe.
+With touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings—the time
+of smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day’s delectable _“chawing,”_
+they beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable
+puffs.
+
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an
+idea in his head—“Boys, let’s search under the bunks!” Bless you,
+Blunt! what a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out;
+the dark places explored; and two sticks of _nail-rod_ tobacco, and
+several old _“chaws,”_ thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage,
+were their cheering reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson,
+who, upon this occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one
+generally adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of
+impartiality is desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest
+consideration to all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance;
+for if they adopted this nautical method, that universally slanderous
+aphorism of Lavater would be forever rendered nugatory—“Expect _not to
+understand any man till you have divided with him an inheritance.”_
+
+The _nail-rods_ they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as
+there were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed
+in the presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his
+face to the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of
+weed with his knife, crying out, “Whose is this?” Whereupon a
+respondent, previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the
+opposite corner of the forecastle, “Blunt’s;” and to Blunt it went; and
+so on, in like manner, till all were served.
+
+I put it to you, lawyers—shade of Blackstone, I invoke you—if a more
+impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage _“chaws”_ were soon gone, and then,
+after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped,
+and relapsed into gloom.
+
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however—but not altogether new
+among seamen—to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut
+up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes
+were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and
+had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their
+ancient, cheese-like flavor.
+
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part,
+round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum,
+upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such
+times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever
+taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it
+slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic
+_“heart;”_ for so this central piece is denominated.
+
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+
+Nor is this delectable morsel of _old junk_ wanting in many
+interesting, mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what
+gales it may have been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How
+many stout masts of seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the
+tempest? How deep it may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of
+strange harbors? What outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the
+water, and what un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when
+forming part of a lofty stay or a shroud?
+
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little “cut” it was,
+that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting
+hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to
+see whether it had any _“tenderloin.”_
+
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at
+all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an
+antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies.
+Indeed, though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had
+rather an astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with
+which the flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors
+seemed to like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They
+converted one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when
+solicited by a shipmate for a _“chaw,”_ would produce a small coil of
+rope.
+
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.
+
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the
+genuine weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out,
+until very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
+
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace,
+when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an
+upper one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down
+upon the mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
+
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the
+_nail-rods_ they found.
+
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve
+or fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be
+left to the philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON’S CAREER
+
+
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of
+a circumstance—which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before—that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too
+unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here,
+with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine
+weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the
+remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
+
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master’s
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with
+a midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson’s would have been
+the face to paint for the doomed vessel’s figurehead, seamed and
+blasted by lightning.
+
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off,
+was only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from
+his excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs
+in his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
+
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
+
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment
+of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before
+him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if
+he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a
+curse between his teeth.
+
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world—the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well
+meriting his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless
+vagabond without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For
+there is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell
+is a democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side
+by side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though
+Milton’s Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only
+because he is not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine
+original. We gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised
+fancies concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure.
+But in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and
+lifting up and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples
+of wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION
+
+
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their
+harps on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of
+Palestine before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to
+themselves, those melodies of other times and a distant land were as
+sweet as the June dew on Hermon.
+
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.
+
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person
+like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through
+the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by
+pied and pansied margins.
+
+“_I_ can’t sing to-night”—sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with
+his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody—“I can’t sing to-night. But, Wellingborough,” he whispered,—and
+I stooped my ear,— “come _you_ with me under the lee of the long-boat,
+and there I’ll hum you an air.”
+
+It was _The Banks of the Blue Moselle._
+
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,—to be
+singing it _here—here,_ as I live, under the tarry lee of our
+long-boat.
+
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all
+with sprites, and cried _“chassez!” “hands across!”_ to the
+multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew
+from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to
+master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so
+delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well
+knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least,
+they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more
+deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight.
+Carlo’s organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury
+blade was an accordion in their ears.
+
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled
+in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.
+
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
+more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
+with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
+all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
+intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
+cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and
+if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week’s board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to
+England; and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal
+felicity.
+
+“I have forgotten England,” he said, “and never more mean to think of
+it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?”
+
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though
+I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in
+the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with
+one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave
+kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never
+actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we
+can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is
+no true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should
+distrust that man’s sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
+
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by
+talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I
+certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even
+as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward
+him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my
+country; I accounted him the nation’s guest. Hence, I esteemed it more
+befitting, that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that
+_his_ prospects and plans should engage our attention, in preference to
+my own.
+
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably—“Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have,” and then he went on to mention, that in
+some places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of
+highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately
+in lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats—it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain
+their livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into
+silvery shillings.
+
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell—Are _the ladies and
+gentlemen in?_ Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not
+sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and
+when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with
+a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, _We come, ladies and gentlemen, to
+sing you a song: we are singers, at your service._ And so, without
+waiting reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous
+voices, enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the
+conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well
+recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make
+the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+
+“Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?” said
+Harry, “or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?” he
+anxiously added.
+
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
+
+I could not but be struck—and had I not been, from my birth, as it
+were, a cosmopolite—I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to
+the civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might
+have resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees
+lived in wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of
+a Cockney, and had shut up his Christendom in London.
+
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not
+play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on
+such a business.
+
+Said I, “My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb
+man has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I
+think myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling.”
+
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea
+of singing himself into a livelihood.
+
+“No, I won’t sing for my mutton,” said he—“what would Lady Georgiana
+say?”
+
+“If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry,” returned
+I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend’s conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+
+“But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and _that_ at least, will be sure to help you.”
+
+“I _do_ write a hand,” he gladly rejoined—“there, look at the
+implement!—do you not think, that such a hand as _that_ might dot an
+_i,_ or cross a _t,_ with a touching grace and tenderness?”
+
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small;
+and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the
+nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer’s hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.
+
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of
+that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his
+noble birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of
+us—the son of a _man._ And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed
+half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled
+to consideration, would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
+
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture:
+or that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the
+foot, when even a fish has no foot at all!
+
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured,
+oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad
+base. It is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+
+But though Harry’s hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white
+as the queen’s cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes,
+had somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
+
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly,
+that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses
+to their coaches? Is _this_ the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?
+with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord
+Lovely? _This_ the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she
+vowed she was mine?—Out of sight, recreant and apostate!—deep
+down—disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that
+upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few
+friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+ALMOST A FAMINE
+
+
+“Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home.” Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
+children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle,
+where the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the “kids,”
+which, indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+
+“Pigs, is it?” coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
+over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.—“Pigs, is it?—and the day is close by, ye
+spalpeens, when you’ll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!”
+
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to
+their outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable
+results.
+
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
+to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
+the ship’s stores, or starve.
+
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
+cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
+
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
+hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
+consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores
+of the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour.
+They plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them
+at the public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat,
+and carried off a promising young shoat: _him_ they devoured raw, not
+venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
+cook’s caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
+they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
+cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
+the name of the Church.
+
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
+Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
+emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
+rigging and flogged.
+
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought
+that such rigorous discipline as _that_ might exasperate five hundred
+emigrants into an insurrection.
+
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs—the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
+the tub. The head—divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice—was now fitted round the culprit’s neck; and he was forthwith
+coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
+protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
+
+“Now, Pat, my boy,” said the mate, “fill that big wooden belly of
+yours, if you can.”
+
+Compassionating his situation, our old “doctor” used to give him alms
+of food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when
+the time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would
+fain have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this
+starving voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE
+LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+
+
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it
+is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even
+sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage.
+Though in the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must
+occasion so great a detention. It is also true, that generally the
+passage out from America is shorter than the return; which is to be
+ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.
+
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
+by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we
+were visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater
+part of a week.
+
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
+
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
+galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
+steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When
+the lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
+emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
+the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
+ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would
+continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One
+morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a
+gallon or two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his
+face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be
+standing by at the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the
+spot; and ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any
+thing to windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+
+During the frequent _hard blows_ we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
+noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
+marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
+close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
+
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
+known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
+
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
+out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
+to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
+disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
+being a physician; and from fear of contagion—though he did not confess
+that to be the motive—refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
+increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
+over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
+fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
+most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
+
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
+deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather—wet, cold,
+and tempestuous—drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other
+human beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous
+storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But
+some of these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing
+calamities, that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their
+natural air.
+
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.
+
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
+that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
+captain’s order.
+
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
+like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
+meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their
+breath with a gasp.
+
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while—notwithstanding the crowd—in front of it was a clear area, which
+the fear of contagion had left open.
+
+“That bulkhead must come down,” cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. “Take hold of it, boys.”
+
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.
+
+“Haul it down!” roared the mate.
+
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.
+
+About four o’clock that morning, the first four died. They were all
+men; and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme.
+Certainly, the bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were
+sailing, concealed nothing more frightful.
+
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
+By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
+rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
+rites, were dropped into the ocean.
+
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
+but the captain did not again go down to them.
+
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
+it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
+to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and
+unsheltered decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered
+above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the
+present, this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused
+to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the
+greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of
+the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to
+assist in what seemed their own salvation.
+
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
+clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
+they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
+quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
+
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
+an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
+very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
+and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually
+guard against contagion.
+
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair
+winds and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last,
+even prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the
+loud jest had been so often heard.
+
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
+that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
+
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on
+the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland
+sailor, and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was
+afterward supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last
+deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants—all looked upon each other like lepers.
+All but the only true leper among us—the mariner Jackson, who seemed
+elated with the thought, that for _him—_already in the deadly clutches
+of another disease—no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which
+only swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the
+despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down;
+not, at least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
+this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched
+in rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours’ time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
+
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
+rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
+and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
+one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
+father’s body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
+death, both mothers and babes survived.
+
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
+the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
+the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
+fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
+and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
+Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
+white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
+boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
+
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
+down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun’-sails alow and aloft;
+and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;—bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck,
+snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun,
+and regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who
+of late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment
+of them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the
+steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing,
+sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was
+more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This
+day we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us,
+with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway,
+soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the
+mate.
+
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,
+the fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of
+the fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on;
+and we made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward
+steered for New York.
+
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers—at
+least by far the greater number—wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives,
+or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard
+and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief
+is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing
+reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind
+condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends;
+and they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their
+pallbearers throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
+suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
+few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
+land?
+
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
+nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
+land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
+jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.
+
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or
+relative on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger
+dying among strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
+
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
+in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others,
+upon the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
+
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;—therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, _craven_ is the phrase too often applied to
+any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the
+prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he
+have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of _craven_
+would you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has
+beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The
+subject invites much subtle speculation; for in every being’s ideas of
+death, and his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best
+index to his life and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then
+begun, Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was
+not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of the
+Christian,—humble, composed, without bravado; and though the most
+skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless
+faith, that embraces the spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity;
+Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison,
+calling upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die;
+but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of
+the Christian.
+
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
+against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks,
+who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no
+more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth,
+with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his
+companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the
+slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the
+observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in
+the cabin bulk-head.
+
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.
+
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
+orders upon his arrival in New York.
+
+“Why so?” said the other, “have I such an orotund voice?”
+
+“No;” profanely returned his friend—“but you are a coward—just the man
+to be a parson, and pray.”
+
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
+the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
+_There_ is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
+die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
+seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
+passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
+more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life
+and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
+three-worded sentence!
+
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
+of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
+the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:—all is a blank.
+And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
+of the Highlander’s calamity.
+
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last
+woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed
+circumstances of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known,
+operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid
+detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most
+palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
+
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.
+
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such
+multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let
+us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they
+have God’s right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her
+miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole
+world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall
+of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the
+emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and
+will.
+
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
+
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
+lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the
+captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent
+lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are
+immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance
+necessitates him to place the _galley,_ or steerage-passengers’ stove,
+in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking
+during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them
+more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore and
+aft?—There is no law concerning these things. And if there was, who but
+some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is there a
+Howard in office!
+
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of
+_them,_ go to heaven, before some of _us?_ We may have civilized bodies
+and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world;
+deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that
+one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity
+is striving to make us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+
+
+“Off Cape Cod!” said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck,
+where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping
+the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+
+_Off Cape Cod!_ and in the shore-bloom that came to us— even from that
+desert of sand-hillocks—methought I could almost distinguish the
+fragrance of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far
+inland garden at home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth;
+which like a flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager
+voyager from afar.
+
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.
+
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last
+the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into
+all three top-sails.
+
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they
+had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several,
+Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four
+weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
+
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been
+off duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to
+entering port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that
+he expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon
+an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on
+deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
+
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were
+like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark
+tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering
+up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place
+at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard—which in reefing is
+accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of
+this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull
+work in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and
+would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his
+unbounded dominion over the men.
+
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing
+and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his
+reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward
+Jackson, whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and _then_ it is, too, that
+they are the most profane.
+
+“Haul out to windward!” coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he
+threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped
+to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of
+blood from his lungs.
+
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell
+headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver
+into the sea.
+
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.
+
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to
+the one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of
+the waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting
+an order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but
+instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, “Bear a hand, and
+reef away, men!” from the mate.
+
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea—and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs—our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
+
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too
+many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel’s keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a _thole-pin_ in the gunwales; its bottom
+bleaching and cracking in the sun.
+
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet
+in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be
+sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could
+in case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the
+souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of
+survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst
+of the calamities that befell patient Job, some _one_ at least of his
+servants escaped to report it.
+
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry’s, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing
+up his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the
+bondage under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode
+in their secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection
+of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that
+_his_ death was _their_ deliverance; which they celebrated by an
+elevation of spirits, unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part
+imputed, however, to their now drawing near to their port.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+HOME AT LAST
+
+
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading
+calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly
+towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all
+around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.
+
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air,
+the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue
+sea seemed to flow under them.
+
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient
+cabin-passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants
+clustered around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down
+into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own;
+and turning to Harry, said, “This America’s skies must be down in the
+sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also
+behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I
+go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool.”
+
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore—the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless
+pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the
+throng.
+
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot’s favor, who proved to be a
+tiger of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the
+braces, and trimming the ship, to catch the least _cat’s-paw_ of wind.
+
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands
+among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a
+realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
+
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and
+tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and
+hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.—A command that was received
+by the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were
+assured, that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise
+long detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore
+reluctantly complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following
+them, went old pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the
+sea was strewn with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the
+waves—couches for all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless
+things of this sort, tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the
+harbor of New York, drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on
+the shores of Staten Island; along whose eastern beach I have often
+walked, and speculated upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and
+dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces,
+and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water.
+And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced
+them to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was
+then fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that
+by evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that
+the Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage.
+Thus, some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall
+not get a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
+
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of
+the forts.
+
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a
+glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced
+with aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like
+horses brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the
+Highlander was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
+
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads,
+and like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
+
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag,
+denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition
+of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the
+world, taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag.
+
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side
+were now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that
+they thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
+
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced
+the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail
+boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black
+rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately
+old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we
+caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
+
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what
+home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems
+to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you
+swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor’s Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+
+“And _that”_ said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a
+shark, showed tiers of teeth, _“that,_ ladies, is a
+line-of-battle-ship, the North Carolina.”
+
+“Oh, dear!”—and “Oh my!”—ejaculated the ladies, and— “Lord, save us,”
+responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
+
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor,
+fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of
+which was now worth a broad manor in England.
+
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were
+all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning.
+But nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like “Hail Columbia!” his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.
+
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and
+gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
+
+At sunrise, we _warped_ into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+_her,_ was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it
+is a maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So
+with a rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the
+tumultuous crowd of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and
+housemaids, stood ready to embrace them.
+
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past;
+and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+
+
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the
+deserted old ship, but the mate and the rats.
+
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond
+all doubt—like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the
+night, and no _starb-o-leens ahoy!_ would annoy us again.
+
+“All night in! think of _that,_ Harry, my friend!”
+
+“Ay, Wellingborough, it’s enough to keep me awake forever, to think I
+may now sleep as long as I please.”
+
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+
+“I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers,”
+cried Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong
+suds. “No! they will _not_ come out, and I’m ruined for life. Look at
+my hand once, Wellingborough!”
+
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a
+rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+
+“Never mind, Harry,” said I—“You know the ladies of the east steep the
+tips of their fingers in some golden dye.”
+
+“And by Plutus,” cried Harry—“I’d steep mine up to the armpits in gold;
+since you talk about _that._ But never mind, I’ll swear I’m just from
+Persia, my boy.”
+
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once,
+I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by
+one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat
+cakes.
+
+“Well, gentlemen, what will you have?”—said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.
+
+“_Gentlemen!_” whispered Harry to me—“_gentlemen!_—hear him!—I say now,
+Redburn, they didn’t talk to us that way on board the old Highlander.
+By heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:—Coffee and hot rolls,” he
+added aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, “and fellow—come back—bring
+us a venison-steak.”
+
+“Haven’t got it, gentlemen.”
+
+“Ham and eggs,” suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.
+
+But the butter!
+
+“Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?”
+
+“Don’t say a word,”—said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast “I’m
+going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so
+long as I live.”
+
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of
+gold, bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
+
+“Now,” said Harry, “lead on; and let’s see something of these United
+States of yours. I’m ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the
+Great Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here,
+take my arm;—lead on.”
+
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded
+me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the
+Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
+
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the
+landlady’s butcher’s bill was not very large.
+
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I
+turned up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had
+happened during my absence.
+
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other,
+gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled
+my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+
+Strange, but even the few hours’ absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and
+strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a
+creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange
+streets seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition;
+and I found him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his
+pocket.
+
+“Where am I going to dine, this day week?”—he slowly said. “What’s to
+be done, Wellingborough?”
+
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though
+needing a little cheering myself; even though I _had_ got home again.
+But no more about that.
+
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and
+in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his
+best for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:—Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons;
+Harry full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself
+contributing a small quota to the general entertainment.
+
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to
+retire for life on the profits of _my first voyage;_ but nevertheless,
+I thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are
+valuable things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing.
+Therefore, as the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart
+for paying off the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board,
+with the rest. We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found
+myself, after an interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its
+mahogany and maple.
+
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as
+the Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes—beautiful sight!—paid them their wages.
+
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars
+coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in
+restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and
+who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy
+dollars as his due.
+
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was
+worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American _“mitts.”_ Only
+seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that
+stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only £5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.
+
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the
+old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing
+all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they
+would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:— the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper—I think it was the Herald—threw his leg over
+one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all
+parts of the world.
+
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the
+disturbance.
+
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+
+“Well, where do you come from? Who are _you,_ pray? and what do you
+want? Steward, show these young gentlemen out.”
+
+“I want my money,” said Harry.
+
+“My wages are due,” said I.
+
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at
+us, letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+
+“Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?”
+
+“Captain Riga!” cried Harry, enraged at his impudence—“I tell you what
+it is, Captain Riga; this won’t do—where’s the rhino?”
+
+“Captain Riga,” added I, “do you not remember, that about four months
+ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this
+very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I
+have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I’ll thank you for
+my pay.”
+
+“Ah, yes, I remember,” said the captain. _“Mr. Jones!_ Ha! ha! I
+remember Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop—_you,_ too,
+are the son of a wealthy French importer; and—let me think—was not your
+great-uncle a barber?”
+
+“No!” thundered I.
+
+“Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen—be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see,” turning over his accounts— “Hum, hum!—yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that’s twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool—that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard— that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
+dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?”
+
+“So it seems, sir,” said I, with staring eyes.
+
+“And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square
+the yards, Monsieur Redburn.”
+
+Owe _him!_ thought I—what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my
+resentment; and presently he said, “By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars;
+and as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers,
+seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me
+in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I’ll thank you for the
+money;” and he extended his open palm across the desk.
+
+“Shall I pitch into him?” whispered Harry.
+
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state
+of my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was
+that he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I
+were in London. But a single minute’s consideration showed that I could
+not help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his
+suit, for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
+
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to
+be munificent. Peace to his dinners.
+
+“Mr. Bolton, I believe,” said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. “Mr. Bolton, _you_ also shipped for three dollars per month: and
+you had one month’s advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have
+been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half,
+Mr. Bolton; and here it is;” handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+
+“And this,” said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude,
+_“this_ is the reward of my long and faithful services!”
+
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+“There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in _your_
+purse, and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir.”
+
+“Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again,” said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was
+invincible.
+
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of
+his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried _Pshaw!_ and that was the last of
+it.
+
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck,
+engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf,
+loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined
+for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw
+very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it
+turned out.
+
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage
+against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses—such as
+indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished,
+without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way,
+and without speaking to the sailors on the subject—by this, and kindred
+actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole
+ship’s company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name
+unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
+
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their
+feelings.
+
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon
+the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat—but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.
+
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the “Irish cockney,” was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+_gentlemen_ alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the
+side next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled
+about, presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite
+salute to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who
+happened to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound,
+cleared the ship.
+
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only
+lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his
+cabin.
+
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so
+clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the
+wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated
+“The Flashes.” And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among
+his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their
+looks, that his customers were “flush,” and would spend their money
+freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+
+It was a touching scene.
+
+“Well, maties,” said one of them, at last—“I spose we shan’t see each
+other again:—come, let’s splice the main-brace all round, and drink to
+_the last voyage!”_
+
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked
+his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors,
+as much as to say—_“Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance
+your liquor;—help yourselves, your honors.”_
+
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed
+them all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then
+disappeared in couples, through the several doorways; for _“The
+Flashes”_ was on a corner.
+
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+_“Good-by, God bless you,”_ is heard for every _“How d’ye do, welcome,
+my boy”—_then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the
+most hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting
+themselves, they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed,
+are tossed to and fro.
+
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood
+on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+
+“They are gone,” said I.
+
+“Thank heaven!” said Harry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat
+on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that’s the everlasting rub—oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?
+
+“I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry,” said I, “he’s
+a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know.”
+
+“No doubt of it,” said Harry, looking hopeless.
+
+“And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon.”
+
+“And I am sorry enough myself,” said Harry, looking very sincere.
+
+“But I will be soon back again, I doubt not,” said I.
+
+“Perhaps so,” said Harry, shaking his head. “How far is it off?”
+
+“Only a hundred and eighty miles,” said I.
+
+“A hundred and eighty miles!” said Harry, drawing the words out like an
+endless ribbon. “Why, I couldn’t walk that in a month.”
+
+“Now, my dear friend,” said I, “take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well.”
+
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so
+bad, that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we
+both gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he
+stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing
+on the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the
+play of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits,
+we parted. I never saw Harry again.
+
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:—I pass over this; and will conclude _my
+first voyage_ by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks;
+during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter,
+now spread before me.
+
+_“Dear Redburn—Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After
+you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don’t know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified,
+are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
+get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
+melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
+those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few
+dollars, but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three
+times after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that
+he had permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my
+questioning her closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that
+she did not know, but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor
+friend, she feared he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to
+the offices in South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket
+whalers, and made inquiries among them; but without success. And this,_
+I _am heartily grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not
+believe that his melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing
+himself away in a whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere
+in the city. You must come down yourself, and help me seek him out.”_
+
+This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield
+to the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered
+to think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought
+him all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry
+must indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his
+bitter experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
+
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+
+
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
+whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat’s crew
+that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
+
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
+Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
+to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and
+that the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of
+originally bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him
+why he had abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of
+ships.
+
+“We had hardly been out three months,” said he, “when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat’s crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next
+day lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never
+entered the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the
+ship, and a whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he
+had a hard time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman’s son,
+and when you could coax him to it, he sang like a bird.”
+
+“What was his name?” said I, trembling with expectation; “what kind of
+eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?”
+
+“Harry Bolton was not your brother?” cried the stranger, starting.
+
+_Harry Bolton!_ it was even he!
+
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, _My
+First Voyage_—which here I end.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN: HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8118-0.txt or 8118-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+    https://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/1/8118/
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that:
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
diff --git a/8118-0.zip b/8118-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24b4bac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8118-0.zip
diff --git a/8118-h.zip b/8118-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26ac0a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8118-h.zip
diff --git a/8118-h/8118-h.htm b/8118-h/8118-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..218c55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/8118-h/8118-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,15987 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn: His First Voyage, by Herman Melville</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+
+body { margin-left: 20%;
+       margin-right: 20%;
+       text-align: justify; }
+
+h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight:
+normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;}
+
+h1 {font-size: 300%;
+    margin-top: 0.6em;
+    margin-bottom: 0.6em;
+    letter-spacing: 0.12em;
+    word-spacing: 0.2em;
+    text-indent: 0em;}
+h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;}
+h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;}
+h4 {font-size: 120%;}
+h5 {font-size: 110%;}
+
+.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */
+
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;}
+
+hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+p {text-indent: 1em;
+   margin-top: 0.25em;
+   margin-bottom: 0.25em; }
+
+.p2 {margin-top: 2em;}
+
+p.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%;
+        font-size: 90%;
+        margin-top: 1em;
+        margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.letter {text-indent: 0%;
+          margin-left: 10%;
+          margin-right: 10%;
+          margin-top: 1em;
+          margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+p.center  {text-align: center;
+           text-indent: 0em;
+           margin-top: 1em;
+           margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.right {text-align: right;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+         margin-top: 1em;
+         margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.footnote {font-size: 90%;
+           text-indent: 0%;
+           margin-left: 10%;
+           margin-right: 10%;
+           margin-top: 1em;
+           margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+sup { vertical-align: top; font-size: 0.6em; }
+
+a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none}
+a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none}
+a:hover {color:red}
+
+</style>
+
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn: His First Voyage, by Herman Melville</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Redburn: His First Voyage</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Herman Melville</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 17, 2003 [eBook #8118]<br />
+[Most recently updated: March 25, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Project Gutenberg volunteers and Blackmask Online</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN: HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***</div>
+
+<h1>Redburn:<br/>
+His First Voyage</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Herman Melville</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+Being the Sailor Boy<br/>
+Confessions and Reminiscences<br/>
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman<br/>
+In the Merchant Navy
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN&rsquo;S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. REDBURN&rsquo;S DEPARTURE FROM HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM BOOK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR&rsquo;S-MAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO&rsquo;s MONKEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII. THE DOCKS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT&rsquo;S-HEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HTHER AND THITHER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE READER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap46">CHAPTER XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap47">CHAPTER XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap48">CHAPTER XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap49">CHAPTER XLIX. CARLO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap50">CHAPTER L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap51">CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap52">CHAPTER LII. THE EMIGRANTS&rsquo; KITCHEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap53">CHAPTER LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap54">CHAPTER LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap55">CHAPTER LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON&rsquo;S CAREER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap56">CHAPTER LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap57">CHAPTER LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap58">CHAPTER LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap59">CHAPTER LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap60">CHAPTER LX. HOME AT LAST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap61">CHAPTER LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap62">CHAPTER LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br/>
+HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN&rsquo;S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it&rsquo;s just the thing&mdash;take it, it will
+<i>save</i> the expense of another. You see, it&rsquo;s quite warm; fine long
+skirts, stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder brother to
+me, upon the <i>eve</i> of my departure for the seaport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, Wellingborough,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;since we are both short of
+money, and you want an outfit, and I <i>Have</i> none to <i>give,</i> you may
+as well take my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can
+get.&mdash;Nay, take it; it&rsquo;s of no use to me now; I can&rsquo;t find it
+in powder any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New York to
+a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a small house, in a
+quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which I had sketched for my
+future life; the necessity of doing something for myself, united to a naturally
+roving disposition, had now conspired within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers, delightedly
+perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of which possessed a
+strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I devoured such
+announcements as the following:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+FOR BREMEN.
+<br/>
+<i>The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
+cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.<br/>
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip.<br/>
+</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
+suggested volumes of thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A <i>brig!</i> The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
+with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Coppered and copper-fastened!</i>
+That fairly smelt of the salt water! How different such vessels must be from
+the wooden, one-masted, green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down
+the river before our house on the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Nearly completed her cargo!</i>
+How momentous the announcement; suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and
+cases of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads
+of hay and lumber, with which my river experience was familiar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May-and</i>
+the newspaper bore date the fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand;
+think of that; what an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing
+was fixed upon so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>For freight or passage apply on board!</i>
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking passage
+for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but foreigners, doubtless;
+men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers, who talked French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Coenties Slip.</i>
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there. Coenties Slip
+must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses, with rusty iron doors
+and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the
+walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with
+sunburnt sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
+Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a residence
+in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a large
+ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I remembered the
+<i>yo heave ho!</i> of the sailors, as they just showed their woolen caps above
+the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their crossing the great
+ocean; and that that very ship, and those very sailors, so near to me then,
+would after a time be actually in Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times crossed the
+Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in Broad-street. And
+of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered sea-coal fire in old
+Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me of the monstrous waves at
+sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and
+Liverpool, and about going up into the ball of St. Paul&rsquo;s in London.
+Indeed, during my early life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected
+with the land; but with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches,
+and long, narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange
+houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy
+days and Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
+Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to school
+there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned over, and
+tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them to wear boots,
+instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots looked so manly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell into
+long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how fine it would
+be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous countries; with what
+reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I had just returned from the
+coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and romantic my sunburnt cheeks would
+look; how I would bring home with me foreign clothes of a rich fabric and
+princely make, and wear them up and down the streets, and how grocers&rsquo;
+boys would turn back their heads to look at me, as I went by. For I very well
+remembered staring at a man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one
+Sunday in Church, as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed
+through strange adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in
+the book which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See what big eyes he has,&rdquo; whispered my aunt, &ldquo;they got so
+big, because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at
+once caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an uncommon
+size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am sure my own
+eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I wanted my aunt to
+take me along and follow the traveler home. But she said the constables would
+take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this wonderful Arabian traveler
+again. But he long haunted me; and several times I dreamt of him, and thought
+his great eyes were grown still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of
+the date tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon foreign
+things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We had several
+pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought from Europe. These I
+examined again and again, wondering where the wood grew; whether the workmen
+who made them still survived, and what they could be doing with themselves now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my father&rsquo;s,
+which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the dining-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers legs
+rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in one corner,
+and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves were toasted brown,
+and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used to think a piece of it
+might taste good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high castles,
+like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in Froissart; and snug
+little turrets on top of the mast, full of little men, with something
+undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing through a bright-blue sea,
+blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning over on their sides at a fearful
+angle; and they must have been going very fast, for the white spray was about
+the bows like a snow-storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more than I
+could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters used to get them
+out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading them on the floor, gaze
+at them with never-failing delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its masquerades, its
+drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens, with long lines of thick
+foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows, and towers and pinnacles. Others
+were rural scenes, full of fine skies, pensive cows standing up to the knees in
+water, and shepherd-boys and cottages in the distance, half concealed in
+vineyards and vines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses and
+elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a great
+whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats sailing after
+it as fast as they could fly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old brown
+library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement, with large
+doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass doors, through which
+might be seen long rows of old books, that had been printed in Paris, and
+London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library edition of the Spectator, in six
+large volumes with gilded backs; and many a time I gazed at the word
+<i>&ldquo;London&rdquo;</i> on the title-page. And there was a copy of
+D&rsquo;Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I would be, if by
+foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight along without stopping,
+out of that book, which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my
+father, whom I so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a
+servant we had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that he had
+really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed; for it seemed so
+hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a foreign country, could be
+dwelling with me in our house in America.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations, bred in
+me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or other, to be a great
+voyager; and that just as my father used to entertain strange gentlemen over
+their wine after dinner, I would hereafter be telling my own adventures to an
+eager auditory. And I have no doubt that this presentiment had something to do
+with bringing about my subsequent rovings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague dreamings
+and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on the sea, was an
+old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long, and of French
+manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before, had brought home from
+Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine: Senator Wellingborough, who had
+died a member of Congress in the days of the old Constitution, and after whom I
+had the honor of being named. Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was
+returned to the donor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of my
+sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch tea-table in one
+corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the admiration of my
+father&rsquo;s visitors in the capital, became the wonder and delight of all
+the people of the village where we now resided, many of whom used to call upon
+my mother, for no other purpose than to see the ship. And well did it repay the
+long and curious examinations which they were accustomed to give it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great wonder of
+itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to resemble exactly the
+corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go to sea. She carried two
+tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and often I used to try to peep in
+at the portholes, to see what else was inside; but the holes were so small, and
+it looked so very dark indoors, that I could discover little or nothing;
+though, when I was very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry
+open the hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon
+something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in
+want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of insane
+desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order to come at
+the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind to my sisters,
+they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that, the ship was placed on
+the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and until I should recover my
+reason.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless it was,
+that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd&rsquo;s ship, that
+lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands, full of gold as
+it could be; and that a company of men were trying to dive down and get the
+treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever thought of doing before, though
+there she had lain for almost a hundred years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous ship,
+among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination, till I grew
+dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the people on board of
+her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful little glass sailors as any
+body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just like living men, and curious blue
+jackets with a sort of ruffle round the bottom. Four or five of these sailors
+were very nimble little chaps, and were mounting up the rigging with very long
+strides; but for all that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I
+can take my oath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms over his
+head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second was in the
+fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the cook, with a
+glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the steward, in a glass
+apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of glass pudding; and a glass
+dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him; while the captain in a glass cap was
+smoking a glass cigar on the quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark,
+with one hand to his head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out
+of the eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The name of this curious ship was <i>La Reine,</i> or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
+dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of whose
+waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you, and I used to
+be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till I grew older, and
+perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of many years
+worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was kept, so as to
+cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if any thing improved the
+general effect, for it looked like the foam and froth raised by the terrible
+gale the good Queen was battling against.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So much for <i>La Reine.</i> We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,&mdash;but I will not
+have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat, lies
+pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea under the
+bows&mdash;but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get on my own;
+for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even
+yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I left home to go to sea on this
+<i>my first voyage.</i>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br/>
+REDBURN&rsquo;S DEPARTURE FROM HOME</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with me;
+perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I was; but if I
+was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that had made me so. I had
+learned to think much and bitterly before my time; all my young mounting dreams
+of glory had left me; and at that early age, I was as unambitious as a man of
+sixty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing patrons,
+and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take none along but the
+one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as December, and bleak as its
+blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is no misanthrope like a boy
+disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth of me flogged out by adversity.
+But these thoughts are bitter enough even now, for they have not yet gone quite
+away; and they must be uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that,
+and let me go on with my story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can,&rdquo; murmured I,
+as she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my safe
+arrival in New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I&rsquo;ll be back in four months&mdash;it will be autumn then,
+and we&rsquo;ll go into the woods after nuts, an I&rsquo;ll tell you all about
+Europe. Good-by! good-by!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran away as
+fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was waiting. He
+accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the steamboat was to leave
+for New York; instilling into me much sage advice above his age, for he was but
+eight years my senior, and warning me again and again to take care of myself;
+and I solemnly promised I would; for what cast-away will not promise to take of
+care himself, when he sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,&mdash;he
+was in ill health then,&mdash;and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and the
+world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with comfortable
+houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps, heedless of the wayfarer
+passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled down my leather cap, and mingled
+with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I walked on,
+with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was on my back, and
+from the end of my brother&rsquo;s rifle hung a small bundle of my clothes. My
+fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I thought that this indeed
+was the way to begin life, with a gun in your hand!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel all
+that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen; and the
+fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with him is nipped in
+the first blossom and bud. And never again can such blights be made good; they
+strike in too deep, and leave such a scar that the air of Paradise might not
+erase it. And it is a hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste
+beforehand the pangs which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood,
+when the gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a
+thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and
+battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the Hudson.
+There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant; and they were
+mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves. After breakfast, some
+of them went to reading: others took a nap on the settees; and others sat in
+silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to who each other might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked stony-eyed and
+heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and to avoid them, went on
+deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At last I bethought me, that I had
+not procured a ticket, and going to the captain&rsquo;s office to pay my
+passage and get one, was horror-struck to find, that the price of passage had
+been suddenly raised that day, owing to the other boats not running; so that I
+had not enough money to pay for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a
+dollar, and only a dollar did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done?
+The boat was off, and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing
+to any body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged on deck;
+but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their roast-beef and mutton,
+became a little more sociable. Not with me, for the scent and savor of poverty
+was upon me, and they all cast toward me their evil eyes and cold suspicious
+glances, as I sat apart, though among them. I felt that desperation and
+recklessness of poverty which only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch
+upon one leg of my trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my
+mother, but still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I
+had hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the patch
+under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked away, boy
+though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them into respect; or
+there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my teeth were white, and my
+jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing at a jovial party seated round a
+mahogany table, with some crackers and cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces
+were flushed with the good dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan
+with a long fast. If I had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I
+had told them of my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I
+very well knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no business to
+be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult, though only a conceit,
+I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions for their prosperity. My whole
+soul was soured within me, and when at last the captain&rsquo;s clerk, a
+slender young man, dressed in the height of fashion, with a gold watch chain
+and broach, came round collecting the tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the
+throat, clutched my gun, put on my leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood
+up like a sentry before him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark
+superfluous, as his object in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood
+motionless and silent, and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to
+have spoken and told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my
+dollar, and then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He did not
+wait a great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff voice, very unlike
+his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar party, demanded my ticket.
+I replied that I had none. He then demanded the money; and upon my answering
+that I had not enough, in a loud angry voice that attracted all eyes, he
+ordered me out of the cabin into the storm. The devil in me then mounted up
+from my soul, and spread over my frame, till it tingled at my finger ends; and
+I muttered out my resolution to stay where I was, in such a manner, that the
+ticket man faltered back. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a dollar for you,&rdquo; I
+added, offering it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want two,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take that or nothing,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;it is all I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented himself
+with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting expeditions, without
+having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that such chaps might better lay
+aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the buck and saw. He then passed on, and
+left every eye fastened upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I pushed my
+seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man, with a plethora
+of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his, gave him more gazes than
+he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him, and he looked round for some one to
+take hold of me; but no one coming, he pretended to be very busy counting the
+gilded wooden beams overhead. I then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my
+gun-lock, deliberately presented the piece at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range, for I
+had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons starting to
+their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at that time; for
+otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac feelings, of which I was
+afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have been, indeed; and much more than
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle, marched
+on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was wet through, and
+the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is boyhood.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br/>
+HE ARRIVES IN TOWN</h2>
+
+<p>
+From the boat&rsquo;s bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother&rsquo;s directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John&rsquo;s Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a drink of
+water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were playing dominoes upon
+the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They winked, and asked what sort of
+sport I had had gunning on such a rainy day, but I only gulped down my water
+and stalked off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother&rsquo;s friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing who I
+was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his fireside; he
+had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its aroma; the
+brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and charming. After a
+temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I changed my wet dress, and
+returning to the table, found that the interval had been well improved by my
+hostess; a meal for a traveler was spread and I laid into it sturdily. Every
+mouthful pushed the devil that had been tormenting me all day farther and
+farther out of me, till at last I entirely ejected him with three successive
+bowls of Bohea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to bed
+thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly believe that
+I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was naturally of an easy and
+forbearing disposition; though when such a disposition is temporarily roused,
+it is perhaps worse than a cannibal&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day, my brother&rsquo;s friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get me a
+place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for Liverpool, and
+found the captain in the cabin; which was a very handsome one, lined with
+mahogany and maple; and the steward, an elegant looking mulatto in a gorgeous
+turban, was setting out on a sort of sideboard some dinner service which looked
+like silver, but it was only Britannia ware highly polished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was just the
+captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty, splendidly dressed,
+with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and what I took to be a free,
+frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked him amazingly. He was promenading
+up and down the cabin, humming some brisk air to himself when we entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, sir,&rdquo; said my friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, good morning, sir,&rdquo; said the captain.
+&ldquo;Steward, chairs for the gentlemen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! never mind, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his
+extreme civility. &ldquo;I merely called to see whether you want a fine young
+lad to go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a sailor; and
+his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one voyage, and see how he
+likes it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! indeed!&rdquo; said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my
+boy, do you?&rdquo; added he, affectionately patting my head. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+a hard life, though; a hard life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin, and
+then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying to frighten
+me, and I answered, &ldquo;Well, sir, I am ready to try it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope he&rsquo;s a country lad, sir,&rdquo; said the captain to my
+friend, &ldquo;these city boys are sometimes hard cases.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! yes, he&rsquo;s from the country,&rdquo; was the reply, &ldquo;and
+of a highly respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But his great-uncle don&rsquo;t want to go to sea too?&rdquo; said the
+captain, looking funny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! no, oh, no!&mdash; Ha! ha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; echoed the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his levity
+concerning my great-uncle, he&rsquo;ll be cracking his jokes the whole voyage;
+and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he bade me look
+out, that he did not crack my head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my lad,&rdquo; said the captain, &ldquo;I suppose you know we
+haven&rsquo;t any pastures and cows on board; you can&rsquo;t get any milk at
+sea, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried my friend, &ldquo;his father, a gentleman of one of
+the first families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Embassador extraordinary?&rdquo; said the captain, looking funny again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! indeed;&rdquo; said the captain, looking grave and bland again,
+&ldquo;then this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;and he&rsquo;s only going to
+sea for the humor of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but
+he <i>will</i> go to sea as a sailor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five) was not
+a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the kindness of his
+heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of creating a profound respect for
+me in the eyes of my future lord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour with a
+tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome captain looked ten
+times more funny than ever; and said that <i>he</i> himself would be my tutor,
+and take me on my travels, and pay for the privilege.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;that reminds me of business. Pray,
+captain, how much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like
+this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the captain, looking grave and profound, &ldquo;we are
+not so particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that&rsquo;s your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!&mdash;Upon my soul, a fine sounding name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, captain,&rdquo; said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him,
+&ldquo;that won&rsquo;t pay for his clothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will doubtless
+see to all that,&rdquo; replied the captain, with his funny look again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! yes, I forgot that,&rdquo; said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish.
+&ldquo;His friends will of course see to that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said the captain smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on
+my pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are quite a sportsman I see,&rdquo; said the captain, eying the
+great buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand opportunity to
+befriend me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s quite a sportsman,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s got
+a very valuable fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it,
+captain, to shoot gulls with at sea? It&rsquo;s cheap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations,&rdquo; said the
+captain, &ldquo;so that he can go hunting again when he returns from
+England.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, perhaps that <i>would</i> be better, after all,&rdquo; said my
+friend, pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. &ldquo;Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only three dollars a month,&rdquo; said the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I believe,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;that you generally give
+something in advance, do you not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices,&rdquo; said
+the captain, with a bow, &ldquo;but in this case, as the boy has rich
+relations, there will be no need of that, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations, did
+this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me from getting
+three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However, I said nothing,
+though I thought the more; and particularly, how that it would have been much
+better for me, to have gone on board alone, accosted the captain on my own
+account, and told him the plain truth. Poor people make a very poor business of
+it when they try to seem rich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and as we
+were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, &ldquo;Well, Redburn,
+my boy, you won&rsquo;t get home-sick before you sail, because that will make
+you very sea-sick when you get to sea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times, and told
+the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with a peculiar sort
+of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my shooting-jacket. And so we
+left.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br/>
+HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and there I
+met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I was after, began
+to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in a great flapping
+sou&rsquo;wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy monkey-jacket,
+&ldquo;Twig his coat, d&rsquo;ye see the buttons, that chap ain&rsquo;t going
+to sea in a merchantman, he&rsquo;s going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty&mdash;look here&mdash;how d&rsquo;ye sell them big buttons by the
+pound?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give us one for a saucer, will ye?&rdquo; said another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let the youngster alone,&rdquo; said a third. &ldquo;Come here, my
+little boy, has your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of the
+matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they can&rsquo;t
+mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried to laugh off
+their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my name and beat a
+retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day I spent
+in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece for a fair price
+to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street with it, when a
+curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a hooked nose, like the
+pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a strange-looking shop, with
+three gilded balls hanging over it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little man very
+civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and bidding me many
+unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine weather, begged me to
+let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to him in an instant, glad of the
+chance of disposing of it, and told him that was just what I wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will
+not try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, &ldquo;I thought it was a
+better article, it&rsquo;s very old.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not,&rdquo; said I, starting in surprise, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not been
+used more than three times; what will you give for it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t <i>buy</i> any thing here,&rdquo; said he, suddenly
+looking very indifferent, &ldquo;this is a place where people <i>pawn</i>
+things.&rdquo; <i>Pawn</i> being a word I had never heard before, I asked him
+what it meant; when he replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to
+him with their fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And pray,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;how much will you let me have for my
+gun, by way of a pawn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I suppose it&rsquo;s worth six dollars, and seeing you&rsquo;re a
+boy, I&rsquo;ll let you have three dollars upon it&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+worth five times that, I&rsquo;ll go somewhere else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll do
+better,&rdquo; and he bowed me out as if he expected to see me again pretty
+soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging over a
+shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of picket-fence, running
+all along from end to end, and three little holes, with three little old men
+standing inside of them, like prisoners looking out of a jail. Back of the
+counter were all sorts of things, piled up and labeled. Hats, and caps, and
+coats, and guns, and swords, and canes, and chests, and planes, and books, and
+writing-desks, and every thing else. And in a glass case were lots of watches,
+and seals, chains, and rings, and breastpins, and all kinds of trinkets. At one
+of the little holes, earnestly talking with one of the hook-nosed men, was a
+thin woman in a faded silk gown and shawl, holding a pale little girl by the
+hand. As I drew near, she spoke lower in a whisper; and the man shook his head,
+and looked cross and rude; and then some more words were exchanged over a
+miniature, and some money was passed through the hole, and the woman and child
+shrank out of the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I won&rsquo;t sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a high-waisted
+surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young man in a calico shirt
+and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a silver watch; and a sheepish
+boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and another little boy had a Bible; and
+all these things were thrust through to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to
+hook any thing that came along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun,
+for the long picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every
+variety of fish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun violently
+through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out, thinking I was going
+to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned it end for end, clicked the
+trigger three times, and then said, &ldquo;one dollar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about one dollar?&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ll give,&rdquo; he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what do you want?&rdquo; and he turned to the next person. This
+was a young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his vest-pocket
+and other hints, made a great show of having something confidential to
+communicate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, &ldquo;None of that; take
+it out. Got a stolen watch? We don&rsquo;t deal in them things here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who had heard
+the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his pocket, and
+keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did you get this ring?&rdquo; said the pawnbroker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to pawn it,&rdquo; whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo; said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much will you give?&rdquo; whispered the other in reply, leaning
+over, and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a little
+ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket; all at once he
+asked the young man where he lived, a question which embarrassed him very much;
+but at last he stammered out a certain number in Broadway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the City Hotel: you don&rsquo;t live there,&rdquo; said the
+man, cruelly glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! well,&rdquo; stammered the other blushing scarlet, &ldquo;I thought
+this was only a sort of form to go through; I don&rsquo;t like to tell where I
+do live, for I ain&rsquo;t in the habit of going to pawnbrokers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You stole that ring, you know you did,&rdquo; roared out the hook-nosed
+man, incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on damaging
+the young man&rsquo;s character for life. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a good mind to call
+a constable; we don&rsquo;t take stolen goods here, I tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man; who looked
+ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a night-cap, with some
+baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the pawnbroker, as if dreading to
+encounter such a terrible pattern of integrity. At last the young man sunk off
+with his money, and looking out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so
+sharply that he knocked his elbow against the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having remarked that
+the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon every thing, and if
+that was refused told the person to be off with himself; I concluded that it
+would be of no use to try and get more from them than they had offered;
+especially when I saw that they had a great many fowling-pieces hanging up, and
+did not have particular occasion for mine; and more than that, they must be
+very well off and rich, to treat people so cavalierly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed pawnbroker,
+and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the curly-headed man was
+very busy about something else, and kept me waiting a long time; at last I got
+a chance and told him I would take the three dollars he had offered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ought to have taken it when you could get it,&rdquo; he replied.
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t give but two dollars and a half for it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money and
+departed.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br/>
+HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD
+AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES</h2>
+
+<p>
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my promise
+to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother informing him of
+the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some romantic and misanthropic
+views of life, such as many boys in my circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in buying a
+red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which I got at an
+out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and two or three trifles.
+After these purchases, I had only one penny left, so I walked out to the end of
+the pier, and threw the penny into the water. The reason why I did this, was
+because I somehow felt almost desperate again, and didn&rsquo;t care what
+became of me. But if the penny had been a dollar, I would have kept it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones&rsquo;, and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I had no
+chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and thought plenty of
+pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so bad yet but I could eat a
+good dinner. And once, years afterward, when I expected to be killed every day,
+I remember my appetite was very keen, and I said to myself, &ldquo;Eat away,
+Wellingborough, while you can, for this may be the last supper you will
+have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a towel
+over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and then went to
+trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see what sort of a looking
+sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got into the shirt I began to feel
+sort of warm and red about the face, which I found was owing to the reflection
+of the dyed wool upon my skin. After that, I took a pair of scissors and went
+to cutting my hair, which was very long. I thought every little would help, in
+making me a light hand to run aloft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the house with
+my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I arrived at
+the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to sea that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to Mr.
+Jones&rsquo; again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So I
+concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large dripping
+pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want, Pillgarlic?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve shipped to sail in this ship,&rdquo; I replied, assuming a
+little dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What for? a tailor?&rdquo; said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I answered that I was going as a &ldquo;boy;&rdquo; for so I was technically
+put down on the articles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;have you got your traps aboard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him I didn&rsquo;t know there were any rats in the ship, and
+hadn&rsquo;t brought any &ldquo;trap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be hay-seed in
+my hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was going in
+the ship, I thought it wouldn&rsquo;t be wise to make an enemy of him, so only
+asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted to put my clothes
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s</i> your clothes?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here in my bundle,&rdquo; said I, holding it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well if that&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got,&rdquo; he cried,
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;d better chuck it overboard. But go forward, go forward to the
+forecastle; that&rsquo;s the place you&rsquo;ll live in aboard here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow of the
+ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him for a light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strike your eyes together and make one,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;we
+don&rsquo;t have any lights here.&rdquo; So I groped my way down into the
+forecastle, which smelt so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me
+sick. After waiting patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at
+last perceived I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes stuck
+round the sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which I at once
+supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that method of
+appropriating their &ldquo;Trunks,&rdquo; as I afterward found these boxes were
+called. And so it turned out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my bundle
+right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake about my claim to
+the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that the ship
+would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and walk about till
+dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the forecastle. So I walked
+about all over, till I was weary, and went into a mean liquor shop to rest; for
+having my tarpaulin on, and not looking very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go
+into any better place, for fear of being driven out. Here I sat till I began to
+feel very hungry; and seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think
+what a fool I had been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but
+a penny apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never saw
+doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in, and ate one
+before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little by drinking a glass
+of water; having read somewhere that this was a good plan to follow in a case
+like the present. I did not feel thirsty, but only hungry; so had much ado to
+get down the water; for it tasted warm; and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the
+negro had been drinking some spirits out of it just before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some more water,
+and being very careful not to step into the same shop twice, till night came
+on, and I found myself soaked through, for it had been raining more or less all
+day. As I went to the ship, I could not help thinking how lonesome it would be,
+to spend the whole night in that damp and dark forecastle, without light or
+fire, and nothing to lie on but the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown
+all such thoughts, I gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet
+enough outside and in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I
+had just been eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward I
+unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon as he
+opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a curious
+language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew not what to make
+of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me he was an English boy,
+from Lancashire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last
+voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work very
+hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the bargain, he had
+arranged with the captain to work his passage back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but found he
+was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I asked him something
+about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn&rsquo;t traveled any in
+America and didn&rsquo;t know any thing about the rivers here. And when I told
+him the river Thames was in England, he showed no surprise or shame at his
+ignorance, but only looked ten times more stupid than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the same bunk,
+stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best to get asleep. But
+though my companion soon began to snore very loud, for me, I could not forget
+myself, owing to the horrid smell of the place, my being so wet, cold, and
+hungry, and besides all that, I felt damp and clammy about the heart. I lay
+turning over and over, listening to the Lancashire boy&rsquo;s snoring, till at
+last I felt so, that I had to go on deck; and there I walked till morning,
+which I thought would never come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left the ship
+and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But this made me very
+qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy; and I went
+staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a heap of
+chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally myself, in which I
+succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off. Then I thought that I had
+done wrong in not returning to my friend&rsquo;s house the day before; and
+would have walked there now, as it was, only it was at least three miles up
+town; too far for me to walk in such a state, and I had no sixpence to ride in
+an omnibus.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br/>
+HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN
+THE TOP-MAST</h2>
+
+<p>
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the rigging, and
+people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and vegetables from the
+shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico shirt, a short blue jacket
+and beaver hat, made his appearance, and went to ordering about the man in the
+big pea-jacket; and at last the captain came up the side, and began to order
+about both of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old tortoise-shell
+snuff-box of my father&rsquo;s, in which I had put a piece of Cavendish
+tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very politely. He
+stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, &ldquo;Do you think we take snuff
+aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking at sea; don&rsquo;t
+let the &lsquo;old man&rsquo; see that snuff-box; take my advice and pitch it
+overboard as quick as you can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty of
+tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as a
+tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me feeling
+foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus, for if he had
+not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief mate, who in that case,
+from what I afterward learned of him, would have knocked me down, or done
+something else equally uncivil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great hurry
+about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, &ldquo;Ashore with you,
+you young loafer! There&rsquo;s no stealings here; sail away, I tell you, with
+that shooting-jacket!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A sailor!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;a barber&rsquo;s clerk, you mean;
+<i>you</i> going out in the ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old
+man hasn&rsquo;t been shipping any more greenhorns like you&mdash;he&rsquo;ll
+make a shipwreck of it if he has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few
+dollars in seamen&rsquo;s wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of
+farmers and clodhoppers and baby-boys. What&rsquo;s your name,
+Pillgarlic?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Redburn,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it;
+haven&rsquo;t you got any other?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wellingborough,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn&rsquo;t they call you
+Jack, or Jill, or something short and handy. But I&rsquo;ll baptize you over
+again. D&rsquo;ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is <i>Buttons.</i> And now do
+you go, Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d&rsquo;ye hear;
+there&rsquo;s them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a pig-pen,
+the very first thing?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey orders, and it
+was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel, or spade, or something
+else to work with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t dig gardens here,&rdquo; was the reply; &ldquo;dig it out
+with your teeth!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen, which
+was awkward work enough, for another boat called the &ldquo;jolly-boat,&rdquo;
+was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them almost close together.
+These two boats were in the middle of the deck. I managed to crawl inside of
+the long-boat; and after barking my shins against the seats, and bumping my
+head a good many times, I got along to the stern, where the pig-pen was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to his
+comrades, &ldquo;Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you &rsquo;bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say.&rdquo;
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal ashore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some shavings,
+which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at work on board. The
+mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the long-boat at a particular
+place between two of the seats. But as I found it hard work to push the
+shavings through in that place, and as it looked wet there, I thought it would
+be better for the shavings as well as myself, to thrust them where there was a
+larger opening and a dry spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing
+me, exclaimed with an oath, &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you to put those
+shavings somewhere else? Do what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your
+eye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was my only
+plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the shavings as that
+which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me <i>why</i> he wanted me
+to put them in the place he designated. Upon this, he flew into a terrible
+rage, and without explanation reiterated his order like a clap of thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never forgot it.
+From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave reasons for any thing
+they order to be done. It is enough that they command it, so that the motto is,
+<i>&ldquo;Obey orders, though you break owners.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now began to feel very faint and sick <i>again,</i> and longed for the ship
+to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be having
+something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on board, and as for
+the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they were
+<i>&ldquo;riggers,&rdquo;</i> that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day
+in getting ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for yielding
+to the kind blandishment of one of these <i>riggers, I</i> had swapped away my
+jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own, thinking to secure a
+sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my chance, and while
+people&rsquo;s backs were turned, I seized a carrot from several bunches lying
+on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my shooting-jacket, went forward
+to eat it; for I had often eaten raw carrots, which taste something like
+chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me a good deal, though at the expense of a
+little pain in my stomach. Hardly had I disposed of it, when I heard the chief
+mate&rsquo;s voice crying out for &ldquo;Buttons.&rdquo; I ran after him, and
+received an order to go aloft and &ldquo;slush down the main-top mast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring about
+me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the mate had turned on his
+heel, and made no explanations. At length I followed after him, and asked what
+I must do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?&rdquo; he
+shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You did,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t know what that
+means.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!&rdquo; he exclaimed to himself.
+&ldquo;A fine time I&rsquo;ll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you,
+youngster. Look up to that long pole there&mdash;d&rsquo;ye see it? that piece
+of a tree there, you timber-head&mdash;well&mdash;take this bucket here, and go
+up the rigging&mdash;that rope-ladder there&mdash;do you understand?&mdash;and
+dab this slush all over the mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls
+on deck. Be off now, Buttons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to ascend a
+ship&rsquo;s mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have felt a
+little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint, the bare
+thought appalled me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I could not
+bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of food; so rallying
+again, I took up the bucket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held perhaps two
+gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick lobbered gravy, which
+I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt beef used by the sailors. Upon
+getting into the rigging, I found it was no easy job to carry this heavy bucket
+up with me. The rope handle of it was so slippery with grease, that although I
+twisted it several times about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and
+round, and slipping off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as
+the &ldquo;top,&rdquo; the clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging
+about between my legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the
+&ldquo;top,&rdquo; I came to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that
+overhanging impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much
+straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the &ldquo;top;&rdquo; and then,
+trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road was
+comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down toward the deck,
+my head spun round so from weakness, that I was obliged to shut my eyes to
+recover myself. I do not remember much more. I only recollect my safe return to
+the deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage passengers,
+besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor, and
+hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board but the
+crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in Whitehall boats, their
+chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in the stem like lords; and
+showing very plainly the complacency they felt in keeping the whole ship
+waiting for their lordships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, ay,&rdquo; muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats
+and swaggered on deck, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s your turn now, but it will be mine
+before long. Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I&rsquo;ll do the yawing
+after the anchor&rsquo;s up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on board
+insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped him into a
+bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their appearance, immediately
+went below to sleep off the fumes of their drink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner fore and
+aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my long fast would
+be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with eating and drinking ashore,
+did not then touch the salt beef and potatoes which the black cook handed down
+into the forecastle; and though this left the whole allowance to me; to my
+surprise, I found that I could eat little or nothing; for now I only felt
+deadly faint, but not hungry.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br/>
+HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD</h2>
+
+<p>
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and all hands
+were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could not help observing
+how haggard the men looked, and how much they suffered from this violent
+exercise, after the terrific dissipation in which they had been indulging
+ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors breathe nothing about such things, but
+strive their best to appear all alive and hearty, though it comes very hard for
+many of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the Hercules,
+took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of shipping, and wharves,
+and warehouses; and rounded the green south point of the island where the
+Battery is, and passed Governor&rsquo;s Island, and pointed right out for the
+Narrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then, there
+was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from becoming too much
+for me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and that,
+before many months, I should have actually been there and home again, telling
+my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what delight they would
+listen, and how they would look up to me then, and reverence my sayings; and
+how that even my elder brother would be forced to treat me with great
+consideration, as having crossed the Atlantic Ocean, which he had never done,
+and there was no probability he ever would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my heavy-heartedness; but
+it would not do at all; for this was only the first day of the voyage, and many
+weeks, nay, several whole months must elapse before the voyage was ended; and
+who could tell what might happen to me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy
+masts, and thought how often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure
+enough that some luckless day or other, I would certainly fall overboard and be
+drowned. And then, I thought of lying down at the bottom of the sea, stark
+alone, with the great waves rolling over me, and no one in the wide world
+knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it must be,
+to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny south side of our
+village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to walk after church in the
+afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now; yes, dead and buried in that
+churchyard. All the time my eyes were filled with tears, and I kept holding my
+breath, to choke down the sobs, for indeed I could not help feeling as I did,
+and no doubt any boy in the world would have felt just as I did then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we passed ships
+lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their hats; and small boats
+with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs; and passed the green shore of
+Staten Island, and caught sight of so many beautiful cottages all overrun with
+vines, and planted on the beautiful fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would
+have given any thing if instead of sailing <i>out of</i> the bay, we were only
+coming <i>into</i> it; if we had crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and
+come back; and my heart leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of
+really entering that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant,
+that it seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the sailors,
+while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about the
+boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how that some
+friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the ship returned, to
+take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square where they lived; and
+how that they would have a good dinner ready, and plenty of cigars and spirits
+out on the balcony. I say this kind of talking shocked me, for they did not
+seem to consider, as I did, that before any thing like that could happen, we
+must cross the great Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back
+again, many thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this much I
+thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to the Sunday
+School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used words that I never
+could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so long?
+these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And besides, I now
+began to see, that they were not going to be very kind to me; but I will tell
+all about that when the proper time comes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing through my
+mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no, no, I was hard at
+work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we were very busy coiling away
+ropes and cables, and putting the decks in order; which were littered all over
+with odds and ends of things that had to be put away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the entrance to
+New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the Narrows, for when you
+go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a doorway; and when you go out
+of these Narrows on a long voyage like this of mine, it seems like going out
+into the broad highway, where not a soul is to be seen. For far away and away,
+stretches the great Atlantic Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky
+comes down to the water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could
+hardly believe, as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or
+any place like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It
+seemed too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
+really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
+farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away beyond the
+place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of steering right out
+among those waves, and leaving the bright land behind, and the dark night
+coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy; and I looked with a sort of fear at
+the sailors standing by me, who could be so thoughtless at such a time. But
+then I remembered, how many times my own father had said he had crossed the
+ocean; and I had never dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always
+thought him a marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who
+could not by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
+credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever sailed
+out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water line, and gone
+to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was too wonderful to
+believe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is quite
+high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort, all in ruins,
+and with the trees growing round it. It was built by Governor Tompkins in the
+time of the last war with England, but was never used, I believe, and so they
+left it to decay. I had visited the place once when we lived in New York, as
+long ago almost as I could remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an
+old sea-captain, with white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel
+in Russia, and who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when
+Captain Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
+Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle, because
+he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white hair and fine
+handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me, that I have never
+forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one visit of his to New York,
+for he was lost in the White Sea some years after.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I remembered
+it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to me, when I went
+there with my uncle. On the side away from the water was a green grove of
+trees, very thick and shady; and through this grove, in a sort of twilight you
+came to an arch in the wall of the fort, dark as night; and going in, you
+groped about in long vaults, twisting and turning on every side, till at last
+you caught a peep of green grass and sunlight, and all at once came out in an
+open space in the middle of the castle. And there you would see cows quietly
+grazing, or ruminating under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf
+frisking about, and trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among
+the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the
+sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long
+beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on the
+topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a ship that was
+bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and though I have changed
+since then, the black goat looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he
+would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh, and have as great a memory as he
+must have had. Yes, the fort was a beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should
+like to build a little cottage in the middle of it, and live there all my life.
+It was noon-day when I was there, in the month of June, and there was little
+wind to stir the trees, and every thing looked as if it was waiting for
+something, and the sky overhead was blue as my mother&rsquo;s eye, and I was so
+glad and happy then. But I must not think of those delightful days, before my
+father became a bankrupt, and died, and we removed from the city; for when I
+think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost strangles me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful fort on
+the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now, with what it was
+when with my father and uncle I went there so long ago. Then I never thought of
+working for my living, and never knew that there were hard hearts in the world;
+and knew so little of money, that when I bought a stick of candy, and laid down
+a sixpence, I thought the confectioner returned five cents, only that I might
+have money to buy something else, and not because the pennies were my change,
+and therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and had vague
+thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose speeches I used
+to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless boy, far away from my
+home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a miserable sailor for life. And
+what made it more bitter to me, was to think of how well off were my cousins,
+who were happy and rich, and lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no
+thought of going to sea for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream,
+that I was not where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home
+again in the city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she
+used to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was the
+ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some boys who
+were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away heavily, and
+resolved not to look at the land any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About sunset we got fairly &ldquo;outside,&rdquo; and well may it so be called;
+for I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left us, and
+for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling enough, as if it
+were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I observed a swift little
+schooner running across our bows, and re-crossing again and again; and while I
+was wondering what she could be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men
+took hold of a little boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had
+been a chip. Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue
+coat, who to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of
+the captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent person
+about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home; and he left the
+giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart talking with the captain, and
+put his hand into his pocket, and gave him some newspapers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the little
+boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and officers and bade
+them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell to me and the sailors; and
+so he went laughing over the side, and got into the boat, and they pulled him
+off to the schooner, and then the schooner made sail and glided under our
+stern, her men standing up and waving their hats, and cheering; and that was
+the last we saw of America.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br/>
+HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS
+EXPERIENCES</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on the
+quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were going
+to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a stout
+good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate&rsquo;s turn came
+to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it was not
+me;&mdash; no; and <i>I</i> noticed, as they went on choosing, one after the
+other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so much as looked at
+me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into their faces, for it was
+dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves away so in their jackets. But the
+sailors, especially the stout good-looking ones, seemed to make a point of
+lounging as much out of the way as possible, and slouching their hats over
+their eyes; and although it may only be a fancy of mine, <i>I</i> certainly
+thought that they affected a sort of lordly indifference as to whose watch they
+were going to be in; and did not think it worth while to look any way anxious
+about the matter. And the very men who, a few minutes before, had showed the
+most alacrity and promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at
+the word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if
+they were quite sure, that by this time the officers must know who the best men
+were, and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to put the officers
+to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were worth having, they were
+worth seeking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate&rsquo;s next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+<i>I</i> was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next column,
+like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Buttons,&rdquo; said the chief mate, &ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d
+got rid of you. And as it is, Mr. Rigs,&rdquo; he added, speaking to the second
+mate, &ldquo;I guess you had better take him into your watch;&mdash;there,
+I&rsquo;ll let you have him, and then you&rsquo;ll be one stronger than
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I thank you,&rdquo; said Mr. Rigs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better,&rdquo; said the chief mate&mdash;&ldquo;see, he&rsquo;s
+not a bad looking chap&mdash;he&rsquo;s a little green, to be sure, but you
+were so once yourself, you know, Rigs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I thank you,&rdquo; said the second mate again. &ldquo;Take him
+yourself&mdash;he&rsquo;s yours by good rights&mdash;I don&rsquo;t want
+him.&rdquo; And so they put me in the chief mate&rsquo;s division, that is the
+larboard watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood, just like a
+silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing that had yet
+happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what I had come to. I was
+very glad when they sent us forward again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-&ldquo;You, Bill?&rdquo; and Bill answered, &ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; just as if
+the second mate was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a
+man in such a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had
+been quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him <i>Mr.</i>
+Rigs during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this <i>Mr. Rigs</i> was a
+great merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very
+long in finding out, that at sea all officers are <i>Misters,</i> and would
+take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them so. And it is
+also one of their rights and privileges to be called <i>sir</i> when
+addressed&mdash;Yes, <i>sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir;</i> and they are as
+particular about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though their
+titles are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in
+England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his tides are the only
+dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish life indeed. He
+is not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the chief mate
+occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the cabin; and besides
+this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine, and sup off the leavings
+of the cabin table, and even the steward, who is accountable to nobody but the
+captain, sometimes treats him cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails
+are reefed; and put his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the
+key of the boatswain&rsquo;s locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
+seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing many
+other things, which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather die and give
+up his title than stand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could not eat
+any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked to have some good
+tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather nervous about asking the
+rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I was obliged to go without a sip.
+I thought of going to the black cook and begging a tin cup; but he looked so
+cross and ugly then, that the sight of him almost frightened the idea out of
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to <i>tea</i> aboard of a
+ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we were told it was
+for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from eight o&rsquo;clock till
+midnight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if matters
+were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the head; and so I
+made no doubt that this was the beginning of that dreadful thing, the
+sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of the sailors how it was
+with me, and begged him to make my excuses very civilly to the chief mate, for
+I thought I would go below and spend the night in my bunk. But he only laughed
+at me, and said something about my mother not being aware of my being out;
+which enraged me not a little, that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly,
+should dare to take such a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of
+blasphemy, and it seemed like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets
+of my soul, for at that time the name of mother was the center of all my
+heart&rsquo;s finest feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret,
+deep down in my being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor&rsquo;s words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where the sun
+had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in his head, and a
+broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen hair. He was not very tall,
+but exceedingly stout-built, though active; and his back was as broad as a
+shield, and it was a great way between his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of
+lady&rsquo;s sailor, for in his broken English he was always talking about the
+nice ladies of his acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he
+called the Hook, which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the
+hook-nosed men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came
+along. He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking
+fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a new silk handkerchief
+round his neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones of a shark, highly
+polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear white duck, and he sported a
+handsome pair of pumps, and a tarpaulin hat bright as a looking-glass, with a
+long black ribbon streaming behind, and getting entangled every now and then in
+the rigging; and he had gold anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one of
+his fingers, which was very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other
+work on board ship. I thought he might better have left his jewelry at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come from the
+moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country; how they passed
+the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how he used to go to bed and
+sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run about, and go to bed again, and
+get up again&mdash;there was no telling how many times, and all in one night;
+for in the winter time in his country, he said, the nights were so many weeks
+long, that a Greenland baby was sometimes three months old, before it could
+properly be said to be a day old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but that
+was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights, which no one
+ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these wonderful countries, I
+never used really to believe what I read, but only thought it very strange, and
+a good deal too strange to be altogether true; though I never thought the men
+who wrote the book meant to tell lies. But I don&rsquo;t know exactly how to
+explain what I mean; but this much I will say, that I never believed in
+Greenland till I saw this Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about
+Greenland, only made me still more incredulous. For what business had a man
+from Greenland to be in my company? Why was he not at home among the icebergs,
+and how could he stand a warm summer&rsquo;s sun, and not be melted away?
+Besides, instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and he
+did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge muff; things, which I
+could not help connecting with Greenland and all Greenlanders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the night.
+This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor and cure me; so
+going down into the forecastle, he came back with a brown jug, like a molasses
+jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the brown jug got near my nose,
+I needed no telling what was in it, for it smelt like a still-house, and sure
+enough proved to be full of Jamaica spirits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Buttons,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;one little dose of this will be
+better for you than a whole night&rsquo;s sleep; there, take that now, and then
+eat seven or eight biscuits, and you&rsquo;ll feel as strong as the
+mainmast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples about
+drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not ashamed of it, I
+was a member of a society in the village where my mother lived, called the
+Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which my friend, Tom Legare, was
+president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept the funds in a little purse that
+his cousin knit for him. There was three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the
+last time he brought in his accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a
+grove on the river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society&rsquo;s money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him as well
+as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the side, feeling
+ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a solemn obligation never
+to drink spirits upon any consideration whatever; though, as I had a sort of
+presentiment that the spirits would now, for once in my life, do me good, I
+began to feel sorry, that when I signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not
+taken care to insert a little clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of
+sea-sickness. And I would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in
+future; and then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking
+their pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with me. And a hard
+thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken; especially as the
+Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth so, that I
+did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had become quite well
+and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could really like such stuff; but
+many of them had a jug of it, besides the Greenlander, which they brought along
+to sea with them, <i>to taper off with,</i> as they called it. But this
+tapering off did not last very long, for the Jamaica was all gone on the second
+day, and the jugs were tossed overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the spirits I
+drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could have had a cup of
+nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well, and perhaps much better. But
+that was not to be had at that time of night, or, indeed, at any other time;
+for the thing they called <i>coffee,</i> which was given to us every morning at
+breakfast, was the most curious tasting drink I ever drank, and tasted as
+little like coffee, as it did like lemonade; though, to be sure, it was
+generally as cold as lemonade, and I used to think the cook had an icehouse,
+and dropt ice into his coffee. But what was more curious still, was the
+different quality and taste of it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted
+fishy, as if it was a decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very
+salty, as if some <i>old horse,</i> or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and
+then again it would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his
+cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it would
+have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some old
+stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made of, that it
+had so many different bad flavors, always remained a mystery; for when at work
+at his vocation, our old cook used to keep himself close shut-up in his
+caboose, a little cook-house, and never told any of his secrets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for all
+that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious looking sort of
+a cook, that I don&rsquo;t believe would ever succeed in getting the cooking at
+Delmonico&rsquo;s in New York. It was well for him that he was a black cook,
+for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing his dirty face! I never saw
+him wash but once, and that was at one of his own soup pots one dark night when
+he thought no one saw him. What induced him to be washing his face then, I
+never could find out; but I suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after
+dreaming about some real estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee,
+notwithstanding the disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a
+strange curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have;
+and though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding
+another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in the
+badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that respect as
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of such
+coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed it would not
+have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and since it was not to
+be had at that time of night, as I said before, I think I was excusable in
+taking something else in place of it, as I did; and under the circumstances, it
+would be unhandsome of them, if my fellow-members of the Temperance Society
+should reproach me for breaking my bond, which I would not have done except in
+case of necessity. But the evil effect of breaking one&rsquo;s bond upon any
+occasion whatever, was witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened
+the way to subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet carried no
+apology with them.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br/>
+THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM</h2>
+
+<p>
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very pleasant, so
+far as the weather was concerned. From being rather cloudy, it became a soft
+moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to count one by one; and
+there was a fine steady breeze; and it was not very cold; and we were going
+through the water almost as smooth as a sled sliding down hill. And what was
+still better, the wind held so steady, that there was little running aloft,
+little pulling ropes, and scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a lighted
+long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but few words to us
+the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of thinking to attend to, which
+in truth is the case with most seamen the first night out of port, especially
+when they have thrown away their money in foolish dissipation, and got very
+sick into the bargain. For when ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild
+and reckless in their way, as the sailors they command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the mate
+suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it. It was not
+much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a little higher up on the
+mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began pulling upon it; the foremost
+man of all setting up a song with no words to it, only a strange musical rise
+and fall of notes. In the dark night, and far out upon the lonely sea, it
+sounded wild enough, and made me feel as I had sometimes felt, when in a
+twilight room a cousin of mine, with black eyes, used to play some old German
+airs on the piano. I almost looked round for goblins, and felt just a little
+bit afraid. But I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched
+a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the
+pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well,
+the mate would always say, <i>&ldquo;Come, men, can&rsquo;t any of you sing?
+Sing now, and raise the dead.&rdquo;</i> And then some one of them would begin,
+and if every man&rsquo;s arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he
+could pull as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am
+sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing in
+a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it from the
+officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains,
+before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass and told
+long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked about Gibraltar,
+and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and I would about Peck Slip
+and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a volume of Voyages and Travels
+round the World. And what most struck me was that like books of voyages they
+often contradicted each other, and would fall into long and violent disputes
+about who was keeping the Foul Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or
+whether the King of Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the
+bar-maid of a particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes; with
+many other mooted points of that sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his chest,
+for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind, to break off
+the first shock of the salt water after laying idle ashore; and also by way of
+<i>tapering off,</i> as I mentioned a little while ago. But I wondered that
+they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them, instead of spirits and
+cigars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ned, for that was the man&rsquo;s name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter at a
+party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an Anti-Smoking Society
+that had been organized in our village by the Principal of the Sunday School
+there, in conjunction with the Temperance Association. So I did not smoke any
+then, though I did afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say.
+Notwithstanding I declined; with a good deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned
+assured me that the cigars were real genuine Havannas; for he had been in
+Havanna, he said, and had them made there under his own eye. According to his
+account, he was very particular about his cigars and other things, and never
+made any importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself
+direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he wanted. He
+went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats, to China for his
+silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great
+joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go
+to Russia for his halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the
+fact, that the Russian hemp is the best; though that is not wit which needs
+explaining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength, united
+with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard biscuit; and
+also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck before the windlass, I had
+now recovered in good part from my sickness, and finding the sailors all very
+pleasant and sociable, at least among themselves, and seated smoking together
+like old cronies, and nothing on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to
+think that they were a pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their
+swearing and another ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had
+misconceived their true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a
+parcel of wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction to
+associate with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but more with
+an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind
+dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made outcasts
+from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for the sake of it,
+and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if they ever got there. And
+I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a church in behalf of sailors,
+when the preacher called them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to
+poor lost children, babes in the wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors&rsquo; Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious seamen who
+never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor heathen in India; and
+how that when they were too old to go to sea, these pious old sailors found a
+delightful home for life in the Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but
+prepare themselves for their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any
+such good sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on
+deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them: so I did
+not disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at discovering that he
+was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men went into
+one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take a &ldquo;swig at
+the halyards,&rdquo; as they called it; and this swigging at the halyards it
+was, that enabled them &ldquo;to taper off&rdquo; handsomely, and no doubt it
+was this, too, that had something to do with making them so pleasant and
+sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and sociable afterward,
+and never treated me so kindly as they did then. Yet this might have been owing
+to my being something of a stranger to them, then; and our being just out of
+port. But that very night they turned about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but
+all in good time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how friendly
+their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for them, grounded on
+their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling so warm an interest in
+them, and being full of pity, and being truly desirous of benefiting them to
+the best of my poor powers, for I knew they were but poor indeed, I made bold
+to ask one of them, whether he was ever in the habit of going to church, when
+he was ashore, or dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the
+dock in the East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He stared a
+little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing my civil bearing
+toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a certain involuntary
+respect for me, and answered, that he had been to church once, some ten or
+twelve years before, in London, and on a week-day had helped to move the
+Floating Chapel round the Battery, from the North River; and that was the only
+time he had seen it. For his books, he said he did not know what I meant by
+good books; but if I wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate&rsquo;s Own, he
+could lend them to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly his
+ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him more and more,
+and contrasting my own situation with his, I was grateful that I was different
+from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel wiser and better than he
+could feel; though I was willing to confess to myself, that it was not
+altogether my own good endeavors, so much as my education, which I had received
+from others, that had made me the upright and sensible boy I at that time
+thought myself to be. And it was now, that I began to feel a good degree of
+complacency and satisfaction in surveying my own character; for, before this, I
+had previously associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there
+was little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with my
+neighbors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily upon this
+sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving him a chance to
+show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I was far from being vain
+and conceited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard, some
+one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the forecastle;
+and having observed that how many times soever the man astern rang his bell,
+the man forward struck his&mdash;tit for tat,&mdash;I inquired of this Floating
+Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and whether, as the big bell hung
+right over the scuttle that went down to the place where the watch below were
+sleeping, such a ringing every little while would not tend to disturb them and
+beget unpleasant dreams; and in asking these questions I was particular to
+address him in a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly
+that I did not deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all
+things together, and not going into particulars. But to my great surprise and
+mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed aloud in my face, and
+called me a &ldquo;Jimmy Dux,&rdquo; though that was not my real name, and he
+must have known it; and also the &ldquo;son of a farmer,&rdquo; though as I
+have previously related, my father was a great merchant and French importer in
+Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh and joke about me, with
+the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not felt so
+terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much like a fool. But my
+being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is very lucky for
+people in a passion.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br/>
+HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND
+FORLORN</h2>
+
+<p>
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a horrid
+groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one came rushing up
+the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his hand, and trembling and
+shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that I thought one of the sailors
+must be murdered below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight, and
+almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over the bows into
+the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great uproar; the sailors
+came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran forward, and learning what had
+happened, began to yell out his orders about the sails and yards; and we all
+went to pulling and hauling the ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still
+on the water. Then they loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for
+more than an hour, but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he
+was one of the sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into
+his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have suddenly
+waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as the chief mate
+called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place, and knowing not how
+he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a fit of frenzy, put an end to
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and almost
+awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the sun and moon,
+and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I been safe back at Mr.
+Jones&rsquo;, or still better, in my home on the Hudson River. I thought it an
+ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which had sent me to sea, sore
+against the advice of my best friends, that is to say, my mother and sisters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any more.
+And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had expired, which
+happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the suicide had been
+occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to myself, and there was no
+other place for me to sleep in. The thought of lying down there now, seemed too
+horrible to me, and what made it worse, was the way in which the sailors spoke
+of my being frightened. And they took this opportunity to tell me what a hard
+and wicked life I had entered upon, and how that such things happened
+frequently at sea, and they were used to it. But I did not believe this; for
+when the suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as
+frightened as I did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened
+still plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
+could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by them.
+However, they lay in their bunks smoking, and kept talking on some time in this
+strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as
+not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country,
+and never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running brook,
+never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest puddle of
+rainwater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true and
+real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and insincere; but
+for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it made me mad, and stung
+me to the quick, that they should speak of me as a poor trembling coward, who
+could never be brought to endure the hardships of a sailor&rsquo;s life; for I
+felt myself trembling, and knew that I was but a coward then, well enough,
+without their telling me of it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because
+they perceived it in me, but because they merely supposed I must be, judging,
+no doubt, from their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that
+the suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might better
+have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked me what
+business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread out of the
+mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman&rsquo;s place; and asked me
+whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a gentleman with
+white hands; and if I ever <i>should</i> be, they would like nothing better
+than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And one of them, whose name
+was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal more to say by-and-by, said, I
+had better steer clear of him ever after, for if ever I crossed his path, or
+got into his way, he would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in
+the rigging near <i>him,</i> he would make nothing of pitching me overboard;
+and that he swore too, with an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it
+was so unforeseen; and then I could not believe that they meant what they said,
+or that they could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing,
+that the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
+night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I loathed,
+detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting heart and soul,
+and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable wretch that ever breathed.
+May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a boy is to be such a wretch. And I
+wailed and wept, and my heart cracked within me, but all the time I defied them
+through my teeth, and dared them to do their worst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake, seated on a
+chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And there I sat, till
+at length the dull beating against the ship&rsquo;s bows, and the silence
+around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br/>
+HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST</h2>
+
+<p>
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as the
+watch was called again. It was now four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and when
+we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The men were
+very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and some of them
+nodded and nodded, till at last they fell off like little boys in church during
+a drowsy sermon. At last it was broad day, and an order was given to wash down
+the decks. A great tub was dragged into the waist, and then one of the men went
+over into the chains, and slipped in behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and
+leaning over, began to swing a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that
+way with much expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a
+very short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and I
+began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of cold. So
+I went to the chief mate, and told him I thought I would just step below, till
+this miserable wetting was over; for I did not have any water-proof boots, and
+an aunt of mine had died of consumption. But he only roared out for me to get a
+broom and go to scrubbing, or he would prove a worse consumption to me than
+ever got hold of my poor aunt. So I scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back
+was almost broke, for the brooms had uncommon short handles, and we were told
+to scrub hard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of water
+about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He must have thought
+this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to point the tube of
+their hose; for he kept me running after him with full buckets of water, and
+sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck, with a continued flood, till
+at last he sent it flying out of a scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had
+only given me permission, I could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it
+overboard without saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he
+said there was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true
+enough, but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the world,
+and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse than my
+mother&rsquo;s house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At eight o&rsquo;clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend to tell
+me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I should have done,
+with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for my own part, it had never
+entered my mind, that sailors had no table to sit down to, no cloth, or
+napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide every thing themselves. But so it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house with his
+tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having no pot, there was
+no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little tub called a
+&ldquo;kid,&rdquo; was passed down into the forecastle, filled with something
+they called &ldquo;burgoo.&rdquo; This was like mush, made of Indian corn,
+meal, and water. With the <i>&ldquo;kid,&rdquo; a</i> little tin cannikin was
+passed down with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put the kid
+between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like an old landlord
+mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole in the middle of the
+mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all the world like a little black
+pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other, with
+great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after stirring them
+round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down their mouthfuls, and
+smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very good; which I have no doubt it
+did; but not having any spoon, I wasn&rsquo;t sure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite they were
+to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to only one dish,
+they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush was getting thinner and
+thinner, and that it was getting low water, or rather low molasses in the
+little pool, I ran on deck, and after searching about, returned with a bit of
+stick; and thinking I had as good a right as any one else to the mush and
+molasses, I worked my way into the circle, intending to make one of the party.
+So I shoved in my stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to
+carry a little <i>burgoo</i> toward my mouth, which had been for some time
+standing ready open to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I
+was about, knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned my
+manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat their
+victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn&rsquo;t that wealthy gentleman my
+father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and unmannerly
+youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as that, would corrupt
+the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to eat
+with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but remembering
+that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan and spoon in his hand
+eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran on deck again, and to my
+great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon, for he had got through his meal,
+and down I came again, though at the eleventh hour, and offered myself once
+more as a candidate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I reached
+over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the knuckles from a
+spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own side, for that was the
+rule. But <i>my</i> side was scraped clean, so I got no <i>burgoo</i> that
+morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to be the
+invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting cross-legged on
+their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard biscuit, very sociably, over
+each other&rsquo;s heads, which was very convenient indeed, but gave me the
+headache, at least for the first four or five days till I got used to it; and
+then I did not care much about it, only it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I
+had forgot to bring a fine comb and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to
+windward over the bulwarks every evening.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br/>
+HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON</h2>
+
+<p>
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a dispute,
+about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who had mixed the
+<i>burgoo,</i> called upon them in a loud voice to cease their clamor, for he
+would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall have something more
+to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I will here try to describe him a
+little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered from the
+yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor. He was as yellow
+as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have on my elbows. His
+hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in the nape of his neck,
+and just behind the ears, where it was stuck over with short little tufts, and
+looked like a worn-out shoe-brush. His nose had broken down in the middle, and
+he squinted with one eye, and did not look very straight out of the other. He
+dressed a good deal like a Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig;
+wearing a pair of great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and
+three red woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject to the
+rheumatism, and was not in good health, he said; and he had a large white wool
+hat, with a broad rolling brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a
+good deal to say about <i>highlanders,</i> and <i>rowdies,</i> whom he
+denounced as only good for the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal
+like a <i>highlander</i> himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near relation
+of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any one ventured to
+question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was a great bully, and being
+the best seaman on board, and very overbearing every way, all the men were
+afraid of him, and durst not contradict him, or cross his path in any thing.
+And what made this more wonderful was, that he was the weakest man, bodily, of
+the whole crew; and I have no doubt that young and small as I was then,
+compared to what I am now, I could have thrown him down. But he had such an
+overawing way with him; such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching
+face, and withal was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would
+have run from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal with; and
+then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a knock-down, for it was
+the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human
+head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or
+starved tiger; at any rate, I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye,
+half so cold, and snaky, and deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give
+much to forget that I have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no beard, and no
+wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might have seen thirty, or
+perhaps fifty years. But according to his own account, he had been to sea ever
+since he was eight years old, when he first went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman,
+and ran away at Calcutta. And according to his own account, too, he had passed
+through every kind of dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the
+world. He had served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a
+diabolical relish used to tell of the <i>middle-passage,</i> where the slaves
+were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were
+unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down
+the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an
+English cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull, which raked
+through and through a whole file of slaves, that were chained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a man
+every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and got still
+more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He would talk of
+finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his pillow in India, when he
+slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors being poisoned at Canton with
+drugged <i>&ldquo;shampoo,&rdquo;</i> for the sake of their money; and of the
+Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of Caspar, and always saved
+the captain for the last, so as to make him point out where the most valuable
+goods were stored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and poisonings. And
+often he narrated many passages in his own individual career, which were almost
+incredible, from the consideration that few men could have plunged into such
+infamous vices, and clung to them so long, without paying the death-penalty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and the
+mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of Syria, who
+died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung out of the world by
+wasps and hornets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man; he was
+thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used to complain,
+that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes fancied, it was the
+consciousness of his miserable, broken-down condition, and the prospect of soon
+dying like a dog, in consequence of his sins, that made this poor wretch always
+eye me with such malevolence as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least
+my mother so thought me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and
+shook off my low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks,
+and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas <i>he</i> was
+being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was
+more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized surmisings
+about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people I meet; especially
+if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will not put it down for a
+certainty that what I suspected concerning this Jackson relative to his
+thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only state my honest opinion, and how
+it struck me at the time; and even now, I think I was not wrong. And indeed,
+unless it was so, how could I account to myself, for the shudder that would run
+through me, when I caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt
+to be dumb at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like
+a man in the moody madness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his eye,
+which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship&rsquo;s helm,
+being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called for by the
+pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy duties, and used to
+plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming them, as he did; though I
+used to think, that for a man in poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at
+least when a good place was to be jumped to; though that might only have been a
+sort of spasmodic exertion under strong inducements, which every one knows the
+greatest invalids will sometimes show.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+<i>sogering,</i> as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire
+to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this Jackson
+was a notorious old <i>soger</i> the whole voyage (I mean, in all things not
+perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and in truth was a
+great veteran that way, and one who must have passed unhurt through many
+campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call him to account in any way; or to
+let him so much as think, what they thought of his conduct. But I often heard
+them call him many hard names behind his back; and sometimes, too, when,
+perhaps, they had just been tenderly inquiring after his health before his
+face. They all stood in mortal fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him
+like so many spaniels; and used to rub his back, after he was undressed and
+lying in his bunk; and used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some
+cold coffee for him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco,
+and mend his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and tend, and nurse him
+every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling on them, and found fault
+with what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most for him, and
+cringed the most before him, were the very ones he most abused; while two or
+three who held more aloof, he treated with a little consideration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship&rsquo;s company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only know that
+so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye in his head, or
+had had a different face from what he did have, they would not have stood in
+such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see that one of the seamen, a
+remarkably robust and good-humored young man from Belfast in Ireland, was a
+person of no mark or influence among the crew; but on the contrary was hooted
+at, and trampled upon, and made a butt and laughing-stock; and more than all,
+was continually being abused and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him
+cordially, because of his great strength and fine person, and particularly
+because of his red cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an <i>able-seaman,</i>
+was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man in the eyes of a
+ship&rsquo;s company; I mean, when he ships for an <i>able-seaman,</i> but is
+not able to do the duty of one. For sailors are of three
+classes&mdash;<i>able-seaman, ordinary-seaman,</i> and <i>boys;</i> and they
+receive different wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship&rsquo;s
+company of twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if they prove
+to understand their duty every way (and that is no small matter either, as I
+shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to, and thought much of by the
+ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets, and lay up
+their sayings in their hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But you must not think from this, that persons called <i>boys</i> aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was called a
+<i>boy,</i> and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a <i>boy</i> means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old enough
+to be a grandfather, he is still called a <i>boy;</i> and boys&rsquo; work is
+put upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson&rsquo;s
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle after
+breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had been to sea
+the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then bade one of them open
+his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor&rsquo;s age just like a
+horse&rsquo;s&mdash;by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened his mouth; and
+Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the light came down from
+deck; and then made him throw his head back, while he looked into it, and
+probed a little with his jackknife, like a baboon peering into a junk-bottle. I
+trembled for the poor fellow, just as if I had seen him under the hands of a
+crazy barber, making signs to cut his throat, and he all the while sitting
+stock still, with the lather on, to be shaved. For I watched Jackson&rsquo;s
+eye and saw it snapping, and a sort of going in and out, very quick, as if it
+were something like a forked tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were longing
+to kill the man; but at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his
+examination, said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for the ends of
+his teeth were the evenest and most worn down; which, he said, arose from
+eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this was the reason he could tell a
+sailor&rsquo;s age like a horse&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+<i>say&mdash;come, boys, let&rsquo;s laugh;</i> and they did laugh; and
+declared it was a rare joke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out, whenever
+Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to them that he himself
+thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes from others pass off without a
+smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell the truth, he sometimes had a
+comical way with him, that is, when his back did not ache) told a truly funny
+story, but with a grave face; when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a
+laugh or otherwise, they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking
+perplexed enough; till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of
+fools and idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had
+purposely put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look grave, too;
+even when he was telling something that ought to split their sides. And with
+that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed them all to scorn; and broke
+out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue together at the corners with a
+fine white foam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every body in
+the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him some dreadful
+harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart. Sometimes I thought he was
+really crazy; and often felt so frightened at him, that I thought of going to
+the captain about it, and telling him Jackson ought to be confined, lest he
+should do some terrible thing at last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave
+it up; for the captain would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing themselves
+before this man. No: there were three or four who used to stand up sometimes
+against him; and when he was absent at the wheel, would plot against him among
+the other sailors, and tell them what a shame and ignominy it was, that such a
+poor miserable wretch should be such a tyrant over much better men than
+himself. And they begged and conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer,
+but the very next time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they
+should all withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly
+all hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink off
+during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more submit to being
+ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good their oaths, they were
+mum again, and let every thing go on the old way; so that those who had put
+them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of Jackson&rsquo;s wrath by
+themselves. And though these last would stick up a little at first, and even
+mutter something about a fight to Jackson; yet in the end, finding themselves
+unbefriended by the rest, they would gradually become silent, and leave the
+field to the tyrant, who would then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to
+do their worst, and jeer at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have
+a mouthful of heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his
+contempt; and indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than
+hatred, for every body and every thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is expected to
+keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere, and seldom to talk,
+unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great idea of their dignity, and
+superiority to <i>greenhorns</i> and <i>landsmen,</i> who know nothing about a
+ship; and they seem to think, that an <i>able seaman</i> is a great man; at
+least a much greater man than a little boy. And the able seamen in the
+Highlander had such grand notions about their seamanship, that I almost thought
+that able seamen received diplomas, like those given at colleges; and were made
+a sort <i>A.M.S,</i> or <i>Masters of Arts.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew that my
+best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed endure a good
+deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson&rsquo;s evil eye, nor
+escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many of the rest against
+me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me before Jackson; so that at
+last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the ship, without a single friend or
+companion; and I began to feel a hatred growing up in me against the whole
+crew&mdash;so much so, that I prayed against it, that it might not master my
+heart completely, and so make a fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br/>
+HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND</h2>
+
+<p>
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast over, the
+watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep hue; and
+the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets. I could hardly
+believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in during the night,
+when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I could hardly imagine that
+this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and blue, that during part of the
+night-watch had rolled along so black and forbidding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and little
+fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange, musical noise
+under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all still. It seemed a pity
+to go to work at such a time; and if we could only have sat in the windlass
+again; or if they would have let me go out on the bowsprit, and lay down
+between the <i>manropes</i> there, and look over at the fish in the water, and
+think of home, I should have been almost happy for a time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at least in
+my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I could now look
+around me, and make observations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder at; to
+me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight of the great
+ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round us, on both sides of
+the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen but
+water&mdash;water&mdash;water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
+smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till now what
+the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and
+beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes,
+such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that
+seemed so playful and placid, could be lashed into rage, and troubled into
+rolling avalanches of foam, and great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my little
+brother&rsquo;s face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It had just
+such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little wave seemed
+gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a pasture; and seemed to look
+up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be patted and caressed. They
+seemed all live things with hearts in them, that could feel; and I almost felt
+grieved, as we sailed in among them, scattering them under our broad bows in
+sun-flakes, and riding over them like a great elephant among lambs. But what
+seemed perhaps the most strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising
+and falling of the sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide
+heaving and swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not
+very well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
+It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes off it,
+it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship out,
+almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear myself
+called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the deep blue sea.
+But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such thoughts; for the men were
+now getting some <i>stun&rsquo;-sails</i> ready to hoist aloft, as the wind was
+getting fairer and fairer for us; and these stun&rsquo;-sails are light canvas
+which are spread at such times, away out beyond the ends of the yards, where
+they overhang the wide water, like the wings of a great bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the name
+of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt very dreamy,
+as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I was; every thing
+was so strange and new.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the stun&rsquo;-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist, the mate
+ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which could I comprehend,
+owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing me stand quite perplexed and
+confounded, he would roar out at me, and call me all manner of names, and the
+sailors would laugh and wink to each other, but durst not go farther than that,
+for fear of the mate, who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at
+me but himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming with my
+eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I managed to learn a
+thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a fool as at first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
+imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
+barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, and dress in strange
+clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own names, even for
+things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing by its shore name, you
+are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber. This first day I speak of,
+the mate having ordered me to draw some water, I asked him where I was to get
+the pail; when I thought I had committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into
+a great passion, and said they never had any <i>pails</i> at sea, and then I
+learned that they were always called <i>buckets.</i> And once I was talking
+about sticking a little wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew
+out again, and said there were no <i>pegs</i> at sea, only <i>plugs.</i> And
+just so it was with every thing else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new names of
+new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me to master them
+all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked what a thicket of
+ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and entangled together like a
+great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of these ropes has its own proper
+name, and many of them are very lengthy, like the names of young royal princes,
+such as the <i>starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line,</i> or the
+<i>larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a ship&rsquo;s
+ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes of plants in
+Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in the world. There is
+no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists give to the various parts
+of the human body; which, indeed, is something like a ship; its bones being the
+stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage all
+the motions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names, which
+keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the very air will
+be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be breathing each
+other&rsquo;s breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they use, that
+consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people seem to have a
+great love for names; for to know a great many names, seems to look like
+knowing a good many things; though I should not be surprised, if there were a
+great many more names than things in the world. But I must quit this rambling,
+and return to my story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last we hoisted the stun&rsquo;-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
+as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the breeze
+blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the foam from her
+bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber seemed to have a pulse
+in it that was beating with life and joy; and I felt a wild exulting in my own
+heart, and felt as if I would be glad to bound along so round the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to all
+the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on with the
+planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at the center of
+the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as if a hidden spring
+had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling along my frame, like
+mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this briny,
+foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the very breath
+that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe, let me rock upon
+the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an eternal breeze astern, and
+an endless sea before!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we were
+again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the chicken coops,
+and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miserable dog&rsquo;s life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
+to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I were an
+African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a speedy end to
+this abominable voyage!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br/>
+HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN</h2>
+
+<p>
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the widely
+altered manner of the captain toward me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good humor, and
+good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to appreciate the difference
+between me and the rude sailors among whom I was thrown. Indeed, I had made no
+doubt that he would in some special manner take me under his protection, and
+prove a kind friend and benefactor to me; as I had heard that some sea-captains
+are fathers to their crew; and so they are; but such fathers as Solomon&rsquo;s
+precepts tend to make&mdash;severe and chastising fathers, fathers whose sense
+of duty overcomes the sense of love, and who every day, in some sort, play the
+part of Brutus, who ordered his son away to execution, as I have read in our
+old family Plutarch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be attentive and
+considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort me in my
+lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he would invite me
+down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me questions concerning my
+parents, and prospects in life; besides obtaining from me some anecdotes
+touching my great-uncle, the illustrious senator; or give me a slate and
+pencil, and teach me problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of
+chess. I even thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help
+me plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt beef
+and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a boy like me,
+who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of tenderness
+and love, as the last visible link in the chain of associations which bound me
+to my home. For, while yet in port, I had seen him and Mr. Jones, my
+brother&rsquo;s friend, standing together and conversing; so that from the
+captain to my brother there was but one intermediate step; and my brother and
+mother and sisters were one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck, where I
+remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship lying at the
+wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was indeed true, that he had
+stood there, though now the ship was so far away on the wide Atlantic Ocean,
+and he perhaps was walking down Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper
+in his counting room, while poor I was so differently employed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When two or three days had passed without the captain&rsquo;s speaking to me in
+any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to drop into the
+cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I should not make the first
+advances, and whether indeed he did not expect it of me, since I was but a boy,
+and he a man; and perhaps that might have been the reason why he had not spoken
+to me yet, deeming it more proper and respectful for me to address him first. I
+thought he might be offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with
+tender feelings. So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second
+dog-watch, when there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call and see
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off some of
+the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to dress myself as
+neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of my red one, and got into
+a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck ones, and put on my new pumps, and
+then carefully brushing my shooting-jacket, I put that on over all, so that
+upon the whole, I made quite a genteel figure, at least for a forecastle,
+though I would not have looked so well in a drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make of it,
+and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told them no, for we
+were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to pay my respects to the
+captain. Upon which they all laughed and shouted, as if I were a simpleton;
+though there seemed nothing so very simple in going to make an evening call
+upon a friend. When some of them tried to dissuade me, saying I was green and
+raw; but Jackson, who sat looking on, cried out, with a hideous grin,
+&ldquo;Let him go, let him go, men&mdash;he&rsquo;s a nice boy. Let him go; the
+captain has some nuts and raisins for him.&rdquo; And so he was going on, when
+one of his violent fits of coughing seized him, and he almost choked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands, and
+seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the mate had
+set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I thought it would
+never do to present myself before a gentleman that way; so for want of lads, I
+slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which my mother had knit for me to carry
+to sea. As I was putting them on, Jackson asked me whether he shouldn&rsquo;t
+call a carriage; and another bade me not forget to present his best respects to
+the skipper. I left them all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the
+cook-house, when the old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched my hat,
+and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought his eyes would
+burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and with a voice of thunder,
+wanted to know what I meant by playing such tricks aboard a ship that he was
+mate of? I told him to let go of me, or I would complain to my friend the
+captain, whom I intended to visit that evening. Upon this he gave me such a
+whirl round, that I thought the Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me
+forward, roaring out I know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing
+round the windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to defer it
+for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson asked me how I had
+found the captain, and whether the next time I went, I would not take a friend
+along and introduce him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that night, I felt
+well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to call on the captain in
+the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the fact, that I had acted like a
+fool; but it all arose from my ignorance of sea usages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin during
+the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return to New York;
+though I often used to get a peep at it through a little pane of glass, set in
+the house on deck, just before the helm, where a watch was kept hanging for the
+helmsman to strike the half hours by, with his little bell in the binnacle,
+where the compass was. And it used to be the great amusement of the sailors to
+look in through the pane of glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the
+proceedings in the cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for
+dinner, or the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little
+mahogany stand, or playing the game called <i>solitaire,</i> at cards, of an
+evening; for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as will ere
+long be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose society he did
+not dislike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be making
+fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made his appearance,
+promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked very good-humored and
+amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I thought that this, to be sure,
+was just the chance I wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as he did
+not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very pleasant day, and
+hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into such a rage; I thought he
+was going to knock me down; but after standing speechless awhile, he all at
+once plucked his cap from his head and threw it at me. I don&rsquo;t know what
+impelled me, but I ran to the lee-scuppers where it fell, picked it up, and
+gave it to him with a bow; when the mate came running up, and thrust me forward
+again; and after he had got me as far as the windlass, he wanted to know
+whether I was crazy or not; for if I was, he would put me in irons right off,
+and have done with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that I had
+been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by him and Captain
+Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told me if I ever repeated
+what I had done that evening, or ever again presumed so much as to lift my hat
+to the captain, he would tie me into the rigging, and keep me there until I
+learned better manners. &ldquo;You are very green,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;but
+I&rsquo;ll ripen you.&rdquo; Indeed this chief mate seemed to have the keeping
+of the dignity of the captain; who, in some sort, seemed too dignified
+personally to protect his own dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with rudeness for
+an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters stood, I resolved to let
+the captain alone for the future, particularly as he had shown himself so
+deficient in the ordinary breeding of a gentleman. And I could hardly credit
+it, that this was the same man who had been so very civil, and polite, and
+witty, when Mr. Jones and I called upon him in port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after, a storm
+came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his nightcap, and
+nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop, began to jump up and
+down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft all manner of hard names,
+just like a common loafer in the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore nothing but
+old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I had seen him in at
+our first interview, and after that on the steps of the City Hotel, where he
+always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore nothing but old-fashioned
+snuff-colored coats, with high collars and short waists; and faded,
+short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the knees; and vests, that did not
+conceal his waistbands, owing to their being so short, just like a little
+boy&rsquo;s. And his hats were all caved in, and battered, as if they had been
+knocked about in a cellar; and his boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to
+think that he was but a shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers
+lost their gloss, and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a
+sort of miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might have
+been owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of dye while at
+sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while ashore, a gentleman on
+false pretenses; for no gentleman would have treated another gentleman as he
+did me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br/>
+THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE</h2>
+
+<p>
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain&rsquo;s old clothes, I may as
+well speak of mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had greatly
+rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be warm and pleasant
+upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be like a summer excursion to
+the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a change of scene and
+society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and deemed it
+wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of pilot-cloth
+jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin suits, and sea-boots,
+and many other things, which old seamen carry in their chests. But one reason
+was, that I did not have the money to buy them with, even if I had wanted to.
+So in addition to the clothes I had brought from home, I had only bought a red
+shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a belt and knife, as I have previously related,
+which gave me a sea outfit, something like the Texan rangers&rsquo;, whose
+uniform, they say, consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+<i>&ldquo;long togs,&rdquo;</i> as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted
+to the life I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my
+pantaloons were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction,
+particularly about the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with
+low waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was often placed in
+most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the rigging, sometimes in plain sight
+of the cabin, with my table linen exposed in the most inelegant and
+ungentlemanly manner possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most prided
+myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man, very thin
+in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest fashions direct from
+Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop were very dirty with
+fly-marks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them in
+hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try them on, and
+hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round spectacles, and could
+not see very well, and had no one to help him but a sick wife, with five
+grandchildren to take care of; and besides that, he was such a great
+snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business; for he took several pinches
+for every stitch, and would sit snuffing and blowing his nose over my
+pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with him. Now, this old tailor had
+shown me the pattern, after which he intended to make my pantaloons; but I
+improved upon it, and bade him have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the
+foot, to button up with a row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin
+of mine, who was a great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of
+pantaloons, made precisely in that way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great deal of
+fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to &ldquo;twig&rdquo;
+them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way of a joke; and
+then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing very plainly that they
+had no idea that my pantaloons were a very genteel pair, made in the height of
+the sporting fashion, and copied from my cousin&rsquo;s, who was a young man of
+fortune and drove a tilbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to mend and
+patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I patched the more
+they parted; because I put my patches on, without heeding the joints of the
+legs, which only irritated my poor pants the more, and put them out of temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home. They had
+been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had had a pair of boots
+that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I walked in them, unless
+it was night time, when no one could see me, and I had something else to think
+of; and I used to keep looking at them during church; so that I lost a good
+deal of the sermon. In a word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all
+this only unfitted them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They
+had very high heels, which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and
+several times came near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them
+shrink in such a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I
+was obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were
+quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees, and the edges were mounted
+with red morocco. The sailors used to call them my
+<i>&ldquo;gaff-topsail-boots.&rdquo;</i> And sometimes they used to call me
+&ldquo;Boots,&rdquo; and sometimes &ldquo;Buttons,&rdquo; on account of the
+ornaments on my pantaloons and shooting-jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, I took their advice, and <i>&ldquo;razeed&rdquo;</i> them, as they
+phrased it. That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet feel flat
+as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and made me slip and
+slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I wore straps on the ice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved a real
+sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a rain storm, kept
+my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on deck in it, during
+the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and lost all its beauty; so
+that it was unprofitable every way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of moleskin.
+Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a rain, until at
+last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave nothing but the bare
+seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became unspeakably unpleasant, when
+we got into rather cold weather, crossing the Banks of Newfoundland, when the
+only way I had to keep warm during the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and
+my roundabout, and then clap the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch
+me under the arms, and it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and
+used to incommode my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so,
+that the mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar kind. I
+had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of them had never
+entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was obliged to sleep on the bare
+boards of my bunk; and when the ship pitched violently, and almost stood upon
+end, I must have looked like an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up
+against a tree like a crucifix.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming, that, in
+this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like going to a
+boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and knife, fork, and
+napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a steerage passenger a
+silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron pot, with hooks to it, to hang
+on a grate; and this pot I used to present at the cook-house for my allowance
+of coffee and tea. It gave me a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean,
+being much disposed to rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I
+was drinking; and it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were
+deprived of all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a labor to me. And
+I was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup, three times a week, which
+imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence and
+heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing calculated to
+make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable. In time, my wretched
+&ldquo;long togs&rdquo; began to drop off my back, and I looked like a Sam
+Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of my
+gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would have said, if
+they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in my miserable
+shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation and shame never could
+overtake me; yet, I thought it a galling mockery, when I remembered that my
+sisters had promised to tell all inquiring friends, that Wellingborough had
+gone <i>&ldquo;abroad&rdquo;</i> just as if I was visiting Europe on a tour
+with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to the captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there were
+several little incidents that made me forget myself in the contemplation of the
+strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a view of
+the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon, and she came
+bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her sails spread wide.
+She came very near, and passed under our stern; and as she leaned over to the
+breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I saw the strange sailors grouped
+upon the forecastle, and the cook looking out of his cook-house with a ladle in
+his hand, and the captain in a green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a
+speaking-trumpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all these
+human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into the sea-air
+from the cook&rsquo;s funnel as if it were a chimney in a city; and every thing
+looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst of what to me, at least,
+seemed a superlative marvel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle in the
+middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the harder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in an
+elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass trumpet to his
+mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, <i>&ldquo;Where
+from?&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch gibberish, of
+which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to Hamburg, as her flag
+denoted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Hamburg!</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually beholding a
+ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals of leisure from
+other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was quite a little speck in
+the distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains during their
+brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective &ldquo;poops&rdquo;
+toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying their behests;
+they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and drove on, with all
+the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting each other on an airing in the
+Desert. To them, I suppose, the great Atlantic Ocean was a puddle.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br/>
+AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL</h2>
+
+<p>
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle watch,
+when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The order was given to loose the <i>main-skysail,</i> which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the forecastle
+looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I have heard that some
+ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail; called <i>moon-sails,</i>
+and <i>skyscrapers,</i> and <i>cloud-rakers.</i> But I shall not believe in
+them till I see them; a <i>skysail</i> seems high enough in all conscience; and
+the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks
+almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the
+eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the
+conceit out of these cloud-defying <i>cloud-rakers.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch sailor came
+up to me, and said, &ldquo;Buttons, my boy, it&rsquo;s high time you be doing
+something; and it&rsquo;s boy&rsquo;s business, Buttons, to loose de royals,
+and not old men&rsquo;s business, like me. Now, d&rsquo;ye see dat leelle
+fellow way up dare? <i>dare,</i> just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up,
+now, Buttons, I zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it was high
+time for me to be stirring myself, and doing <i>boy&rsquo;s business,</i> as
+they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up I went, not
+daring to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were, to the shrouds, as
+I ascended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe hard,
+before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the <i>Jacob&rsquo;s
+Ladder;</i> and they may well call it so, for it took me almost into the
+clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself hanging on the
+skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and curling my feet round
+the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far out upon
+the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my lofty perch, the sea
+looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all round, by beetling black
+cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds; and every second,
+expected to find myself falling&mdash;falling&mdash;falling, as I have felt
+when the nightmare has been on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank in the
+water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over which I was
+hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round the truck over my
+head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost frightened me to hear it; it
+seemed so much like a spirit, at such a lofty and solitary height.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this extreme
+elevation, the ship&rsquo;s motion was very great; so that when the ship rolled
+one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the ceiling; and when it
+rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging along a slanting pine-tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I could
+not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate hurrying me. So in
+a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting off the <i>gaskets,</i> or
+lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready, sung out as I had been told,
+to <i>&ldquo;hoist away!&rdquo;</i> And hoist they did, and me too along with
+the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they were so unexpectedly
+quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was, going up higher and higher;
+the yard rising under me, as if it were alive, and no soul in sight. Without
+knowing it at the time, I was in a good deal of danger, but it was so dark that
+I could not see well enough to feel afraid&mdash;at least on that account;
+though I felt frightened enough in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and
+made good the saying of old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard
+from the rigging is a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely; whereas
+old tars are less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something like a
+compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate, he
+treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves some
+mention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe, and
+prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea. His
+hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a red shirt, he
+was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever saw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable; and at a
+word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and imprecations. It was Max
+that several times set on foot those conspiracies against Jackson, which I have
+spoken of before; but he ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of
+resentful reservations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when we got to
+Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American Merchant Service;
+for like all European seamen in American ships, Max prided himself not a little
+upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if he could, would have been very glad
+to have passed himself off for a born native.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting discredit upon
+his adopted country, he never offered to better my wardrobe, by loaning me any
+thing from his own well-stored chest. Like many other well-wishers, he
+contented him with sympathy. Max also betrayed some anxiety to know whether I
+knew how to dance; lest, when the ship&rsquo;s company went ashore, I should
+disgrace them by exposing my awkwardness in some of the sailor saloons. But I
+relieved his anxiety on that head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about my
+short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a finger, or a
+thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br/>
+THE COOK AND STEWARD</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling, foggy,
+clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist and vapor upon
+it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost thought we must have somehow
+got back to New York, and were lying at the foot of Wall-street again in a
+rainy twilight. The decks were dripping with wet, so that in the dense fog, it
+seemed as if we were standing on the roof of a house in a shower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges of the
+rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson, he was all the
+time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to imagine
+what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend, Mr.
+Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane, between
+churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all. Every
+thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church to go to; no
+place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to think it must be a
+sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when school-boys stay at home
+reading Robinson Crusoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black cook; who
+according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the name of <i>the
+doctor.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And <i>doctors,</i> cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so serviceable to
+man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and green peas, say, in
+spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in winter? Will a dose of calomel
+and jalap do you as much good? Will a bolus build up a fainting man? Is there
+any satisfaction in dining off a powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan
+sometimes loll men off by a surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well,
+what then? No matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly
+medicines, they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And when you die
+by a pill-doctor&rsquo;s hands, it is never with a sweet relish in your mouth,
+as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last breath villainously
+savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges they make for the abominable
+lunches they serve out so stingily! One of their bills for boluses would keep
+you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and used
+to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat over his boiling
+pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled and covered with grease
+spots: for he kept it stuck into a little leather strap, nailed to the keg
+where he kept the fat skimmed off the water in which the salt beef was cooked.
+I could hardly believe my eyes when I found this book was the Bible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky studio or
+study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five feet square, and
+about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the pipe of which stuck out
+of the roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a little
+looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were his shaving
+tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very close to it, was a
+sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his legs spread out very wide,
+to keep them from scorching; and there, with his book in one hand, and a pewter
+spoon in the other, he sat all that Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and
+studying away at the same time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading
+must have been very hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as
+he read; and big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till
+they hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it was no
+wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious passage in the
+Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read, he called me as I was
+passing his premises, and read the passage over, demanding an explanation. I
+told him it was a mystery that no one could explain; not even a parson. But
+this did not satisfy him, and I left him poring over it still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to be
+found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a committee
+of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their natural canonicals,
+wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed black hats, and white
+neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon him, and remained conversing
+with him at his cookhouse door for more than an hour; and before they went away
+they stepped inside, and the sliding doors were closed; and then we heard some
+one reading aloud and preaching; and after that a psalm was sung and a
+benediction given; when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in
+a great perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old fellow used
+to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of cold, wet stormy
+mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and make his fire; with the sea
+breaking over the bows, and now and then dashing into his stove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did rip a
+little, for it would have tried old Job&rsquo;s temper, to be set to work
+making a fire in the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very particular
+about them; he had a warm love and affection for his cook-house. In fair
+weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket before the door, by way of a mat;
+and screwed a small ring-bolt into the door for a knocker; and wrote his name,
+&ldquo;Mr. Thompson,&rdquo; over it, with a bit of red chalk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men said he lived round the corner of <i>Forecastle-square,</i> opposite
+the <i>Liberty Pole;</i> because his cook-house was right behind the foremast,
+and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard. When a man
+is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower yard-arms, they say
+he <i>&ldquo;takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down Hemp-street.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward&rsquo;s, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by the name
+of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when Mr. Jones and I
+visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that turban at sea, though; but
+sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair, just like the large, round brush,
+used for washing windows, called a <i>Pope&rsquo;s Head.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large supply,
+the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes, being mostly
+cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he had sailed with upon
+many previous voyages, were all in the height of the exploded fashions, and of
+every kind of color and cut. He had claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored
+suits, and red velvet vests, and buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several
+full suits of black, which, with his dark-colored face, made him look quite
+clerical; like a serious young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take
+orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something he
+called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more like a
+glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring, and was always
+calling your attention to something, and pointing at it with his ornamented
+finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the <i>&ldquo;Three
+Spaniards,&rdquo;</i> and <i>&ldquo;Charlotte Temple,&rdquo;</i> and carried a
+lock of frizzled hair in his vest pocket, which he frequently volunteered to
+show to people, with his handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about
+sunset, these two, the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the
+cook-house, leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from
+falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay till after
+dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events that had happened
+during the day in the cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sometimes Mr. Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a chapter for
+the edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad profligate and gay
+deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful indiscretion. He would read over to
+him the story of Joseph and Potiphar&rsquo;s wife; and hold Joseph up to him as
+a young man of excellent principles, whom he ought to imitate, and not be
+guilty of his indiscretion any more. And Lavender would look serious, and say
+that he knew it was all true&mdash;he was a wicked youth, he knew it&mdash;he
+had broken a good many hearts, and many eyes were weeping for him even then,
+both in New York, and Liverpool, and London, and Havre. But how could he help
+it? He hadn&rsquo;t made his handsome face, and fine head of hair, and graceful
+figure. It was not <i>he,</i> but the others, that were to blame; for his
+bewitching person turned all heads and subdued all hearts, wherever he went.
+And then he would look very serious and penitent, and go up to the little
+glass, and pass his hands through his hair, and see how his whiskers were
+coming on.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br/>
+HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM
+BOOK</h2>
+
+<p>
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I thought I
+would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a
+<i>bull&rsquo;s-eye,</i> or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into
+the deck to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found
+myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull&rsquo;s-eye had not
+suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the deck, it
+was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a coil of rope
+would be thrown down on it, and stay there till I dressed myself and went up to
+remove it&mdash;a kind of interruption to my studies which annoyed me very
+much, when diligently occupied in reading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole, where we
+burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest time I had, when all
+my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my back, during a forenoon watch
+below, and read in comparative quiet and seclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they had
+fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped overboard. One was
+an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and the other was a large black
+volume, with <i>Delirium Tremens</i> in great gilt letters on the back. This
+proved to be a popular treatise on the subject of that disease; and I
+remembered seeing several copies in the sailor book-stalls about Fulton Market,
+and along South-street, in New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great profit
+and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones, who had quite
+a library, and took down this book from a top shelf, where it lay very dusty.
+When he gave it to me, he said, that although I was going to sea, I must not
+forget the importance of a good education; and that there was hardly any
+situation in life, however humble and depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one
+might find leisure in it to store his mind, and build himself up in the exact
+sciences. And he added, that though it <i>did</i> look rather unfavorable for
+my future prospects, to be going to sea as a common sailor so early in life;
+yet, it would no doubt turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate, if
+I would only take good care of myself, would give me a sound constitution, if
+nothing more; and <i>that</i> was not to be undervalued, for how many very rich
+men would give all their bonds and mortgages for my boyish robustness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was merely
+entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find entertainment and
+edification beautifully and harmoniously combined; and though, at first, I
+might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused the book thoroughly, it would
+soon discover hidden charms and unforeseen attractions; besides teaching me,
+perhaps, the true way to retrieve the poverty of my family, and again make them
+all well-to-do in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at the
+back: <i>&ldquo;Smith&rsquo;s Wealth of Nations.&rdquo;</i> This not satisfying
+me, I glanced at the title page, and found it was an <i>&ldquo;Enquiry into the
+Nature and Causes&rdquo;</i> of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to
+look further down, I caught sight of <i>&ldquo;Aberdeen,&rdquo;</i> where the
+book was printed; and thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country,
+must prove some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very kindly,
+and promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page number one,
+resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken previously, to
+prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and body of the book,
+where I fancied lay something like the philosopher&rsquo;s stone, a secret
+talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to silver and gold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as I
+commenced the first chapter, entitled <i>&ldquo;Of the causes of improvement in
+the productive power of labor.&rdquo;</i> Dry as crackers and cheese, to be
+sure; and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only getting
+initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened to me. So I read
+on and on, about <i>&ldquo;wages and profits of labor,&rdquo;</i> without
+getting any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank some
+water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost work; and
+thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home, lettered on the back,
+<i>&ldquo;The History of Rome&rdquo;</i> was quite as full of matter, and a
+great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had ever read the
+volume himself; and could not help remembering, that he had to get on a chair
+when he reached it down from its dusty shelf; <i>that</i> certainly looked
+suspicious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I lighted
+upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect: <i>&ldquo;Jonathan
+Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods,</i> 1798.&rdquo; So it must have
+originally belonged to Mr. Jones&rsquo; father; and I wondered whether
+<i>he</i> had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever read it, even
+the author himself; but then authors, they say, never read their own books;
+writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound
+before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it for a pillow;
+for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes waked up feeling dull
+and stupid; but of course the book could not have been the cause of that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor, and his
+Dream Book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world, used to
+tell Jack in reproach, that he was an <i>Irish Cockney.</i> By which I
+understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in London,
+somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue that I could
+hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I should
+judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a little old man.
+His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and stumpy; so that when he
+had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou&rsquo;west cap flapping in his face,
+and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked like a fat porpoise,
+standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a walrus; and with about the
+same expression, half human and half indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a
+good-natured fellow, and a little given to looking at sea-life romantically;
+singing songs about susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young
+oyster boys and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a
+man-of-war&rsquo;s-man who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war,
+and threw away his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in
+the battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible
+story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a sea-captain all
+the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for a spell against the
+scurvy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild Irish words
+he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a fortune-teller, an
+old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house was much frequented by
+sailors; and how she had two black cats, with remarkably green eyes, and
+nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on a claw-footed table near the old
+goblin; when she felt his pulse, to tell what was going to befall him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some cause
+or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state made him
+look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and confounded this
+Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the conclusion it must be the
+result of the black art, wrought upon him by an enemy; and that enemy, he
+opined, was an old sailor landlord in Marseilles, whom he had once seriously
+offended, by knocking him down in a fray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and all his
+friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling him an old man
+with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an apothecary&rsquo;s,
+stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he called
+<i>&ldquo;Trafalgar Oil</i> for restoring the hair,&rdquo; <i>price one
+dollar;</i> and told him that after he had used that bottle, and it did not
+have the desired effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called <i>&ldquo;Balm of
+Paradise, or the Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen.&rdquo;</i> These
+high-sounding naval names delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there must be
+virtue in them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a young
+man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in the middle of
+his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to his head, with both
+hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large bottle, conspicuously labeled,
+<i>&ldquo;Balm of Paradise.&rdquo;</i> It seemed from the text, that this
+gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil, and was so thoroughly
+persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of bed, even in his sleep; groped
+into his closet, seized the precious bottle, applied its contents, and then to
+bed again, getting up in the morning without knowing any thing about it. Which,
+indeed, was a most mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how
+the engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was ignorant,
+and where there were no bystanders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly rubbed in
+his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted by his copious
+applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to it, that by the time
+we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned with success. And he was
+not a little delighted, that this gradual change would be operating while we
+were at sea; so as not to expose him to the invidious observations of people
+ashore; on the same principle that dandies go into the country when they
+purpose raising whiskers. He would often ask his shipmates, whether they
+noticed any change yet; and if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth,
+there was a very great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his hair with
+oil, operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet, and want of a
+brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild horse&rsquo;s mane,
+and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue. Besides his collection
+of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself with several boxes of pills,
+which he had purchased from a sailor doctor in New York, who by placards stuck
+on the posts along the wharves, advertised to remain standing at the northeast
+corner of Catharine Market, every Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten
+and twelve in the morning, to receive calls from patients, distribute
+medicines, and give advice gratis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but at
+breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as they do in
+Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the boarding-houses, they put
+a vial of blue pills into the castor, along with the pepper and mustard, and
+next door to another vial of toothpicks. But they are very ill-bred and
+unpolished in the western country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of <i>horse
+salts</i> (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to sea
+without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also, take this
+medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain storm. But this is
+nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor themselves with calomel off
+Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in this connection, some really
+frightful stories might be told; but I forbear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the death
+of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you from catching
+cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board this very ship, being
+so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently turned into my bunk soaking wet,
+and turned out again piping hot, and smoking like a roasted sirloin; and yet
+was never the worse for it; for then, I bore a charmed life of youth and
+health, and was dagger-proof to bodily ill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner of his
+chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red cover, marked
+all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and purporting to be a full and
+complete treatise on the art of Divination; so that the most simple sailor
+could teach it to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon Bonaparte
+had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor. Hence it was
+entitled the <i>Bonaparte Dream Book;</i> for the magic of it lay in the
+interpretation of dreams, and their application to the foreseeing of future
+events; so that all preparatory measures might be taken beforehand; which would
+be exceedingly convenient, and satisfactory every way, if true. The problems
+were to be cast by means of figures, in some perplexed and difficult way,
+which, however, was facilitated by a set of tables in the end of the pamphlet,
+something like the Logarithm Tables at the end of Bowditch&rsquo;s Navigator.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this <i>Bonaparte Dream Book</i> of
+his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in his own
+dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before taking his pills,
+and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his bunk before the rest of
+the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet, and a bit of chalk; and then
+straddling his chest, begin scratching his oily head to remember his fugitive
+dreams; marking down strokes on his chest-lid, as if he were casting up his
+daily accounts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic figures in
+the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he could with
+difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted, he somehow managed
+to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So that, as he generally wore a
+good-humored expression, no doubt he must have thought, that all his future
+affairs were working together for the best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his bunk, his
+eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice&mdash;&ldquo;Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What benches?&rdquo; growled Max&mdash;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the
+matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Benches! benches!&rdquo; screamed Blunt, without heeding him, &ldquo;cut
+down the forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment&rsquo;s coming!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still, muttering to
+himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his <i>benches;</i> till, shortly
+after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind would stand or
+sit at the Last Day.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br/>
+A NARROW ESCAPE</h2>
+
+<p>
+This Dream Book of Blunt&rsquo;s reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the larboard watch&rsquo;s turn to remain below from midnight till four
+o&rsquo;clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out again
+about three o&rsquo;clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he was
+desirous of at once having interpreted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on the lid.
+When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him and all the rest
+of us up, and sent the whole ship&rsquo;s company flying on deck in the dark.
+We did not know what it was; but somehow, among sailors at sea, they seem to
+know when real danger of any land is at hand, even in their sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and crying out
+<i>Luff! Luff!</i> to some one in the dark water before the ship. In that
+direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black hull of a
+strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so near, that we
+heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind, the trampling of feet
+on the deck, and the same cry of <i>Luff! Luff!</i> that our own mate, was
+raising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash, like the
+fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys jerked out the bolt
+near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our jib-boom thumping against our
+bows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the darkness,
+and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been injured; for when it grew
+light, we found pieces of strange rigging mixed with ours. We repaired the
+damage, and replaced the broken spar with another jib-boom we had; for all
+ships carry spare spars against emergencies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on board,
+was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the forecastles of both
+ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our vessel was terribly reprimanded
+by the mate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet their
+fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels coming together,
+jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the middle watch of the night,
+mutually destroy each other; and like fighting elks, sink down into the ocean,
+with their antlers locked in death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks, having got
+her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a good breeze; and all
+her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in about seven days after, she
+came back, a most distressing object to behold. All her starboard side was torn
+and splintered; her starboard anchor was gone; and a great part of the
+starboard bulwarks; while every one of the lower yard-arms had been broken, in
+the same direction; so that she now carried small and unsightly
+<i>jury-yards.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered, but
+the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and gallant
+appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now entered so
+forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known at home, who had
+left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was brought back at noon with
+his right side paralyzed from head to foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship, crowding all
+sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed past her starboard
+side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to become
+negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for though every
+seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of them, perhaps, have
+been in ships that have suffered from them; yet, when you find yourself sailing
+along on the ocean at night, without having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it
+is hard for you to realize that any are near. Then, if they <i>are</i> near, it
+seems almost incredible that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes
+Greenland at one end of the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that
+any one vessel upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with
+another. But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things which
+wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become
+acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when experience has
+taught them, the lesson only serves for that day; inasmuch as the foolish in
+prosperity are infidels to the possibility of adversity; they see the sun in
+heaven, and believe it to be far too bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly
+as the bravest and fleetest ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the
+sea, have been struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do
+some lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
+fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
+suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into death.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br/>
+IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek,
+as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a spit?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt in a
+mist, that no London in the Novemberest November ever equaled. The chronometer
+pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday? So dense is the
+fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail for fear of accidents;
+and not only that, but here am I, poor Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort
+of belfry, the top of the <i>&ldquo;Sampson-Post,&rdquo;</i> a lofty tower of
+timber, so called; and tolling the ship&rsquo;s bell, as if for a funeral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from our
+track.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord
+attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through my
+fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like the
+<i>&ldquo;bull that could pull,&rdquo;</i> announcing the decease of the
+lamented Cock-Robin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an ingenious
+sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young porkers on board;
+and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at both ends of the pen
+with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred up and irritated the
+porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and no doubt saved the ship, as
+the geese saved the Capitol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a vast
+sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be followed by a
+spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some fountain had suddenly
+jetted out of the ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my duty as a
+sexton. But presently some one cried out&mdash;<i>&ldquo;There she blows!
+whales! whales close alongside!&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to <i>me,</i> Wellingborough;&mdash; would
+my own brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long, black
+snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought they
+would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh! regular
+krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when they descended
+to feed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I lost all
+respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the story of Jonah;
+for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant tenement; how could he have
+had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought I, the whale which according to
+Rabbinical traditions was a female one, might have expanded to receive him like
+an anaconda, when it swallows an elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its
+mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter&rsquo;s, they say, and then go
+and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your high-raised
+ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been disappointed when he looked
+up to the domed midriff surmounting the whale&rsquo;s belly, and surveyed the
+ribbed pillars around him. A pretty large belly, to be sure, thought he, but
+not so big as it might have been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves sailing
+through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small craft; and when I
+beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor saying, intended to
+illustrate restricted quarters, or being <i>on the limits. It is like a
+fisherman&rsquo;s walk,</i> say they, <i>three steps and overboard.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean between
+England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run down, and
+obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the sailors ceasing with
+the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over their craft. Their sad fate is
+frequently the result of their own remissness in keeping a good look-out by
+day, and not having their lamps trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound passage, I
+may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached them in the night;
+and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the deep-sea-lead was heaved. The
+line attached is generally upward of three hundred fathoms in length; and the
+lead itself, weighing some forty or fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end,
+in which, previous to sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the
+soil at the bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called
+&ldquo;arming&rdquo; the lead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We &ldquo;hove&rdquo; our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel&rsquo;s heading was
+stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was placed
+toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors carried the
+lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the jib-boom, and at the
+word of command, far ahead and overboard it went, with a plunge; scraping by
+the side, till it came to the stern, when the line ran out of the tub like
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we came to haul <i>it</i> up, I was astonished at the force necessary to
+perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove through a
+block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat porpoise. When the
+lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine the tallow, and get a peep
+at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but the sailors did not seem to be much
+interested by it, calling me a fool for wanting to preserve a few grains of the
+sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we found
+ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact of our being in it was
+proved by the captain in person, who superintended the drawing of a bucket of
+salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer. In the absence of the
+Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the temperature of this current is
+eight degrees higher than that of the ocean, and the temperature of the ocean
+is twenty degrees higher than that of the Grand Banks. And it is to this
+remarkable difference of temperature, for which there can be no equilibrium,
+that many seamen impute the fogs on the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland;
+but why there should always be such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that
+I do not know has ever been accounted for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is curious to dip one&rsquo;s finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current comes,
+were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North Atlantic,
+which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles, as some large
+halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth being about two hundred
+leagues, it comprises an area larger than that of the whole Mediterranean, and
+may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of hot water flowing through the ocean; off
+the coast of Florida, running at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br/>
+A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR&rsquo;S-MAN</h2>
+
+<p>
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the bringing out
+of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite silent and reserved, as
+if from some conscious inferiority, though he had shipped as an <i>ordinary
+seaman,</i> and, for aught I could see, performed his duty very well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they were which
+we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in their ignorance, all
+at once broke out, and astonished every body by his intimate acquaintance with
+the monsters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t sperm whales,&rdquo; said Larry, &ldquo;their
+spouts ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t bushy enough; they ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn&rsquo;t stay up so long; they
+ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t Hump-backs, for they ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t got any humps; they
+ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t Fin-backs, for you won&rsquo;t catch a Finback so near a
+ship; they ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t Greenland whales, for we ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t off
+the coast of Greenland; and they ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t right whales, for it
+wouldn&rsquo;t be right to say so. I tell ye, men, them&rsquo;s Crinkum-crankum
+whales.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what are them?&rdquo; said a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, them is whales that can&rsquo;t be cotched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a whaler, and
+had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson ventured to dispute
+his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very hard. And ever after,
+Larry&rsquo;s judgment was relied upon concerning all strange fish that
+happened to float by us during the voyage; for whalemen are far more familiar
+with the wonders of the deep than any other class of seaman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was Larry&rsquo;s first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that merchant
+seamen generally affect a certain superiority to
+<i>&ldquo;blubber-boilers,&rdquo;</i> as they contemptuously style those who
+hunt the leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and
+so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
+order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise have
+encountered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over the
+bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always examining your
+boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk about the wild places in
+the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of Madagascar, where he had frequently
+touched during his whaling voyages. And this familiarity with the life of
+nature led by the people in that remote part of the world, had furnished Larry
+with a sentimental distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he
+never omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, &ldquo;in
+<i>Madagasky</i> there, they don&rsquo;t wear any togs at all, nothing but a
+bowline round the midships; they don&rsquo;t have no dinners, but keeps a
+dinin&rsquo; all day off fat pigs and dogs; they don&rsquo;t go to bed any
+where, but keeps a noddin&rsquo; all the time; and they gets drunk, too, from
+some first rate arrack they make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of
+&rsquo;baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations against
+civilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what&rsquo;s the use of bein&rsquo; <i>snivelized!&rdquo;</i> said
+he to me one night during our watch on deck; &ldquo;snivelized chaps only
+learns the way to take on &rsquo;bout life, and snivel. You don&rsquo;t see any
+Methodist chaps feelin&rsquo; dreadful about their souls; you don&rsquo;t see
+any darned beggars and pesky constables in <i>Madagasky, I</i> tell ye; and
+none o&rsquo; them kings there gets their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast
+Ameriky, I say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are <i>you</i> now, Buttons, any better off for bein&rsquo;
+snivelized?&rdquo; coming close up to me and eying the wreck of my
+gaff-topsail-boots very steadfastly. &ldquo;No; you ar&rsquo;n&rsquo;t a
+bit&mdash;but you&rsquo;re a good deal <i>worse</i> for it, Buttons. I tell ye,
+ye wouldn&rsquo;t have been to sea here, leadin&rsquo; this dog&rsquo;s life,
+if you hadn&rsquo;t been snivelized&mdash;that&rsquo;s the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it&rsquo;s spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it&rsquo;s too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say.&rdquo; And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole
+past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still lower down
+over the bridge of his nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war&rsquo;s man we had, who
+went by the name of <i>&ldquo;Gun-Deck,&rdquo;</i> from his always talking of
+sailor life in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a
+prodigious mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a
+wide, braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly
+prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed down
+decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always took off his
+boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his pretty toes to show
+his charming feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida, and had
+a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through the everglades,
+and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his telling a story about a
+party being discovered at quite a distance from them; but one of the savages
+was made very conspicuous by a pewter plate, which he wore round his neck, and
+which glittered in the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to
+<i>Gun-Deck,</i> he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered
+the wearer&rsquo;s heart. It was a rat-killing war, he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Gun-Deck</i> had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and oranges
+in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta, among the ladies
+there. And about all these things, he talked like a romantic man-of-war&rsquo;s
+man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved it; found it good, and a
+comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry never could agree in their
+respective views of civilization, and of savagery, of the Mediterranean and
+<i>Madagasky.</i>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br/>
+THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK </h2>
+
+<p>
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the like
+of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain poured down in sheets
+and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off the decks; and in
+bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our knees; every thing floating
+about, like chips in a dock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses before the
+flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and cringing to it awhile,
+the good Highlander was put off before it; and with her nose in the water, went
+wallowing on, ploughing milk-white waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated
+foam in her wake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could hardly
+stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But while I reeled to
+and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me look out that the ship did
+not fall overboard; and advised me to get a handspike, and hold it down hard in
+the weather-scuppers, to steady her wild motions. But I was now getting a
+little too wise for this foolish kind of talk; though all through the voyage,
+they never gave it over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue again,
+the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We bore away for
+it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain in the mizzen-top with
+his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed alongside of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that must have
+been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were pretty much gone;
+and here and there the bare <i>stanchions,</i> or posts, were left standing,
+splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the deck, lying almost even
+with the sea. The foremast was snapt off less than four feet from its base; and
+the shattered and splintered remnant looked like the stump of a pine tree
+thrown over in the woods. Every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her
+open main-hatchway yawned into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged
+again, with a rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the
+lee-roll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck,
+something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic of a
+jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a signal, and been
+frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark, green,
+grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise were
+motionless. I saw the captain&rsquo;s, glass directed toward them, and heard
+him say at last, &ldquo;They must have been dead a long time.&rdquo; These were
+sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for safety; but
+must have famished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain would
+lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the schooner. But
+we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so much as learning the
+schooner&rsquo;s name, though every one supposed her to be a New Brunswick
+lumberman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did not send
+off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were indignant at what
+they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but feel amazed and shocked at
+his indifference; but my subsequent sea experiences have shown me, that such
+conduct as this is very common, though not, of course, when human life can be
+saved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot for
+barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look there,&rdquo; said Jackson, hanging over the rail and
+coughing&mdash;&ldquo;look there; that&rsquo;s a sailor&rsquo;s coffin. Ha! ha!
+Buttons,&rdquo; turning round to me&mdash;&ldquo;how do you like that, Buttons?
+Wouldn&rsquo;t you like to take a sail with them &rsquo;ere dead men?
+Wouldn&rsquo;t it be nice?&rdquo; And then he tried to laugh, but only coughed
+again. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at dem poor fellows,&rdquo; said Max, looking
+grave; &ldquo;do&rsquo; you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de
+Cape of Dood Hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dood Hope, Dood Hope,&rdquo; shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin,
+mimicking the Dutchman, &ldquo;dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are
+drowned and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark
+nights.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Blunt, &ldquo;all sailors are saved; they have
+plenty of squalls here below, but fair weather aloft.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?&rdquo;
+howled Jackson through a cough. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk of heaven to
+me&mdash;it&rsquo;s a lie&mdash;I know it&mdash;and they are all fools that
+believe in it. Do you think, you Greek, that there&rsquo;s any heaven for
+<i>you?</i> Will they let <i>you</i> in there, with that tarry hand, and that
+oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark gulps you down his hatchway one of
+these days, you&rsquo;ll find, that by dying, you&rsquo;ll only go from one
+gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney! Yes, you&rsquo;ll be
+bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like to see the whole ship
+swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box on &rsquo;em. That would be
+a dose of salts for ye!&rdquo; And so saying, he went off, holding his hands to
+his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour was come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and mind.
+He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the time, though
+his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to kindle more and more, as
+if he were going to die out at last, and leave them burning like tapers before
+a corpse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about Christianity; no
+more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read a word, yet he was
+spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during the long night watches,
+would enter into arguments, to prove that there was nothing to be believed;
+nothing to be loved, and nothing worth living for; but every thing to be hated,
+in the wide world. He was a horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he
+resembled in his tawny skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at
+heaven and earth. He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some
+inscrutable curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat
+near him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness, there
+was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and touching; and
+though there were moments when I almost hated this Jackson, yet I have pitied
+no man as I have pitied him.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br/>
+AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY</h2>
+
+<p>
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out. But
+before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know that the
+Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in connection with
+a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between the two ports. No: she
+was only what is called a <i>regular trader</i> to Liverpool; sailing upon no
+fixed days, and acting very much as she pleased, being bound by no obligations
+of any kind: though in all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for
+her destination. Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders,
+among sailors come under the general head of <i>transient ships;</i> which
+implies that they are here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like
+Mullins&rsquo;s dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for aboard
+of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had sailed in them, the
+crew have terrible hard work, owing to their carrying such a press of sail, in
+order to make as rapid passages as possible, and sustain the ship&rsquo;s
+reputation for speed. Hence it is, that although they are the very best of
+sea-going craft, and built in the best possible manner, and with the very best
+materials, yet, a few years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously
+impairs their constitutions&mdash; like robust young men, who live too fast in
+their teens&mdash;and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the
+people of Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out
+for the whaling business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and gentlemen, as
+tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of harpooners round Cape
+Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and bird&rsquo;s-eye maple cabin, which
+once held rosewood card-tables and brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a
+bottle of champagne, and many a bright eye sparkled, <i>now</i> accommodates a
+bluff Quaker captain from Martha&rsquo;s Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying
+with his ship in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of
+naked chiefs and savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the
+honors to the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of
+leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across
+the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck, too, where these
+gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of the
+sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where reeks with
+oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic <i>transit gloria mundi!</i>
+Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! <i>It is</i> like a broken
+down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than five or
+six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate, on this
+particular voyage she only carried out one regular cabin-passenger; that is, a
+person previously unacquainted with the captain, who paid his fare down, and
+came on board soberly, and in a business-like manner with his baggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger&mdash;the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage; never
+spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York, going
+over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall concerning the
+signs of the times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck with arms
+folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise, and gaze out to
+windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But looking disappointed,
+would retire slowly into his state-room, where you could see him through the
+little window, in an irregular sitting position, with the back part of him
+inserted into his berth, and his head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in
+profound meditation, with his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen
+reading; never took a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine; never
+conversed; and never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no need
+of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe. Conjecture was lost in
+speculating as to who he was, and what was his business. The sailors, who are
+always curious with regard to such matters, and criticise cabin-passengers more
+than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware at the time, completely exhausted
+themselves in suppositions, some of which are characteristically curious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to the
+English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and bonesetter,
+but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn; and others declared
+that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist, flying from his last wife and
+several small children; or a scoundrelly forger, bank-robber, or general
+burglar, who was returning to his beloved country with his ill-gotten booty.
+One observing sailor was of opinion that he was an English murderer,
+overwhelmed with speechless remorse, and returning home to make a full
+confession and be hanged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes confident
+opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all sadly to the
+prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this is the way all the
+world over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling of what they thought
+of you, I know not what you would have done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions, this
+mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and collected; never
+troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes, of a moonlight night he
+glided about the deck, like the ghost of a hospital attendant; flitting from
+mast to mast; now hovering round the skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of
+the binnacle. Blunt, the Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an
+extra dose of salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some merchant
+sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of a passenger who
+may be detected taking excursions aloft, however moderate the flight of the
+awkward fowl. This is called <i>&ldquo;making a spread eagle&rdquo;</i> of the
+man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted, that before arriving in
+port, he shall furnish the ship&rsquo;s company with money enough for a treat
+all round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the keen
+look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon incautious
+strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the captain; as for the
+mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are earnestly engaged about
+something else, whenever they get an inkling of this proceeding going on. But,
+with only one poor fellow of a cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and
+<i>he</i> such a quiet, unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little
+chance for levying contributions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way up the
+mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on with might
+and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully turned round, gazing
+off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the nightmare; and in some sudden
+and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must have been impelled to the taking up
+of that perilous position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, &ldquo;you
+will surely fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the
+gentleman!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor&rsquo;s attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger, and
+without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot. The stranger was more
+dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently remonstrated; but in vain; for
+as his fearfulness of falling made him keep his hands glued to the ropes, and
+so prevented him from any effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome
+<i>spread-eagle</i> of, to the great satisfaction of the crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger stammered and
+stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his reservedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Spread-eagle, sir,&rdquo; said the Greenlander, thinking that those few
+words would at once make the matter plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Treats all round, sir,&rdquo; said the Greenlander, wondering at the
+other&rsquo;s obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor, and
+handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was suffered to
+descend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince&rsquo;s
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had nothing
+but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked stuffed out;
+perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious, though very
+different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have previously hinted.
+What say you to a charming young girl?&mdash;just the girl to sing the Dashing
+White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl; her father must have been a
+general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were blue; her cheeks were white and
+red; and Captain Riga was her most devoted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the steward
+used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the Liverpool dock-masters,
+who, for the benefit of her health and the improvement of her mind, had sent
+her out to America in the Highlander, under the captain&rsquo;s charge, who was
+his particular friend; and that now the young lady was returning home from her
+tour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often promenaded
+with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of secret dispatches, who
+would look up now and then out of his reveries, and cast a furtive glance of
+wonder, as if he thought the captain was audacious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved ungallantly, to
+say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of her charming society,
+to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no gentleman ever pretends to save
+his best coat when a lady is in the case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a
+chance to abase it, by converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir
+Walter Raleigh, that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty
+slippers. But this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might have
+worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of proving, by
+his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the young lady&rsquo;s
+guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby they look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for all this, the passage 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&rsquo;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
+&ldquo;spandangalous;&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It now remains to speak of the steerage passengers. 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 shirt 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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves, picking up a precarious
+livelihood by sucking molasses out of the casks discharged from West India
+ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray oranges and lemons found
+floating in the docks. He passed 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&rsquo;s legs, when he was taking
+another vagrant to task for repeatedly throwing himself upon the public
+charities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to catch sight of the
+Highlander, and immediately recognized her as the very ship 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 passage. The captain
+refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the heroic little fellow resolved to
+conceal himself on board previous to the ship&rsquo;s sailing; which he did,
+stowing himself away in the <i>between-decks;</i> and moreover, as he told us,
+in a narrow space between two large casks of water, from which he now and then
+thrust out his head for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There are
+plenty of passengers of that kind continually plying between Liverpool and New
+York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board, which he took care
+should not happen till he thought the ship must be out of sight of land; the
+captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough shaking, and
+threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-bit for <i>John Shark,</i> 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 washing in the lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a
+handsome lad, though thin and pale with the hardships 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s-man&rsquo;s trowsers; so that in the
+end, he looked like a juvenile boatswain&rsquo;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 passenger 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 passenger
+contributing their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers
+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 ashore by
+himself; and I lost sight of him in the vast crowds thronging the docks of
+Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must here mention, as some relief to the impression which Jackson&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the Lancashire 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
+ashore at last, without a good-by from any person but one.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br/>
+HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO&rsquo;S MONKEY</h2>
+
+<p>
+But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there is little more to be
+said concerning the passage 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 Lancashire 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 Greenlander as they worked at the rigging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in <i>&ldquo;parcelling,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;serving,&rdquo;</i> 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
+<i>spun-yarn.</i> This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancashire
+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
+<i>&ldquo;junk,&rdquo;</i> the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then
+twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured. This
+&ldquo;junk&rdquo; 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 oakum. 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 ashore in a gale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging, and at the cry of
+<i>&ldquo;tumble up there, my hearties, and take in sail,&rdquo; I</i> was
+among the first ground-and-lofty tumblers, that sprang aloft at the word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and I found myself
+hanging over the yard with eleven others, the ship 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 repetitions, 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 <i>&ldquo;granny-knot,&rdquo;</i> 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&rsquo;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 ship
+leans over, it makes more of a <i>stairs</i> of the rigging; whereas, in
+harbor, it is almost straight up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant sort of vitality to
+the vessel; so that the difference in being aloft in a ship at sea, and a ship
+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, <i>that</i>
+would be much more satisfactory, than an inglorious fall from the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in a hard
+blow; which duty required two hands on the yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing 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 like 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 <i>gasket,</i> 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander <i>&ldquo;in full fig,&rdquo;</i>
+with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
+vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to it
+through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm stretched
+forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was glorious to watch him
+standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up and down the watery Highlands
+and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on her way. He was a veteran with many
+wounds of many sea-fights; and when he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder
+there, amputated his left leg, and gave him another wooden one, which I am
+sorry to say, did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if he
+limped. Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one
+eye, and repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the painter came and made
+his toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of a
+beautiful pattern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and snug
+with a handsome pension in the &ldquo;Sailors&rsquo;-Snug-Harbor&rdquo; on
+Staten Island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer was
+this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art, upon which
+much depends; especially the making a short passage; for if the helmsman be a
+clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he keeps the ship going about
+in a melancholy state of indecision as to its precise destination; so that on a
+voyage to Liverpool, it may be pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for
+Rotterdam, and now for John o&rsquo; Groat&rsquo;s; all of which is worse than
+wasted time. Whereas, a true steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and
+tries to make a bee-line from port to port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm, might
+make the ship <i>&ldquo;lurch to&rdquo;&mdash;or &ldquo;bring her by the
+lee.&rdquo;</i> And what those things are, the cabin passengers would never
+find out, when they found themselves going down, down, down, and bidding
+good-by forever to the moon and stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they are,
+what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence, is the rough
+fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the wheel, now cocking his
+eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or looking out to windward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with one
+small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind, might give
+a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving last wills and
+testaments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who might
+play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the case. Watch him
+close, therefore; take him down into your state-room occasionally after a
+stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of cordial will do it. And if
+you or your heirs are interested with the underwriters, then also have an eye
+on him. And if you remark, that of the crew, all the men who come to the helm
+are careless, or inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding them
+often, and crying out: <i>&ldquo;Luff, you rascal; she&rsquo;s falling
+off!&rdquo;</i> or, <i>&ldquo;Keep her steady, you scoundrel, you&rsquo;re
+boxing the compass!&rdquo;</i> then hurry down to your state-room, and if you
+have not yet made a will, get out your stationery and go at it; and when it is
+done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus&rsquo; log, and it may possibly
+drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next gale of wind.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br/>
+QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I contented
+myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which I drew on a
+blank leaf of the <i>&ldquo;Wealth of Nations,&rdquo;</i> and studied it every
+morning, like the multiplication table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; and I wondered how it
+was that it pointed north, rather than south or west; for I do not know that
+any reason can be given why it points in the precise direction it does. One
+would think, too, that, as since the beginning of the world almost, the tide of
+emigration has been setting west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it
+is forever pointing its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few
+inducements to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship&rsquo;s compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of a
+common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms within, and
+constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm. It had two chimney
+stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned in it by night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one side two
+glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer retreat, a snug bit
+of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I been the captain, I would
+have planted vines in boxes, and placed them so as to overrun this binnacle; or
+I would have put canary-birds within; and so made an aviary of it. It is
+surprising what a different air may be imparted to the meanest thing by the
+dainty hand of taste. Nor must I omit the helm itself, which was one of a new
+construction, and a particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system
+of cogs and wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something
+like a printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it
+much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers, by
+catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances. Then, sometimes in
+a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the helm would fetch a
+lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like Ixion, often seriously
+hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>harness-cask,</i> also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe,
+in which a week&rsquo;s allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves being
+chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of the quarter-deck. Of an
+oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all silver-gilt, with gilded bands
+secured with gilded screws, and a gilded padlock, richly chased. This formed
+the captain&rsquo;s smoking-seat, where he would perch himself of an afternoon,
+a tasseled Chinese cap upon his head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white
+and canine-looking teeth. He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the magnificent <i>capstan!</i> The pride and glory of the whole
+ship&rsquo;s company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose
+duty it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of distant
+admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor center-table, it stood
+full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with brazen stars, and
+variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of mahogany and satin wood. This was
+the captain&rsquo;s lounge, and the chief mate&rsquo;s secretary, in the
+bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for memorandums.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I might proceed and speak of the <i>booby-hatch,</i> used as a sort of settee
+by the officers, and the <i>fife-rail</i> round the mainmast, inclosing a
+little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue ribbon
+round his neck, belonging to the dock-master&rsquo;s daughter, used to take his
+morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New York
+Bowling-Green.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br/>
+A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES </h2>
+
+<p>
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running aloft, the
+men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration, though not at all
+relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority. For the mere knowing of
+the names of the ropes, and familiarizing yourself with their places, so that
+you can lay hold of them in the darkest night; and the loosing and furling of
+the canvas, and reefing topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of
+course forming an indispensable part of a seaman&rsquo;s vocation, and the
+business in which he is principally engaged; yet these are things which a
+beginner of ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many
+other matters familiar to an <i>&ldquo;able seaman.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What did I know, for instance, about <i>striking a top-gallant-mast,</i> and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have <i>turned in a
+dead-eye,</i> or in the approved nautical style have <i>clapt a seizing on the
+main-stay?</i> What did I know of <i>&ldquo;passing a gammoning,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;reiving a Burton,&rdquo; &ldquo;strapping a shoe-block,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;clearing a foul hawse,&rdquo;</i> and innumerable other intricacies?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of a
+regular trade as a carpenter&rsquo;s or locksmith&rsquo;s. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the sea, of
+seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers, where they see a
+great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy of the Letters of Junius,
+belonging to my father, I remember reading, that coal to supply the city of
+London could be dug at Blackheath, and sold for one half the price that the
+people of London then paid for it; but the Government would not suffer the
+mines to be opened, as it would destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a bit of
+an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the shrouds; he
+must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns for lashings to the
+boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to tie graceful bows and knots,
+such as <i>Matthew Walker&rsquo;s roses,</i> and <i>Turk&rsquo;s heads;</i> he
+must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the halyards; he must be a
+sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing rigging; he must be a
+carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of a yard in case of emergency;
+he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend the sails; a ropemaker, to twist
+<i>marline</i> and <i>Spanish foxes;</i> a blacksmith, to make hooks and
+thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must be a sort of Jack of all trades, in
+order to master his own. And this, perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is
+pretty much the case with all things else; for you know nothing till you know
+all; which is the reason we never know anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar to his
+calling&mdash;<i>fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
+palms, heavers,</i> and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries with
+him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The estimation in which a ship&rsquo;s crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one who is a
+clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those who merely
+<i>&ldquo;hand, reef, and steer,&rdquo;</i> that is, run aloft, furl sails,
+haul ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is <i>&ldquo;a
+sailor-man&rdquo;</i> which means that he not only knows how to reef a topsail,
+but is an artist in the rigging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that these
+things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had only shipped
+for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too; and it was not worth
+while to teach <i>me</i> any thing, the fruit of which instructions could be
+only reaped by the next ship I might belong to. All they wanted of me was the
+good-will of my muscles, and the use of my backbone&mdash;comparatively small
+though it was at that time&mdash;by way of a lever, for the above-mentioned
+artists to employ when wanted. Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in
+the rigging, I was set to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant
+service it is a religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something
+or other, never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a bowline,
+to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me a most
+uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality attending the
+various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they <i>would</i> drop out of
+my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers seemed unlimited:
+also the blessings and benedictions I received from the chief mate for my
+clumsiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which hempen
+business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the gallows; or
+whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and whiled away
+the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my hands were plying, and
+repeating Lord Byron&rsquo;s Address to the Ocean, which I had often spouted on
+the stage at the High School at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in the
+spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All but the <i>&ldquo;turning out&rdquo;</i> or rising from your berth when the
+watch was called at night&mdash;<i>that</i> I never fancied. It was a sort of
+acquaintance, which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless,
+miserable business, truly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below to
+sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied limbs, you
+are started up&mdash;it seems but the next instant after closing your
+lids&mdash;and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark and,
+perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the forecastle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least the
+golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is usually deemed a
+comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one is conscious that he is
+so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little private arrangement with the
+Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch, just to step below occasionally,
+and shake me, and whisper in my ear&mdash;<i>&ldquo;Watch below, Buttons; watch
+below&rdquo;&mdash;</i>which pleasantly reminded me of the delightful fact.
+Then I would turn over on my side, and take another nap; and in this manner I
+enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to the other sailor&rsquo;s one. I
+recommend the plan to all landsmen contemplating a voyage to sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could not be
+avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on deck, exhilarated
+by the prospect of changing places with us, would call the watch in a most
+provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand, bear a hand
+with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine shower-bath here on
+deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting cold!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers would
+reply with&mdash;&ldquo;Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don&rsquo;t be in such
+a hurry, now. You feel sweet, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; with other exclamations,
+some of which were full of fury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of the
+ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became the wits and
+jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br/>
+HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen days,
+employed us about thirty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was in
+sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard, but could
+see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast. Was that Ireland?
+Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing startling. If
+<i>that&rsquo;s</i> the way a foreign country looks, I might as well have staid
+at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not say; but
+I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and wonderful. However,
+there it was; and as the light increased and the ship sailed nearer and nearer,
+the land began to magnify, and I gazed at it with increasing interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before Lord
+Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I thought of Curran,
+Grattan, Plunket, and O&rsquo;Connell; I thought of my uncle&rsquo;s ostler,
+Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the gallant Albion, tost
+to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I thought I should very much like
+to leave the ship and visit Dublin and the Giant&rsquo;s Causeway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it; but it
+was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any other boat would
+have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary man in it was actually a
+born native of the land in sight; that in all probability he had never been in
+America, and knew nothing about my friends at home, I began to think that he
+looked somewhat strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing distance,
+cried out&mdash;&ldquo;Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain&rsquo;t ye, my
+beautiful sailors?&rdquo; And concluded by calling upon us to stop and heave a
+rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the mate
+accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the stranger kept
+hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, &ldquo;pay out! pay out, my
+honeys; ah! but you&rsquo;re noble fellows!&rdquo; Till at last the mate asked
+him why he did not come alongside, adding, &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you enough rope
+yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sure and I have,&rdquo; replied the fisherman, &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s
+time for Pat to cut and run!&rdquo; and so saying, his knife severed the rope,
+and with a Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before
+the wind, and bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!&rdquo; cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere; fairly
+robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced travelers
+certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs and bass-wood
+pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were any more Hibernians
+like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as well give it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of purple
+mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could this be really Wales?&mdash;Wales?&mdash;and I thought of the Prince of
+Wales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was looking at,
+with the identical eyes in my own head?&mdash;And then I thought of a
+grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this queen at
+Bunker&rsquo;s Hill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly like the
+general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead and
+Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had, was ahead; so
+we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the water, and always hovering
+in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance, which might have been a fort,
+or a light-house. I lost myself in conjectures as to what sort of people might
+be tenanting that lonely edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near our
+destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New York
+pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a plethoric
+looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing through the
+water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner, that bade us adieu
+off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve other pilots, fellows with
+shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats, who sat grouped together on deck
+like a fire-side of bears, wintering in Aroostook. They must have had fine
+sociable times, though, together; cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of
+Liverpool-bound vessels; smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and
+spinning yarns; till at last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of
+different ships, and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some
+Liverpool taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had been some
+wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for here was a real live
+Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon fell to ordering us
+here and there, and swearing vociferously in a language quite familiar to me; I
+began to think him very common-place, and considerable of a bore after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After running till about midnight, we <i>&ldquo;hove-to&rdquo;</i> near the
+mouth of the Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the
+flood; and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth, is
+quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed immense
+buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and shadowy shapes,
+like Ossian&rsquo;s ghosts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while the
+fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a mysterious
+interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a great bell, whose
+slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the solemn roll of the billows.
+I thought I had never heard so boding a sound; a sound that seemed to speak of
+judgment and the resurrection, like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the vaults
+of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous <i>Bett-Buoy,</i>
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow, according to
+the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a moderate breeze, it
+tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like the tocsin, warning all
+mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of dirges for the past, than of
+monitions for the future; and no one can give ear to it, without thinking of
+the sailors who sleep far beneath it at the bottom of the deep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon, passing two
+lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew near the town, and at
+last, came to anchor in the stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which seemed very
+deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most unexpected
+resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New York. There was
+nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There they stood; a row of
+calm and collected ware-houses; very good and substantial edifices, doubtless,
+and admirably adapted to the ends had in view by the builders; but plain,
+matter-of-fact ware-houses, nevertheless, and that was all that could be said
+of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a Leaning
+Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these edifices I must
+confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise, looking about
+him delighted, exclaimed, &ldquo;Why, this &rsquo;ere is a considerable
+place&mdash;I&rsquo;m <i>dummed if</i> it ain&rsquo;t quite a place.&mdash;Why,
+them &rsquo;ere houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afriky,
+all hollow; nothing like this in <i>Madagasky,</i> I tell you;&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+<i>dummed,</i> boys if Liverpool ain&rsquo;t a city!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands with
+the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the impression, that
+Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some swamp, and whose
+inhabitants turned their attention principally to the cultivation of log-wood
+and curing of flying-fish. For that any great commercial city existed three
+thousand miles from home, was a thing, of which Larry had never before had a
+<i>&ldquo;realizing sense.&rdquo;</i> He was accordingly astonished and
+delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for the country which
+could boast so extensive a town. Instead of holding Queen Victoria on a par
+with the Queen of Madagascar, as he had been accustomed to do; he ever after
+alluded to that lady with feeling and respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to kindle no
+enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They looked around them
+with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as you or I would, if, after a
+morning&rsquo;s absence round the corner, we found ourselves returning home.
+Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages to Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them stept a
+neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty years of age, I
+should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among the sailors, she inquired
+for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was forthcoming, and saluted her by the
+mellifluous appellation of <i>Sally.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had often
+assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse of his; and
+that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of seeing her. But having
+heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen, and their having wives
+and sweethearts in every port, the round world over; and having been an
+eye-witness to a nuptial parting between this very Max and a lady in New York;
+I put down this relation of his, for what I thought it might reasonably be
+worth. What was my astonishment, therefore, to see this really decent, civil
+woman coming with a neat parcel of Max&rsquo;s shore clothes, all washed,
+plaited, and ironed, and ready to put on at a moment&rsquo;s warning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of pleasure,
+which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife after long
+separations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself in New
+York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down into the
+forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having exchanged her
+bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and this was precisely
+what the New York wife had done for Max, not thirty days previous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and approved
+herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and trowsers, a capital
+tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very well-behaved, discreet, and
+reputable woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York wife, to
+have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and equally devoted to
+the keeping in good order Max&rsquo;s wardrobe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg had done;
+and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as Sally had greeted
+him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives never belonged to one
+man; they never quarreled, or had so much as a difference of any kind; the
+whole broad Atlantic being between them; and Max was equally polite and civil
+to both. For many years, he had been going Liverpool and New York voyages,
+plying between wife and wife with great regularity, and sure of receiving a
+hearty domestic welcome on either side of the ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way immoral,
+I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject. But I never did so
+again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and after rating me soundly for
+meddling in concerns not my own, concluded by asking me triumphantly, whether
+<i>old King Sol,</i> as he called the son of David, did not have a whole
+frigate-full of wives; and that being the case, whether he, a poor sailor, did
+not have just as good a right to have two? &ldquo;What was not wrong then, is
+right now,&rdquo; said Max; &ldquo;so, mind your eye, Buttons, or I&rsquo;ll
+crack your pepper-box for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br/>
+HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up the
+anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming against other
+ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and about dark, succeeded
+in working up to a berth in <i>Prince&rsquo;s Dock.</i> The hawsers and
+tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go ashore, select their
+boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary regulations
+of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on board the vessels
+within them; and hence, though the sailors are supposed to sleep in the
+forecastle, yet they must get their meals ashore, or live upon cold potatoes.
+To a ship, the American merchantmen adopt the former plan; the owners, of
+course, paying the landlord&rsquo;s bill; which, in a large crew remaining at
+Liverpool more than six weeks, as we of the Highlander did, forms no
+inconsiderable item in the expenses of the voyage. Other ships,
+however&mdash;the economical Dutch and Danish, for instance, and sometimes the
+prudent Scotch&mdash;feed their luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same
+fare which they give them at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked,
+which, indeed, is but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce
+the scurvy. A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with immeasurable
+disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if their captains treated
+them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time, I felt
+dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my eyes and
+lungs. As for <i>stepping</i> on it, that was out of the question, in the
+well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have an
+opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into the country;
+and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal loam&mdash;but not
+till then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this street,
+and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane, filled with
+boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we stopped before the sign of
+a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded bunch of grapes and a
+bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn and American Eagle, lying down
+by each other, like the lion and lamb in the millennium.&mdash;A very judicious
+and tasty device, showing a delicate apprehension of the propriety of
+conciliating American sailors in an English boarding-house; and yet in no way
+derogating from the honor and dignity of England, but placing the two nations,
+indeed, upon a footing of perfect equality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a young
+unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding up one paw, as
+if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of basket-hilted,
+low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing by, what this animal
+meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he answered, &ldquo;Why, youngster,
+don&rsquo;t you know what that means? It&rsquo;s a young jackass, limping off
+with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down American
+mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a buxom English
+wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and not the sailor, proved
+to be the head of the establishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among the seamen
+went by the name of <i>&ldquo;Handsome Mary.&rdquo;</i> But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business personage of
+the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and conducted all the
+more important arrangements, yet she was by no means an Amazon to her husband,
+if she <i>did</i> play a masculine part in other matters. No; and the more is
+the pity, poor Mary seemed too much attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a
+termagant. Often she went about her household concerns with the tears in her
+eyes, when, after a fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been
+beating her. The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him
+a thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do so, as
+Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar of his
+stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared upon you on one
+side, ready to entrap all guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box, made of a
+smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted up like a
+portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long; and when customers
+grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself, pouring down mug after mug, as
+if he took himself for one of his own quarter-casks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then they
+would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in concert. This
+pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a round, sleek, oily
+head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a lusty troller of
+ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean his waddling bulk partly
+out of the sentry-box, singing:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,<br/>
+    Can hurt me if I wold,<br/>
+I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt<br/>
+    In jolly good ale and old,&mdash;<br/>
+I stuff my skin so full within,<br/>
+    Of jolly good ale and old.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Or this,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Four wines and brandies I detest,<br/>
+Here&rsquo;s richer juice from barley press&rsquo;d.<br/>
+It is the quintessence of malt,<br/>
+And they that drink it want no salt.<br/>
+Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,<br/>
+And water henceforth you&rsquo;ll forswear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances with
+the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob Still, daily
+eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his paunch, and enthrones
+himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule with thy spouse?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs pour out as
+the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air in a vessel is
+displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and dries up
+the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain and demonstrable,
+that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates differently upon them from
+what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room on one
+side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a courtesy, and
+received the compliments of several old guests among our crew. She then
+disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates were now engaged in
+tippling, and talking with numerous old acquaintances of theirs in the
+neighborhood, who thronged about the door, I remained alone in the little room,
+meditating profoundly upon the fact, that I was now seated upon an English
+bench, under an English roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of
+the English empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room, with one
+small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a smoky, untidy yard,
+bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was horrible with pieces of
+broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the ceiling.
+The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless succession of
+vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the apartment. By way of a
+pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map was hung against it,
+representing in faded colors the flags of all nations. From the street came a
+confused uproar of ballad-singers, bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this is England?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord mayors, and
+coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby races, and the dukes
+and duchesses, and the Count d&rsquo;Orsays, which, from all my reading, I had
+been in the habit of associating with England? Not the most distant glimpse of
+them was to be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to see the
+sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is not going to
+send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St. James&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a sailor
+were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go <i>round</i> the world,
+without going <i>into</i> it; and their reminiscences of travel are only a dim
+recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe, parallel with the
+Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle; hover about the edges of
+terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and pier-heads. They would dream as
+little of traveling inland to see Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would
+of sending a car overland to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from room to
+room, in shrill tones exclaiming, &ldquo;Supper, supper ready.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor. Three tall
+brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of what had once been
+sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul anchors, lovers&rsquo; sonnets,
+and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against the wainscot in a row, were the
+four knaves of cards, each Jack putting his best foot foremost as usual. What
+these signified I never heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of solids
+and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?&mdash;the sailors,
+who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles&rsquo; shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway was a
+similar dish, heavily laden with farmers&rsquo; slices of head-cheese; and at
+the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over tier.
+Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled potatoes, eggs by
+the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand adjoining, was an ample reserve
+of every thing on the supper table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of beef-steaks;
+curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting down before the
+head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the girls
+who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing to take; and I
+would thank her for one. She replied that it was too late for tea; but she
+would get me a cup of <i>&ldquo;swipes&rdquo;</i> if I wanted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not knowing what <i>&ldquo;swipes&rdquo;</i> might be, I thought I would run
+the risk and try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour
+flavor, as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never patronized
+<i>swipes</i> again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it
+was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my shipmates, who
+pronounced it good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this <i>stripes, as I</i>
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of beer; or
+the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not remember now what
+they said it was, precisely. I only know, that <i>swipes</i> was my
+abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it as answering to the
+name itself; which is certainly significant of something vile. But it is drunk
+in large quantities by the poor people about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some
+degree, accounts for their poverty.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.<br/>
+REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The ship remained in Prince&rsquo;s Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the general
+tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and will then proceed
+to note down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and impressions of
+things as they are recalled to me now, after the lapse of so many years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our stay in
+the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a pleasant morning from
+the <i>Arms Hotel</i>, I believe it was, where he boarded; and after lounging
+about the ship, giving orders to his Prime Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief
+mate, he would saunter back to his drawing-rooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his pocket, I
+inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush of his cheeks,
+that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which Liverpool is famous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad, roystering nights
+they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have delighted in. For company over
+the cabin-table, he would have four or five whiskered sea-captains, who kept
+the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all the time. And once, the whole
+company were found under the table at four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and
+were put to bed and tucked in by the two mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed
+with our woolly Doctor of Divinity, the black cook, that they should have been
+ashamed of themselves; but there is no shame in some sea-captains, who only
+blush after the third bottle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said something
+courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer, who staid on board
+of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house officer;
+trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping on the transom
+with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent smuggling; but he used to
+smuggle himself ashore very often, when, according to law, he should have been
+at his post on board ship. But no wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine
+feelings, altogether above his situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse
+than driving geese to water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down; then we had
+an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at the rigging, or
+picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other, never mind how trivial,
+till twelve o&rsquo;clock, when we went to dinner. At half-past nine we resumed
+work; and finally <i>knocked off</i> at four o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon,
+unless something particular was in hand. And after four o&rsquo;clock, we could
+go where we pleased, and were not required to be on board again till next
+morning at daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were light
+enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some employment for
+us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving us from
+that; and all the while the men&rsquo;s wages ran on, as at sea. Sundays we had
+to ourselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships in
+Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure. They live
+ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome exercise in the
+morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and Havre, are
+the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take. Because, in New York
+he receives his month&rsquo;s advance; in Liverpool, another; both of which, in
+most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the time his voyage terminates, he
+generally has but little coming to him; sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a
+long voyage, say to India or China, his wages accumulate; he has more
+inducements to economize, and far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is
+paid off at last, he goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most abounds in all
+the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which make the hapless
+mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords, bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps,
+and boarding-house loungers, the land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while
+the land-rats and mice constantly nibble at his purse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are not to
+be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant parts of
+the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and attractions, and
+extolling it above all other seaports in the world. For in Liverpool they find
+their Paradise&mdash;not the well known street of that name&mdash;and one of
+them told me he would be content to lie in Prince&rsquo;s Dock till <i>he hove
+up anchor</i> for the world to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever prove a
+most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before the bane is
+removed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character, ignorance,
+and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless and alone in the
+world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are almost constantly beyond
+the reach of their good influences; consider that after the rigorous
+discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations of a voyage, they are set adrift
+in a foreign port, and exposed to a thousand enticements, which, under the
+circumstances, would be hard even for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue
+went about on crutches; consider that by their very vocation they are shunned
+by the better classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and
+improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must very soon
+perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very promising one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those chronic
+evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by ameliorating the moral
+organization of all civilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels, and
+launched into the docks; though the &ldquo;Boatswain&rsquo;s Mate&rdquo; and
+other clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains in the
+navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical boarding-houses
+are provided for them; though the parsimony of ship-owners has seconded the
+really sincere and pious efforts of Temperance Societies, to take away from
+seamen their old rations of grog while at sea:&mdash;notwithstanding all these
+things, and many more, the relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to
+the rest of mankind, seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance, that
+unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one class makes in
+sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because the sailor, who to-day
+steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the Atlantic, is a somewhat
+different man from the exaggerated sailors of Smollett, and the men who fought
+with Nelson at Copenhagen, and survived to riot themselves away at North Corner
+in Plymouth;&mdash;because the modem tar is not quite so gross as heretofore,
+and has shaken off some of his shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney
+queue:&mdash;therefore, in the estimation of some observers, he has begun to
+see the evils of his condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon a closer
+scrutiny, it will be seen that he has but drifted along with that great tide,
+which, perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of
+his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to society at
+large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as indispensable. But
+however easy and delectable the springs upon which the insiders pleasantly
+vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and glossy the door-panels; yet,
+for all this, the wheels must still revolve in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No
+contrivance, no sagacity can lift <i>them</i> out of the mire; for upon
+something the coach must be bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe; they
+are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of fruits and wines
+and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies,
+merchants, tourists, and scholars to their destination: they are a bridge of
+boats across the Atlantic; they are the <i>primum mobile</i> of all commerce;
+and, in short, were they to emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon,
+almost every thing would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis,
+and the orators in the American Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that fellow
+staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun him, and
+account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you throw open your
+parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a season ticket to your pew
+in church?&mdash;No. You will do no such thing; but at a distance, you will
+perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the building of a hospital, to
+accommodate sailors already broken down; or for the distribution of excellent
+books among tars who can not read. And the very mode and manner in which such
+charities are made, bespeak, more than words, the low estimation in which
+sailors are held. It is useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the
+refuse and offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view of them is
+principally had through romances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up from the
+mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems and programmes of
+the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for with such systems, the
+thought of lifting them up seems almost as hopeless as that of growing the
+grape in Nova Zembla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who toil for
+his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his friend in the end;
+and though sometimes he would almost seem as a neglected step-son of heaven,
+permitted to run on and riot out his days with no hand to restrain him, while
+others are watched over and tenderly cared for; yet we feel and we know that
+God is the true Father of all, and that none of his children are without the
+pale of his care.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.<br/>
+REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Among the odd volumes in my father&rsquo;s library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a great
+many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of studying them,
+and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint embellishments and plates, and
+staring at the strange title-pages, some of which I thought resembled the
+mustached faces of foreigners. Among others was a Parisian-looking, faded,
+pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge here and there effaced upon its now thin and
+attenuated cheeks, entitled, <i>&ldquo;Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de
+L&rsquo;Ancien et du Nouveau Paris: Miroir Fidèle&rdquo;</i> also a
+time-darkened, mossy old book, in marbleized binding, much resembling
+verd-antique, entitled, <i>&ldquo;Itinéraire Instructif de Rome, ou Description
+Générale des Monumens Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus
+Remarquables de Peinteur, de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Célébre
+Ville;&rdquo;</i> on the russet title-page is a vignette representing a barren
+rock, partly shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the
+lee of the rock and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless
+foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious twins; a
+pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground, with locked arms, eagerly
+engaged at their absorbing occupation; a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from
+a bough, and the wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed of
+barn-yard cows; the work is published <i>&ldquo;Avec privilege du Souverain
+Pontife.&rdquo;</i> There was also a velvet-bound old volume, in brass clasps,
+entitled, <i>&ldquo;The Conductor through Holland&rdquo;</i> with a plate of
+the Stadt House; also a venerable <i>&ldquo;Picture of London&rdquo;</i>
+abounding in representations of St. Paul&rsquo;s, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall
+Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover, reminding one of
+the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an elaborate title-page, full of
+printer&rsquo;s flourishes, in emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip,
+entitled, in part, <i>&ldquo;The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout
+England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by order of His Majesty&rsquo;s
+Postmaster-General: This work describes the Cities, Market and Borough and
+Corporate Towns, and those at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of
+the Mails&rsquo; arrival and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the
+Metropolis from which the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply
+post-horses and carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen&rsquo;s Seats
+situated near the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton,
+and Margate.&rdquo;</i> It is dedicated <i>&ldquo;To the Right Honorable the
+Earls of Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships&rsquo; Most Obliged,
+Obedient, and Obsequious Servant, John Gary,</i> 1798.&rdquo; Also a green
+pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms on the cover,
+looking like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, &ldquo;A
+<i>Description of York, its Antiquities and Public Buildings, particularly the
+Cathedral; compiled with great pains from the most authentic
+records.&rdquo;</i> Also a small scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum
+binding, and with a frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and
+turrets of King&rsquo;s College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, <i>&ldquo;The Cambridge Guide:
+its Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
+and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.&rdquo;</i> Also a pamphlet,
+with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly higgledy-piggledy
+group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an accurate representation
+of the <i>&ldquo;North or Grand Front of Blenheim,&rdquo;</i> and entitled,
+&ldquo;A <i>Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
+Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and
+Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General
+Description of the famous China Gallery,</i> &amp;.; <i>with an Essay on Landscape
+Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a New and Elegant
+Plan of the Great Park.&rdquo;</i> And lastly, and to the purpose, there was a
+volume called &ldquo;THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond associations
+connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to my
+boyhood,&mdash;the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned over
+amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing sadness
+steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer myself, ere
+I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer&rsquo;s shambles. I will, my
+beloved,&mdash;old family relic that you are;&mdash;till you drop leaf from
+leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf somewhere, though I
+have no bench for myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an <i>18mo;</i> it is bound in green
+morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and tarnished
+with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of red, like little
+cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an incurable wound upon the
+back. There is no lettering outside; so that he who lounges past my humble
+shelves, seldom dreams of opening the anonymous little book in green. There it
+stands; day after day, week after week, year after year; and no one but myself
+regards it. But I make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But let us open the volume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and falling
+air-castles? Ah, no!&mdash;these are all part and parcel of the precious book,
+which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile sonnets, I
+might write under this horse, <i>&ldquo;Drawn at the age of three
+years,&rdquo;</i> and under this autograph, <i>&ldquo;Executed at the age of
+eight.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and the
+hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin&rsquo;s? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain
+of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin&rsquo;s ditty are mine; this
+hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so fast; I did
+not mean to tell that yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded indeed,
+stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father&rsquo;s hand-writing,
+the following:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WALTER REDBURN.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Riddough&rsquo;s Royal Hotel,<br/>
+Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous memoranda
+in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore indubitably my
+father&rsquo;s, which he must have made at various times during his stay in
+Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old, midsummer interest to me:
+and though, from the numerous effacements, it is much like cross-reading to
+make them out; yet, I must here copy a few at random:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td></td><td>    </td><td>£</td><td>s.</td><td>d</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Guide-Book</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td>3</td><td>6</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Dinner at the Star and Garter</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>10</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)</i></td><td>    </td><td>2</td><td>6</td><td>3</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Gratuities</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>4</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Hack</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td>4</td><td>6</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Thompson&rsquo;s Seasons</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>5</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Library</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>1</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Boat on the river</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>6</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><i>Port wine and cigar</i></td><td>    </td><td></td><td></td><td>4</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p class="p2">
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.</i><br/>
+<i>Call upon Mr. Morille same day.</i><br/>
+<i>Leave card at Colonel Digby&rsquo;s on Tuesday.</i><br/>
+<i>Theatre Friday night&mdash;Richard III. and new farce.</i><br/>
+<i>Present letter at Miss L&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo;s on Tuesday.</i><br/>
+<i>Call on Sampson &amp; Wilt, Friday.</i><br/>
+<i>Get my draft on London cashed.</i><br/>
+<i>Write home by the Princess.</i><br/>
+<i>Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt&rsquo;s.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the British
+Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is <i>&ldquo;A Plan of
+the Town of Liverpool.&rdquo;</i> But there seems little plan in the confined
+and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks irregularly scattered
+along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a peaceful stream of shaded
+line engraving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish white: a
+desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to populate it with
+all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space designated by that spot is
+now, doubtless, completely built up in Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all
+directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked
+<i>&ldquo;Riddough&rsquo;s Hotel,&rdquo;</i> the house my father stopped at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow the
+lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and penetrate with
+them into the narrowest courts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a foreign
+land; but attended St. John&rsquo;s Church near the Hay-market, and other
+places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in Duke-street,
+the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that he called to pay his
+respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian, poet, and banker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and come upon
+the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a piece of landscape,
+representing a loosely clad lady in sandals, pensively seated upon a bleak rock
+on the sea shore, supporting her head with one hand, and with the other,
+exhibiting to the stranger an oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a
+strange bird, with this motto elastically stretched for a
+border&mdash;<i>&ldquo;Deus nobis haec otia fecit.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation of a
+now extinct fowl, called the <i>&ldquo;Liver,&rdquo;</i> said to have inhabited
+a <i>&ldquo;pool,&rdquo;</i> which antiquarians assert once covered a good part
+of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool,
+Liverpool derives its name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full sail; and
+on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to roll over a huge
+bale of goods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following title
+complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a facsimile:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>The Picture<br/>
+of Liverpool:<br/>
+or, Stranger&rsquo;s Guide<br/>
+and Gentleman&rsquo;s Pocket Companion<br/>
+</i><b> FOR THE TOWN.<br/>
+</b> Embellished<br/>
+With Engravings<br/>
+By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.<br/>
+Liverpool:<br/>
+Printed in Swift&rsquo;s Court,<br/>
+And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.<br/>
+<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time bowing,
+informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to previous editions of
+the work; and quotes <i>&ldquo;testimonies of respect which had lately appeared
+in various quarters</i> &mdash;<i>the British Critic, Review, and the seventh
+volume of the Beauties of England and Wales&rdquo;&mdash;</i>and concludes by
+expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition might
+<i>&ldquo;render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy also
+of the subject it is intended to illustrate.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place of
+writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope <i>Place, 1st Sept.</i>
+1803.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of the
+day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age, occupation,
+and name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author must
+needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true fame, since
+he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I find him out now,
+sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him a headstone, and record
+upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that his noblest epitaph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue written by
+the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon the opening of the
+Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<i>&ldquo;Where Mersey&rsquo;s stream, long winding o&rsquo;er the plain,<br/>
+Pours his full tribute to the circling main,<br/>
+A band of fishers chose their humble seat;<br/>
+Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,<br/>
+Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,<br/>
+They braved the billows for precarious food:<br/>
+Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,<br/>
+Their nets and little boats their only store.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations, and
+old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer&rsquo;s Shipwreck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a gentleman, but
+a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true city patriotism; for in
+his <i>&ldquo;Survey of</i><i> the Town&rdquo;</i> are nine thickly printed
+pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public of so
+long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by saying, that
+<i>&ldquo;the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at present but
+little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no doubt be highly
+acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this noble epic is written
+with great felicity of expression and the sweetest delicacy of
+feeling.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the author
+of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But that was years
+ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a reflection to insinuate
+itself into my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately style,
+and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of Liverpool and the
+Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and bales, and anchors; and after
+descanting upon the abject times, when <i>&ldquo;his noble waves, inglorious,
+Mersey rolled,&rdquo;</i> the poet breaks forth like all Parnassus with:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<i>&ldquo;Now o&rsquo;er the wondering world her name resounds,<br/>
+From northern climes to India&rsquo;s distant bounds&mdash;<br/>
+Where&rsquo;er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;<br/>
+Where&rsquo;er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves;<br/>
+Where&rsquo;er the honored flood extends his tide,<br/>
+That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride.<br/>
+Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns,<br/>
+And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines:<br/>
+&rsquo;Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow,<br/>
+And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough;<br/>
+In every clime her prosperous fleets are known,<br/>
+She makes the wealth of every clime her own.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<i>&ldquo;And here</i> R*s*o*, <i>with genius all his own,<br/>
+New tracks explores, and all before unknown?&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted bard of the
+Mersey, seem to have nourished the warmest appreciation of the fact, that to
+their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation which gracefully embellished
+its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He is called the modern Guicciardini
+of the modern Florence, and his histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are
+spoken of with classical admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by informing the
+impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of Liverpool; so that,
+at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on that head. It then goes on
+to give an account of the history and antiquities of the town, beginning with a
+record in the <i>Doomsday-Book</i> of William the Conqueror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the uttermost
+antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned to stop in its
+researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would have pushed on
+resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of Uz, and Adam; and
+finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the soil of Liverpool was
+created with the creation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of antiquarian
+research, is the pious author&rsquo;s moralizing reflections upon an
+interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the inhabitants sent a
+memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a subsidy, wherein they style
+themselves <i>&ldquo;her majesty&rsquo;s poor decayed town of
+Liverpool.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book, bearing
+every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how this piece of
+antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous antiquities, I am forcibly
+reminded that the world is indeed growing old. And when I turn to the second
+chapter, <i>&ldquo;On the increase of the town, and number of
+inhabitants,&rdquo;</i> and then skim over page after page throughout the
+volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur of a place, which,
+since then, has more than quadrupled in population, opulence, and splendor, and
+whose present inhabitants must look back upon the period here spoken of with a
+swelling feeling of immeasurable superiority and pride, I am filled with a
+comical sadness at the vanity of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of
+to-day is the corner-stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter&rsquo;s church was
+built in great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however
+imposing, we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander
+domes of posterity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool
+of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude
+of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach,
+and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence
+and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus
+to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young
+saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad
+boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then
+obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and going
+still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as
+a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style of this
+<i>&ldquo;Picture of Liverpool,&rdquo;</i> so different from the brief, pert,
+and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I shall now
+insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as it is entertaining
+in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare information, which the
+reader may need, concerning the famous town, to which I made <i>my first
+voyage.</i> And I think that with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself
+am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to
+mince his substantial baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my
+own; and so, pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored
+guide-book its due.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how can the printer&rsquo;s art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader&rsquo;s eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No! by my father&rsquo;s sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond family
+reminiscences, I will not! I will <i>not</i> quote thee, old Morocco, before
+the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities would only be
+skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I should be
+charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from a guide-book-the most
+vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.<br/>
+WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN</h2>
+
+<p>
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing that
+from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most probably ship
+on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the infallible
+clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place, I
+grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town, as set
+forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the columns of
+statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored over them, as I used
+to do over my multiplication-table. For I was determined to make the whole
+subject my own; and not be content with a mere smattering of the thing, as is
+too much the custom with most students of guide-books. Then I perused one by
+one the elaborate descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared
+the text with the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated
+each other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so impressed
+every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of recognizing the
+originals in a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very guide-book,
+and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its fidelity proved beyond
+a peradventure; I could not but think that I was building myself up in an
+unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as I had familiarized myself with
+the map, and could turn sharp corners on it, with marvelous confidence and
+celerity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take pleasant
+afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and up Great
+George&rsquo;s, stopping at various places of interest and attraction. I began
+to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar seemed all the features of
+the map. And though some of the streets there depicted were thickly involved,
+endlessly angular and crooked, like the map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I
+made no doubt, that I could march through them in the darkest night, and even
+run for the most distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear delusion!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty years
+old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove but a
+miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the Liverpool my father
+saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his son Wellingborough was
+sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so accustomed had I been to associate
+my old morocco guide-book with the town it described, that the bare thought of
+there being any discrepancy, never entered my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my guide-book
+to see how the map would compare with the identical place itself. But they bore
+not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I, this is owing to my taking a
+horizontal view, instead of a bird&rsquo;s-eye survey. So, never mind old
+guide-book, <i>you,</i> at least, are all right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew went
+ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince&rsquo;s Dock&rsquo;s
+walls; and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to compare notes,
+when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and my shipmates were
+standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my
+infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding, that it was
+well worth the intelligent stranger&rsquo;s while to visit it for the purpose
+of beholding the guard relieved in the evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle? and this
+was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet not a red coat was
+to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one small discrepancy, condemn
+the old family servant who had so faithfully served my own father before me;
+and when I learned that this tavern went by the name of <i>&ldquo;The Old Fort
+Tavern;&rdquo;</i> and when I was told that many of the old stones were yet in
+the walls, I almost completely exonerated my guide-book from the
+half-insinuated charge of misleading me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought I, my
+guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down lane, even unto
+the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions &ldquo;with
+Eastern scrupulosity,&rdquo; and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman&rsquo;s pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of clothing, and
+particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a very strange compound
+indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier, to one of the sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them not;
+and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant anticipations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have been the
+reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken sailor passing,
+exclaimed, <i>&ldquo;Eyes right! quick step there!&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and one of
+the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon me from his
+sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and newspapers, and hung
+round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued forth in a great hurry,
+crossed my path as I was emerging into the street, and commanded me to
+<i>halt!</i> I obeyed; when scanning my appearance pertinaciously, he desired
+to know where I got that tarpaulin hat, not being able to account for the
+phenomenon of its roofing the head of a broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed
+to my ship, which lay at no great distance; when remarking from my voice that I
+was a Yankee, this faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks are
+extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are perpetrated on
+board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing suspicious, they probe
+into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy <i>&ldquo;shakings,&rdquo;</i>
+and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side out before the
+police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls. And often they will
+search a suspicious looking fellow&rsquo;s clothes, even if he be a very thin
+man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible pockets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where was I going?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough&rsquo;s
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and then,
+with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town, according to the
+dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be performing a filial pilgrimage
+to spots which would be hallowed in my eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward Lord-street,
+where the hotel was situated, according to my authority; and when, taking out
+my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked there, through its whole extent
+with my father&rsquo;s pen; a thousand fond, affectionate emotions rushed
+around my heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my father
+walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry apparel, and marked
+how the people regarded me; the men staring at so grotesque a young stranger,
+and the old ladies, in beaver hats and ruffles, crossing the walk a little to
+shun me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat, buff
+vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of his would ever
+visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was not born then: no,
+when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as thought of; I was not
+included in the census of the universe. My own father did not know me then; and
+had never seen, or heard, or so much as dreamed of me. And that thought had a
+touch of sadness to me; for if it had certainly been, that my own parent, at
+one time, never cast a thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter?
+Poor, poor Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless
+and forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very thought
+of your father&rsquo;s having been here before you, but carries with it the
+reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one whit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on my way,
+till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going under a
+cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness delighted me, and
+filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old Abbeys and Minsters, I
+emerged into the fine quadrangle of the Merchants&rsquo; Exchange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my father
+right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch at my back, into
+the paved square where I stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow the
+passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and overtaking
+him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of Castle-street. But I soon
+checked myself, when remembering that he had gone whither no son&rsquo;s search
+could find him in this world. And then I thought of all that must have happened
+to him since he paced through that arch. What trials and troubles he had
+encountered; how he had been shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last
+died a bankrupt. I looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from
+tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned to my
+guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to a pillar;
+but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This, however, was but a
+slight subsequent erection, which ought not to militate against the general
+character of my friend for comprehensiveness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated upon a
+marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring in the arms of
+Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other on a cannon. Victory is
+dropping a wreath on the dying admiral&rsquo;s brow; while Death, under the
+similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating his bony hand under the
+hero&rsquo;s robe, and groping after his heart. A very striking design, and
+true to the imagination; I never could look at Death without a shudder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures in
+chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of
+humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his knee, and
+his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever feeling better.
+Another has his head buried in despondency, and no doubt looks mournfully out
+of his eyes, but as his face was averted at the time, I could not catch the
+expression. These woe-begone figures of captives are emblematic of
+Nelson&rsquo;s principal victories; but I never could look at their swarthy
+limbs and manacles, without being involuntarily reminded of four African slaves
+in the market-place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the principal
+commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was once supposed to
+have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I remembered that my
+father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting our house in New York, of the
+unhappiness that the discussion of the abolition of this trade had occasioned
+in Liverpool; that the struggle between sordid interest and humanity had made
+sad havoc at the fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and
+even separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father&rsquo;s
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who in
+every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a poem
+<i>(&ldquo;the Wrongs of Africa&rdquo;),</i> several pamphlets; and in his
+place in Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had no small
+share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact, that I
+never went through Chapel-street without going through the little arch to look
+at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to find Lord Nelson still
+falling back; Victory&rsquo;s wreath still hovering over his swordpoint; and
+Death grim and grasping as ever; while the four bronze captives still lamented
+their captivity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I have
+mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an apartment, opening
+from the basement under the colonnade; and, advancing, I perceived that this
+was a news-room, full of files of papers. My love of literature prompted me to
+open the door and step in; but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a
+dignified looking personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I
+deliberated a minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined
+to let him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so called
+from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and turning down
+into Lord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for the hotel.
+How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined, when it is
+considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house at which my father
+stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar, opened his letters, and
+read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen and ladies where the missing
+hotel was; but they only stared and passed on; until I met a mechanic,
+apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear my questions and give me an
+answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Riddough&rsquo;s Hotel?&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;upon my word, I think I
+have heard of such a place; let me see&mdash;yes, yes&mdash;that was the hotel
+where my father broke his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you
+surely can&rsquo;t be inquiring for Riddough&rsquo;s Hotel! What do you want to
+find there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! nothing,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I am much obliged for your
+information&rdquo;&mdash;and away I walked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book; and all my
+previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly half a century
+behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the town, than the map of
+Pompeii.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on which I had
+so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book with the cocked-hat
+corners; the book full of fine old family associations; the book with seventeen
+plates, executed in the highest style of art; this precious book was next to
+useless. Yes, the thing that had guided the father, could not guide the son.
+And I sat down on a shop step, and gave loose to meditation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never forget it.
+This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough&rsquo;s Hotels are forever
+being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are forever shifting.
+This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling up, they say; and who knows
+what your son (if you ever have one) may behold, when he comes to visit
+Liverpool, as long after you as you come after his grandfather. And,
+Wellingborough, as your father&rsquo;s guidebook is no guide for you, neither
+would yours (could you afford to buy a modern one to-day) be a true guide to
+those who come after you. Guide-books, Wellingborough, are the least reliable
+books in all literature; and nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of
+guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the
+thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their
+posterity trace, amid avenues of modem erections; to how few is the old
+guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and the old ones are
+used for waste paper. But there is one Holy Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that
+will never lead you astray, if you but follow it aright; and some noble
+monuments that remain, though the pyramids crumble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and though my
+guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for infallibility, I did not
+treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred pages which had once been a
+beacon to my sire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No.&mdash;Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite, old
+Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old streets in
+the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now and then, concerning
+a Riddough&rsquo;s Hotel, or some other forgotten thing of the past. As I
+fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves more than he chides, my eye
+lighted upon a passage concerning <i>&ldquo;The Old Dock,&rdquo;</i> which much
+aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place without delay: and walking
+on, in what I presumed to be the right direction, at last found myself before a
+spacious and splendid pile of sculptured brown stone; and entering the porch,
+perceived from incontrovertible tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After
+admiring it awhile, I took out my guide-book again; and what was my amazement
+at discovering that, according to its authority, I was entirely mistaken with
+regard to this Custom-house; for precisely where I stood, <i>&ldquo;The Old
+Dock&rdquo;</i> must be standing, and reading on concerning it, I met with this
+very apposite passage:&mdash;<i>&ldquo;The first idea that strikes the stranger
+in coming to this dock, is the singularity of so great a number of ships afloat
+in the very heart of the town, without discovering any connection with the
+sea.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good deal of
+&ldquo;singularity&rdquo; about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that it
+was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem to have no
+<i>connection with the sea!</i> However, the same author went on to say, that
+the <i>&ldquo;astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for awhile, and turn
+to the left.&rdquo;</i> But, right or left, no place answering to the
+description was to be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted for, even
+by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general improvement of the
+town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand, I accosted a policeman
+standing by, and begged him to tell me whether he was acquainted with any place
+in that neighborhood called the <i>&ldquo;Old Dock.&rdquo;</i> The man looked
+at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I was apparently sane, and quite
+civil into the bargain, he whipped his well-polished boot with his rattan,
+pulled up his silver-laced coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of
+the following facts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems that in this place originally stood the <i>&ldquo;pool,&rdquo;</i>
+from which the town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound
+round the greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into the
+&ldquo;Old Dock,&rdquo; for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago,
+it had been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern traveler
+standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of Gomorrah seemed
+reversed, and a lake had been converted into substantial stone and mortar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into your
+pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is several thousand
+leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of improvement. Smell its old morocco
+binding, Wellingborough; does it not smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not
+remind you of Cheops and the Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the
+lost books of Livy, and is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume,
+entitled, <i>&ldquo;The Wars of the Lord&rdquo;</i> quoted by Moses in the
+Pentateuch. Put it up, Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter
+follow your nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and
+thin: and be your ship&rsquo;s mainmast and St. George&rsquo;s spire your
+landmarks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No!&mdash;And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose leaf:
+No, no, I&rsquo;ll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me in
+sight of the venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes behold the
+mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on the
+Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side, covered over
+with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of the noble Derby&rsquo;s
+was now a common jail of the town; and how that circumstance was full of
+suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the water:
+and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the land of
+Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least glimpse of
+priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire but these smoky
+ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a brick-kiln? Why, no
+buildings here look so ancient as the old gable-pointed mansion of my maternal
+grandfather at home, whose bricks were brought from Holland long before the
+revolutionary war! Tis a deceit&mdash;a gull&mdash;a sham&mdash;a hoax! This
+boasted England is no older than the State of New York: if it is, show me the
+proofs&mdash;point out the vouchers. Where&rsquo;s the tower of Julius Caesar?
+Where&rsquo;s the Roman wall? Show me Stonehenge!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in Liverpool; the
+old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of you; you are but a
+sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great tourist, and visit the
+antiquities, in that preposterous shooting-jacket of yours. Indeed, you can
+not, my boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True, true&mdash;that&rsquo;s it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am
+only a common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a weary day&rsquo;s walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer of tea, in which,
+for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.<br/>
+THE DOCKS</h2>
+
+<p>
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince&rsquo;s Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately around
+me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I never tired of
+admiring them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and slip-shod,
+shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks filled my young
+mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure, I could not but be
+struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled thicket of masts along the
+East River; yet, my admiration had been much abated by those irregular,
+unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a reproach and disgrace to the city
+that tolerates them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers of
+stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely inclosed, and many
+of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind the great American chain
+of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, and Superior. The extent
+and solidity of these structures, seemed equal to what I had read of the old
+Pyramids of Egypt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the &ldquo;Wet
+Dock,&rdquo;<a href="#fn1" name="fnref1" id="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> so
+called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected with its design,
+construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London was induced to copy
+after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In magnitude, cost, and
+durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the present day surpass all others
+in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn1" id="fn1"></a> <a href="#fnref1">[1]</a>
+This term&mdash;<i>Wet Dock</i>&mdash;did not originate, (as has been
+erroneously opined by the otherwise learned Bardoldi); from the fact, that
+persons falling into one, never escaped without a soaking; but it is simply
+used, in order to distinguish these docks from the <i>Dry-Dock</i>, where the
+bottoms of ships are repaired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first dock built by the town was the <i>&ldquo;Old Dock,&rdquo;</i> alluded
+to in my Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since
+which period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now flanking
+the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock, like a
+chain of immense fortresses:&mdash;Prince&rsquo;s, George&rsquo;s, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King&rsquo;s, Queen&rsquo;s, and many more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their valor
+did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which Liverpool held so
+large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon its more modern streets,
+certain illustrious names, that Broadway might be proud of:&mdash;Duncan,
+Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names upon
+their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file of most fit
+monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in connection with the
+commerce they defended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone; which,
+useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a name, by having
+it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such monuments are cenotaphs
+indeed; founded far away from the true body of the fame of the hero; who, if he
+be truly a hero, must still be linked with the living interests of his race;
+for the true fame is something free, easy, social, and companionable. They are
+but tomb-stones, that commemorate his death, but celebrate not his life. It is
+well enough that over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives,
+some vast marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having
+lived and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the marble,
+and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build such a pompous
+vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his fame, and an insult to
+his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built in the closet with the letters
+of the alphabet, than even Cheops himself could have founded, with all Egypt
+and Nubia for his quarry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the <i>King&rsquo;s</i>
+and <i>Queens.</i> At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal
+streets in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in
+the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to the
+Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of freedom, they
+were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where King George and his lady
+were solemnly declared unworthy of being immortalized by the village of
+L&mdash;. A country antiquary once told me, that a committee of two barbers
+were deputed to write and inform the distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much answer
+for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince&rsquo;s Dock,
+where the Highlander rested after her passage across the Atlantic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest of all,
+and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it is mostly
+frequented by the American shipping. Here lie the noble New York packets, which
+at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and here lie the Mobile and
+Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river, the
+earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified again as
+materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince&rsquo;s Dock is
+protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive wall; and on the
+side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls, one of which runs along a
+thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed forms an oblong, and may, at a
+guess, be presumed to comprise about fifteen or twenty acres; but as I had not
+the rod of a surveyor when I took it in, I will not be certain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays surrounding it,
+may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the interior from the streets is
+had through several gateways; so that, upon their being closed, the whole dock
+is shut up like a house. From the river, the entrance is through a water-gate,
+and ingress to ships is only to be had, when the level of the dock coincides
+with that of the river; that is, about the time of high tide, as the level of
+the dock is always at that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river, the
+keels of the ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than twenty feet
+above those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course, produces a striking
+effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense ships floating high aloft in
+the heart of a mass of masonry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prince&rsquo;s Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance of
+a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older occupants.
+The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs worn conspicuously
+over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of the various vessels, and
+hail the surrounding strangers in all directions:&mdash; <i>&ldquo;Highlander
+ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer alongside the
+Neptune!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and
+drop astern of the Undaunted!&rdquo;</i> And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates and
+exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of the
+unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed by
+innumerable advantages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the open river,
+through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin forms a sort of
+ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie waiting their turn to enter.
+During a storm, the necessity of this basin is obvious; for it would be
+impossible to <i>&ldquo;dock&rdquo;</i> a ship under full headway from a voyage
+across the ocean. From the turbulent waves, she first glides into the
+ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from thence into the docks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the <i>King&rsquo;s
+Dock,</i> comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at an
+expense of some &pound;20,000.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed the seas,
+related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the ships which carried
+over troops from England to Ireland in King William&rsquo;s war, in 1688,
+entered the King&rsquo;s Dock on the first day of its being opened in 1788,
+after an interval of just one century. She was a dark little brig, called the
+<i>Port-a-Ferry.</i> And probably, as her timbers must have been frequently
+renewed in the course of a hundred years, the name alone could have been all
+that was left of her at the time. A paved area, very wide, is included within
+the walls; and along the edge of the quays are ranges of iron sheds, intended
+as a temporary shelter for the goods unladed from the shipping. Nothing can
+exceed the bustle and activity displayed along these quays during the day;
+bales, crates, boxes, and cases are being tumbled about by thousands of
+laborers; trucks are coming and going; dock-masters are shouting; sailors of
+all nations are singing out at their ropes; and all this commotion is greatly
+increased by the resoundings from the lofty walls that hem in the din.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br/>
+THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled town,
+full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago, an epitome of
+the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even those of Heathendom,
+are represented. For, in itself, each ship is an island, a floating colony of
+the tribe to which it belongs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the globe are
+represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and New Zealand send
+their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway her spruce; and the
+Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and Campeachy, is seen at his
+post by the wheel. Here, under the beneficent sway of the Genius of Commerce,
+all climes and countries embrace; and yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly
+love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious and
+liberal plan of the <i>Astor House.</i> Here ships are lodged at a moderate
+charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure. Here they are
+comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all weathers and secured
+from all calamities. For I can hardly credit a story I have heard, that
+sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the very middle of the docks have
+lost their top-gallant-masts. Whatever the toils and hardships encountered on
+the voyage, whether they come from Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here
+their sufferings are ended, and they take their ease in their watery inn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince&rsquo;s
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects in
+life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn, battered, and
+disabled; others were all a-taunt-o&mdash;spruce, gay, and brilliant, in
+readiness for sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from Glasgow, with
+its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid, thrifty-looking skipper, would be
+replaced by a jovial French hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs,
+and its quarter-deck elastic from much dancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart&rsquo;s or Delmonico&rsquo;s
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its live
+freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending their flocks on
+the hills and downs of New Holland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-boat, but
+with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which looked as if they
+had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard. These little fellows were
+continually coming in with their cargoes for ships bound to America; and lying,
+five or six together, alongside of those lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel
+of red ants about the carcass of a black buffalo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water; and
+frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying through
+the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man at the tiller;
+their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these
+diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a
+three-decker&rsquo;s poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And
+why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was none of the largest,
+it was subject to <i>him;</i> and though his crew might only consist of
+himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a triumph, which the moralists
+of all ages have set above the victories of Alexander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an old-fashioned
+alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses placed in the deck; so
+that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small firmament twinkling with
+astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless, the place is but ill-adapted; a
+sitting, or recumbent position being indispensable to an occupancy of the
+premises. Yet small, low, and narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords
+accommodations to the skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy
+good-wife, seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair, as he
+kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple like this found room
+to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of cherry-cheeked young
+tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling forth, like so many curly
+spaniels from a kennel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher, and fall
+into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house all alone. I
+found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had an eye to having
+things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he invited me down into his
+sanctum to supper; and there we sat together like a couple in a box at an
+oyster-cellar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He, he,&rdquo; he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little
+cask of beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet&mdash;&ldquo;You
+see, Jack, I keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just
+before going to bed, it ain&rsquo;t bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh!
+Jack?&mdash;here now, smack your lips over that, my boy&mdash;have a
+pipe?&mdash;but stop, let&rsquo;s to supper first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping in it
+awhile, and addressing it with&mdash;<i>&ldquo;What cheer here, what
+cheer?&rdquo;</i> at last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a
+jar of butter. And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the
+pitcher of beer in the center. &ldquo;Why that&rsquo;s but a two legged
+table,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;let&rsquo;s make it four.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my soul
+good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and sparkling on his
+nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale, that I almost felt like
+taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now Jack,&rdquo; said he, when supper was over, &ldquo;now Jack, my boy,
+do you smoke?&mdash;Well then, load away.&rdquo; And he handed me a seal-skin
+pouch of tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host&rsquo;s rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He, he, my boy,&rdquo; then said he&mdash;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t never
+have any bugs here, I tell ye: I smokes &rsquo;em all out every night before
+going to bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where may you sleep?&rdquo; said I, looking round, and seeing no
+sign of a bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sleep?&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;why I sleep in my jacket, that&rsquo;s the
+best counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very funny,&rdquo; says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have some more ale?&rdquo; says he; &ldquo;plenty more.&rdquo; &ldquo;No
+more, thank you,&rdquo; says I; &ldquo;I guess I&rsquo;ll go;&rdquo; for what
+with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I began to feel like breathing fresh air.
+Besides, my conscience smote me for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, don&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t go, my boy;
+don&rsquo;t go out into the damp; take an old Christian&rsquo;s advice,&rdquo;
+laying his hand on my shoulder; &ldquo;it won&rsquo;t do. You see, by going out
+now, you&rsquo;ll shake off the ale, and get broad awake again; but if you stay
+here, you&rsquo;ll soon be dropping off for a nice little nap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host&rsquo;s hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that interested
+me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large New York ships
+several days before their sailing, to make every thing comfortable ere
+starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little infants in arms; laughing
+girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute, middle-aged men with pictured
+pipes in their mouths, would be seen mingling together in crowds of five, six,
+and seven or eight hundred in one ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
+ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and rebounding from
+the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you would think you were in a
+cathedral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing the
+songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom of a devout
+race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as they hie to the land
+of the stranger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and valuable
+of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the census of her
+Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from the hills of
+Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the wheat of the Rhine on
+the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a hundred fold increased, may
+return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has been
+settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the prejudices of
+national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim
+her for their own. You can not spill a drop of American blood without spilling
+the blood of the whole world. Be he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or
+Scot; the European who scoffs at an American, calls his own brother
+<i>Raca,</i> and stands in danger of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of
+men, with a bigoted Hebrew nationality&mdash;whose blood has been debased in
+the attempt to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among
+ourselves. No: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand
+noble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world;
+for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are
+without father or mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus and Remus
+for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal paternity; and Caesar
+and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and Shakespeare are as much ours as
+Washington, who is as much the world&rsquo;s as our own. We are the heirs of
+all time, and with all nations we divide our inheritance. On this Western
+Hemisphere all tribes and people are forming into one federated whole; and
+there is a future which shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to
+the old hearthstone in Eden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus&rsquo; time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth&rsquo;s Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God&rsquo;s good pleasure, and in
+the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest must
+come; and our children&rsquo;s children, on the world&rsquo;s jubilee morning,
+shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of Babel
+be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall speak shall be
+the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots; and the dwellers on
+the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions round about; Italians, and
+Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap34"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.<br/>
+THE IRRAWADDY</h2>
+
+<p>
+Among the various ships lying in Prince&rsquo;s Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a <i>&ldquo;country ship,&rdquo;</i> which is
+the name bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and they
+still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak wood, the
+oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, <i>&ldquo;the King of the
+Oaks.&rdquo;</i> The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of
+cotton. She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
+who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a higher
+caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen, this dignitary
+was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace, a cocked hat, and
+drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled by his bare feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating the
+crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice had made
+him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the tackle-rope,
+elastic as cats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher accosted
+me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed it aside,
+making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my motives in paying a
+visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately let me pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the dark-colored
+timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of <i>kayar,</i> or cocoa-nut
+fiber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays, Mahrattas,
+Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round &ldquo;kids&rdquo; full
+of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom, they helped
+themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite another purpose.
+They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I found that several of
+them could also speak very good English. They were a small-limbed, wiry, tawny
+set; and I was informed made excellent seamen, though ill adapted to stand the
+hardships of northern voyaging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from Bombay;
+two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest met their fate
+in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in violent seas, attended
+with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two more had been lost overboard
+from the flying-jib-boom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss of these
+poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would never wear
+monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in the bitterest
+weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about the loss of so many
+sheep by the murrain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three mates,
+master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin, where every
+Sunday they read the Church of England&rsquo;s prayers, while the heathen at
+the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and idols. And thus,
+with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on the forecastle, the
+Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the <i>&ldquo;fancy piece&rdquo;</i>
+astern comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
+while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head&mdash;a
+dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done &ldquo;to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders&rdquo;&mdash;something as work is done in the navy to the
+music of the boatswain&rsquo;s pipe&mdash;the Lascars were set to
+<i>&ldquo;stripping the ship&rdquo;</i> that is, to sending down all her spars
+and ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost drowned
+our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped about aloft,
+chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing much dexterity and
+seamanship in their manner of doing their work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see this
+singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of the
+neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left strict orders
+with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of the Highlander&rsquo;s
+rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the old women with umbrellas,
+who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars, even when they desired to be
+private. These inquisitive old ladies seemed to regard the strange sailors as a
+species of wild animal, whom they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at
+leopards in the Zoological Gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing through the
+Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the wall outside. It
+proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the regulations of the
+docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his vessel. Struck with the
+curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from it, I inquired what he was
+smoking; he replied <i>&ldquo;Joggerry,&rdquo;</i> which is a species of weed,
+used in place of tobacco.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like most
+smokers, I sat down by <i>Dattabdool-mans, as</i> he called himself, and we
+fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when we parted,
+I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it is a Godsend to
+fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you never dreamed of; his
+experiences are like a man from the moon&mdash;wholly strange, a new
+revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an insight into things
+quaint, curious, and marvelous, drop your books of travel, and take a stroll
+along the docks of a great commercial port. Ten to one, you will encounter
+Crusoe himself among the crowds of mariners from all parts of the globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I and my
+Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his account of the
+<i>teakwood</i> and <i>kayar rope,</i> concerning which things I was curious,
+and sought information.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>&ldquo;sagoon&rdquo;</i> as he called the tree which produces the teak,
+grows in its greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another kind
+of wood, the <i>&ldquo;sissor,&rdquo;</i> which supplies most of the
+<i>&ldquo;shin-logs,&rdquo;</i> or &ldquo;knees,&rdquo; and crooked timbers in
+the <i>country ships.</i> The sagoon grows to an immense size; sometimes there
+is fifty feet of trunk, three feet through, before a single bough is put forth.
+Its leaves are very large; and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened
+them to elephants&rsquo; ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them,
+for the purpose of staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier
+than water; it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its
+chief merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
+insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil called
+<i>&ldquo;poonja.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by the
+native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed the European
+artisans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the <i>kayar,</i> of which it
+is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as well for
+ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend&rsquo;s account of it,
+joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially ripe;
+and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both hands, upon a
+sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In this way a boy will
+strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the <i>kayar</i> is not made from
+the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of the nut; which, after
+being long soaked in water, is beaten with mallets, and rubbed together into
+fibers. After this being dried in the sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or
+any similar substance. The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable
+ropes, extremely well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the
+running rigging of a ship; while the same causes, united with its great
+strength and buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the elasticity of the <i>kayar</i> ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm. Hence, as
+the Irrawaddy&rsquo;s shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar told me,
+they were continually setting up or slacking off her standing-rigging,
+according as the weather was cold or warm. And the loss of a foretopmast,
+between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed to this circumstance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian spars
+replaced with Canadian pine, and her <i>kayar</i> shrouds with hempen ones. She
+then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap35"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.<br/>
+GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL</h2>
+
+<p>
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the Dutch
+galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist, high prow and
+stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee traders, and pert
+French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat among modish beavers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the northern
+European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in this
+flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to these, they have
+vessels of a more modern kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and spars,
+so that all over it resembles the <i>&ldquo;bright side&rdquo;</i> or polished
+<i>streak,</i> usually banding round an American ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax and
+elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but on a
+bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make leeway at a sad
+rate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince&rsquo;s Dock; and hardly would I
+gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a still
+more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
+appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built about the
+bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun was a
+curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned by the
+government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an antique, covered
+with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors, eagles; and it had two handles
+near the trunnions, like those of a tureen. The knob on the breach was
+fashioned into a dolphin&rsquo;s head; and by a comical conceit, the touch-hole
+formed the orifice of a human ear; and a stout tympanum it must have had, to
+have withstood the concussions it had heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so that its
+deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors. Thus shut in, its
+hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or mines; especially as her
+men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of ore, which might have been gold
+ore, so scrupulous were they in evening the bushel measures, in which they
+transferred it to the quay; and so particular was the captain, a dark-skinned
+whiskerando, in a Maltese cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with
+his pencil and memorandum-book in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple shirts, and
+arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled about with a
+crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of swearing on board of
+this craft, which was rendered the more reprehensible when she came to moor
+alongside the Floating Chapel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into a
+mariner&rsquo;s church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took the
+place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the steeple, some
+twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to see an old pensioner
+of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the
+Bethel flag, and like the <i>muezzin</i> or cryer of prayers on the top of a
+Turkish mosque, would call the strolling sailors to their devotions; not
+officially, but on his own account; conjuring them not to make fools of
+themselves, but muster round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a
+man-of-war. This old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several
+times, and found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making allusions
+to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of the old hull,
+summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I ever experienced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form one of
+the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting Liverpool to turn
+their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few of them ever think of
+entering these chapels, though they might pass them twenty times in the day,
+some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address them in the open air, from the corners
+of the quays, or wherever they can procure an audience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these congregations, I
+always made a point of joining it; and would find myself surrounded by a motley
+crowd of seamen from all quarters of the globe, and women, and lumpers, and
+dock laborers of all sorts. Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an
+old cask, arrayed in full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England.
+Never have I heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men,
+who, like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and undeniable
+as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men; fine periods are
+vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need to be pressed home by
+plain facts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the clergy in
+question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses, which were leveled
+right at the wants of their auditors, always succeeded in fastening their
+attention. In particular, the two great vices to which sailors are most
+addicted, and which they practice to the ruin of both body and soul; these
+things, were the most enlarged upon. And several times on the docks, I have
+seen a robed clergyman addressing a large audience of women collected from the
+notorious lanes and alleys in the neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend clergy is
+like their divine Master&rsquo;s;&mdash;not to bring the righteous, but sinners
+to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and comfortable
+congregations, before whom they have ministered year after year; and plunge at
+once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and hearts of vice: <i>then</i>
+indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope with; and a victory gained over
+<i>him,</i> would entitle them to a conqueror&rsquo;s wreath. Better to save
+one sinner from an obvious vice that is destroying him, than to indoctrinate
+ten thousand saints. And as from every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines
+of Holy Mary and the Child Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of
+his heaven; even so should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places,
+and at street corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His
+children.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap36"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.<br/>
+THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the <i>&ldquo;Old Church,&rdquo;</i> well
+known to the seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands
+very near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town&rsquo;s
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best preserved
+piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship on
+that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was a
+<i>chapel-of-ease;</i> though from the straight backed pews, there could have
+been but little comfort taken in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St. Nicholas, the
+patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made offerings, to induce his
+saintship to grant them short and prosperous voyages. In the tower is a fine
+chime of bells; and I well remember my delight at first hearing them on the
+first Sunday morning after our arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an
+admonition with it; something like the premonition conveyed to young
+Whittington by Bow Bells. <i>&ldquo;Wellingborough! Wellingborough! you must
+not forget to go to church, Wellingborough! Don&rsquo;t forget, Wellingborough!
+Wellingborough! don&rsquo;t forget.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of every
+Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this illustrate the
+increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same custom now observed, the
+bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and what
+seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with which I regarded
+this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the grave-yard surrounding
+it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the swarms of laborers about the
+docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by thoroughfares in all directions; and the
+tomb-stones, not being erect, but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete
+flagging to the spot), multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their
+heels erasing the death&rsquo;s-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the
+departed. At noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the
+shipping, retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining one for
+a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon these slabs;
+and once, removing a fellow&rsquo;s arm, read the following inscription, which,
+in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the death:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+HERE LYETH YE BODY OF<br/>
+TOBIAS DRINKER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am indebted to my
+excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the Earl of Derby, coming
+to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the Isle of Man, the corporation
+erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in the church for his reception. And
+moreover, that in the time of Cromwell&rsquo;s wars, when the place was taken
+by that mad nephew of King Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church
+into a military prison and stable; when, no doubt, another <i>&ldquo;sumptuous
+stall&rdquo;</i> was erected for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry
+officer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris, where
+the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their friends, or till
+buried at the public charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has always
+more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I used to see a
+crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door, upon the faces of the
+drowned within. And once, when the door was opened, I saw a sailor stretched
+out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve of his frock rolled up, and showing his
+name and date of birth tattooed upon his arm. It was a sight full of
+suggestions; he seemed his own headstone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
+falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount if
+irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and women are
+constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I observed them
+principally early in the morning, when they issued from their dens, on the same
+principle that the rag-rakers, and rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out
+bright and early; for then, the night-harvest has ripened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get their
+living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And these miserable
+old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from going to the church-yard
+themselves; for they were the most wretched of starvelings.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.<br/>
+WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT&rsquo;S-HEY </h2>
+
+<p>
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of the docks
+are many very painful sights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I generally
+passed through a narrow street called &ldquo;Launcelott&rsquo;s-Hey,&rdquo;
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or rather
+alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary old
+warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to come
+out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I stood; the
+dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into twilight; and not a
+soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have run, when I heard that
+dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless, endless wail of some one forever
+lost. At last I advanced to an opening which communicated downward with deep
+tiers of cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen
+feet below the walk, crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over,
+was the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid
+bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each
+side. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
+they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening wail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near; but
+there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted its head,
+and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay motionless. The
+woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall her eye again. They
+were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had crawled into that den, I
+could not tell; but there they had crawled to die. At that moment I never
+thought of relieving them; for death was so stamped in their glazed and
+unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded them as already no more. I stood
+looking down on them, while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked
+myself, What right had any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when
+sights like this were to be seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and
+make a man-hater of a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they
+not human beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
+queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat with a
+dull, dead ache that was their life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet there some
+ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul rubbish for little
+particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and sold for a trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I had just
+left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I then asked another,
+a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered strip of coarse baling stuff
+round her body. Looking at me for an instant, she resumed her raking in the
+rubbish, and said that she knew who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no
+time to attend to beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed
+to know my errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be
+taken. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;to the church-yard.&rdquo; I said
+she was alive, and not dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then she&rsquo;ll never die,&rdquo; was the rejoinder.
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s been down there these three days, with nothing to
+eat;&mdash;that I know myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She desarves it,&rdquo; said an old hag, who was just placing on her
+crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off,
+&ldquo;that Betsy Jennings desarves it&mdash;was she ever married? tell me
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving Launcelott&rsquo;s-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business, Jack,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t belong to that street.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who does then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a
+Yankee?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;but come, I will help you remove that woman,
+if you say so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave these
+matters to the town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would not even
+go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way, in a silent,
+secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding away in the ground,
+did not obtrude upon any one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this time,
+none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood irresolute, a
+voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a loft over the way;
+and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a sort of porter, to come
+down, which he did; when I pointed down into the vault.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t we get them out?&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you
+some place in your warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them
+to eat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re crazy, boy,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;do you suppose, that
+Parkins and Wood want their warehouse turned into a hospital?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had seen;
+asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and girls removed; or
+if she could not do that, let me have some food for them. But though a kind
+person in the main, Mary replied that she gave away enough to beggars in her
+own street (which was true enough) without looking after the whole
+neighborhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called <i>Brandy-Nan;</i> and
+begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to take to
+the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the miserable occupants
+of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the room where our dinner was
+being spread; and waiting till the girl had gone out, I snatched some bread and
+cheese from a stand, and thrusting it into the bosom of my frock, left the
+house. Hurrying to the lane, I dropped the food down into the vault. One of the
+girls caught at it convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister
+pushed the other&rsquo;s arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a
+weak uncertain grasp like an infant&rsquo;s. She placed it to her mouth; but
+letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like &ldquo;water.&rdquo;
+The woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor tavern,
+and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it refused, unless I
+would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my boarding-house was some way off,
+and it would be lost time to run to the ship for my big iron pot; under the
+impulse of the moment, I hurried to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I
+remembered having seen running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an
+old rag house; and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me
+that day, filled it with water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this, I returned to Launcelott&rsquo;s-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with it into
+the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me stand. The two
+girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me with an unalterable,
+idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The woman spoke not a word, and
+did not stir. While the girls were breaking and eating the bread, I tried to
+lift the woman&rsquo;s head; but, feeble as she was, she seemed bent upon
+holding it down. Observing her arms still clasped upon her bosom, and that
+something seemed hidden under the rags there, a thought crossed my mind, which
+impelled me forcibly to withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a
+glimpse of a meager little babe&mdash;the lower part of its body thrust into an
+old bonnet. Its face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed
+eyes looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who they
+were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering something
+that could not be understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood deliberating
+a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out of the vault. But if
+I did, what then? They would only perish in the street, and here they were at
+least protected from the rain; and more than that, might die in seclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost repented
+that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to prolong their
+misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they must very soon; they
+were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I hardly know whether I ought
+to confess another thing that occurred to me as I stood there; but it was
+this&mdash;I felt an almost irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of
+in some way putting an end to their horrible lives; and I should almost have
+done so, I think, had I not been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well
+knew that the law, which would let them perish of themselves without giving
+them one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in
+convicting him who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
+existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still met the
+same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side, and the woman
+with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed. The first evening I
+did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the morning; but the second
+evening, the bread I had dropped that morning remained untouched. On the third
+morning the smell that came from the vault was such, that I accosted the same
+policeman I had accosted before, who was patrolling the same street, and told
+him that the persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better
+have them removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it
+was not his street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the guard-house
+within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom I told the story;
+but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock Police was distinct from
+that of the town, and this was not the right place to lodge my information.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship; but at
+twelve o&rsquo;clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott&rsquo;s-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
+women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but my
+prayer was answered&mdash;they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale, shrunken
+forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how do we hope to be
+saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again, that I may find comfort
+in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded as we are by the wants and
+woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of
+their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry
+in the house of the dead?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap38"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br/>
+THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS</h2>
+
+<p>
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and more that
+I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks, and hovels of the
+wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell of them, would only be to
+tell over again the story just told; so I return to the docks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in the empty lot,
+belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the day are to be seen
+within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps of rubbish carried ashore
+from the holds of the shipping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope yarn;
+and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York, inasmuch as it
+is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover, as after discharging a
+ship&rsquo;s cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless dunnage remains in the
+hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the appointed receptacles for
+depositing it within the walls is extremely large, and is constantly receiving
+new accessions from every vessel that unlades at the quays.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered wretches,
+armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt, and making as
+much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their findings,
+nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the immemorial perquisites of
+the second mate of a merchant ship to collect, and sell on his own account, all
+the condemned &ldquo;old junk&rdquo; of the vessel to which he belongs, he
+generally takes good heed that in the buckets of rubbish carried ashore, there
+shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds and
+beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months&rsquo;
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and in large
+ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then, how desperately
+driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack heaps of refuse which
+have been previously gleaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
+streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable army
+of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At twelve o&rsquo;clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour is
+seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the outside of
+the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite the charity of the
+seamen. The first time that I passed through this long lane of pauperism, it
+seemed hard to believe that such an array of misery could be furnished by any
+town in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice showed
+here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible shifts and
+stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish this picture of all
+that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young girls,
+incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy men, with the
+gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths; young boys,
+hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny babes in the glare
+of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or art in
+attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen such things
+before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat huddled up
+against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It was a picture
+intending to represent the man himself caught in the machinery of some factory,
+and whirled about among spindles and cogs, with his limbs mangled and bloody.
+This person said nothing, but sat silently exhibiting his board. Next him,
+leaning upright against the wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage
+round his brow, and his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but
+with one finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<i>&ldquo;I have had no food for three days;<br/>
+My wife and children are dying.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing an
+unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of flagging
+immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely covered with
+inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour&rsquo;s time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of wayfarers,
+you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of the more urgent
+applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand; catching you by the coat;
+hanging on, and following you along; and, <i>for Heaven&rsquo;s sake,</i> and
+<i>for God&rsquo;s sake,</i> and <i>for Christ&rsquo;s sake,</i> beseeching of
+you but <i>one ha&rsquo;penny.</i> If you so much as glanced your eye on one of
+them, even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
+never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied his
+demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed that the
+beggars treated the town&rsquo;s people differently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which three
+times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had made them
+callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them had much money to
+give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to infest the dock walls as
+they did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with suffering
+among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of an old man, who
+every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain, occupied a particular
+corner, where crowds of tars were always passing. He was an uncommonly large,
+plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and dressed in the nautical garb; his face
+was red and round; he was continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust
+forth, so as almost to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile
+of monkey jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to
+receive the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the old man,
+and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted him as
+an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many long years. He
+was an old man-of-war&rsquo;s man, who had lost his leg at the battle of
+Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden one as a genuine
+specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson&rsquo;s ship, the Victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
+claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions demanded
+help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their disguise in a
+moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks as the
+Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my utter
+inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a prayer, that some
+angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks into an elixir, that
+would heal all their woes, and make them, man and woman, healthy and whole as
+their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no part of
+your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For as all these
+sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young Abel, so, to you, the
+sight of the world&rsquo;s woes would be a parental torment indeed.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap39"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.<br/>
+THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN </h2>
+
+<p>
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in a less
+degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually encountered in
+the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are kept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great numbers,
+these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire population of the
+vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals,
+plied by strolling musicians, mix with the songs of the seamen, the babble of
+women and children, and the groaning and whining of beggars. From the various
+boarding-houses, each distinguished by gilded emblems outside&mdash;an anchor,
+a crown, a ship, a windlass, or a dolphin&mdash;proceeds the noise of revelry
+and dancing; and from the open casements lean young girls and old women,
+chattering and laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every
+moment strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the invariable
+courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to the next
+spirit-vault, and drink each other&rsquo;s health.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these streets,
+and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from other parts of
+the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up and
+down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to receive
+contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain words in a
+peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his head, and turning up
+his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a lamentation upon his
+infirmity; and at the time it produced the same effect upon me, that my first
+reading of Milton&rsquo;s Invocation to the Sun did, years afterward. I can not
+recall it all; but it was something like this, drawn out in an endless
+groan&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon&mdash;no more see sun nor moon!&rdquo; And thus would he pass
+through the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving him
+standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of sailor
+ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a printed copy, and
+beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a man-of-war&rsquo;s-man, I
+observed every day standing at a corner in the middle of the street. He had a
+full, noble voice, like a church-organ; and his notes rose high above the
+surrounding din. But the remarkable thing about this ballad-singer was one of
+his arms, which, while singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in
+the air, as if it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable;
+and he performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
+falling from a frigate&rsquo;s mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character. He was
+full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of pirates and
+sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a monomaniac upon
+these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the robberies and assassinations
+of the day, happening in the sailor quarters of the town; and most of his
+ballads were upon kindred subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had
+them printed for sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at
+this business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to go
+to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the <i>Old Fort Tavern;</i> and
+mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just been killed
+at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The murderer was carried off
+by the police before my eyes, and the very next morning the ballad-singer with
+the miraculous arm, was singing the tragedy in front of the boarding-houses,
+and handing round printed copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly
+bought up by the seamen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events which
+take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods frequented by sailors
+in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys which, in their vocabulary, go by
+the names of Rotten-row, Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with
+vice and crime; to which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel.
+The sooty and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over this
+part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the enormities here
+practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors sometimes disappear forever;
+or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from the broken doorways. These are the
+haunts in which cursing, gambling, pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are
+virtues too lofty for the infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety
+forbids that I should enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and
+resurrectionists are almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued
+together, a company of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice
+to mankind in their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned
+out of their arches like vermin.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap40"></a>CHAPTER XL.<br/>
+PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS</h2>
+
+<p>
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning the
+Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw into this
+chapter various minor things that I recall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the dock walls,
+are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite different announcements,
+placarded upon the walls themselves. They are principally notices of the
+approaching departure of <i>&ldquo;superior, fast-sailing, coppered and
+copper-fastened ships,&rdquo;</i> for the United States, Canada, New South
+Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the advertisements of
+Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen where he can procure of the
+best and the cheapest; together with ambiguous medical announcements of the
+tribe of quacks and empirics who prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with
+thus publicly giving notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados
+and pretended Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby workhouse-looking knaves,
+whose business consists in haunting the dock walls about meal times, and
+silently thrusting mysterious little billets&mdash;duodecimo editions of the
+larger advertisements&mdash;into the astonished hands of the tars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They do this, with such a mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air; such a
+villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you are almost
+tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements to all
+seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round bounty, and
+embark in her Majesty&rsquo;s navy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for the
+general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships, going upon
+particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be announced as about to sail
+under the command of that fine old sailor, and noble father to his crew,
+<i>Lord George Flagstaff.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments in the
+army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the charms of some
+country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these placards do, upon the
+beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for which the regiments wanting
+recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns, vine-clad hills, endless meadows of
+verdure, here make up the landscape; and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of
+travel, are informed, that here is a chance for them to see the world at their
+leisure, and be paid for enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments
+for India are promised plantations among valleys of palms; while to those
+destined for New Holland, a novel sphere of life and activity is opened; and
+the companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia are lured by tales of summer
+suns, that ripen grapes in December. No word of war is breathed; hushed is the
+clang of arms in these announcements; and the sanguine recruit is almost
+tempted to expect that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be the weapons he
+will wield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Bruce at Bannockburn, who decoyed to
+his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For instead of a farm at
+the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit encounters the keen saber of
+the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a
+shivering sentry upon the bleak ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter
+blasts from Baffin&rsquo;s Bay and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the
+St. Lawrence, whose every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of
+Old England; as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to
+the army as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow must
+groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and his Mary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool. Among
+the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of Britain to
+embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many young men, who,
+upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to penniless; or, at least,
+with only enough money to carry them over the sea, without providing for future
+contingencies. How easily and naturally, then, may such youths be induced to
+enter upon the military life, which promises them a free passage to the most
+distant and flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides
+holding out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the fullness of
+time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home at all, and embark
+upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a piece of adventurousness
+only one removed from the spirit that prompts the army recruit to enlist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping emigrants,
+without thinking of rattraps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their little
+notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are another set of
+rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; who make strange motions to
+you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some state secret to disclose,
+intimately connected with the weal of the commonwealth. They nudge you with an
+elbow full of indefinite hints and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye
+like a Jew&rsquo;s or a pawnbroker&rsquo;s; they dog you like Italian
+assassins. But if the blue coat of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly
+they strive to look completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how
+they saunter off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and
+family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I fancied him
+crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm with my shadow, he
+followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned round and paused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat; and his
+hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card with his
+address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark angle of the wall,
+near which we were; when taking him for a cunning foot-pad, I again wheeled
+about, and swiftly passed on. But though I did not look round, I <i>felt</i>
+him following me still; so once more I stopped. The fellow now assumed so
+mystic and admonitory an air, that I began to fancy he came to me on some
+warning errand; that perhaps a plot had been laid to blow up the Liverpool
+docks, and he was some Monteagle bent upon accomplishing my flight. I was
+determined to see what he was. With all my eyes about me, I followed him into
+the arch of a warehouse; when he gazed round furtively, and silently showing me
+a ring, whispered, &ldquo;You may have it for a shilling; it&rsquo;s pure
+gold&mdash;I found it in the gutter&mdash;hush! don&rsquo;t speak! give me the
+money, and it&rsquo;s yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trade in these articles;
+I don&rsquo;t want your ring.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you? Then take that,&rdquo; he whispered, in an intense
+hushed passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction was
+conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next time I
+was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice, pointed out the
+man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly turning up into sight a
+pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels. I could not help thinking that
+these sort of fellows, so given to running away upon emergencies, must furnish
+a good deal of work to the shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of
+hemp and gallows-joiners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable merchants of
+brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of Sheffield razors, mostly
+boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the police; nevertheless,
+they contrive to saunter back, and board the vessels, going among the sailors
+and privately exhibiting their wares. Incited by the extreme cheapness of one
+of the razors, and the gilding on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine
+purchased it on the spot for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco.
+On the following Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of
+tormented and tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to dress them.
+In old times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that suggested the
+propriety of a barber&rsquo;s practicing surgery in connection with the
+chin-harrowing vocation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another class of knaves, who practice upon the sailors in Liverpool, are the
+pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries among the narrow lanes adjoining the
+dock. I was astonished at the multitude of gilded balls in these streets,
+emblematic of their calling. They were generally next neighbors to the gilded
+grapes over the spirit-vaults; and no doubt, mutually to facilitate business
+operations, some of these establishments have connecting doors inside, so as to
+play their customers into each other&rsquo;s hands. I often saw sailors in a
+state of intoxication rushing from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker&rsquo;s;
+stripping off their boots, hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and sometimes even
+their pantaloons on the spot, and offering to pawn them for a song. Of course
+such applications were never refused. But though on shore, at Liverpool, poor
+Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he himself is by no means exempt from
+practices, that do not savor of a rigid morality; at least according to law. In
+tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when cool and collected, often manages to
+evade the Customs completely, and land goodly packages of the weed, which owing
+to the immense duties upon it in England, commands a very high price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock, three
+Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the forecastle,
+ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had. Accordingly several pounds
+were brought forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; asked the officers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All,&rdquo; said the men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will see,&rdquo; returned the others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed over the
+bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but discovered nothing. The
+sailors were then given to understand, that while the ship lay in dock, the
+tobacco must remain in the cabin, under custody of the chief mate, who every
+morning would dole out to them one plug per head, as a security against their
+carrying it ashore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said the men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they daily drew
+pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in the manner
+following.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his pocket;
+<i>that</i> he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about his person as
+he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates at such hours,
+of course these smugglers stood little chance of detection; although vigilant
+looking policemen were always standing by. And though these
+<i>&ldquo;Charlies&rdquo;</i> might suppose there were tobacco smugglers
+passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard, as to
+harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting under a ship&rsquo;s
+bows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we came from
+America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate; for in Liverpool it
+is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the docks they sell an English
+pennyworth, put up in a little roll like confectioners&rsquo; mottoes, with
+poetical lines, or instructive little moral precepts printed in red on the
+back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the least
+striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with such sleek and
+glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by a valet every morning.
+They march with a slow and stately step, lifting their ponderous hoofs like
+royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay stripes upon these Roman citizens; for
+their docility is such, they are guided without rein or lash; they go or come,
+halt or march on, at a whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous
+did these fine truck-horses look&mdash;so full of calm intelligence and
+sagacity, that often I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they
+stood in contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though I
+would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language, I would
+have derived from them a good deal of valuable information touching the docks,
+where they passed the whole of their dignified lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a horse,
+or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an
+Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No
+philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through
+us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a species of four-footed
+dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to live upon oats, and toils for
+his masters, half-requited or abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers
+of water? But there is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo
+about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. As for those
+majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of
+striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The truck
+is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the lumpers pile
+bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large warehouse, and yet a
+procession of three of these horses will tranquilly walk away with the whole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals. Like
+the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,&mdash;not of the same cut and color
+though,&mdash;which reach below their knees; and from the racket they make on
+the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think they patronized
+the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get any thing out of these
+truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set, who, with all possible
+solemnity, march at the head of their animals; now and then gently advising
+them to sheer to the right or the left, in order to avoid some passing vehicle.
+Then spending so much of their lives in the high-bred company of their horses,
+seems to have mended their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting
+to them something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to
+them a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is the
+following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended in its cage
+from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse pretty fluently in
+the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day a truckman left his
+vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the water. It was noon, when an
+interval of silence falls upon the docks; and Poll, seeing herself face to face
+with the horse, and having a mind for a chat, cried out to him, <i>&ldquo;Back!
+back! back!&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince&rsquo;s, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American boats,
+since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying to all parts of
+the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of produce, imported from
+starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned into pens for oxen and sheep;
+and often, side by side with these inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as
+they can stand, seemingly penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning
+of July when the Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily
+coming over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of buffaloes,
+behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the street filled by
+a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from Brunswick Dock gates,
+arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray, corduroy knee-breeches, and shod
+with shoes that raised a mighty dust. Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs,
+they looked like an irruption of barbarians. They were marching straight out of
+town into the country; and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the
+corporation, took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sing <i>Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney,&rdquo;</i> cried one
+fellow, tossing his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head
+of the rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the shores of
+the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed the additional
+multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and when, added to all
+this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers, descending, thick as locusts, upon
+the English corn-fields; I could not help marveling at the fertility of an
+island, which, though her crop of potatoes may fail, never yet failed in
+bringing her annual crop of men into the world.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap41"></a>CHAPTER XLI.<br/>
+REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER</h2>
+
+<p>
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to mention
+such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in Liverpool, the
+days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I found myself walking in
+the twilight after nine o&rsquo;clock, I tried to recall my astronomical
+knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for so curious a phenomenon. But
+the days in summer, and the nights in winter, are just as long in Liverpool as
+at Cape Horn; for the latitude of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who, thereby, was
+enabled after my day&rsquo;s work aboard the Highlander, to ramble about the
+town for several hours. After I had visited all the noted places I could
+discover, of those marked down upon my father&rsquo;s map, I began to extend my
+rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a committee of one, to investigate
+all accessible parts of the town; though so many years have elapsed, ere I have
+thought of bringing in my report.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world, I have
+always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering about, up and
+down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and speculating upon the
+strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to pace along endless streets
+of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on the doors, admiring the pretty
+faces in the windows, and invoking a passing blessing upon the chubby children
+on the door-steps. I was stared at myself, to be sure: but what of that? We
+must give and take on such occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket
+produced quite a sensation in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a
+father of a family went home to his children with a curious story, about a
+wandering phenomenon they had encountered, traversing the side-walks that day.
+In the words of the old song, <i>&ldquo;I cared for nobody, no not I, and
+nobody cared for me.&rdquo;</i> I stared my fill with impunity, and took all
+stares myself in good part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot drawn up at
+a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and so did the
+sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in attendance. I was
+particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men: and the many evidences
+they furnished of their enjoying this meal with a wonderful relish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my curiosity,
+were making me an object of their own; and that they were gazing at me, as if I
+were some unauthorized intruder upon the British soil. Truly, they had reason:
+for when I now think of the figure I must have cut in those days, I only marvel
+that, in my many strolls, my passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of thousands of
+rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited by laborers, and
+poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through masses of squalid men,
+women, and children, who at this evening hour, in those quarters of Liverpool,
+seem to empty themselves into the street, and live there for the time. I had
+never seen any thing like it in New York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and
+many very sad scenes; and especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged
+man, rushing along frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and
+children, who clung to his arms and legs; and, in God&rsquo;s name, conjured
+him not to desert them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and
+drowning himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In these
+haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged me unceasingly
+at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost endless vistas: and want and
+woe staggered arm in arm along these miserable streets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was the
+absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the &ldquo;free states&rdquo; of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute. But in
+these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and with the
+exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even Englishmen; as much
+Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords. This conveyed a strange
+feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded me that I was not in my own
+land. For <i>there,</i> such a being as a native beggar is almost unknown; and
+to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this,
+perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which negro-sailors are
+regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In Liverpool indeed the negro
+steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head like a man; for here, no such
+exaggerated feeling exists in respect to him, as in America. Three or four
+times, I encountered our black steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking
+arm in arm with a good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would
+have been mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to
+escape with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to them, and
+the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black cooks and stewards
+of American ships are very much attached to the place and like to make voyages
+to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some degree
+by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of most men, and
+from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape; at first I was
+surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is in this town; but a
+little reflection showed that, after all, it was but recognizing his claims to
+humanity and normal equality; so that, in some things, we Americans leave to
+other countries the carrying out of the principle that stands at the head of
+our Declaration of Independence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen by me,
+that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary, Liverpool, away from
+the docks, was very much such a place as New York. There were the same sort of
+streets pretty much; the same rows of houses with stone steps; the same kind of
+side-walks and curbs; and the same elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one could
+have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St. John&rsquo;s Market
+on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to see that great roof
+supported by so many pillars, yet the most discriminating observer would not
+have been able to detect any difference between the articles exposed for sale,
+and the articles exhibited in Fulton Market, New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers&rsquo; shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that all this
+talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a nut-shell, lives in
+an epitome of the universe, and has but little to see beyond him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true, that I often thought of London&rsquo;s being only seven or eight
+hours&rsquo; travel by railroad from where I was; and that <i>there,</i>
+surely, must be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose bright
+and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First walking into some
+dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then a walk through the more
+fashionable streets, to see the people going to church; and then I myself went
+to church, selecting the goodliest edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a
+spire I could find.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the sums spent
+in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the founding of
+charities, yet since these structures are built, those who disapprove of them
+in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them in another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and simmer
+over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever he pleases;
+and that even St. Peter&rsquo;s in Rome is open to him, as to a cardinal; that
+St. Paul&rsquo;s in London is not shut against him; and that the Broadway
+Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to him, and will not even
+have doors and thresholds to her pews, the better to allure him by an unbounded
+invitation. I say, this consideration of the hospitality and democracy in
+churches, is a most Christian and charming thought. It speaks whole volumes of
+folios, and Vatican libraries, for Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes
+farther home than all the sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, and
+Archbishop Tillotson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the land;
+nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of any
+Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine broadcloth coats
+flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present myself before the sexton, as
+a candidate for admission. He would stare a little, perhaps (one of them once
+hesitated), but in the end, what could he do but show me into a pew; not the
+most commodious of pews, to be sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very
+plain sight or hearing of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was
+always some confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I
+used to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting on
+my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in the
+churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of some sort
+or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of the aisle, where
+I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation between myself and the
+clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know that I was a foreigner of
+distinction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached&mdash;just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her majesty the
+Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in that prayer, and
+invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a roving
+with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses; winding in among
+the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling my fancied way like a
+wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning long, through noon, unto
+night. But at last the benediction would come; and appropriating my share of
+it, I would slowly move away, thinking how I should like to go home with some
+of the portly old gentlemen, with high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and
+take a seat at their cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was
+no dinner for me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be scorned. The
+roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the immortal plum-puddings, and
+the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies. But to finish off with that abominable
+<i>&ldquo;swipes&rdquo;</i> almost spoiled all the rest: not that I myself
+patronized <i>&ldquo;swipes&rdquo;</i> but my shipmates did; and every cup I
+saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in imagination, and even then the
+flavor was bad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was curious to
+watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The servant girls were
+running about, mustering the various crews, whose dinners were spread, each in
+a separate apartment; and who were collectively known by the names of their
+ships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are the <i>Arethusas?&mdash;</i>Here&rsquo;s their beef been
+smoking this half-hour.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the
+<i>Splendids.&rdquo;&mdash;</i> &ldquo;Run, Molly, my love; get the
+salt-cellars for the <i>Highlanders</i> .&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;You Peggy,
+where&rsquo;s the <i>Siddons&rsquo; pickle-pat?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I</i> say,
+Judy, are you never coming with that pudding for the <i>Lord
+Nelsons?&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we came to
+dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each end of the
+Highlanders&rsquo; table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared himself on his
+bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs, so as to include the
+two hearts between them, he called out for Danby, the boarding-house keeper;
+for although his wife Mary was in fact at the head of the establishment, yet
+Danby himself always came in for the fault-findings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration of
+Jackson&rsquo;s address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a recapitulation
+of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in disgust, and dined
+elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the rest of
+the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these afternoon strolls,
+that on passing through St. George&rsquo;s-square, I found myself among a large
+crowd, gathered near the base of George the Fourth&rsquo;s equestrian statue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes; but
+mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and dinnerless
+undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops belonged to the
+various regiments then in town. Police officers, also, were conspicuous in
+their uniforms. At first perfect silence and decorum prevailed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much toil, or too
+little food. His features were good, his whole air was respectable, and there
+was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly in earnest in what he was
+saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to his
+hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic gestures. I was
+not long within hearing of him, before I became aware that this youth was a
+Chartist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I noticed
+the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they began to glide
+through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of dispersing. The first
+persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who accordingly sauntered off,
+switching their rattans, and admiring their high-polished shoes. It was plain
+that the Charter did not hang very heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they
+also gradually broke up; and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many political
+desperadoes are made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the town, and
+attracted by the sight of two great Pompey&rsquo;s pillars, in the shape of
+black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I approached them
+with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet connecting them, what was
+my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky hollow in the ground, with rocky
+walls, and dark holes at one end, carrying out of view several lines of iron
+railways; while far beyond, straight out toward the open country, ran an
+endless railroad. Over the place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung;
+and gradually, as I gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom
+of the hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had previously
+seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be? Certainly, I had never been
+in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish arch! surely I remembered that very
+well. It was not till several months after reaching home in America, that my
+perplexity upon this matter was cleared away. In glancing over an old number of
+the Penny Magazine, there I saw a picture of the place to the life; and
+remembered having seen the same print years previous. It was a representation
+of the spot where the Manchester railroad enters the outskirts of the town.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap42"></a>CHAPTER XLII.<br/>
+HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE <i>CROSS</i> OLD GENTLEMAN</h2>
+
+<p>
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in a
+previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days after, which
+may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by the
+sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The windows were
+open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable legs crossed over their
+comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate, happy-looking old gentlemen reading
+the magazines and papers, and one had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out my
+guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the building
+before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the opposite side of
+the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its original; and often dwelling
+upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the open windows; till at last I felt an
+uncontrollable impulse to step in for a moment, and run over the news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;m a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be treated with
+courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked across the way; and with
+just a small tapping of a misgiving at my heart, I at last scraped my feet
+clean against the curb-stone, and taking off my hat while I was yet in the open
+air, slowly sauntered in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from the
+<i>London Times,</i> which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the large
+sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog with a muddy
+hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine apartment, he shook his
+silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the spectacles fell off his nose.
+Almost at the same moment, up stepped a terribly cross man, who looked as if he
+had a mustard plaster on his back, that was continually exasperating him; who
+throwing down some papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent
+shoulders, and then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons,
+wheeled me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in vain;
+the door was closed upon me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These Englishmen have no manners, that&rsquo;s plain, thought I; and I trudged
+on down the street in a reverie.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap43"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.<br/>
+HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF
+THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS </h2>
+
+<p>
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green hedges
+of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with me; and now
+that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away without having a
+good, long look at the open fields.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a beautiful
+day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and flowers, and there
+was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished me. Soon I gained an
+elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and meadow and mead, and woodland
+and hedge, were all around me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last&mdash;there it was
+in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that seemed
+faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I breathed my
+breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles once respired by
+Rosamond the Fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On I trudged along the London road&mdash;smooth as an entry floor&mdash;and
+every white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road became
+dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field, would be very
+pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little dale, undulating down to
+a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed over toward it; but paused by the
+road-side at a frightful announcement, nailed against an old tree, used as a
+gate-post&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;MAN-TRAPS AND SPRING-GUNS!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were not
+surely <i>cannibals,</i> that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale, and
+lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A <i>man-trap!&rdquo;</i> It must be so. The announcement could bear but
+one meaning&mdash;that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the unwary
+rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour him on the spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen Victoria,
+permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty ever passed by this
+way, and seen the announcement?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And who put it there?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proprietor, probably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what right had he to do so?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why, he owned the soil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And where are his title-deeds?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a mighty
+traveler, indeed:&mdash;stopped on your travels by a <i>man-trap!</i> Do you
+think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was so entreated
+in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much wiser than when you
+set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not having seen more sights,
+will be <i>man-traps&mdash;mantraps, my masters!</i> that frightened you!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What right has
+this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What excessive effrontery, to
+lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet, right down to the earth&rsquo;s
+axis, and, perhaps, straight through to the antipodes! For a moment I thought I
+would test his traps, and enter the forbidden Eden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that at last I
+thought best to pace off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice little
+church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just such a church as
+I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was viny as an arbor; the ivy
+was climbing about the tower; and the bees were humming about the hoary old
+head-stones along the walls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Any man-traps here? thought I&mdash;any spring-guns?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No Indian,
+red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They gazed and they
+gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and conducted myself with
+perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at first I almost imagined they
+might.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood staring at
+the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the London Road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics, drinking
+ale at a table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good day,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good day; from Liverpool?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guess so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For London?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; not this time. I merely come to see the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts whether I
+might not look something like a horse-thief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a seat,&rdquo; said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his
+wife&rsquo;s apron on, I thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of which, I
+told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a good-natured,
+jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a sociable youth. They
+treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories about America, concerning
+which, they manifested the utmost curiosity. One of them, however, was somewhat
+astonished that I had not made the acquaintance of a brother of his, who had
+resided somewhere on the banks of the Mississippi for several years past; but
+among twenty millions of people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to
+my knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively
+conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies exchanged: and
+perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:&mdash;fine old ale; yes, English ale,
+ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and breathed English air; and
+every blade of grass was an Englishman born. Smoky old Liverpool, with all its
+pitch and tar was now far behind; nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?&mdash; Hurra! what say you?
+let&rsquo;s have a peep at St. Paul&rsquo;s? Don&rsquo;t you want to see the
+queen? Have you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and
+the Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two vacuums of
+pockets&mdash;who&rsquo;s to pay the bill?&mdash;You can&rsquo;t beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father&rsquo;s son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign land; you
+must not turn pauper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul&rsquo;s or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, well, up heart, you&rsquo;ll see it one of these days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames&mdash;think of <i>that!&mdash;</i>here I am&mdash;ay, treading in the
+wheel-tracks of coaches that are bound for the metropolis!&mdash;It was too
+bad; too bitterly bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on;
+till at last I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with
+broad branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a hen
+gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I threw myself and
+there lay my head, like a last year&rsquo;s nut. People passed by, on foot and
+in carriages, and little thought that the sad youth under the tree was the
+great-nephew of a late senator in the American Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me from the
+field, crying out&mdash;&ldquo;What are you doing there, you young
+rascal?&mdash;run away from the work&rsquo;us, have ye? Tramp, or I&rsquo;ll
+set Blucher on ye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black bull-muzzle
+thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy farmer, with an
+alarming cudgel in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, are you going to start?&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Presently,&rdquo; said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got
+a few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me as it
+did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own premises, and
+said&mdash; &ldquo;Stranger! if you ever visit America, just call at our house,
+and you&rsquo;ll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don&rsquo;t fail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the cold
+charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to hapless young
+travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until reaching a
+cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be pleasanter;
+there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like six moss-roses,
+hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway, sat an old man,
+confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little child, sprawling on the
+ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A hale matron, but with rather a prim
+expression, was reading a journal by his side: and three charmers, three Peris,
+three Houris! were leaning out of the window close by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! Wellingborough, don&rsquo;t you wish you could step in?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when&mdash;is it
+possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you look as if you had walked far;
+come, take a bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear&rdquo; (how my heart jumped),
+&ldquo;go fetch some from the dairy.&rdquo; And the white-handed angel did
+meekly obey, and handed <i>me&mdash;me,</i> the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling
+milk, which I could hardly drink down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England. But I
+endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do away at once
+with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close scrutiny of my
+miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I declared myself a
+Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a Sunday in the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And have you been to church to-day, young man?&rdquo; said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know&mdash;a most
+excellent sermon&mdash;I am much the better for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short experience
+of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary enemies of all
+strange young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew would be
+interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I strove to talk
+in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very plainly that my polished
+phrases were making a surprising impression, though that miserable
+shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback to my claims to gentility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post like a
+sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers in the
+background, though the old man frequently called upon them to advance. This
+fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as free from ungenerous
+suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of them. But I still lingered,
+snatching furtive glances at the young ladies, and vehemently talking to the
+old man about Illinois, and the river Ohio, and the fine farms in the Genesee
+country, where, in harvest time, the laborers went into the wheat fields a
+thousand strong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don&rsquo;t give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you. At last
+it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one side,
+and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle charmer poured out
+the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins; and such buttered muffins
+never were spread on the other side of the Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic
+flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly delicious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there they sat&mdash;the charmers, I mean&mdash;eating these buttered
+muffins in plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute
+they grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a fine
+thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my friends would
+stare! a lady from England!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the one who
+had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in the direction
+where I sat. She certainly <i>did</i> look at my jacket; and I am constrained
+to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen in love at first
+sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of the question; for what a
+looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some observations
+about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the buttered muffins,
+too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and in other fidgety ways
+vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off; but as
+quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and again. Oh,
+charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes, Wellingborough, you must; so I
+made one desperate congee, and darted through the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I live a
+bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I entered the
+town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks, I passed through the
+gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells, across the tiers of ships
+between the quay and the Highlander. My only resource was my bunk; in I turned,
+and, wearied with my long stroll, was soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks
+and roses.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap44"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.<br/>
+REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE
+READER</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I had been
+in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of a handsome,
+accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He was one of those
+small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair, and silken muscles, who
+seem to have been born in cocoons. His complexion was a mantling brunette,
+feminine as a girl&rsquo;s; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his
+eyes were large, black, and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the
+sound of a harp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of a
+seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses, standing
+in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes without. His
+beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in such a street, that I
+could not possibly divine what had transplanted this delicate exotic from the
+conservatories of some Regent-street to the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper. He was
+speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from something that
+dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a voyage to my country.
+Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to enjoy the society of this
+incontrovertible son of a gentleman&mdash;a kind of pleasure so long debarred
+me&mdash;I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket, and at once accosted him;
+declaring who I was, and that nothing would afford me greater delight than to
+be of the least service, in imparting any information concerning America that
+he needed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and at
+length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to accompany
+him on a walk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We rambled about St. George&rsquo;s Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things respecting his
+history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St. Edmunds, a
+borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was early left an
+orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt and himself, his
+mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus fell heir to a portion of
+about five thousand pounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless of the
+retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession or business
+of any kind to engage his attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him to abide
+on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of her stately and
+storied old Saxon tower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my Abbey-gate, that
+bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by my carved roof of the
+old church of St. Mary&rsquo;s, which escaped the low rage of the bigoted
+Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that sleep in my midst; by my
+Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me.
+Where will you find shadier walks than under my lime-trees? where lovelier
+gardens than those within the old walls of my monastery, approached through my
+lordly Gate? Or if, oh Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not
+for my annual verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst
+fain, like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms, and
+billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty your glass
+and your purse as you list.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie to
+London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and dandies,
+he lost his last sovereign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the requisite
+quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a midshipman in the East
+India service; in which office he was known as a
+<i>&ldquo;guinea-pig,&rdquo;</i> a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the
+middies of the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his bane,
+this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry&rsquo;s case, inapplicable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw up his
+warrant in disgust. A few weeks&rsquo; dissipation in London, and again his
+purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to return home to
+his aunt, and amend&mdash;though she had often written him the kindest of
+letters to that effect&mdash;Harry resolved to precipitate himself upon the New
+World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this object in view, he packed
+his trunks, and took the first train for Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at
+once betook himself to the docks, to examine the American shipping, when a new
+crotchet entered his brain, born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume
+duck browsers and tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor.
+There was a dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine
+coats, which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for
+all past conventionalities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some of his
+superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold Anchor in
+Union-street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all anxiety
+that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire to which he
+warmly responded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application to the
+captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our crew had left
+us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just upon the eve of our
+departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to which
+the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from the obligation
+to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have little or no work to
+employ them, and from the necessity of boarding them ashore, like lords, at
+their leisure, captains interested in the ownership of their vessels, are not
+at all indisposed to let their sailors abscond, if they please, and thus
+forfeit their money; for they well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily
+to be procured, through the crimps of the port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the vessels
+of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga was in fact a
+Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to conceal. And though
+extravagant in his personal expenses, and even indulging in luxurious habits,
+costly as Oriental dissipation, yet Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as,
+indeed, was evinced in the magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he
+requited my own valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry
+and me, that he should offer to ship as a <i>&ldquo;boy,&rdquo;</i> at the same
+rate of compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the
+cheapness of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus,
+instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who would
+consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the rate of half a
+dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the end of the voyage, his
+fastidious palate would be the means of leaving a handsome balance of salt beef
+and pork in the <i>harness-cask.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet vests,
+Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and man-of-war
+browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine morning, on the
+quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his virgin tarpaulin before
+the redoubtable Riga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain&rsquo;s
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression, that had
+so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first accosted him in
+the cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas, Harry! thought I,&mdash;as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,&mdash;that <i>&ldquo;gallant, gay deceiver&rdquo;</i> shall
+not altogether cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that
+should be the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic concern
+touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to presume must have
+driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest in his future welfare; and
+did not hesitate to declare that, in going to America, under such
+circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a manly and spirited part;
+and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would be an invigorating preparative
+to the landing upon a shore, where he must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide him a
+home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship; and during the
+interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength of his wages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my young
+blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration at so urbane
+and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive my congratulations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Harry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;be not deceived by the fascinating
+Riga&mdash;that gay Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the
+capital or the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him
+when he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For <i>then</i> he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his
+character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and sympathy
+then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than his boots, and
+would no more think of addressing you than of invoking wooden Donald, the
+figure-head on our bows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of the
+diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told him, that
+unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could furl a royal in a
+squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort of treatment from the
+sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any mortal who had ever crossed his
+legs under mahogany.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the precise
+degree in which he was a practical sailor;&mdash;whether he had a giddy head;
+whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether, with but one hand
+on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he felt he could look right to
+windward and beard it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and confident
+air; saying that in his <i>&ldquo;guinea-pig&rdquo;</i> days, he had often
+climbed the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he
+made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the
+Highlander&rsquo;s rigging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant sight
+of his most unseamanlike person&mdash;more suited to the Queen&rsquo;s
+drawing-room than a ship&rsquo;s forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to himself;
+and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and indulge in many
+apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for the most part, will
+<i>&ldquo;gang their ain gate;&rdquo;</i> and the most we can do is, to hope
+for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best cross the
+sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough money for that; but
+no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and as
+Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his heart. He sold
+off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his silver-keyed flute and
+enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus furnished was pleasantly spent
+in refreshing ourselves at the road-side inns in the vicinity of the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our experiences of
+the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a London life; described the
+curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me the measurement of Madame
+Vestris&rsquo; ankle; alluded to his first introduction at a club to the madcap
+Marquis of Waterford; told over the sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby
+day; and made various but enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana
+Theresa, the noble daughter of an anonymous earl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic
+narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds of
+reminiscences not his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon; and I
+used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of chess; making him
+hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter, against all my fine
+comrade&rsquo;s array of dukes, lords, curricles, and countesses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I
+cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I had
+been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my pocket. To this,
+Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more, than to show me the
+capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously hinted at the possibility of
+his doing so, before many days had passed. But this seemed so idle a thought,
+that I only imputed it to my friend&rsquo;s good-natured, rattling disposition,
+which sometimes prompted him to out with any thing, that he thought would be
+agreeable. Besides, would this fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic
+acquaintances, walking down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of
+my shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that
+Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee credulity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed, he was
+as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of Lake Erie; so
+that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment; reckless of the cut of
+my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who might stare at so singular a
+couple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel, he made
+a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the square was a
+good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat, was a remarkably
+elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the hotel steps, and
+containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an ivory-headed riding-whip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was he, Harry?&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My old chum, Lord Lovely,&rdquo; said Harry, with a careless air,
+&ldquo;and Heaven only knows what brings Lovely from London.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lord?&rdquo; said I starting; &ldquo;then I must look at him
+again;&rdquo; for lords are very scarce in Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unmindful of my companion&rsquo;s remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and
+slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the legs, with
+small feet like a doll&rsquo;s, and a small, glossy head like a seal&rsquo;s. I
+had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental attitudes in front of
+Palmo&rsquo;s in Broadway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry&rsquo;s, I thought something of
+accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done for the
+young prodigal&rsquo;s welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought best not to
+intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to the open window of
+a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing himself into an interesting
+posture, with the sole of one boot vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp
+on it&mdash;a coronet&mdash;fell into a sparkling conversation with a
+magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by a regal marabou feather, inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it would
+be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world, just to seat
+myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a drive into the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might decline
+the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of introduction; I marched
+on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once endeavored to draw out, touching
+Lord Lovely; but he only made mysterious answers; and turned off the
+conversation, by allusions to his visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the
+magnificent seat of the Most Noble Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly
+assured Harry that he might consider Ickworth his home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry&rsquo;s having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of the
+truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry has
+fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy address; and
+there is nothing altogether impossible about his having consorted with the
+master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous earl. And what right has
+a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the slightest suspicion against what he
+says? What little money he has, he spends freely; he can not be a polite
+blackleg, for I am no pigeon to pluck; so <i>that</i> is out of the
+question;&mdash;perish such a thought, concerning my own bosom friend!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever cherished
+toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this, I never could
+entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high life. I was very
+sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease in his company; and
+made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in its loneliness, it was
+yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom of some immaculate friend.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap45"></a>CHAPTER XLV.<br/>
+HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON</h2>
+
+<p>
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry, who had
+been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter his plans, one
+afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang down the hatchway into
+the <i>between-decks,</i> where, in perfect solitude, I was engaged picking
+oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for want of any thing better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hey for London, Wellingborough!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Off tomorrow!
+first train&mdash;be there the same night&mdash;come! I have money to rig you
+all out&mdash;drop that hangman&rsquo;s stuff there, and away! Pah! how it
+smells here! Come; up you jump!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+London? it could not be!&mdash;and Harry&mdash;how kind of him! he was then
+indeed what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had hopes of
+recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose to conceal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;they will
+not let me go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I
+don&rsquo;t care very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share
+the expenses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all the
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tut! my Yankee bantam,&rdquo; said Harry; &ldquo;look here!&rdquo; and
+he showed me a handful of gold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But they are <i>yours,</i> and not <i>mine,</i> Harry,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yours <i>and</i> mine, my sweet fellow,&rdquo; exclaimed Harry.
+&ldquo;Come, sink the ship, and let&rsquo;s go!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t consider, if I quit the ship, they&rsquo;ll be
+sending a constable after me, won&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can&rsquo;t wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself much, if I
+<i>did</i> take French leave of him. So, without further thought of the matter,
+I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship&rsquo;s bell struck four; at
+which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the rest of the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and along the
+dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said, that go to London
+he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he should for any time
+remain at either place, he could not now tell; and it was by no means
+impossible, that in less than a week&rsquo;s time we would be back again in
+Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was enveloped in a mystery that I
+did not much like; and I hardly know whether I have repeated correctly what he
+said at the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arrived at the <i>Golden Anchor,</i> where Harry put up, he at once led me to
+his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what
+clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size&mdash;if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt, vest, and
+pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat, those Harry ran out
+and bought without delay; returning with a loose, stylish sack-coat, and a sort
+of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and unpretending.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me, arrayed
+in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that very morning. I
+asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense, when he had plenty of
+other clothes in his chest. But he only winked, and looked knowing. This,
+again, I did not like. But I strove to drown ugly thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and charging
+his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for it; Harry
+seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we turned
+into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of the
+colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to finish his
+toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and presently was joined
+by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>me&rdquo;</i> said the stranger; and who was <i>me</i> but
+Harry, who had thus metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a
+faltering voice, which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was
+not going to turn gentleman forger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted this
+mode of disguising himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why afraid of your friends?&rdquo; asked I, in astonishment,
+&ldquo;and we are not in London yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can&rsquo;t you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a short
+time, you know. But I&rsquo;ll tell you all by and by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came to a
+public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along through
+boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and over arching
+viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half delirious with excitement,
+I found myself dropped down in the evening among gas-lights, under a great roof
+in Euston Square.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap46"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.<br/>
+A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON </h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No time to lose,&rdquo; said Harry, &ldquo;come along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some street
+to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares, churches,
+and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the ice, and all the
+roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of brick and mortar; I
+thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a coal-hole, and myself somebody else:
+so unreal seemed every thing about me. My head was spinning round like a top,
+and my eyes ached with much gazing; particularly about the corners, owing to my
+darting them so rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any
+thing; though, in truth, I missed much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of
+the window, all at once&mdash;&ldquo;stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have
+passed the house&mdash;No. 40 I told you&mdash;that&rsquo;s it&mdash;the high
+steps there, with the purple light!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and bidding
+me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side, and then
+locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a little abashed;
+it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far surpassed any
+thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and echoed
+to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I started with
+misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed sighing with a
+subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent spectacle around me; mocking
+it, where most it glared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walls were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable colonnades;
+and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of variegated
+marbles&mdash;emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver, Sienna with
+porphyry&mdash;supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like a bower, and
+thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East of this foliage, you
+spied in a crimson dawn, Guide&rsquo;s ever youthful Apollo, driving forth the
+horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there
+pendent hung galaxies of gas lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale,
+cream-colored, porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver
+flood; as if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was
+the moon-lit garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and
+Jessica, lurked somewhere among the vines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned slaves,
+sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and taper-waisted glasses,
+journals and cigars, before them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over their
+arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially, whenever they
+uttered a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany turret-like
+structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating with rooms in the
+rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with snow-white hair and
+whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket&mdash;he looked like an almond tree in
+blossom&mdash;who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry over the scene before
+him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the waiters; and with a silent
+salute, received the silver of the guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading some
+India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud voice,
+condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the table,
+called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us, and my
+comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain where I was,
+while he withdrew for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential word
+with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much surprised,&mdash;I
+thought, a little disconcerted,&mdash;and then disappeared with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all this
+splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my head was
+almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought that I was
+really in London. What would my brother have said? What would Tom Legare, the
+treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have thought?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a little
+village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it was hard to
+unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation of the London-like
+scene around me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden visions
+of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me; and every
+instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some gentleman as
+<i>&ldquo;My Lord,&rdquo;</i> or <i>&ldquo;four Grace.&rdquo;</i> But if there
+were really any lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my
+hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul&rsquo;s and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before breakfast, or
+perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry&rsquo;s return, that we
+might immediately sally out into the street, and see some of the sights, before
+the shops were all closed for the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me. So I
+tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping the thing,
+threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy; but all the time I
+felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the time, I must have looked
+very guilty of something. But spite of this, I kept looking boldly out of my
+eyes, and straight through my blushes, and observed that every now and then
+little parties were made up among the gentlemen, and they retired into the rear
+of the house, as if going to a private apartment. And I overheard one of them
+drop the word <i>Rouge;</i> but he could not have used rouge, for his face was
+exceedingly pale. Another said something about <i>Loo.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come along, Redburn,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in the
+Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the night, for
+Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang up to follow him;
+but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he only led me into the
+passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble Graces, unitedly holding a
+broad candelabra, like an elk&rsquo;s antlers, over the landing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs, every step
+of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the hammer-cloth of the
+Lord Mayor&rsquo;s coach; and Harry hied straight to a rosewood door, which, on
+magical hinges, sprang softly open to his touch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some reluctant, sedgy
+sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting, mimicking parterres of tulips,
+and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in Babylon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven, like
+the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And oriental
+ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited serpents,
+undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there, they flashed out
+sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles&rsquo; oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringes of bullion
+and silk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with bars of
+velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings, suspended by tasseled
+cords of twisted silver and blue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to Alexander
+in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan oasis: such pictures
+as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from Cortez, when, sword in hand, he
+burst open the sanctorum of the pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you
+may still see, perhaps, in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of
+Pansa, in Pompeii&mdash;in that part of it called by Varro <i>the hollow of the
+house:</i> such pictures as Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the
+private cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the
+bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such
+pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the left
+hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance of a
+dragon&rsquo;s crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It was
+that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked expression, and
+imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His marble mouth seemed
+tremulous with secrets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sit down, Wellingborough,&rdquo; said Harry; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t be
+frightened, we are at home.&mdash;Ring the bell, will you? But
+stop;&rdquo;&mdash; and advancing to the mysterious bust, he whispered
+something in its ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a knowing mute, Wellingborough,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;who
+stays in this one place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But
+mind you don&rsquo;t breathe any secrets in his ear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a servant
+almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude of a bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cigars,&rdquo; said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into
+the middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example, and
+make myself happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before, while
+leading my dog&rsquo;s life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander, I
+twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an undercurrent of
+dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and turning to my companion,
+exclaimed, &ldquo;And pray, do you live here, Harry, in this Palace of
+Aladdin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upon my soul,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you have hit it:&mdash;you must
+have been here before! Aladdin&rsquo;s Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by
+that very name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been
+quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his general
+carriage was firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid, Harry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;that when you left me just
+now, you must have been drinking something stronger than wine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hear him now,&rdquo; said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,&mdash;&ldquo;a parson &rsquo;pon
+honor!&mdash;But remark you, Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again,
+and for a considerably longer time than before:&mdash;I may not be back again
+to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be still,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;hear me, I know the old duke here,
+and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who? not the Duke of Wellington,&rdquo; said I, wondering whether Harry
+was really going to include <i>him</i> too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; cried Harry, &ldquo;I mean the white-whiskered old man you
+saw below; they call him <i>the Duke:&mdash;he</i> keeps the house. I say, I
+know him well, and he knows <i>me;</i> and he knows what brings me here, also.
+Well; we have arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and
+sleep here tonight, and&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo; continued he, speaking
+low&mdash;&ldquo;you must guard this letter&mdash;&rdquo; slipping a sealed one
+into my hand&mdash;&ldquo;and, if I am not back by morning, you must post right
+on to Bury, and leave the letter there;&mdash;here, take this
+paper&mdash;it&rsquo;s all set down here in black and white&mdash;where you are
+to go, and what you are to do. And after that&rsquo;s done&mdash;mind, this is
+all in case I don&rsquo;t return&mdash;then you may do what you please: stay
+here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here&rsquo;s enough to pay
+all your expenses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the purse in
+my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost started from my
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter, Redburn?&rdquo; he cried, with a wild sort of
+laugh&mdash;&ldquo;you are not afraid of me, are you?&mdash;No, no! I believe
+in you, my boy, or you would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that
+letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in heaven&rsquo;s name do you mean?&rdquo; at last I exclaimed,
+&ldquo;you don&rsquo;t really intend to desert me in this strange place, do
+you, Harry?&rdquo; and I snatched him by the hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pooh, pooh,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;let me go. I tell you, it&rsquo;s
+all right: do as I say: that&rsquo;s all. Promise me now, will you? Swear
+it!&mdash;no, no,&rdquo; he added, vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me
+more&mdash;&ldquo;no, I won&rsquo;t: I have nothing more to tell you&mdash;not
+a word. Will you swear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a syllable! Will you swear?&mdash;you will not? then here, give me
+that purse:&mdash;there&mdash;there&mdash;take that&mdash;and that&mdash;and
+that;&mdash;that will pay your fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are
+not my friend,&rdquo; and he wheeled round his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled me;
+and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered old
+man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me as his
+friend&mdash;young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to the
+comforts of his lordship, while he&mdash;Harry&mdash;was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression, that I
+hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry then shook my
+hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one word, seized his cap,
+and darted out of the room, saying, &ldquo;Leave not this room tonight; and
+remember the letter, and Bury!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose, and
+opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard the hum
+from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory rattling from the
+closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the room, and a terrible
+revulsion came over me: I would have given the world had I been safe back in
+Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in Prince&rsquo;s Dock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some assassin
+pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange thought came over
+me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern plague had been imported. And
+was that pale yellow wine, that I drank below, drugged? thought I. This must be
+some house whose foundations take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries
+only enchanted me fast to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth
+from the house, my limbs seemed manacled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a confused
+sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder than before, burst
+upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the room where I was, I caught
+sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched hands, wildly darting through the
+passage, toward the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul&mdash;in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning through my
+mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to do this
+thing?&mdash;why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he want of me?
+But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour he had accosted me
+on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually changed; and from the moment we
+had sprung into the cab, he had seemed almost another person from what he had
+seemed before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;&mdash;would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder, I
+thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth, search
+every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had sworn not to do
+so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return. Yet, if he did not
+return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted over the money, and looked
+at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of the
+letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at them
+attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable object in
+deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he&rsquo;s in earnest; and here I
+am&mdash;yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come what
+will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the last of this
+thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence around
+me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had never before
+felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most squalid haunts of sailor
+iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling
+over with lizards; and I thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the
+serpent of vice is a serpent still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself upon a
+lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of night-mare. Every
+few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of starting up, and rushing
+into the street, to inquire where I was; but remembering Harry&rsquo;s
+injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and that it was now so late, I
+again tried to be composed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of dice-boxes with
+the military-looking man below; and the next thing I knew, was the glare of a
+light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very pale, stood before me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The letter and paper,&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There! there! there! thus I tear you,&rdquo; he cried, wrenching the
+letter to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. &ldquo;I am off for America; the game is up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake explain,&rdquo; said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. &ldquo;Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been
+gambling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha, ha,&rdquo; he deliriously laughed. &ldquo;Gambling? red and white,
+you mean?&mdash;cards?&mdash;dice?&mdash;the bones?&mdash;Ha,
+ha!&mdash;Gambling? gambling?&rdquo; he ground out between his
+teeth&mdash;&ldquo;what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they
+are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wellingborough,&rdquo; he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his
+eyes blazing into mine&mdash;&ldquo;Wellingborough&rdquo;&mdash;and fumbling in
+his breast-pocket, he drew forth a dirk&mdash;&ldquo;Here, Wellingborough, take
+it&mdash;take it, I say&mdash;are you stupid?&mdash;there,
+there&rdquo;&mdash;and he pushed it into my hands. &ldquo;Keep it away from
+me&mdash;keep it out of my sight&mdash;I don&rsquo;t want it near me, while I
+feel as I do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they
+don&rsquo;t bury them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it&rsquo;s an
+invitation to hang myself"&mdash;and seizing it by the gilded handle at the
+end, he twitched it down from the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In God&rsquo;s name, what ails you?&rdquo; I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, oh nothing,&rdquo; said Harry, now assuming a treacherous,
+tropical calmness&mdash;&ldquo;nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world.
+I&rsquo;m the serenest of men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But give me that dirk,&rdquo; he suddenly cried&mdash;&ldquo;let me have
+it, I say. Oh! I don&rsquo;t mean to murder myself&mdash;I&rsquo;m past that
+now&mdash;give it me&rdquo;&mdash;and snatching it from my hand, he flung down
+an empty purse, and with a terrific stab, nailed it fast with the dirk to the
+table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s something for the old
+duke to see to-morrow morning; that&rsquo;s about all that&rsquo;s left of
+me&mdash; that&rsquo;s my skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don&rsquo;t be
+downhearted; there&rsquo;s a little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea
+or two left. Don&rsquo;t stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow
+night; we start in the morning&rdquo;&mdash;and turning his back, he began to
+whistle very fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this, then,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;is your showing me London, is it,
+Harry? I did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I
+will not regret not seeing the town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, &ldquo;Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why?&rdquo; said I, in alarm, &ldquo;what more would you have me
+swear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!&rdquo; he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips&mdash;&ldquo;never to breathe it!
+swear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not
+desire it,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s no need of swearing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn,&rdquo; he added, imploringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as
+soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what am I?&rdquo; cried Harry; &ldquo;but pardon me, Redburn, I did
+not mean to offend; if you knew all&mdash;but no, no!&mdash;never mind, never
+mind!&rdquo; And he ran to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Brandy,&rdquo; whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you not going to sleep, then?&rdquo; said I, more and more alarmed
+at his wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such
+a mood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No sleep for me! sleep if <i>you</i> can&mdash;I mean to sit up with a
+decanter!&mdash;let me see&rdquo;&mdash;looking at the ormolu clock on the
+mantel&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s only two hours to morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow, appeared
+with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to leave it and depart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the lounge.
+I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and then; starting
+from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the table; the brandy
+before him; from which he occasionally poured into his glass. Instead of
+exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits seemed to soothe him down;
+and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his shaking
+me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look! it is broad day,&rdquo; said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings
+of the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall of
+pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and cigar-stumps
+decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the street door; we sprang
+into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled along northward by railroad,
+toward Prince&rsquo;s Dock and the Highlander.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap47"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.<br/>
+HOMEWARD BOUND</h2>
+
+<p>
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets to the
+sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of the last
+thirty-six hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our journey;
+so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our return; that all
+united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in London seemed impossible; and
+that I had been there, and come away little the wiser, was almost distracting
+to one who, like me, had so longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at the
+houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the Palace of
+Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the mysterious place
+where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was almost ready to conclude,
+that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket, he now
+led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was shown to his
+room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing once more in our
+sailor habiliments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?&rdquo; said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course&mdash;what
+else?" he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?&rdquo; asked I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s as it may turn out,&rdquo; said Harry; &ldquo;but I have
+now more than ever resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a
+fellow like me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the
+wharf, you know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let&rsquo;s
+see what they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel
+better already. Never say die, is my motto.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay of
+Prince&rsquo;s Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days&rsquo; time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good!&rdquo; exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours, and
+intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to any severe
+account for it from the officers; for several of our men had absented
+themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or nothing was said
+to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know nothing about it.
+During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the discipline of the ship was
+altogether relaxed; and I could hardly believe they were the same officers who
+were so dictatorial at sea. The reason of this was, that we had nothing
+important to do; and although the captain might now legally refuse to receive
+me on board, yet I was not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my
+years, and worked as cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the
+homeward passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the crew; and
+the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, &ldquo;Well, sir, you have thought
+best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were flattering ourselves
+that you had made a run of it for good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the
+proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But turn to, sir, turn to,&rdquo; added the mate; &ldquo;here! aloft
+there, and free that pennant; it&rsquo;s foul of the
+backstay&mdash;jump!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at Harry; but,
+as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had been
+already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from shore; but it
+became the crew&rsquo;s business to clear away the <i>between-decks,</i>
+extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for the reception of about
+five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were already littering the decks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than upon
+the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of casks on
+deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along the
+<i>between-decks,</i> forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing access
+to four rows of bunks,&mdash;three tiers, one above another,&mdash;against the
+ship&rsquo;s sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in the
+middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse planks. They
+looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else; especially as the place was
+so gloomy and dark; no light coming down except through the fore and after
+hatchways, both of which were covered with little houses called
+<i>&ldquo;booby-hatches.&rdquo;</i> Upon the main-hatches, which were well
+calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the
+<i>&ldquo;passengers-galley&rdquo;</i> was solidly lashed down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This <i>galley</i> was a large open stove, or iron range&mdash;made expressly
+for emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the
+emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After two days&rsquo; work, every thing was in readiness; most of the emigrants
+on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the outlet of
+Prince&rsquo;s Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out with the
+tide in the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable. Added to
+the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro of our five
+hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage, were now coming on
+board; the appearance of the cabin passengers, following porters with their
+trunks; the loud orders of the dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind
+us to preserve their order of going out; the leave-takings, and
+good-by&rsquo;s, and God-bless-you&rsquo;s, between the emigrants and their
+friends; and the cheers of the surrounding ships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by the
+bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit, now came a
+one-eyed <i>crimp</i> leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had been shipped
+to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated before, that two or three
+of our men had left us for good, while in port. When the crimp had got this man
+and another safely lodged in a bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a
+miserable cab, pulled out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved
+completely helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward
+the quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his closed
+eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered on board by a
+rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who put him likewise into
+a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself carefully tucking him in, and
+bidding the bystanders not to disturb him till the ship was away from the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock. Hats and
+handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears were shed; and the
+last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a policeman collaring a boy,
+and walking him off to the guard-house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A steam-tug, the <i>Goliath,</i> now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
+the river past the fort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene was most striking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four days
+past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships for all
+parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of merchantmen, all
+steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in the clear morning air
+like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and from many a forecastle, came
+the deep mellow old song <i>Ho-o-he-yo, cheerily men!</i> as the crews called
+their anchors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their voyage.
+They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing America, and
+relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days would be an uncommonly
+long voyage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships sailing to
+the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them in obtaining
+emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more remunerative than crates and
+bales, is exceedingly great; so much so, that some of the agents they employ,
+do not scruple to deceive the poor applicants for passage, with all manner of
+fables concerning the short space of time, in which their ships make the run
+across the ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of provisions
+than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes proves to be in the
+last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on. And though benevolent
+societies have been long organized in Liverpool, for the purpose of keeping
+offices, where the emigrants can obtain reliable information and advice,
+concerning their best mode of embarkation, and other matters interesting to
+them; and though the English authorities have imposed a law, providing that
+every captain of an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to
+it, that each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet,
+all this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents from
+practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants themselves, from
+the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by one,
+lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into the most
+miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable. The wind was
+tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the emigrants fell.
+Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the uncomfortable and perilous
+decks: and from the two <i>&ldquo;booby-hatches&rdquo;</i> came the steady hum
+of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible wrestler,
+sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and the women and
+children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of the poor
+emigrant&rsquo;s first storm at sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin, who have
+nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to run for them at
+a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly inquire how they are
+getting along, and mix them a posset: and even then, in the abandonment of this
+soul and body subduing malady, such ladies and gentlemen will often give up
+life itself as unendurable, and put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy
+annihilation; all of which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to
+preserve their valuable lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of cotton, and
+packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place that, during storm
+time, must be closed against both light and air; who can do no cooking, nor
+warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching seas would instantly flood
+their fire in their exposed galley on deck? How, then, with these men, and
+women, and children, to whom a first voyage, under the most advantageous
+circumstances, must come just as hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz
+Clarence, lady, daughter, and seventeen servants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the Highlander,
+the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most indispensable conveniences of
+a civilized dwelling. This forces them in storm time to such extremities, that
+no wonder fevers and plagues are the result. We had not been at sea one week,
+when to hold your head down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a
+suddenly opened cesspool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board some of
+these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to prevent the
+emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the quarter-deck, the
+only completely open space on ship-board. Consequently&mdash;even in fine
+weather&mdash;when they come up from below, they are crowded in the waist of
+the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and spars; abused by the seamen,
+and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for unavoidably standing in the way of
+working the vessel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and to
+protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of the
+<i>&ldquo;wild Irish&rdquo;</i> emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by
+the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between those
+who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid twenty
+guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent in having
+this regulation maintained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker&rsquo;s, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men&rsquo;s heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of humanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is to
+have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this
+circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation at
+these things.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap48"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.<br/>
+A LIVING CORPSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be marked by
+a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which had so strongly
+impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been brought
+on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their duties, in
+four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man yet lay in his
+bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had been adjusted by the
+crimp, who had deposited him there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His name was down on the ship&rsquo;s papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the
+sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand that
+Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him; when,
+muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the quarterdeck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At about
+three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most old seamen,
+was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness, recommended that
+Miguel&rsquo;s clothing should be removed, in order that he should lie more
+comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing be done in the
+forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously forbade this
+proceeding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the extreme
+angle of the forecastle, behind the <i>bowsprit-bitts</i>&mdash;two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship&rsquo;s keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the
+men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to the
+presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side planks; for some
+days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to extirpate the vermin
+overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch, to which I belonged, turned
+out; and instantly as every man waked, he exclaimed at the now intolerable
+smell, supposed to be heightened by the shaking up the bilge-water, from the
+ship&rsquo;s rolling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blast that rat!&rdquo; cried the Greenlander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s blasted already,&rdquo; said Jackson, who in his drawers had
+crossed over to the bunk of Miguel. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a water-rat, shipmates,
+that&rsquo;s dead; and here he is&rdquo;&mdash;and with that, he dragged forth
+the sailor&rsquo;s arm, exclaiming, &ldquo;Dead as a timber-head!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he held to
+the man&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s not dead,&rdquo; he cried, as the yellow flame wavered
+for a moment at the seaman&rsquo;s motionless mouth. But hardly had the words
+escaped, when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like
+a forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the cadaverous
+face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all over
+with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the silence, the
+uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely like phosphorescent
+shark in a midnight sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and every
+lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in curls of soft
+blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal death. Prometheus,
+blasted by fire on the rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man&rsquo;s name, tattooed
+in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if there was
+something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating letter burned so
+white, that you might read the flaming name in the flickering ground of blue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s that d&mdash;d Miguel?&rdquo; was now shouted down among
+us from the scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined
+to have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor,&rdquo;
+coughed Jackson. &ldquo;Come you down, sir, and look.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a rage;
+but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a bullet. &ldquo;My
+God!&rdquo; he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take hold of it,&rdquo; said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander;
+&ldquo;it must go overboard. Don&rsquo;t stand shaking there, like a dog; take
+hold of it, I say! But stop&rdquo;&mdash;and smothering it all in the blankets,
+he pulled it partly out of the bunk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent sparkles
+of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor did the
+conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at all serve to
+soothe me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the infernal
+opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when brought on board
+the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake of the month&rsquo;s
+advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill he presented, the
+body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on board of the Highlander,
+under the pretense of its being a live body in a drunken trance. And I heard
+Jackson say, that he had known of such things having been done before. But that
+a really dead body ever burned in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But
+the sailors seemed familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of
+such things having happened to others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case like
+this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I almost
+thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the Calvinists, and
+that Miguel&rsquo;s earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal condemnation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the bunk,
+and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk was nailed
+up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict orders were given
+to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the emigrants; but to this,
+they needed no commands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the forecastle,
+by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing, or in any way make
+merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the watches on deck. All but
+Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting silently smoking on their chests,
+or in their bunks, would look toward the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and
+invoke the dead man with incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and
+made my soul stand still.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap49"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.<br/>
+CARLO</h2>
+
+<p>
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a rich-cheeked,
+chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued velvet jacket, and
+tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not above fifteen years of age;
+but in the twilight pensiveness of his full morning eyes, there seemed to sleep
+experiences so sad and various, that his days must have seemed to him years. It
+was not an eye like Harry&rsquo;s tho&rsquo; Harry&rsquo;s was large and
+womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a
+tropic sky; and spoke of humility, deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless
+endurance of all the ills of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of tendril
+curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow reminded you of
+a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady&rsquo;s arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His whole
+figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might have ripened
+into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies steal in infancy;
+such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went among the poor and outcast,
+for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as
+only Andalusian beggars are, full of poetry, gushing from every rent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire; and on
+life&rsquo;s ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince&rsquo;s Dock, with his
+hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of Liverpool,
+playing the sunny airs of southern climes, among the northern fog and drizzle.
+And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over the Atlantic, he had
+again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carlo,&rdquo; said Harry, &ldquo;how did you succeed in England?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing back
+his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he looked up,
+and said in his broken English&mdash;that seemed like mixing the potent wine of
+Oporto with some delicious syrup:&mdash;said he, &ldquo;Ah! I succeed very
+well!&mdash;for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the sad. I
+have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the ladies, and solemn
+sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know from their faces what
+airs will best please them; I never stop before a house, but I judge from its
+portico for what tune they will soonest toss me some silver. And I ever play
+sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to the sad; and most always the rich best
+fancy the sad, and the poor the merry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men,&rdquo;
+said Harry, &ldquo;who would much rather have your room than your music?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sometimes,&rdquo; said Carlo, playing with his foot,
+&ldquo;sometimes I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you never
+leave them under a shilling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; continued the boy, &ldquo;I love my organ as I do myself, for
+it is my only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off, not I;
+would I, poor organ?&rdquo;&mdash; looking down the hatchway where it was.
+&ldquo;No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for when
+people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they themselves
+are to blame; for such people&rsquo;s musical pipes are cracked, and grown
+rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps,&rdquo; said Harry, with a
+laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! there&rsquo;s the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as
+a hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no more
+than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without chords.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the vessel
+was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze, and the poor
+emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were gathered on deck; Carlo
+suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings; went below, and, assisted by the
+emigrants, returned with his organ.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to be
+loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should
+be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia&rsquo;s horse,
+and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod. Musical instruments
+should be like the silver tongs, with which the high-priests tended the Jewish
+altars&mdash;never to be touched by a hand profane. Who would bruise the
+poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a beggar&rsquo;s hedge, would insult
+the melodious god himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a negro-fiddle,
+that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest architectural organ that
+ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a cathedral nave. For even a
+Jew&rsquo;s-harp may be so played, as to awaken all the fairies that are in us,
+and make them dance in our souls, as on a moon-lit sward of violets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which might have
+made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into our inmost beings,
+and shows us all hidden things?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely transcendental
+mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul to be essentially a
+harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus and Campanella, that every
+man has four souls within him; then can we account for those banded sounds with
+silver links, those quartettes of melody, that sometimes sit and sing within
+us, as if our souls were baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest
+old harpers of Wales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But look! here is poor Carlo&rsquo;s organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about him; his
+right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of his instrument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Behold the organ!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their melody
+be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may we not
+anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might almost have
+played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was buried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and belfries;
+its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order; in front, it
+looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!&mdash;what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded with
+devotional sunsets!&mdash;what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and niches
+with saints!&mdash;But stop! &rsquo;tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some interior
+Alhambra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the Fountain
+of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air&mdash;a mixed and liquid sea of
+sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here&rsquo;s
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and while
+I list to the organs twain&mdash; one yours, one mine&mdash;let me gaze fathoms
+down into thy fathomless eye;&mdash;&rsquo;tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant standards,
+armies marching&mdash;all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes, the nucleus
+of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded damask-flies, thick
+clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm around me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory knobs; and
+plays some flute-like saraband&mdash;soft, dulcet, dropping sounds, like silver
+cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as if ten thousand
+brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts, called North, and South, and
+East, to rush to West!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again&mdash;what blasted heath is this?&mdash;what goblin sounds of
+Macbeth&rsquo;s witches?&mdash;Beethoven&rsquo;s Spirit Waltz! the muster-call
+of sprites and specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor,
+and all the Blocksberg&rsquo;s, demons dire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard&mdash;some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep dipped in
+silver gauzes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this could Carlo do&mdash;make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me;
+and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and bowers of
+song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street organs;
+more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in squadrons of
+Parisian orchestras.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same wondrous
+magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure greatly needs
+the artist&rsquo;s repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His York Minster&rsquo;s West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton&rsquo;s
+heaven, it turns on golden hinges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded
+columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and lounges; and
+lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out come,
+two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of martial men;
+with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass on, and disappear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling themselves
+on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors, among
+the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some emperor, a queen;
+and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back the glances tossed by
+coquettes of countesses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands, begrimed, and
+black, and rickety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may thus
+transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who owns a
+million.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy, with
+aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous box of sights
+and sounds forth from a lordling&rsquo;s door!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap50"></a>CHAPTER L.<br/>
+HARRY BOLTON AT SEA</h2>
+
+<p>
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me, even
+now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried you part of
+the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with your secrets, and
+whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be glad?
+Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it, that we
+believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the departed; their
+voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it is winter with them;
+and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that every spring renews the
+green life of the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see you,
+plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious to others.
+Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of fancy;
+half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings, like gods,
+come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the embrace of wild,
+dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the same as
+of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you show like a
+zebra, banding with elks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair, Harry
+Bolton, mingling with the Highlander&rsquo;s crew, looked not unlike the soft,
+silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds through
+Caffrarian woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from bowsprit
+to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the girlish
+youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in Union-street, would
+form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly, they cast upon him many a
+critical glance; but were not long in concluding that Harry would prove no very
+great accession to their strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not
+tell many hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked
+him before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
+knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors are
+not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time, abstaining
+from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold and unsympathizing
+civility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and the
+thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with every one,
+a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his money was now gone
+again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled him but little, in the
+first flush of being at sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life, should
+evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly inadmissible in a person
+situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity with lofty life, only the less
+qualified him for understanding the other extreme. Will you believe me, this
+Bury blade once came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers,
+and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously crossed
+my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that, spite his
+protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea before, even as a
+<i>Guinea-pig</i> in an Indiaman; for the slightest acquaintance with the
+sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him, it would seem, from enacting
+this folly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that Chinese mandarin?&rdquo; cried the mate, who had made
+voyages to Canton. &ldquo;Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now,
+and furl it in a trice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; said Harry, starting back. &ldquo;Is not this the morning
+watch, and is not mine a morning gown?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though, in my refined friend&rsquo;s estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate&rsquo;s, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is too bad!&rdquo; exclaimed Harry to me; &ldquo;I meant to lounge
+away the watch in that gown until coffee time;&mdash;and I suppose your
+Hottentot of a mate won&rsquo;t permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of
+a morning; but by gad, I&rsquo;ll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite
+him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the want of
+polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and pique, only
+determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of indignation he raised
+very soon overwhelmed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one, which he
+had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was ornamented with brass
+screw-heads, and other devices; and was well filled with those articles of the
+wardrobe in which Harry had sported through a London season; for the various
+vests and pantaloons he had sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not
+materially lessened his extensive stock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by the
+sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of silks,
+velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they thought Harry
+had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by abandoning his
+country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers. Jackson even asked him to
+lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test the color of his calves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of easy
+manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship&rsquo;s company, the
+sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible necessity of
+decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the constables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to themselves,
+or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar. What else can
+bring them to sea?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was put
+down for a very equivocal character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially one
+evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to mount one
+of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two mizzen-peaks at his
+stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver, or a footman to a Portuguese
+running barber, or some old maid&rsquo;s tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it
+had become all the same to Harry as if there were no gentlemanly and
+complaisant Captain Riga on board. For to his no small astonishment,&mdash;but
+just as I had predicted,&mdash;Captain Riga never noticed him now, but left the
+business of indoctrinating him into the little experiences of a
+greenhorn&rsquo;s career solely in the hands of his officers and crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was any
+running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in coiling
+away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact that his shipmates
+were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands of the watch would be
+engaged <i>clewing up a t&rsquo;-gallant-sail,</i> that is, pulling the proper
+ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard aloft, Harry would always
+manage to get near the <i>belaying-pin, so</i> that when the time came for two
+of us to spring into the rigging, he would be inordinately fidgety in making
+fast the <i>clew-lines,</i> and would be so absorbed in that occupation, and
+would so elaborate the hitchings round the pin, that it was quite impossible
+for him, after doing so much, to mount over the bulwarks before his comrades
+had got there. However, after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of
+their getting loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a
+prodigious hurry for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in
+advance, would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off
+from the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact was
+confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never would do: <i>he
+could not go aloft;</i> his nerves would not hear of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, Harry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;better you had never been born. Do
+you know what it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made
+no doubt you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that
+you had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you only
+imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find yourself as
+much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, <i>his nerves
+could not stand it;</i> in the course of his courtly career, he had drunk too
+much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked altogether too many
+Havannas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one morning,
+and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the short signal
+halyards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; said Harry, aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Away you go!&rdquo; said the mate, snatching a whip&rsquo;s end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t strike me!&rdquo; screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take that, and along with you,&rdquo; cried the mate, laying the rope
+once across his back, but lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By heaven!&rdquo; cried Harry, wincing&mdash;not with the blow, but the
+insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept
+him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head, I
+should infallibly have pitched my boy&rsquo;s bulk into the officer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Captain Riga!&rdquo; cried Harry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t call upon <i>him&rdquo;</i> said the mate; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s
+asleep, and won&rsquo;t wake up till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you
+go!&rdquo; he added, flourishing the rope&rsquo;s end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there no
+hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he made one
+bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice. I thought a few
+more springs would take him to the truck, and was a little fearful that in his
+desperation he might then jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious
+greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped
+short, and looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber;
+and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him
+not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. &ldquo;Up you go, sir.&rdquo; But
+Harry said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You Max,&rdquo; cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, &ldquo;spring after
+him, and help him; you understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a bump
+against the base of Harry&rsquo;s back. Needs must when the devil drives; and
+higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my unfortunate
+friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin signal halyards&mdash;,
+hardly bigger than common twine&mdash;were flying in the wind.
+&ldquo;Unreeve!&rdquo; cried the mate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Harry&rsquo;s arm stretched out&mdash;his legs seemed shaking in the
+rigging, even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was
+done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb quivering. From
+that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted above the bulwarks; and
+for the residue of the voyage, at least, became an altered person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the time, he went to the mate&mdash;since he could not get speech of the
+captain&mdash;and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship&rsquo;s company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound himself to
+pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New York, over and
+above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a blunt denial; and a
+look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on board a ship, and
+<i>always</i> a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within so brief a period,
+no officer can bear to associate on terms of any thing like equality with a
+person whom he has ordered about at his pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but go
+aloft again he <i>could</i> not, and <i>would</i> not. He would do any thing
+else but that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This affair sealed Harry&rsquo;s fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
+reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a miserable
+life indeed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of finding
+one&rsquo;s self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate sea-tyrants,
+with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but your ignorance of
+every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead, and the duties you are
+constantly called upon to perform. In such a sphere, and under such
+circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would be sea-clowns and bumpkins;
+and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked without remorse. In more than one
+instance I have seen the truth of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no
+exception. And from the circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the
+bitterest of these evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange
+constitutional nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a
+hunted hare to the merciless crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of appearance,
+had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes of a spirit not
+easily tamed&mdash;how was it, that he could now yield himself up to the almost
+passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps his spirit, for the time,
+had been broken. But I will not undertake to explain; we are curious creatures,
+as every one knows; and there are passages in the lives of all men, so out of
+keeping with the common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of
+themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap51"></a>CHAPTER LI.<br/>
+THE EMIGRANTS</h2>
+
+<p>
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had intervals of
+foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with head winds, till at
+last, after a three days&rsquo; fog and rain, the sun rose cheerily one
+morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we were out of the weather
+emphatically called <i>&ldquo;Channel weather,&rdquo;</i> and the last we
+should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and all the rest
+was broad ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Land ho!</i> was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
+At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking America
+itself was at hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. &ldquo;Is <i>that</i> it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aye, it doesn&rsquo;t look much like <i>ould</i> Ireland, does
+it?&rdquo; said Jackson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a bit, honey:&mdash;and how long before we get there?
+to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when they
+were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own native island,
+which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a steamboat for Liverpool,
+was now close to them again; and that, after newly voyaging so many days from
+the Mersey, the Highlander was only bringing them in view of the original home
+whence they started.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
+adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a place
+just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see how much
+nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together, looking
+straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York city every
+minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles distant, and steering,
+moreover, against a head wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest search for
+land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the bows; when he would
+cry out at the top of his voice&mdash;&ldquo;Look, look, ye divils! look at the
+great pigs of the sea!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them false; and
+that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote place; and one
+night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga purposed taking them to
+Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but though some of the old women
+almost believed it, and a great weeping ensued among the children, yet the men
+knew better than to believe such a ridiculous tale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He would
+lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat, and gazing out
+on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and play for several hours;
+much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who blessed him and his organ again
+and again; and paid him for his music by furnishing him his meals. Sometimes,
+the steward would come forward, when it happened to be very much of a
+moonlight, with a message from the cabin, for Carlo to repair to the
+quarterdeck, and entertain the gentlemen and ladies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes, by
+urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo&rsquo;s, for
+the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or thrice: for this
+fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the other
+steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling to strangers;
+and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely unknown to him, and in
+whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest, were curveting about in
+famous high spirits. So for the most part, the gentlemen and ladies were fain
+to dance as well as they could to my little Italian&rsquo;s organ.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any tune
+that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at one side, and
+so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or such
+an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some ladies, whom
+I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to Malibran at Covent Garden,
+assured the attentive Captain Riga, that Carlo&rsquo;s organ was a most
+wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, ladies,&rdquo; said the captain, bowing, &ldquo;by your leave, I
+think Carlo&rsquo;s organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig
+running after its dam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were all
+ready enough to dance to poor Carlo&rsquo;s music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carlo&rdquo;&mdash;said I, one night, as he was marching forward from
+the quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place during my
+watch on deck:&mdash;&ldquo;Carlo&rdquo;&mdash;said I, &ldquo;what do the
+gentlemen and ladies give you for playing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo;&mdash;and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and
+her shield&mdash;three English pennies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a
+little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the natural
+antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers, regard the
+inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not feeling very charitably
+disposed toward them, myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her own way
+for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I cherished a feeling
+toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not because they happened to
+be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only because they seemed the most finical,
+miserly, mean men and women, that ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad skirts; he
+had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a whole hour, with
+his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in his breeches pockets, as
+if he had two mints at work there, coining guineas. He was an abominable
+looking old fellow, with cold, fat, jelly-like eyes; and avarice,
+heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all over him. He seemed all the time
+going through some process of mental arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and
+cents: his very mouth, wrinkled and drawn up at the corners, looked like a
+purse. When he dies, his skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the
+till-hole between his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked as if he
+were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a short, little,
+fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf, but very full about
+the waist. There was nothing describable about him but his dress; for he had
+such a meaningless face, I can not remember it; though I have a vague
+impression, that it looked at the time, as if its owner was laboring under the
+mumps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the rest; who
+were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee of the
+<i>spanker;</i> or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the emigrant
+women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the upper cabin. These
+sparks frequently called for the steward to help them to brandy and water, and
+talked about going on to Washington, to see Niagara Falls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four heavy
+files of the <i>London Times,</i> and other papers; and he spent all his hours
+in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg crossed over the
+other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all. That was indispensable
+to the proper understanding of what he studied. He growled terribly, when
+disturbed by the sailors, who now and then were obliged to move him to get at
+the ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are like
+creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap52"></a>CHAPTER LII.<br/>
+THE EMIGRANTS&rsquo; KITCHEN</h2>
+
+<p>
+I have made some mention of the &ldquo;galley,&rdquo; or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the steerage,
+that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this galley. But it was
+otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the steerage; and all their
+cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty large one, to be sure, but,
+nevertheless, small enough, considering the number to be accommodated, and the
+fact that the fire was only to be kindled at certain hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in all
+their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the captain. And
+though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is necessary, and even
+indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond the captain, he too often
+makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as for going to law with him at the
+end of the voyage, you might as well go to law with the Czar of Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very disagreeable
+work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of the spray over the
+uncovered &ldquo;galley.&rdquo; Whenever I had the morning watch, from four to
+eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from below about
+daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of rope-yarn, or tarred
+canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the fire be fairly made, than
+up came the old women, and men, and children; each armed with an iron pot or
+saucepan; and invariably a great tumult ensued, as to whose turn to cook came
+next; sometimes the more quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other&rsquo;s
+pots and pans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed to
+crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a great
+strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his appearance; and
+eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose coffee-pot that was; upon
+being told, he removed it, and put his own in its place; saying something about
+that individual place belonging to him; and with that, he turned aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed, made a
+violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no sooner perceived,
+than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy snatched up the boiling
+coffee, and spirted its contents all about the fellow&rsquo;s bare legs; which
+incontinently began to dance involuntary hornpipes and fandangoes, as a
+preliminary to giving chase to the boy, who by this time, however, had
+decamped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but scores
+of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see these poor
+emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the most ordinary
+accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to which such beings
+are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by imbittering their
+tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they themselves drive the
+strongest rivet into the chain, by which their social superiors hold them
+subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second dog-watch,
+at the mate&rsquo;s command, I would march up to the fire, and giving notice to
+the assembled crowd, that the time was come to extinguish it, would dash it out
+with my bucket of salt water; though many, who had long waited for a chance to
+cook, had now to go away disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled into what
+is sometimes called <i>mush;</i> by the Dutch is known as <i>supaan;</i> by
+sailors <i>burgoo;</i> by the New Englanders <i>hasty-pudding;</i> in which
+hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a sort of
+epic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with sea-biscuit, and
+other perennial food, that was eatable all the year round, fire or no fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than the
+rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages, Dutch
+herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the contingencies of a
+voyager in the steerage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer ashore, whose
+greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly using himself for a
+cupboard, by transferring their contents into his own interior. He was a little
+light of head, I always thought. He particularly doated on his long strings of
+sausages; and would sometimes take them out, and play with them, wreathing them
+round him, like an Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this
+diversion, and eating his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible
+junk bottle, and smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made
+time jog along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of pecuniary
+circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced English tailor, who it
+seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife in some imaginary section of
+the ship, called the <i>second cabin,</i> which was feigned to combine the
+comforts of the first cabin with the cheapness of the steerage. But it turned
+out that this second cabin was comprised in the after part of the steerage
+itself, with nothing intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he
+found himself herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was young
+and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers&rsquo;-boys fall in love with; she
+had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do, from the
+dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their double-barreled
+opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he would remonstrate with
+his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial commands upon her, to go below
+instantly, out of sight. But the lady was not to be tyrannized over; and so she
+told him. Meantime, the bucks would be still framing her in their lenses,
+mightily enjoying the fun. The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to
+start up, and make a dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting
+as far as the mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that
+divided them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly baited
+into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get rid of his
+wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could think of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Billy, my dear;&rdquo; and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Billy, my love!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bow went faster and faster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let&rsquo;s make it all
+up;&rdquo; and she bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with
+her irresistible eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour or two,
+as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed, which
+was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass from the
+cabin.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap53"></a>CHAPTER LIII.<br/>
+THE HORATII AND CURIATII</h2>
+
+<p>
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of Livy,
+in the 24th section of his first book:&mdash;&ldquo;It <i>happened, that in
+each family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity
+in point of age or of strength.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from Armagh, in
+Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons, born, as they said,
+on the same day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like as the
+mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms seen in a
+kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to form a complete
+figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all six boys bore a strong
+cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the O&rsquo;Briens were in
+disposition quite the reverse of the O&rsquo;Regans. The former were a timid,
+silent trio, who used to revolve around their mother&rsquo;s waist, and seldom
+quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the O&rsquo;Regans were &ldquo;broths of
+boys,&rdquo; full of mischief and fun, and given to all manner of devilment,
+like the tails of the comets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early every morning, Mrs. O&rsquo;Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her
+spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made her
+way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from the sea, for
+the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and the three boys were
+ducking and diving together in the brine; their mother engaged in
+<i>shampooing</i> them, though it was haphazard sort of work enough; a rub
+here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on a stray limb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it&rsquo;s you,
+Teddy, you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don&rsquo;t be mixing your
+legs up with Pat&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the sport
+mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated them all
+over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O&rsquo;Brien would be standing on the boatswain&rsquo;s
+locker&mdash;or rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel&rsquo;s bows&mdash;with a
+large old quarto Bible, black with age, laid before her between the
+knight-heads, and reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O&rsquo;Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O&rsquo;Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty black; and
+they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the incantations
+muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted us; and Blunt, our
+Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O&rsquo;Brien purposely came on deck
+every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for the next ensuing twenty-four
+hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted her,
+saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the knight-heads again with
+her book, the crew would throw it overboard for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion was
+curiously manifested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her, began her
+low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of the ship, and
+slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the multitudinous waves from a
+floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind her, snatched the book from her
+hands, and threw it overboard. The widow gave a wail, and her boys set up a
+cry. Their cousins, then ducking in the water close by, at once saw the cause
+of the cry; and springing from the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the
+legs, biting and striking at him: which, the before timid little O&rsquo;Briens
+no sooner perceived, than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the
+amazed seaman found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the mate. He
+saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max that he would
+harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as if rejoiced at their
+giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max, sorely scratched, bit, pinched,
+and every way aggravated, though of course without a serious bruise, cried out
+&ldquo;enough!&rdquo; and the assailants were ordered to quit him; but though
+the three O&rsquo;Briens obeyed, the three O&rsquo;Regans hung on to him like
+leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There now, you rascal,&rdquo; cried the mate, &ldquo;throw overboard
+another Bible, and I&rsquo;ll send you after it without a bowline.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel. That
+morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by the
+cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in them, as they
+always do concerning twins, which some of them show in public parks and
+gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning their nurses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And were you all born at one time?&rdquo; asked an old lady, letting her
+eye run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, an&rsquo; we were,&rdquo; said Teddy; &ldquo;wasn&rsquo;t we,
+mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken up for
+their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which resulted in
+starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable feeling
+coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable or
+unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two sisters
+simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet, the mere fact of
+there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me at least, all twins are
+prodigies; and still I hardly know why this should be; for all of us in our own
+persons furnish numerous examples of the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs
+twins? A regular Castor and Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms,
+hands, legs, feet, eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike
+as they possibly can be?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the
+particular benefit of twins?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap54"></a>CHAPTER LIV.<br/>
+SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND <i>PIG-TAIL</i></h2>
+
+<p>
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their tobacco
+in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious commercial
+speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid for
+the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater portion of what
+tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender the portion he had
+secured under lock and key by command of the Custom-house officers. So that
+when the crew were about two weeks out, on the homeward-bound passage, it
+became sorrowfully evident that tobacco was at a premium.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at sea is
+cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and games of that
+kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called
+<i>&ldquo;High-low-Jack-and-the-game,&rdquo;</i> which name, indeed, has a
+Jackish and nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of
+tobacco, which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they
+play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander&rsquo;s crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and invertedly
+increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less; and finally resolved
+themselves into <i>&ldquo;chaws.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of them,
+after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob themselves of
+rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as it is very difficult
+sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if they chance to be sailors,
+whose conversation at all times is apt to be boisterous; these fellows would
+often be driven out of the forecastle by those who desired to rest. They were
+obliged to repair on deck, and make a card-table of it; and invariably, in such
+cases, there was a great deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges
+of nigging and cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were
+exchanged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but very
+little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky; and the cards,
+from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly torn and tarry, so
+much so, that several members of the four suits might have seceded from their
+respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe, under the name of
+<i>&ldquo;Tar-spots.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum
+constituting an ordinary <i>&ldquo;chaw,&rdquo;</i> was made to last a whole
+day; and at night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same
+<i>&ldquo;chaw&rdquo;</i> was placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried;
+so as to do duty in a pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a stimulus,
+on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became absent, moody, and
+sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something like opium-smokers,
+suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on their chests, forlorn and
+moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the forecastle lamp, at which they had
+lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With touching eloquence they recalled those
+happier evenings&mdash;the time of smoke and vapor; when, after a whole
+day&rsquo;s delectable <i>&ldquo;chawing,&rdquo;</i> they beguiled themselves
+with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and disconsolate,
+Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea in his
+head&mdash;&ldquo;Boys, let&rsquo;s search under the bunks!&rdquo; Bless you,
+Blunt! what a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark
+places explored; and two sticks of <i>nail-rod</i> tobacco, and several old
+<i>&ldquo;chaws,&rdquo;</i> thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage,
+were their cheering reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon
+this occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally
+adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is
+desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to all
+heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted this
+nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater would be
+forever rendered nugatory&mdash;&ldquo;Expect <i>not to understand any man till
+you have divided with him an inheritance.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>nail-rods</i> they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there
+were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the
+presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to the wall,
+and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with his knife, crying
+out, &ldquo;Whose is this?&rdquo; Whereupon a respondent, previously pitched
+upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner of the forecastle,
+&ldquo;Blunt&rsquo;s;&rdquo; and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like manner,
+till all were served.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I put it to you, lawyers&mdash;shade of Blackstone, I invoke you&mdash;if a
+more impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage <i>&ldquo;chaws&rdquo;</i> were soon gone,
+and then, after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped,
+and relapsed into gloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however&mdash;but not altogether new
+among seamen&mdash;to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut up into
+small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes were preferred;
+especially those which had long lain in the hold, and had contracted an
+epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient, cheese-like flavor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part, round
+which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum, upon various
+occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such times, to light upon
+a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever taken, I know not what kind of
+strange, nutty delight in untwisting it slowly, and gradually coming upon its
+deftly hidden and aromatic <i>&ldquo;heart;&rdquo;</i> for so this central
+piece is denominated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to luster; is
+exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor, as of an old dusty
+bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and, altogether, is an object which
+no man, who enjoys his dinners, could refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor is this delectable morsel of <i>old junk</i> wanting in many interesting,
+mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have been;
+in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of seventy-fours
+and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it may have lain, as a
+hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What outlandish fish may have nibbled
+at it in the water, and what un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when
+forming part of a lofty stay or a shroud?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little &ldquo;cut&rdquo; it
+was, that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting hold
+of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to see whether
+it had any <i>&ldquo;tenderloin.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at all an
+agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an antiquary, or
+to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed, though possibly I
+might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an astringent, acrid taste;
+probably induced by the tar, with which the flavor of all ropes is more or less
+vitiated. But the sailors seemed to like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with
+great gusto. They converted one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and
+when solicited by a shipmate for a <i>&ldquo;chaw,&rdquo;</i> would produce a
+small coil of rope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the substitution of
+dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes. No one has ever supped
+in a forecastle at sea, without having been struck by the prodigious residuum
+of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of
+material to supply every pipe-bowl among us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this matter;
+namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine weed, Jackson
+was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until very shortly previous to
+our arrival in port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace, when the
+sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish captives, Jackson would
+sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper one, and enveloped in a cloud
+of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the mourners below, with a sardonic grin
+at their forlornness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their supplies of
+the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the sufferings they had
+brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those sufferings, and every way
+derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at them. No one dared to return his
+scurrilous animadversions, nor did any presume to ask him to relieve their
+necessities out of his fullness. On the contrary, as has been just related,
+they divided with him the <i>nail-rods</i> they found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or
+fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left to the
+philosophers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap55"></a>CHAPTER LV.<br/>
+DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON&rsquo;S CAREER</h2>
+
+<p>
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of a
+circumstance&mdash;which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before&mdash;that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too unwell to do
+duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here, with the exception of a
+few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine weather, he remained on his
+back, or seated cross-legged, during the remainder of the homeward-bound
+passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway sailor in
+canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be painted by the
+dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master&rsquo;s lowering
+sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a midnight
+shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson&rsquo;s would have been the face to
+paint for the doomed vessel&rsquo;s figurehead, seamed and blasted by
+lightning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was only
+feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his excesses in
+Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in his flesh, was now
+gnawing into his vitals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like those of a
+skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he lift his hand without
+a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a time startled us from sleep.
+Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed his scepter, and ruled us all like a
+tyrant to the last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment of the
+crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before him, seemed to
+exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if he had indeed sold it
+to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse between his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with short
+breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that misanthrope
+upon the throne of the world&mdash;the diabolical Tiberius at Caprese; who even
+in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and unspeakable mental terrors
+only known to the damned on earth, yet did not give over his blasphemies but
+endeavored to drag down with him to his own perdition, all who came within the
+evil spell of his power. And though Tiberius came in the succession of the
+Caesars, and though unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I
+account this Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well
+meriting his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond
+without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is no
+dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of
+devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by side with his own
+malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial murderer, I pay him no more
+homage than I would a felon. Though Milton&rsquo;s Satan dilutes our abhorrence
+with admiration, it is only because he is not a genuine being, but something
+altered from a genuine original. We gather not from the four gospels alone, any
+high-raised fancies concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and burglars
+will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our high-priest of poetry; it
+only enhances it, that with such unmitigated evil for his material, he should
+build up his most goodly structure. But in historically canonizing on earth the
+condemned below, and lifting up and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but
+make examples of wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity,
+and be sure of fame.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap56"></a>CHAPTER LVI.<br/>
+UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION</h2>
+
+<p>
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps on the
+willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine before the haughty
+beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those melodies of other times
+and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew on Hermon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away captive,
+though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many a night, was
+called upon to sing for those who through the day had insulted and derided him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like his;
+it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the words of a
+song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and pansied margins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> can&rsquo;t sing to-night&rdquo;&mdash;sadly said Harry to the
+Dutchman, who with his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch
+with his melody&mdash;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sing to-night. But,
+Wellingborough,&rdquo; he whispered,&mdash;and I stooped my ear,&mdash;
+&ldquo;come <i>you</i> with me under the lee of the long-boat, and there
+I&rsquo;ll hum you an air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was <i>The Banks of the Blue Moselle.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be singing
+that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling fountains in gardens,
+or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,&mdash;to be singing it
+<i>here&mdash;here,</i> as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
+sprites, and cried <i>&ldquo;chassez!&rdquo; &ldquo;hands across!&rdquo;</i> to
+the multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this ruffian
+crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from his mouth
+while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his feelings, and
+make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted, even with the rudest
+minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry possessed a spell over them,
+which, for the time at least, they could not resist; and it might induce them
+to treat with more deference the being who was capable of yielding them such
+delight. Carlo&rsquo;s organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my
+Bury blade was an accordion in their ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so
+common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more
+hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the
+charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont
+to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once
+glaring eyes in fascinated and fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly
+all, for a time, they relinquished their prey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more
+upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company with another,
+without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for
+sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing
+only tolerable to genius, whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past career than
+ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many things in his hitherto
+but partly divulged history, which I was very curious to know; and especially
+he never made the remotest allusion to aught connected with our trip to London;
+while the oath of secrecy by which he had bound me held my curiosity on that
+point a captive. However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting
+disclosures; and if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for
+it in a measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the expenses of
+our return from London; that only by selling some more of his clothing, could
+he pay for his first week&rsquo;s board in New York; and that he was altogether
+without any regular profession or business, upon which, by his own exertions,
+he could securely rely for support. And yet, he told me that he was determined
+never again to return to England; and that somewhere in America he must work
+out his temporal felicity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have forgotten England,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and never more mean to
+think of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I was,
+had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in the hopper of
+an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar
+circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave kindly and considerately
+to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never actually experienced something
+like the woe that weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our
+sympathy. And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may
+be, that we should distrust that man&rsquo;s sincerity, who stoops to condole
+with us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by talking
+over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I certainly was;
+still, being an American, and returning to my home; even as he was a stranger,
+and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward him in the attitude of the
+prospective doer of the honors of my country; I accounted him the
+nation&rsquo;s guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting, that I should rather
+talk with him, than he with me: that <i>his</i> prospects and plans should
+engage our attention, in preference to my own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such bewitching
+airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be turned to account.
+The thought struck him most favorably&mdash;&ldquo;Gad, my boy, you have hit
+it, you have,&rdquo; and then he went on to mention, that in some places in
+England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly respectable
+families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in lamentably decayed
+circumstances, and thread-bare coats&mdash;it was customary for two or three
+young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their livelihood by their voices:
+coining their silvery songs into silvery shillings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell&mdash;Are <i>the ladies and
+gentlemen in?</i> Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not sumptuously
+appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and when the people
+entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a gentle bow, and a
+smile, and say, <i>We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are
+singers, at your service.</i> And so, without waiting reply, forth they burst
+into song; and having most mellifluous voices, enchanted and transported all
+auditors; so much so, that at the conclusion of the entertainment, they very
+seldom failed to be well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return
+again, and make the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?&rdquo; said
+Harry, &ldquo;or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?&rdquo; he
+anxiously added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a civilized
+and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets, fine houses, nay,
+plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he would almost think himself
+in England; so similar to England, in essentials, was this outlandish America
+that haunted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not but be struck&mdash;and had I not been, from my birth, as it were,
+a cosmopolite&mdash;I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the
+civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have
+resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in wigwams,
+and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney, and had shut up
+his Christendom in London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not play the
+troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly popped upon me the
+question, whether I would not join him in the enterprise; as it would be quite
+out of the question to go alone on such a business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said I, &ldquo;My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man
+has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think myself
+well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea of
+singing himself into a livelihood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I won&rsquo;t sing for my mutton,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;what
+would Lady Georgiana say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry,&rdquo;
+returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend&rsquo;s conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and <i>that</i> at least, will be sure to help
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>do</i> write a hand,&rdquo; he gladly rejoined&mdash;&ldquo;there,
+look at the implement!&mdash;do you not think, that such a hand as <i>that</i>
+might dot an <i>i,</i> or cross a <i>t,</i> with a touching grace and
+tenderness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small; and the
+fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the nails
+hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few characters for an
+Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the sturdy farmer&rsquo;s hand
+of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the state; but it was as the
+perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman, who
+once cut great Seneca dead in the forum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of that
+Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline fingers,
+declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble birth. And so
+it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us&mdash;the son of a <i>man.</i>
+And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if
+their hands and feet were entitled to consideration, would constitute the
+oligarchy of all Peru.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his finger-nails,
+like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or that the badge of
+nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot, when even a fish has no
+foot at all!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh,
+democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It is only
+the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though Harry&rsquo;s hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white as
+the queen&rsquo;s cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the reputation
+of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and clew-lines, and his
+occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had somewhat subtracted from
+its original daintiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly, that
+you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses to their
+coaches? Is <i>this</i> the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana? with which I
+pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord Lovely? <i>This</i> the
+hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she vowed she was
+mine?&mdash;Out of sight, recreant and apostate!&mdash;deep
+down&mdash;disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that upon
+our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few friends there,
+to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he might flourish his pen,
+and gently exercise his delicate digits, by traversing some soft foolscap; in
+the same way that slim, pallid ladies are gently drawn through a park for an
+airing.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap57"></a>CHAPTER LVII.<br/>
+ALMOST A FAMINE</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home.&rdquo; Thus exclaimed one of the steerage children,
+who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where the crew were
+assembled, helping themselves from the &ldquo;kids,&rdquo; which, indeed,
+resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pigs, is it?&rdquo; coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat
+presiding over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.&mdash;&ldquo;Pigs, is it?&mdash;and the day is
+close by, ye spalpeens, when you&rsquo;ll want to be after taking a sup at our
+troughs!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds drove the
+ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and shortsightedness of the
+passengers in the steerage, with regard to their outfits for the voyage, began
+to be followed by the inevitable results.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing to eat,
+their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from the ship&rsquo;s
+stores, or starve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the cabin,
+that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was demonstrable, should be
+given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a sort of substitute for a muffin
+and a brace of poached eggs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger: hardly
+enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The consequence was, that
+all day long, and all through the night, scores of the emigrants went about the
+decks, seeking what they might devour. They plundered the chicken-coop; and
+disguising the fowls, cooked them at the public galley. They made inroads upon
+the pig-pen in the boat, and carried off a promising young shoat: <i>him</i>
+they devoured raw, not venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they
+prowled about the cook&rsquo;s caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of
+scalding water; they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the
+cook to the cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in the name
+of the Church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian, Captain
+Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever emigrant is found
+guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the rigging and flogged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost alarmed me
+for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place, after all; and they
+even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular punishment which the captain
+caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of their clan, as a substitute for a
+flogging. For no doubt he thought that such rigorous discipline as <i>that</i>
+might exasperate five hundred emigrants into an insurrection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs&mdash;the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of the
+tub. The head&mdash;divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice&mdash;was now fitted round the culprit&rsquo;s neck; and he was
+forthwith coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his
+legs protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so ridiculous was
+his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself laughed with the rest
+at the figure he cut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Pat, my boy,&rdquo; said the mate, &ldquo;fill that big wooden
+belly of yours, if you can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compassionating his situation, our old &ldquo;doctor&rdquo; used to give him
+alms of food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
+time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain have
+continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving voyage.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap58"></a>CHAPTER LVIII.<br/>
+THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES
+MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND</h2>
+
+<p>
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have frequently
+made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is not uncommon for
+other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty, seventy, eighty, and
+ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in the latter cases, some
+signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so great a detention. It is also
+true, that generally the passage out from America is shorter than the return;
+which is to be ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed by
+head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were visited
+by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of a week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but this was
+nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at sea, from their
+first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their appearance on deck,
+during the entire passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public galley.
+This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the steerage, which
+otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the lulls of the
+rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly emigrant would climb to the
+deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into the sea. No experience seemed
+sufficient to instruct some of these ignorant people in the simplest, and most
+elemental principles of ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject,
+several would continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their
+slops. One morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched
+over a gallon or two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his
+face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by
+at the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and ironically
+commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to windward at sea, but
+fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the frequent <i>hard blows</i> we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their noisome
+den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be marveled at, that the
+shocking fate, which, but a short time ago, overtook the poor passengers in a
+Liverpool steamer in the Channel, during similar stormy weather, and under
+similar treatment, did not overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so close,
+unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of sufficient food,
+from which many were suffering; which, helped by their personal uncleanliness,
+brought on a malignant fever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it known,
+than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the cabin: and with
+the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the steerage. But the medicines
+proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly grew worse; and two more of the
+emigrants became infected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought out a
+certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him to wait upon
+the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the disease from
+extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied being a physician; and
+from fear of contagion&mdash;though he did not confess that to be the
+motive&mdash;refused even to enter the steerage. The cases increased: the
+utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued, over which, for the
+most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the fastidiousness of some
+readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a
+narrative like mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on deck; but
+being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather&mdash;wet, cold, and
+tempestuous&mdash;drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
+beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
+continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of these poor
+people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities, that the
+atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the emigrants who
+slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a barricade in front of
+those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But this was no sooner reported to
+the captain, than he ordered it to be thrown down; since it could be of no
+possible benefit; but would only make still worse, what was already direful
+enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing, that the
+mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the captain&rsquo;s
+order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was like
+entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of meager,
+begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the chests, were scores
+of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a suffocating vapor. But this
+vapor was better than the native air of the place, which from almost
+unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme. In every corner, the females
+were huddled together, weeping and lamenting; children were asking bread from
+their mothers, who had none to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were
+leaning back against the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and
+fetching their breath with a gasp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while&mdash;notwithstanding the crowd&mdash;in front of it was a clear area,
+which the fear of contagion had left open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That bulkhead must come down,&rdquo; cried the mate, in a voice that
+rose above the din. &ldquo;Take hold of it, boys.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of pale-faced,
+infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore they would slay us, if
+we did not desist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haul it down!&rdquo; roared the mate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen having no
+pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to fight fifty to
+one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last had recourse to
+entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to depart, without achieving
+our object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About four o&rsquo;clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
+and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
+bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed nothing
+more frightful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary. By their
+own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives, rolled in their
+own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried rites, were dropped into the
+ocean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines; but the
+captain did not again go down to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had it not
+been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness to turn such a
+number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered decks, the steerage
+passengers would have been ordered above, and their den have been given a
+thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was out of the question. The
+sailors peremptorily refused to go among the defilements to remove them; and so
+besotted were the greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the
+necessity of the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand
+to assist in what seemed their own salvation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their clamors
+at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present they must sleep
+and take their meals elsewhere than in their old quarters, which communicated
+with the cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from an
+infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the very
+hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it; and in so
+small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard against
+contagion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps, presented
+a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed before, now implored
+the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds and fine weather. Trunks
+were opened for Bibles; and at last, even prayer-meetings were held over the
+very table across which the loud jest had been so often heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of that
+death which any body at any time may die, should produce these spasmodic
+devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever thinning our ranks;
+and die by death we all must at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the third,
+four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor, and another, a
+woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward supposed to have been
+purely induced by her fears. These last deaths brought the panic to its height;
+and sailors, officers, cabin-passengers, and emigrants&mdash;all looked upon
+each other like lepers. All but the only true leper among us&mdash;the mariner
+Jackson, who seemed elated with the thought, that for <i>him&mdash;</i>already
+in the deadly clutches of another disease&mdash;no danger was to be apprehended
+from a fever which only swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst
+of the despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not,
+at least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on this
+tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in rain and
+spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we stripped our
+ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours&rsquo; time, the waves ran in
+mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy on the water.
+Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and drowned in the roar of the
+wind among the cordage; while we gave to the gale the blackened bodies of five
+more of the dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the rolls
+of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic, and gale had
+hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of one of these
+infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its father&rsquo;s body in
+the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by death, both mothers and
+babes survived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for the
+first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching the
+billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which fortresses
+might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages, and groves, and
+gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in Switzerland; for down
+into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests,
+like avalanches; while the seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the
+swallowing up of human beings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore down on
+the waves, with all our canvas set; stun&rsquo;-sails alow and aloft; and our
+best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his elbow;&mdash;bowling
+along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the emigrants who
+were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing the delightful air,
+spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and regaling themselves with the
+generous charity of the captain, who of late had seen fit to increase their
+allowance of food. A detachment of them now joined a band of the crew, who
+proceeding into the steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough
+cleansing, sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It
+was more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day
+we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
+convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied under
+the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was still
+entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the fogs, so
+generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the fever. But, to the
+joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we made a rapid run across
+these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we still ran
+our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers&mdash;at least by far
+the greater number&mdash;wore a still, subdued aspect, though a little cheered
+by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon reaching their port. But
+those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or children, needed no crape, to
+reveal to others, who they were. Hard and bitter indeed was their lot; for with
+the poor and desolate, grief is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however
+sincere, but a gnawing reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no
+kind condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and
+they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw
+down the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home, suddenly
+found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a few pounds, or
+perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange land?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing nigh,
+with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised land, without
+fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the jelly-eyed old gentleman,
+before spoken of, gave a shilling to the steward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning from a
+visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative on board,
+hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among strangers, her
+memory had been buried with her body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people in
+feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon the panic
+into which nearly all had been thrown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;&mdash;therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their minds
+either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men with their
+fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure, there are few living
+men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit that any other living men have
+ever been very much nearer death than themselves. Accordingly, <i>craven</i> is
+the phrase too often applied to any one who, with however good reason, has been
+appalled at the prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though,
+should he have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of
+<i>craven</i> would you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once
+has beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject
+invites much subtle speculation; for in every being&rsquo;s ideas of death, and
+his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life and
+his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates died the death
+of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in theory, yet he, too,
+died the death of the Christian,&mdash;humble, composed, without bravado; and
+though the most skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm,
+creedless faith, that embraces the spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity;
+Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling
+upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
+last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled against
+the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned
+such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more. In his rakish vest,
+and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had
+led the earnest petitions of his companions; supplicating mercy, where before
+he had never solicited the slightest favor. More than once had he been seen
+thus engaged by the observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the
+little glass in the cabin bulk-head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he shone in
+the sun, none braver than he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy orders
+upon his arrival in New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;have I such an orotund
+voice?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No;&rdquo; profanely returned his friend&mdash;&ldquo;but you are a
+coward&mdash;just the man to be a parson, and pray.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among the
+emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things happened so long
+ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps taking place to-day. But
+the only account you obtain of such events, is generally contained in a
+newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head. <i>There</i> is the obituary of
+the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They die, like the billows that break
+on the shore, and no more are heard or seen. But in the events, thus merely
+initialized in the catalogue of passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the
+readers of news, who are more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a
+world of life and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk
+into a three-worded sentence!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans of
+despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not the wringing
+hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:&mdash;all is a blank. And one of
+these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details of the
+Highlander&rsquo;s calamity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes of the
+poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances of disasters
+like these. Such things, if widely known, operate unfavorably to the ship, and
+make her a bad name; and to avoid detention at quarantine, a captain will state
+the case in the most palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he
+can.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said, concerning
+emigrant ships in general.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of
+foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive it, with the
+one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God&rsquo;s right to
+come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them. For the whole
+world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is no telling who does not own
+a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we waive all this; and will only
+consider, how best the emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come
+they must and will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a certain
+number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law were enforced,
+much good might be done; and so also might much good be done, were the English
+law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed supply of food for every emigrant
+embarking from Liverpool. But it is hardly to be believed, that either of these
+laws is observed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard lot of
+the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain of a ship, to
+supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and give them light and
+air in that foul den, where they are immured, during a long voyage across the
+Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to place the <i>galley,</i> or
+steerage-passengers&rsquo; stove, in a dry place of shelter, where the
+emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance
+obliges him to give them more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run
+fore and aft?&mdash;There is no law concerning these things. And if there was,
+who but some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is there a
+Howard in office!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of <i>them,</i>
+go to heaven, before some of <i>us?</i> We may have civilized bodies and yet
+barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its
+voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs
+ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap59"></a>CHAPTER LIX.<br/>
+THE LAST END OF JACKSON</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Off Cape Cod!&rdquo; said the steward, coming forward from the
+quarter-deck, where the captain had just been taking his noon observation;
+sweeping the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Off Cape Cod!</i> and in the shore-bloom that came to us&mdash; even from
+that desert of sand-hillocks&mdash;methought I could almost distinguish the
+fragrance of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland
+garden at home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from afar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two broad, blue
+furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By night it was a
+reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a
+shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-topgallant-sail,
+though the light mast sprung like a switch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last the
+order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into all three
+top-sails.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they had
+begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several, Jackson came up
+from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four weeks or more, took hold
+of a rope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off duty
+from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering port, of
+reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he expected his wages;
+but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon an
+occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on deck, from
+the captain to the child in the steerage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were like
+vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark tomb in the
+forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering up the
+rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place at the extreme
+weather-end of the topsail-yard&mdash;which in reefing is accounted the post of
+honor. For it was one of the characteristics of this man, that though when on
+duty he would shy away from mere dull work in a calm, yet in tempest-time he
+always claimed the van, and would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one
+cause of his unbounded dominion over the men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing and
+plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his reef-point, and
+sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson, whose business it was
+to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning backward to
+the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At all times, this is
+a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose spirits seem then to partake
+of the commotion of the elements, as they hang in the gale, between heaven and
+earth; and <i>then</i> it is, too, that they are the most profane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haul out to windward!&rdquo; coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry,
+and he threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped to his
+side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood from his
+lungs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong from
+the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long projection of
+the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon the water. His fall
+was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck, some of whom were spotted
+with the blood that trickled from the sail, while they raised a spontaneous
+cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind man might have known something deadly had
+happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the one
+white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our shipmate; but the
+next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the waves, and Jackson never
+arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an order to descend, haul back the
+fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead of that, the next sound that greeted
+us was, &ldquo;Bear a hand, and reef away, men!&rdquo; from the mate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save Jackson;
+for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the sea&mdash;and if he
+had not been dead then, the first immersion must have driven his soul from his
+lacerated lungs&mdash;our jolly-boat would have taken full fifteen minutes to
+launch into the waves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too many
+sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster befalling the
+Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two, was
+permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its sides. It was
+almost as much of a fixture as the vessel&rsquo;s keel. It was filled with
+pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat was capsized without
+a <i>thole-pin</i> in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching and cracking in the
+sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet in this
+state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be sure, no vessel
+full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in case of a fatal
+disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the souls on board; yet
+provision should certainly be made for a handful of survivors, to carry home
+the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst of the calamities that befell
+patient Job, some <i>one</i> at least of his servants escaped to report it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my hearing at
+least, and Harry&rsquo;s, never made the slightest allusion to the departed
+Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up his memory
+among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage under which this
+man held every one of them, did really corrode in their secret hearts, that
+they thought to repress the recollection of a thing so degrading, I can not
+determine; but certain it was, that <i>his</i> death was <i>their</i>
+deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits, unknown before.
+Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to their now drawing near
+to their port.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap60"></a>CHAPTER LX.<br/>
+HOME AT LAST</h2>
+
+<p>
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading calm
+seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly towns, makes
+quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all around
+were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches, betokening the
+vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common port, and tranced in one
+common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from Europe, Africa, India, and Peru
+converged to a line, which braided them all in one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air, the green
+heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue sea seemed to flow
+under them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient cabin-passengers
+were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered around the bows, with
+eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down into the
+calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own; and turning to
+Harry, said, &ldquo;This America&rsquo;s skies must be down in the sea; for,
+looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also behold overhead.
+Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I go. I even found it in
+rainy Liverpool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore&mdash;the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless pockets
+came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the throng.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot&rsquo;s favor, who proved to be a tiger
+of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces, and
+trimming the ship, to catch the least <i>cat&rsquo;s-paw</i> of wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands among
+them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a realization of the
+vicinity of the green grass, that not even the distant sight of the shore
+itself can transcend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied round
+with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands was beheld.
+While this was going on, forth came an order from the quarter-deck, for every
+bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in the steerage to be committed to
+the deep.&mdash;A command that was received by the emigrants with dismay, and
+then with wrath. But they were assured, that this was indispensable to the
+getting rid of an otherwise long detention of some weeks at the quarantine.
+They therefore reluctantly complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow.
+Following them, went old pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around,
+the sea was strewn with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the
+waves&mdash;couches for all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things
+of this sort, tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New
+York, drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten
+Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated upon the
+broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces, and
+give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water. And to this
+they were incited by the same warning which had induced them to make an
+offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then fumigated, and dried
+with pans of coals from the galley; so that by evening, no stranger would have
+imagined, from her appearance, that the Highlander had made otherwise than a
+tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus, some sea-captains take good heed that
+benevolent citizens shall not get a glimpse of the true condition of the
+steerage while at sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was somewhat
+against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short tacks, at last ran
+through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the forts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a glorious
+green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with aromas. The
+steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses brought back to
+spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander was full of the glad
+sights and sounds of the shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes upward to
+the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence Jackson had fallen;
+but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and like thirsty men, drank in
+all their dew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag, denoting
+the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to symbolize the yellow
+fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of the black vomit into every
+beholder, all quarantines all over the world, taint the air with the streamings
+of their fever-flag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were now in
+plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at anchor, yet no boat
+came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on we sailed, past a spot
+which every one had dreaded. How it was that they thus let us pass without
+boarding us, we never could learn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced the
+blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail boats,
+thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black rigging stretching
+along the East River; and northward, up the stately old Hudson, covered with
+white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we caught a far glimpse of the purple
+Palisades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what home
+is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems to pour
+through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you swear to build
+altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga, telescope
+in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers, Governor&rsquo;s
+Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>that&rdquo;</i> said he, pointing out a vast black hull which,
+like a shark, showed tiers of teeth, <i>&ldquo;that,</i> ladies, is a
+line-of-battle-ship, the North Carolina.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, dear!&rdquo;&mdash;and &ldquo;Oh my!&rdquo;&mdash;ejaculated the
+ladies, and&mdash; &ldquo;Lord, save us,&rdquo; responded an old gentleman, who
+was a member of the Peace Society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor, fathoms
+down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of which was now
+worth a broad manor in England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were all
+off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor House; where, no
+doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in honor of their own
+arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers, however, could afford to
+pay the high price the watermen demanded for carrying them ashore; so most of
+them remained with us till morning. But nothing could restrain our Italian boy,
+Carlo, who, promising the watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly
+rowed ashore, seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and
+something like &ldquo;Hail Columbia!&rdquo; his tune. We gave him three
+rapturous cheers, and we never saw Carlo again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and gazing
+at the thousand lights of the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sunrise, we <i>warped</i> into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+<i>her,</i> was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a
+maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a rush and
+a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd of emigrants,
+whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to embrace them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally uncongenial to
+both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a chest in the forecastle.
+And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew lovely in our eyes, which lingered
+over every familiar old timber; for the scene of suffering is a scene of joy
+when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed,
+is sweeter than the presence of delight.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap61"></a>CHAPTER LXI.<br/>
+REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR</h2>
+
+<p>
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted old
+ship, but the mate and the rats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings, proposed
+that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in the forecastle.
+Little else that was eatable being for sale in the paltry shops along the
+wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts, and a bottle of ginger-pop,
+and thus supplied we made merry. For to us, whose very mouths were become
+pickled and puckered, with the continual flavor of briny beef, those pies and
+doughnuts were most delicious. And as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop
+was divine! I have reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond all
+doubt&mdash;like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the night,
+and no <i>starb-o-leens ahoy!</i> would annoy us again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All night in! think of <i>that,</i> Harry, my friend!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, Wellingborough, it&rsquo;s enough to keep me awake forever, to think
+I may now sleep as long as I please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers,&rdquo;
+cried Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds.
+&ldquo;No! they will <i>not</i> come out, and I&rsquo;m ruined for life. Look
+at my hand once, Wellingborough!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a rich,
+russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind, Harry,&rdquo; said I&mdash;&ldquo;You know the ladies of the
+east steep the tips of their fingers in some golden dye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And by Plutus,&rdquo; cried Harry&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;d steep mine up
+to the armpits in gold; since you talk about <i>that.</i> But never mind,
+I&rsquo;ll swear I&rsquo;m just from Persia, my boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once, I
+piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by one
+Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat cakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, gentlemen, what will you have?&rdquo;&mdash;said a waiter, as we
+seated ourselves at a table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Gentlemen!</i>&rdquo; whispered Harry to
+me&mdash;&ldquo;<i>gentlemen!</i>&mdash;hear him!&mdash;I say now, Redburn,
+they didn&rsquo;t talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By heaven, I
+begin to feel my straps again:&mdash;Coffee and hot rolls,&rdquo; he added
+aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, &ldquo;and fellow&mdash;come
+back&mdash;bring us a venison-steak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t got it, gentlemen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ham and eggs,&rdquo; suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of the
+Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and imperial
+toast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the butter!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say a word,&rdquo;&mdash;said Harry, spreading his tenth
+slice of toast &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to turn dairyman, and keep within the
+blessed savor of butter, so long as I live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a flourish, and
+sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold, bound from Acapulco
+to Old Spain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Harry, &ldquo;lead on; and let&rsquo;s see something of
+these United States of yours. I&rsquo;m ready to pace from Maine to Florida;
+ford the Great Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here,
+take my arm;&mdash;lead on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded me of
+his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the Golden Anchor,
+in Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help marveling;
+considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a stranger in the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment, where they
+did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady&rsquo;s
+butcher&rsquo;s bill was not very large.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned up
+town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened during my
+absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other, gave me
+some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled my departure
+homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange, but even the few hours&rsquo; absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and strange
+faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a creature of the
+suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets seemed now to have
+reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found him with a very sad eye;
+and his right hand groping in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where am I going to dine, this day week?&rdquo;&mdash;he slowly said.
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done, Wellingborough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing a
+little cheering myself; even though I <i>had</i> got home again. But no more
+about that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my senior, by
+the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who had of late been
+engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in South-street; and it occurred
+to me, that he was just the man to befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So
+I mentioned the thing to my comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and in
+private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best for him;
+though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:&mdash;Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry
+full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a small
+quota to the general entertainment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to retire
+for life on the profits of <i>my first voyage;</i> but nevertheless, I thought
+that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable things; and
+should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as the second morning
+after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off the crew, Harry and I made
+our appearance on ship-board, with the rest. We were told to enter the cabin;
+and once again I found myself, after an interval of four months, and more,
+surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat Captain
+Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the Lord High
+Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood deferentially in a
+semicircle before him, while the captain held the ship-papers in his hand, and
+one by one called their names; and in mellow bank notes&mdash;beautiful
+sight!&mdash;paid them their wages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars coming to
+them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in restraining him from
+the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and who had taken no pay in
+advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy dollars as his due.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was worth
+precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand cents, which were
+again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now stepped into a fortune of
+seventy thousand American <i>&ldquo;mitts.&rdquo;</i> Only seventy dollars,
+after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that stating amounts in
+sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller notion of their magnitude, than
+by disguising their immensity in such aggregations of value, as doubloons,
+sovereigns, and dollars. Who would not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris,
+than only &pound;5000 in London, though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in
+round numbers, is pretty much the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the old
+cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once invested it in a
+grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing all was
+right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they would have
+demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and cheated, your sailors,
+and they know their rights, too; at least, when they are at liberty, after the
+voyage is concluded:&mdash; the sailors also salaamed, and withdrew, leaving
+Harry and me face to face with the Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every moment to
+hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the captain, throwing
+aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar, took up the morning
+paper&mdash;I think it was the Herald&mdash;threw his leg over one arm of the
+chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all parts of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, where do you come from? Who are <i>you,</i> pray? and what do you
+want? Steward, show these young gentlemen out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want my money,&rdquo; said Harry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My wages are due,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us,
+letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Captain Riga!&rdquo; cried Harry, enraged at his
+impudence&mdash;&ldquo;I tell you what it is, Captain Riga; this won&rsquo;t
+do&mdash;where&rsquo;s the rhino?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Captain Riga,&rdquo; added I, &ldquo;do you not remember, that about
+four months ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in
+this very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I have
+gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I&rsquo;ll thank you for my
+pay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, yes, I remember,&rdquo; said the captain. <i>&ldquo;Mr. Jones!</i>
+Ha! ha! I remember Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and
+stop&mdash;<i>you,</i> too, are the son of a wealthy French importer;
+and&mdash;let me think&mdash;was not your great-uncle a barber?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; thundered I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen&mdash;be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see,&rdquo; turning over his accounts&mdash; &ldquo;Hum, hum!&mdash;yes, here
+it is: Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that&rsquo;s twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in
+Liverpool&mdash;that makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers
+lost overboard&mdash; that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you
+four dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it seems, sir,&rdquo; said I, with staring eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the
+yards, Monsieur Redburn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owe <i>him!</i> thought I&mdash;what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed
+my resentment; and presently he said, &ldquo;By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and as
+there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers, seven dollars
+and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me in precisely that sum.
+Now, young gentleman, I&rsquo;ll thank you for the money;&rdquo; and he
+extended his open palm across the desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall I pitch into him?&rdquo; whispered Harry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of my
+account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that he had
+till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were in London. But
+a single minute&rsquo;s consideration showed that I could not help myself; so,
+telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit, for I was a bankrupt, and
+could not pay him, I turned to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a copper,
+after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four mortal months. But
+Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and had run up large wine
+bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be munificent. Peace to his
+dinners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bolton, I believe,&rdquo; said the captain, now blandly bowing
+toward Harry. &ldquo;Mr. Bolton, <i>you</i> also shipped for three dollars per
+month: and you had one month&rsquo;s advance in Liverpool; and from dock to
+dock we have been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a
+half, Mr. Bolton; and here it is;&rdquo; handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this,&rdquo; said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude,
+<i>&ldquo;this</i> is the reward of my long and faithful services!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed, &ldquo;There,
+Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in <i>your</i> purse, and it
+would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again,&rdquo; said the
+captain, coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was
+invincible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of his
+situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove precious to
+him. But he only cried <i>Pshaw!</i> and that was the last of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck, engaged
+in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf, loaded with their
+chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined for the boarding-houses
+uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw very plainly that they must have
+some mischief under weigh; and so it turned out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage against
+the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses&mdash;such as indirectly
+causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished, without betraying
+any appearance of having any inclination that way, and without speaking to the
+sailors on the subject&mdash;by this, and kindred actions, I say, he had
+contracted the cordial dislike of the whole ship&rsquo;s company; and long
+since they had bestowed upon him a name unmentionably expressive of their
+contempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being debated by
+the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give a united and
+valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained toward their late
+lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those sentiments was desired; some
+unmistakable token, which should forcibly impress Captain Riga with the justest
+possible notion of their feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon the eve
+of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the subordinates, actuated by
+the purest gratitude toward their president, or chief, proceed to vote him a
+silver pitcher, in token of their respect. It was something like this, I
+repeat&mdash;but with a material difference, as will be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being agreed
+upon, Blunt, the &ldquo;Irish cockney,&rdquo; was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the steward to
+inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the pier-head, earnestly
+seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+<i>gentlemen</i> alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side
+next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about,
+presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute to every
+thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened to be in their
+rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only lifted
+his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so clever
+ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the wharf, till
+they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated &ldquo;The
+Flashes.&rdquo; And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among his
+villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their looks, that his
+customers were &ldquo;flush,&rdquo; and would spend their money freely, as,
+indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a touching scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, maties,&rdquo; said one of them, at last&mdash;&ldquo;I spose we
+shan&rsquo;t see each other again:&mdash;come, let&rsquo;s splice the
+main-brace all round, and drink to <i>the last voyage!&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked his
+decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as much as to
+say&mdash;<i>&ldquo;Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your
+liquor;&mdash;help yourselves, your honors.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them all
+off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared in couples,
+through the several doorways; for <i>&ldquo;The Flashes&rdquo;</i> was on a
+corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+<i>&ldquo;Good-by, God bless you,&rdquo;</i> is heard for every <i>&ldquo;How
+d&rsquo;ye do, welcome, my boy&rdquo;&mdash;</i>then, of all men, sailors shake
+the most hands, and wave the most hats. They are here and then they are there;
+ever shifting themselves, they shift among the shifting: and like rootless
+sea-weed, are tossed to and fro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood on the
+corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are gone,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank heaven!&rdquo; said Harry.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap62"></a>CHAPTER LXII.<br/>
+THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON</h2>
+
+<p>
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat on one
+of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and gentlemen; and
+through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out over the bay, varied
+with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to our boots; and thought what a
+fine world it would be, if we only had a little money to enjoy it. But
+that&rsquo;s the everlasting rub&mdash;oh, who can cure an empty pocket?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry,&rdquo; said I,
+&ldquo;he&rsquo;s a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt of it,&rdquo; said Harry, looking hopeless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so
+soon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I am sorry enough myself,&rdquo; said Harry, looking very sincere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I will be soon back again, I doubt not,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps so,&rdquo; said Harry, shaking his head. &ldquo;How far is it
+off?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only a hundred and eighty miles,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A hundred and eighty miles!&rdquo; said Harry, drawing the words out
+like an endless ribbon. &ldquo;Why, I couldn&rsquo;t walk that in a
+month.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, my dear friend,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;take my advice, and while I
+am gone, keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad, that
+nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both gulped down a
+glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he stuck
+close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on the wharf,
+he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play of the paddles;
+and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we parted. I never saw Harry
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into embraces, long
+and loving:&mdash;I pass over this; and will conclude <i>my first voyage</i> by
+relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks; during
+which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter, now
+spread before me.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+<i>&ldquo;Dear Redburn&mdash;Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where.
+After you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don&rsquo;t know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified, are
+seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not get Harry a
+place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more melancholy, and at
+last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but those on his back to pay his
+board. I offered to loan him a few dollars, but he would not receive them. I
+called upon him two or three times after this, but he was not in; at last, his
+landlady told me that he had permanently left her house the very day before.
+Upon my questioning her closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that
+she did not know, but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend,
+she feared he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in
+South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made
+inquiries among them; but without success. And this,</i> I <i>am heartily
+grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his
+melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a
+whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You must come
+down yourself, and help me seek him out.&rdquo;</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in London, and
+his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to the most sudden,
+crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a friendless, penniless foreigner in
+New York, he must have had the most terrible incitements to committing violence
+upon himself; I shuddered to think, that even now, while I thought of him, he
+might no more be living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I
+quickly glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him all
+over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must indeed
+have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter experience on
+board of the Highlander, and more than all, his nervousness about going aloft,
+it seemed next to impossible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a whaler.
+One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat&rsquo;s crew that boarded
+our vessel, came forward among us to have a little sea-chat, as is always
+customary upon such occasions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at Callao,
+for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion to the fact,
+that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that the good craft
+Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally bringing him round upon
+that side of the globe. I asked him why he had abandoned her; he answered that
+she was the most unlucky of ships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We had hardly been out three months,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when on the
+Brazil banks we lost a boat&rsquo;s crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and
+next day lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered
+the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a whale,
+while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard time of it, from
+the beginning; he was a gentleman&rsquo;s son, and when you could coax him to
+it, he sang like a bird.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was his name?&rdquo; said I, trembling with expectation;
+&ldquo;what kind of eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Harry Bolton was not your brother?&rdquo; cried the stranger, starting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Harry Bolton!</i> it was even he!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having passed
+through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, <i>My First
+Voyage</i>&mdash;which here I end.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN: HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 8118-h.htm or 8118-h.zip</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/1/8118/</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Updated editions will replace the previous one&#8212;the old editions will
+be renamed.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG&#8482;
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br />
+<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br />
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+To protect the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
+or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.B. &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&#8220;the
+Foundation&#8221; or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg&#8482; work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work (any work
+on which the phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; appears, or with which the
+phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+  <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+    of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+    at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
+    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
+  </div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221; associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg&#8482; License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg&#8482;.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; License.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work in a format
+other than &#8220;Plain Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg&#8482; website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original &#8220;Plain
+Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg&#8482; works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+provided that:
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'>
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &bull; You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+        the use of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works calculated using the method
+        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, but he has
+        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+        Section 4, &#8220;Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+        Literary Archive Foundation.&#8221;
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &bull; You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        works.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &bull; You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+        receipt of the work.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &bull; You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+        distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works.
+    </div>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain &#8220;Defects,&#8221; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &#8220;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&#8221; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &#8216;AS-IS&#8217;, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg&#8482;&#8217;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg&#8482; collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg&#8482; and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation&#8217;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state&#8217;s laws.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation&#8217;s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation&#8217;s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
+public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
+visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg&#8482;,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+</div>
+
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
+
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe66110
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #8118 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8118)
diff --git a/old/7redb10.txt b/old/7redb10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6355da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/7redb10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12620 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Redburn. His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8118]
+[This file was first posted on June 17, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+The text file version of this e-book was prepared by Project Gutenberg
+volunteers from the HTML version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+
+REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE
+
+by
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND
+         BRED IN HIM
+     II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+    III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+     IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+      V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS
+         UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+     VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN,
+         AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+    VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+   VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES
+         SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+     IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH
+         THEM
+      X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE
+         BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+     XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+    XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+   XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS
+         MIND
+    XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+     XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+    XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+   XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+  XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+         DREAM BOOK
+    XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+     XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD
+         OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+    XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+   XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+  XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+   XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY
+    XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+   XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+  XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+ XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+   XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+         SAILORS
+    XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH
+         OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
+   XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH
+         THE TOWN
+  XXXII. THE DOCKS
+ XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+  XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+   XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+ XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+  XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+     XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+    XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+   XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+  XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+         ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+   XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+         CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+    XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+   XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+  XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+ XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+   XLIX. CARLO
+      L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+     LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+    LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+   LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+    LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+    LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD
+         CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
+   LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+  LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE
+         AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+    LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+     LX. HOME AT LAST
+    LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+   LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+
+
+Being the Sailor Boy
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+In the Merchant Navy
+
+
+
+
+I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN
+HIM
+
+
+"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will
+save the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts,
+stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets."
+
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.
+
+"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money, and
+you want an outfit, and I Have none to give, you may as well take my
+fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can get.--Nay,
+take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more."
+
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
+York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:
+
+"FOR BREMEN.
+
+"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
+cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."
+
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
+suggested volumes of thought.
+
+A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
+with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+
+Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
+different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-
+white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before our
+house on the bank.
+
+Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting
+ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling
+me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which
+my river experience was familiar.
+
+"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date the
+fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
+an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
+so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+
+"For freight or passage apply on board!"
+
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking
+passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
+foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
+who talked French.
+
+"Coenties Slip."
+
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
+Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
+with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and
+chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much
+abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and
+out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
+residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
+large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
+remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
+woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their
+crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
+sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
+
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
+Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered
+sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me
+of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like
+twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the
+ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my
+thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old
+lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked
+streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially
+I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and
+Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
+Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
+school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned
+over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them
+to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots
+looked so manly.
+
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
+into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
+fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and
+down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to
+look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a man
+myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as
+the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+
+"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big, because
+when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once
+caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."
+
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am
+sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I
+wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she
+said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this
+wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and several
+times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown still
+larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
+
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
+foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We
+had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
+from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
+grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
+could be doing with themselves now.
+
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.
+
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.
+
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
+castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
+
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
+than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
+used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
+them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
+
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
+
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
+and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a
+great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats
+sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
+
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
+brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
+with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
+doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had been
+printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library
+edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and
+many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there
+was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I
+would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight
+along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to
+every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk
+French, as he sometimes did to a servant we had.
+
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that
+he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed;
+for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a
+foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in America.
+
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
+bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
+other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
+entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
+hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
+no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
+my subsequent rovings.
+
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days of
+the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
+
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of
+my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
+tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
+admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and
+delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many of
+whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see the
+ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which they
+were accustomed to give it.
+
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and
+often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was
+inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,
+that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little,
+I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break
+the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something
+wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in
+want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of
+insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order
+to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind
+to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that,
+the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and
+until I should recover my reason.
+
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
+it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd's
+ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands,
+full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to
+dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever
+thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost a hundred
+years.
+
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
+ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
+till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
+people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
+little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
+like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
+the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little chaps,
+and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for all
+that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
+oath.
+
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
+over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
+was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the
+cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
+steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of
+glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;
+while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
+quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
+head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
+
+The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
+dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
+whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
+and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till
+I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in
+the world.
+
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
+
+So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not
+have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat,
+lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea
+under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get
+on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my
+sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I
+left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.
+
+
+
+II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+
+
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with
+me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I
+was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that
+had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time;
+all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early
+age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.
+
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing
+patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take
+none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as
+December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is
+no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth
+of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter enough
+even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must be
+uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let me go on
+with my story.
+
+"Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can," murmured I, as
+she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my safe
+arrival in New York.
+
+"And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I'll be back in four months--it will be autumn then, and
+we'll go into the woods after nuts, an I'll tell you all about Europe.
+Good-by! good-by!"
+
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage advice
+above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning me
+again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I would;
+for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself, when he
+sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,--he
+was in ill health then,--and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and
+the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with
+comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I
+thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your
+hand!
+
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel
+all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen;
+and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with
+him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never again can such
+blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave such a scar
+that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a hard and cruel
+thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be
+reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become
+bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before
+and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and
+not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
+
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.
+
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain's office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day, owing
+to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to pay
+for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a dollar
+did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat was off,
+and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing to any
+body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged
+on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If I
+had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them of
+my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain's clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on my
+leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his object
+in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and silent,
+and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have spoken and
+told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my dollar, and
+then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He did not wait a
+great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff voice, very unlike
+his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar party, demanded my
+ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded the money; and upon
+my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry voice that attracted
+all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the storm. The devil in me
+then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my frame, till it tingled
+at my finger ends; and I muttered out my resolution to stay where I was,
+in such a manner, that the ticket man faltered back. "There's a dollar
+for you," I added, offering it.
+
+"I want two," said he.
+
+"Take that or nothing," I answered; "it is all I have."
+
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that
+such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the
+buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon me.
+
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I
+pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man,
+with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his,
+gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him, and he
+looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming, he
+pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead. I
+then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.
+
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range,
+for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons
+starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at that
+time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac feelings,
+of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have been,
+indeed; and much more than that.
+
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle,
+marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was
+wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+
+Such is boyhood.
+
+
+
+
+III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+
+
+From the boat's bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother's directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John's Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a drink
+of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were playing
+dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They winked, and
+asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy day, but I
+only gulped down my water and stalked off.
+
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother's friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+
+"What do you want?" said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+
+"I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor."
+
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing
+who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his
+fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me
+that day.
+
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, an returning to the table, found that the interval
+had been we improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler was spread and
+I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil that had been
+tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till at last I
+entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.
+
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to
+bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly
+believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal's.
+
+Next day, my brother's friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get
+me a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very handsome
+one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an elegant looking
+mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort of sideboard
+some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was only Britannia
+ware highly polished.
+
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.
+
+"Good morning, sir," said my friend.
+
+"Good morning, good morning, sir," said the captain. "Steward, chairs
+for the gentlemen."
+
+"Oh! never mind, sir," said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his extreme
+civility. "I merely called to see whether you want a fine young lad to
+go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a sailor; and
+his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one voyage, and see
+how he likes it."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+"He's a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?" added he, affectionately patting my head. "It's a hard We, though;
+a hard life."
+
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin,
+and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying to
+frighten me, and I answered, "Well, sir, I am ready to try it."
+
+"I hope he's a country lad, sir," said the captain to my friend, "these
+city boys are sometimes hard cases."
+
+"Oh! yes, he's from the country," was the reply, "and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator."
+
+"But his great-uncle don't want to go to sea too?" said the captain,
+looking funny.
+
+"Oh! no, oh, no!--Ha! ha!"
+
+"Ha! ha!" echoed the captain.
+
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.
+
+"Well, my lad," said the captain, "I suppose you know we haven't any
+pastures and cows on board; you can't get any milk at sea, you know."
+
+"Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven't."
+
+"Yes," cried my friend, "his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business."
+
+"Embassador extraordinary?" said the captain, looking funny again.
+
+"Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant."
+
+"Ah! indeed;" said the captain, looking grave and bland again, "then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?"
+
+"Certainly," said my friend, "and he's only going to sea for the humor
+of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he will go
+to sea as a sailor."
+
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five)
+was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the
+kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of creating
+a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.
+
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour
+with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome
+captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that he himself
+would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for the privilege.
+
+"Ah!" said my friend, "that reminds me of business. Pray, captain, how
+much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?"
+
+"Well," said the captain, looking grave and profound, "we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that's your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!--Upon my soul, a fine sounding name."
+
+"Why, captain," said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, "that won't
+pay for his clothing."
+
+"But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that," replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.
+
+"Oh! yes, I forgot that," said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish. "His
+friends will of course see to that."
+
+"Of course," said the captain smiling.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+
+"You are quite a sportsman I see," said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand opportunity
+to befriend me.
+
+"Yes, he's quite a sportsman," said he, "he's got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It's cheap."
+
+"Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations," said the captain,
+"so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England."
+
+"Yes, perhaps that would be better, after all," said my friend,
+pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. "Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?"
+
+"Only three dollars a month," said the captain.
+
+"And I believe," said my friend, "that you generally give something in
+advance, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices," said the
+captain, with a bow, "but in this case, as the boy has rich relations,
+there will be no need of that, you know."
+
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that it
+would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
+
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and
+as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, "Well,
+Redburn, my boy, you won't get home-sick before you sail, because that
+will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea."
+
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times,
+and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with
+a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my
+shooting-jacket. And so we left.
+
+
+
+
+IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+
+
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and
+there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I
+was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in
+a great flapping sou'wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy
+monkey-jacket, "Twig his coat, d'ye see the buttons, that chap ain't
+going to sea in a merchantman, he's going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty--look here--how d'ye sell them big buttons by the pound?"
+
+"Give us one for a saucer, will ye?" said another.
+
+"Let the youngster alone," said a third. "Come here, my little boy, has
+your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?"
+
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of
+the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they
+can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried
+to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my
+name and beat a retreat.
+
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day
+I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece
+for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street
+with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a
+hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a
+strange-looking shop, with three gilded balk hanging over it.
+
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged t me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to
+him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told him
+that was just what I wanted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will not
+try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, "I thought it was a
+better article, it's very old."
+
+"Not," said I, starting in surprise, "it's not been used more than three
+times; what will you give for it?"
+
+"We don't buy any thing here," said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, "this is a place where people pawn things." Pawn being a
+word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he
+replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their
+fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+
+"And pray," said I, "how much will you let me have for my gun, by way of
+a pawn?"
+
+"Well, I suppose it's worth six dollars, and seeing you're a boy, I'll
+let you have three dollars upon it"
+
+"No," exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, "it's worth five times
+that, I'll go somewhere else."
+
+"Good morning, then," said he, "I hope you'll do better," and he bowed
+me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.
+
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging over
+a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of picket-fence,
+running all along from end to end, and three little holes, with three
+little old men standing inside of them, like prisoners looking out of a
+jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of things, piled up and
+labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and swords, and canes, and
+chests, and planes, and books, and writing-desks, and every thing else.
+And in a glass case were lots of watches, and seals, chains, and rings,
+and breastpins, and all kinds of trinkets. At one of the little holes,
+earnestly talking with one of the hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a
+faded silk gown and shawl, holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I
+drew near, she spoke lower in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and
+looked cross and rude; and then some more words were exchanged over a
+miniature, and some money was passed through the hole, and the woman and
+child shrank out of the door.
+
+I won't sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young man
+in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust through
+to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that came
+along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety of
+fish.
+
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, "one
+dollar."
+
+"What about one dollar?" said I.
+
+"That's all I'll give," he replied.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" and he turned to the next person. This was a
+young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.
+
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, "None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don't deal in them things here."
+
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who
+had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his
+pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+
+"Where did you get this ring?" said the pawnbroker.
+
+"I want to pawn it," whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+
+"What's your name?" said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+
+"How much will you give?" whispered the other in reply, leaning over,
+and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a
+little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket;
+all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question which
+embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain number
+in Broadway.
+
+"That's the City Hotel: you don't live there," said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+
+"Oh! well," stammered the other blushing scarlet, "I thought this was
+only a sort of form to go through; I don't like to tell where I do live,
+for I ain't in the habit of going to pawnbrokers."
+
+"You stole that ring, you know you did," roared out the hook-nosed man,
+incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man's character for life. "I'm a good mind to call a.
+constable; we don't take stolen goods here, I tell you."
+
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man; who
+looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a night-cap,
+with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the
+pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.
+
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more from
+them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a great
+many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular occasion for
+mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and rich, to treat
+people so cavalierly.
+
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the
+curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.
+
+"Ought to have taken it when you could get it," he replied. "I won't
+give but two dollars and a half for it now."
+
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money
+and departed.
+
+
+
+
+V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS
+BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+
+
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my
+promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in
+buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which
+I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and two
+or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny left, so I
+walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into the water.
+The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost desperate
+again, and didn't care what became of me. But if the penny had been a
+dollar, I would have kept it.
+
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones', and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I
+had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and
+thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so
+bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward, when I
+expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very keen,
+and I said to myself, "Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can, for this
+may be the last supper you will have."
+
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a
+towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and
+then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see what
+sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got into the
+shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about the face, which I found
+was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool upon my skin. After that, I
+took a pair of scissors and went to cutting my hair, which was very
+long. I thought every little would help, in making me a light hand to
+run aloft.
+
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the house
+with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate again.
+
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to sea
+that day.
+
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to
+Mr. Jones' again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So
+I concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+
+"What do you want, Pillgarlic?" said he.
+
+"I've shipped to sail in this ship," I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+
+"What for? a tailor?" said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+
+I answered that I was going as a "boy;" for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.
+
+"Well," said he, "have you got your traps aboard?"
+
+I told him I didn't know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn't
+brought any "trap."
+
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.
+
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn't be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.
+
+"Where's your clothes?" said he.
+
+"Here in my bundle," said I, holding it up.
+
+"Well if that's all you've got," he cried, "you'd better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that's the
+place you'll live in aboard here."
+
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow of
+the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him for
+a light.
+
+"Strike your eyes together and make one," said he, "we don't have any
+lights here." So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which smelt
+so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After waiting
+patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last perceived
+I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes stuck round the
+sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which I at once
+supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that method of
+appropriating their "Trunks," as I afterward found these boxes were
+called. And so it turned out.
+
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my
+bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that
+the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and
+walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the
+forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary, and went into
+a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on, and not looking
+very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better place, for fear of
+being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel very hungry; and
+seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think what a fool I had
+been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but a penny
+apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never saw
+doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in, and
+ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little by
+drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere that this was a good
+plan to follow in a case like the present. I did not feel thirsty, but
+only hungry; so had much ado to get down the water; for it tasted warm;
+and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the negro had been drinking some
+spirits out of it just before.
+
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some more
+water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop twice, till
+night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it had been
+raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could not help
+thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in that damp
+and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to lie on but
+the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such thoughts, I
+gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough outside and
+in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I had just been
+eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward I
+unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon as
+he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a
+curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew
+not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me he
+was an English boy, from Lancashire.
+
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last
+voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work
+very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to' work his passage back.
+
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but
+found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I
+asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn't
+traveled any in America and didn't know any thing about the rivers here.
+And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he showed no
+surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times more
+stupid than before.
+
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best to
+get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud, for
+me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the place,
+my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt damp and
+clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening to the
+Lancashire boy's snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to go on
+deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would never come.
+
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left the
+ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But this
+made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy;
+and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a
+heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally
+myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off.
+Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my friend's
+house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it was, only
+it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk in such a
+state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND
+SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+
+
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the rigging,
+and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and went
+to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the captain
+came up the side, and began to order about both of them.
+
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father's, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, "Do you think we
+take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking at
+sea; don't let the 'old man' see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can."
+
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty of
+tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as a
+tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me
+feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus,
+for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief
+mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him, would have
+knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.
+
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great
+hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with
+you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you,
+with that shooting-jacket!"
+
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.
+
+"A sailor!" he cried, "a barber's clerk, you mean; you going out in the
+ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn't been
+shipping any more greenhorns like you--he'll make a shipwreck of it if he
+has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few dollars in seamen's
+wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of farmers and
+clodhoppers and baby-boys. What's your name, Pillgarlic?"
+
+"Redburn," said I.
+
+"A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it; haven't
+you got any other?"
+
+"Wellingborough," said I.
+
+"Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn't they call you Jack,
+or Jill, or something short and handy. But I'll baptize you over again.
+D'ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is Buttons. And now do you go,
+Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d'ye hear;
+there's them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now."
+
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?
+
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey orders,
+and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel, or spade,
+or something else to work with.
+
+"We don't dig gardens here," was the reply; "dig it out with your
+teeth!"
+
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen,
+which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the "jolly-boat,"
+was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them almost close
+together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck. I managed to
+crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins against the
+seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along to the stern,
+where the pig-pen was.
+
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to
+his comrades, "Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you 'bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say."
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal
+ashore.
+
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I found
+it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as it
+looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as well
+as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a dry
+spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed with
+an oath, "Didn't I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else? Do
+what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!"
+
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was
+my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me
+why he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this, he
+flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his order
+like a clap of thunder.
+
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave reasons
+for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they command it,
+so that the motto is, "Obey orders, though you break owners."
+
+I now began to feel very faint and sick again, and longed for the ship
+to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be having
+something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on board, and as
+for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they were
+"riggers," that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day in getting
+ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for yielding to
+the kind blandishment of one of these riggers, I had swapped away my
+jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own, thinking to secure
+a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my chance, and while
+people's backs were turned, I seized a carrot from several bunches lying
+on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my shooting-jacket, went
+forward to eat it; for I had often eaten raw carrots, which taste
+something like chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me a good deal, though
+at the expense of a little pain in my stomach. Hardly had I disposed of
+it, when I heard the chief mate's voice crying out for "Buttons." I ran
+after him, and received an order to go aloft and "slush down the
+main-top mast."
+
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring
+about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the mate had
+turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I followed after
+him, and asked what I must do.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?" he shouted.
+
+"You did," said I, "but I don't know what that means."
+
+"Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!" he exclaimed to himself. "A
+fine time I'll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you, youngster.
+Look up to that long pole there--d'ye see it? that piece of a tree there,
+you timber-head--well--take this bucket here, and go up the rigging--that
+rope-ladder there--do you understand?--and dab this slush all over the
+mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls on deck. Be off now,
+Buttons."
+
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to
+ascend a ship's mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have
+felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint,
+the bare thought appalled me.
+
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I could
+not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of food; so
+rallying again, I took up the bucket.
+
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of it
+was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several times
+about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and slipping
+off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the "top," the
+clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about between my
+legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the "top," I came
+to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that overhanging
+impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much
+straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the "top;" and then,
+trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road
+was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was obliged
+to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more. I only
+recollect my safe return to the deck.
+
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage passengers,
+besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor,
+and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board
+but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in
+Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in
+the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt
+in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats and
+swaggered on deck, "it's your turn now, but it will be mine before long.
+Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I'll do the yawing after the
+anchor's up."
+
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on
+board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped
+him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their
+appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of their
+drink.
+
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner
+fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my
+long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with eating
+and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and potatoes which
+the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and though this left the
+whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found that I could eat little
+or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint, but not hungry.
+
+
+
+
+VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+
+
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and all
+hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could not
+help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they suffered
+from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in which they
+had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors breathe
+nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all alive and
+hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.
+
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south point
+of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor's Island, and
+pointed right out for the Narrows.
+
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then,
+there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.
+
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be forced
+to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the Atlantic
+Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability he ever
+would.
+
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my heavy-
+heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the first day
+of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must elapse
+before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might happen to
+me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and thought how
+often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure enough that some
+luckless day or other, I would certainly fall overboard and be drowned.
+And then, I thought of lying down at the bottom of the sea, stark alone,
+with the great waves rolling over me, and no one in the wide world
+knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it
+must be, to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny
+south side of our village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to
+walk after church in the afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now;
+yes, dead and buried in that churchyard. All the time my eyes were
+filled with tears, and I kept holding my breath, to choke down the sobs,
+for indeed I could not help feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in
+the world would have felt just as I did then.
+
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so many
+beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the beautiful
+fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing if instead
+of sailing out of the bay, we were only coming into it; if we had
+crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and my heart
+leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really entering
+that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant, that it
+seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
+again.
+
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
+sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about
+the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how
+that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the
+ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square
+where they lived; and how that they would have a good dinner ready, and
+plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I say this land of
+talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider, as I did, that
+before any thing like that could happen, we must cross the great
+Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back again, many
+thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this much
+I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to the
+Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used words
+that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind to
+me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
+
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.
+
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like this
+of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not a
+soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great Atlantic
+Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down to the
+water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly believe,
+as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or any place
+like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed
+too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
+really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
+farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away
+beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of
+steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land
+behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy;
+and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who
+could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many
+times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never
+dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a
+marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
+by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
+credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever
+sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water
+line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was
+too wonderful to believe.
+
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
+quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
+all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
+Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with
+white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and
+who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain
+Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
+Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle,
+because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white
+hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me,
+that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one
+visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the White Sea some years
+after.
+
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water was
+a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this grove, in
+a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the fort, dark as
+night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults, twisting and
+turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of green grass and
+sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in the middle of the
+castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing, or ruminating
+under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf frisking about, and
+trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy
+ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides
+of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long
+beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on
+the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a
+ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and
+though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as
+ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh,
+and have as great a memory as he must have had. Yes, the fort was a
+beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to build a little cottage
+in the middle of it, and live there all my life. It was noon-day when I
+was there, in the month of June, and there was little wind to stir the
+trees, and every thing looked as if it was waiting for something, and
+the sky overhead was blue as my mother's eye, and I was so glad and
+happy then. But I must not think of those delightful days, before my
+father became a bankrupt, and died, and we removed from the city; for
+when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost
+strangles me.
+
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful
+fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now, with
+what it was when with my father and uncle I went there so long ago. Then
+I never thought of working for my living, and never knew that there were
+hard hearts in the world; and knew so little of money, that when I
+bought a stick of candy, and laid down a sixpence, I thought the
+confectioner returned five cents, only that I might have money to buy
+something else, and not because the pennies were my change, and
+therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and had
+vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in the
+city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she used
+to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was the
+ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some boys
+who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.
+
+About sunset we got fairly "outside," and well may it so be called; for
+I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left
+us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat, who
+to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of the
+captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart talking
+with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave him some
+newspapers.
+
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the
+little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell to
+me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got into
+the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the schooner
+made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and waving
+their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of America.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME
+OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+
+
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on
+the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were
+going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a
+stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate's turn
+came to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it
+was not me;--no; and I noticed, as they went on choosing, one after the
+other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so much as
+looked at me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into their
+faces, for it was dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves away so
+in their jackets. But the sailors, especially the stout good-looking
+ones, seemed to make a point of lounging as much out of the way as
+possible, and slouching their hats over their eyes; and although it may
+only be a fancy of mine, I certainly thought that they affected a sort
+of lordly indifference as to whose watch they were going to be in; and
+did not think it worth while to look any way anxious about the matter.
+And the very men who, a few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity
+and promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at the
+word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if
+they were quite sure, that by this time the officers must know who the
+best men were, and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to
+put the officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were
+worth having, they were worth seeking.
+
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate's next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+I was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next column,
+like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.
+
+"Well, Buttons," said the chief mate, "I thought I'd got rid of you. And
+as it is, Mr. Rigs," he added, speaking to the second mate, "I guess you
+had better take him into your watch;--there, I'll let you have him, and
+then you'll be one stronger than me."
+
+"No, I thank you," said Mr. Rigs.
+
+"You had better," said the chief mate--"see, he's not a bad looking
+chap--he's a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself, you
+know, Rigs."
+
+"No, I thank you," said the second mate again. "Take him yourself--he's
+yours by good rights--I don't want him." And so they put me in the chief
+mate's division, that is the larboard watch.
+
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood, just
+like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing that
+had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what I had
+come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.
+
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-"You, Bill?" and Bill answered, "Sir?" just as if the second mate
+was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man in such
+a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had been
+quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him Mr. Rigs
+during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this Mr. Rigs was a great
+merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very
+long in finding out, that at sea all officers are Misters, and would
+take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them so.
+And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be called sir when
+addressed--Yes, sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir; and they are as particular
+about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though their titles
+are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in
+England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his tides are the
+only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish We
+indeed. He is not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the
+chief mate occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the
+cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine,
+and sup off the leavings of the cabin table, and even the steward, who
+is accountable to nobody but the captain, sometimes treats him
+cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails are reefed; and put
+his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the
+boatswain's locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
+seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing
+many other things, which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather
+die and give up his title than stand.
+
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could not
+eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked to
+have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.
+
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to tea aboard of a
+ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we were told
+it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from eight
+o'clock till midnight.
+
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
+matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the
+head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of
+the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses very
+civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and spend the
+night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said something about my
+mother not being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
+that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare to take such
+a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of blasphemy, and it seemed
+like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets of my soul, for at
+that time the name of mother was the center of all my heart's finest
+feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my
+being.
+
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
+the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
+his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
+hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
+and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
+his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in his
+broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook,
+which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
+men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came along.
+He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking
+fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a new silk
+handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones
+of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear white
+duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and a tarpaulin hat
+bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon streaming behind,
+and getting entangled every now and then in the rigging; and he had gold
+anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one of his fingers, which was
+very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other work on board ship.
+I thought he might better have left his jewelry at home.
+
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
+from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
+how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
+he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
+about, and go to bed again, and get up again--there was no telling how
+many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his country,
+he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland baby was
+sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said to be a day
+old.
+
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
+that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
+which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
+wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
+only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book meant
+to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean; but
+this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till I saw this
+Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland, only made
+me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from Greenland to
+be in my company? Why was he not at home among the icebergs, and how
+could he stand a warm summer's sun, and not be melted away? Besides,
+instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and he
+did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge muff; things,
+which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all Greenlanders.
+
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the
+night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor and
+cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back with a brown
+jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the
+brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it, for it
+smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be full of Jamaica
+spirits.
+
+"Now, Buttons," said he, "one little dose of this will be better for you
+than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or
+eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast."
+
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples
+about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not
+ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which
+my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept
+the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him. There was
+three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he brought in his
+accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove on the
+river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him
+as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the
+side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits would
+now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that when I
+signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert a little
+clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness. And I
+would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in future; and
+then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking their
+pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with me. And a hard
+thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken; especially as
+the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth
+so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had
+become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could
+really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the
+Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off
+with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long,
+for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed
+overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the spirits
+I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could have had
+a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well, and perhaps
+much better. But that was not to be had at that time of night, or,
+indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called coffee, which was
+given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious tasting
+drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as it did like
+lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally as cold as lemonade, and
+I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and dropt ice into his coffee.
+But what was more curious still, was the different quality and taste of
+it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a
+decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very salty, as if
+some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and then again it
+would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his
+cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it
+would have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some
+old stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made
+of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always remained a
+mystery; for when at work at his vocation, our old cook used to keep
+himself close shut-up in his caboose, a little cook-house, and never
+told any of his secrets.
+
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for
+all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don't believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico's in New York. It was well for him that
+he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing
+his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at one of
+his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him. What
+induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out; but I
+suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some real
+estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have; and
+though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding
+another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in
+the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that
+respect as before.
+
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I did;
+and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for breaking
+my bond, which I would not have done except in case of necessity. But
+the evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion whatever, was
+witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened the way to
+subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet carried no
+apology with them.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+
+
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather cloudy,
+it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to
+count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it was not
+very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth as a
+sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held so
+steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes, and
+scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a lighted
+long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but few words
+to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of thinking to
+attend to, which hi truth is the case with most seamen the first night
+out of port, especially when they have thrown away their money in
+foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For when
+ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in their
+way, as the sailors they command.
+
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
+mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
+It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a little
+higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began pulling
+upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no words to it,
+only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark night, and
+far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and made me feel as
+I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin of mine, with
+black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the piano. I almost
+looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit afraid. But I soon
+got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without
+it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling,
+whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the
+mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and
+raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every
+man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull
+as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure
+the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing
+in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it
+from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates.
+Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can
+sing out at a rope.
+
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
+and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
+about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and
+I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a
+volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most struck me
+was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each other, and
+would fall into long and violent disputes about who was keeping the Foul
+Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether the King of
+Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the bar-maid of a
+particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes; with many other
+mooted points of that sort.
+
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
+chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
+to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle ashore;
+and also by way of tapering off, as I mentioned a little while ago. But
+I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them,
+instead of spirits and cigars.
+
+Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter at
+a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the Temperance
+Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did afterward upon
+the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I declined; with a good
+deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that the cigars were real
+genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he said, and had them made
+there under his own eye. According to his account, he was very
+particular about his cigars and other things, and never made any
+importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself
+direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he
+wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats,
+to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his
+cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he
+would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his halter; the wit of
+which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is
+the best; though that is not wit which needs explaining.
+
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
+united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
+biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck before
+the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness, and
+finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
+themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing on
+earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
+pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and another
+ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived their
+true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a parcel of
+wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction to
+associate with them.
+
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but more
+with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind
+dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made
+outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for
+the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if
+they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a
+church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called them strayed lambs
+from the fold, and compared them to poor lost children, babes in the
+wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors' Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
+seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their
+latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good sailors
+among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on deck apart
+from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them: so I did not
+disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at discovering that
+he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.
+
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men went
+into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take a
+"swig at the halyards," as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them "to taper off" handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then. Yet
+this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to them,
+then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they turned
+about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
+
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.
+
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
+his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him more
+and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was grateful that
+I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel
+wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing to confess to
+myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors, so much as my
+education, which I had received from others, that had made me the
+upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to be. And it was
+now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction
+in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had previously
+associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there was
+little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with my
+neighbors.
+
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
+upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
+him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
+was far from being vain and conceited.
+
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
+some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
+forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
+astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his--tit for tat,--I inquired
+of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and
+whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to
+the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams;
+and in asking these questions I was particular to address him in a civil
+and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I did not
+deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all things
+together, and not going into particulars. But to my great surprise and
+mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed aloud in my face,
+and called me a "Jimmy Dux," though that was not my real name, and he
+must have known it; and also the "son of a farmer," though as I have
+previously related, my father was a great merchant and French importer
+in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh and joke about
+me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not
+felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much Eke a
+fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is
+very lucky for people in a passion.
+
+
+
+
+X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
+MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+
+
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
+horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
+came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
+hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
+I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
+
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
+and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
+the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
+uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
+forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
+about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
+ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
+loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
+but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the
+sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into his
+bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
+suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
+the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place,
+and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a
+fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
+
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and
+almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the
+sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I
+been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the Hudson
+River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which
+had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best friends, that is
+to say, my mother and sisters.
+
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
+more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it worse,
+was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they
+took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked Me I had entered
+upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea, and they were
+used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the suicide came
+rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as frightened as I
+did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened still
+plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
+could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by
+them. However, they lay in then-bunks smoking, and kept talking on some
+time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin
+my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into
+the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far
+off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of
+sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.
+
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
+and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
+I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.
+And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,
+but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked
+me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread
+out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and
+asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a
+gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like
+nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And
+one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal
+more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,
+for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the
+death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he
+would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with
+an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
+then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they
+could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that
+the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
+night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I
+loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
+heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable
+wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a
+boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked
+within me, but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared
+them to do their worst.
+
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+
+
+
+
+XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+
+
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as
+the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and
+when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The
+men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and
+some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell off like little
+boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was broad day, and an
+order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub was dragged into the
+waist, and then one of the men went over into the chains, and slipped in
+behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and leaning over, began to swing
+a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that way with much
+expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a very
+short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and
+I began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of
+cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told him I thought I would just
+step below, till this miserable wetting was over; for I did not have any
+water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had died of consumption. But he
+only roared out for me to get a broom and go to scrubbing, or he would
+prove a worse consumption to me than ever got hold of my poor aunt. So I
+scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back was almost broke, for the
+brooms had uncommon short handles, and we were told to scrub hard.
+
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of
+water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He must
+have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to
+point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him with full
+buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck,
+with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of a
+scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the
+world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse than
+my mother's house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+
+At eight o'clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend to
+tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I should
+have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for my own
+part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no table to sit
+down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide every
+thing themselves. But so it was.
+
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house
+with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having
+no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little tub
+called a "kid," was passed down into the forecastle, filled with
+something they called "burgoo." This was like mush, made of Indian corn,
+meal, and water. With the "kid," a. little tin cannikin was passed down
+with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put the kid
+between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like an old
+landlord mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole in the
+middle of the mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all the world
+like a little black pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other,
+with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after
+stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down
+their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very
+good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I wasn't
+sure.
+
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little
+burgoo toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready open
+to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was about,
+knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned my
+manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn't that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to
+eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon, for
+he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.
+
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But my side was scraped clean, so I got no
+burgoo that morning.
+
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to
+be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard biscuit,
+very sociably, over each other's heads, which was very convenient
+indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first four or five
+days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much about it, only
+it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to bring a fine comb
+and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward over the bulwarks
+every evening.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+
+
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the burgoo, called upon them in a loud voice to cease their
+clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall
+have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I will
+here try to describe him a little.
+
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor. He
+was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have
+on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in
+the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was stuck over
+with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out shoe-brush. His nose
+had broken down in the middle, and he squinted with one eye, and did not
+look very straight out of the other. He dressed a good deal like a
+Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig; wearing a pair of
+great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and three red
+woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject to the rheumatism,
+and was not in good health, he said; and he had a large white wool hat,
+with a broad rolling brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a
+good deal to say about highlanders, and rowdies, whom he denounced as
+only good for the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a
+highlander himself.
+
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was a
+great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict him,
+or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful was,
+that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have no
+doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now, I
+could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with him;
+such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and withal
+was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have run
+from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that
+I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it
+must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no beard,
+and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might have
+seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own account,
+he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he first went
+as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according
+to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation
+and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in
+Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish
+used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel
+and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and
+weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks;
+how he had been in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an English
+cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull, which raked
+through and through a whole file of slaves, that were chained.
+
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
+man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
+got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
+would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their
+money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of
+Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to make him
+point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
+
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.
+
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
+the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
+Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
+out of the world by wasps and hornets.
+
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
+he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
+to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes
+fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable, broken-down
+condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in consequence of
+his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with such malevolence
+as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my mother so thought
+me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my
+low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and,
+spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being
+consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was
+more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will not
+put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even now,
+I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.
+
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his
+eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship's
+helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called
+for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy
+duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming
+them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health,
+he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be
+jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion
+under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids
+will sometimes show.
+
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire
+to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this
+Jackson was a notorious old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all
+things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and
+in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have passed
+unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call him to
+account in any way; or to let him so much as think, what they thought of
+his conduct. But I often heard them call him many hard names behind his
+back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been tenderly
+inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood in mortal
+fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him like so many spaniels; and
+used to rub his back, after he was undressed and lying in his bunk; and
+used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some cold coffee for
+him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco, and mend
+his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and tend, and nurse him
+every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling on them, and found
+fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most for
+him, and cringed the most before him, were the very ones he most abused;
+while two or three who held more aloof, he treated with a little
+consideration.
+
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship's company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
+know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
+in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
+would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
+that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
+from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
+crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
+butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being abused
+and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially, because of his
+great strength and fine person, and particularly because of his red
+cheeks.
+
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an able-seaman,
+was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man in the eyes of a
+ship's company; I mean, when he ships for an able-seaman, but is not
+able to do the duty of one. For sailors are of three classes--
+able-seaman, ordinary-seaman, and boys; and they receive different
+wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship's company of twelve
+men will only have five or six able seamen, who if they prove to
+understand their duty every way (and that is no small matter either, as
+I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to, and thought much of
+by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets,
+and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
+
+But you must not think from this, that persons called boys aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
+called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a boy means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
+enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work is
+put upon him.
+
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson's
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's age
+just like a horse's--by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened his
+mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the light
+came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while he
+looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a baboon
+peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just as if I
+had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to cut his
+throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the lather on, to
+be shaved. For I watched Jackson's eye and saw it snapping, and a sort
+of going in and out, very quick, as if it were something like a forked
+tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were longing to kill the man; but
+at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his examination,
+said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for the ends of his
+teeth were the evenest and most worn down; which, he said, arose from
+eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this was the reason he could tell a
+sailor's age like a horse's.
+
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+say--come, boys, let's laugh; and they did laugh; and declared it was a
+rare joke.
+
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out,
+whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to them
+that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes from
+others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell
+the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that is, when his
+back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a grave face;
+when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or otherwise,
+they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking perplexed enough;
+till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and
+idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had purposely
+put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look grave, too;
+even when he was telling something that ought to split their sides. And
+with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed them all to
+scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue
+together at the corners with a fine white foam.
+
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every
+body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him
+some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart.
+Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened at
+him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling him
+Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some terrible thing at
+last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up; for the captain
+would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward again.
+
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly all
+hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink off
+during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more submit
+to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good their
+oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old way; so
+that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of
+Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up a
+little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson; yet
+in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.
+
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to greenhorns and landsmen, who
+know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think, that an able seaman
+is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little boy. And the
+able seamen in the Highlander had such grand notions about their
+seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen received diplomas,
+like those given at colleges; and were made a sort A.M.S, or Masters of
+Arts.
+
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew
+that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed
+endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson's
+evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many
+of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me
+before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the
+ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began to feel a hatred
+growing up in me against the whole crew--so much so, that I prayed
+against it, that it might not master my heart completely, and so make a
+fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
+over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
+hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
+I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in
+during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
+could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
+blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
+forbidding.
+
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out
+on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over
+at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost
+happy for a time.
+
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
+least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
+could now look around me, and make observations.
+
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
+at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight
+of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round
+us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen
+but water-water--water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
+smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till
+now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
+boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
+squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
+I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
+lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
+great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
+
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my
+little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It
+had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little
+wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless Little kid in a pasture;
+and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be
+patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them,
+that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them,
+scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
+like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most
+strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the
+sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and
+swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very
+well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
+It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes
+off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
+
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear
+myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the
+deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist
+aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these
+stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out
+beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like
+the wings of a great bird.
+
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the
+name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt
+very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I
+was; every thing was so strange and new.
+
+While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
+
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
+with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
+managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a
+fool as at first.
+
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
+imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
+barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, arid dress in
+strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own
+names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing
+by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber.
+This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to draw some
+water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I thought I had
+committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
+said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that they were
+always called buckets. And once I was talking about sticking a little
+wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew out again, and
+said there were no pegs at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with
+every thing else.
+
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
+names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
+to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked
+what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
+entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of
+these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy,
+like the names of young royal princes, such as the starboard-main-top-
+gallant-bow-line, or the larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.
+
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes
+of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in
+the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists
+give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something
+like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews
+the small running ropes, that manage all the motions.
+
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
+which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
+very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
+breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they
+use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people
+seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names,
+seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be
+surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the
+world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
+
+At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
+as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the
+breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the
+foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber
+seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with Me and joy; and I
+felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be glad to
+bound along so round the world.
+
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to
+all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on
+with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at
+the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as
+if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling
+along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+
+Yes I yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
+briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
+very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe,
+let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an
+eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
+
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we
+were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
+chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+
+Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
+to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I
+were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a
+speedy end to this abominable voyage!
+
+
+
+
+XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+
+
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.
+
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good humor,
+and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to appreciate the
+difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I was thrown.
+Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special manner take me
+under his protection, and prove a kind friend and benefactor to me; as I
+had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to their crew; and so they
+are; but such fathers as Solomon's precepts tend to make--severe and
+chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of duty overcomes the sense of
+love, and who every day, in some sort, play the part of Brutus, who
+ordered his son away to execution, as I have read in our old family
+Plutarch.
+
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother's friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.
+
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.
+
+When two or three days had passed without the captain's speaking to me
+in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not expect
+it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that might
+have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it more
+proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he might be
+offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender feelings.
+So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second dog-watch, when
+there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call and see him.
+
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off
+some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of my
+red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck ones,
+and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my shooting-jacket,
+I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made quite a genteel
+figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not have looked so
+well in a drawing-room.
+
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make of
+it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told them
+no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to pay
+my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed and shouted, as
+if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so very simple in
+going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some of them tried to
+dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson, who sat looking
+on, cried out, with a hideous grin, "Let him go, let him go, men--he's a
+nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and raisins for him."
+And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits of coughing seized
+him, and he almost choked.
+
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands,
+and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the
+mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I
+thought it would never do to present myself before a gentleman that way;
+so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which my
+mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was putting them on,
+Jackson asked me whether he shouldn't call a carriage; and another bade
+me not forget to present his best respects to the skipper. I left them
+all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the cook-house, when the
+old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched my
+hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought his
+eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and with a
+voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by playing such tricks
+aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to let go of me, or I
+would complain to my friend the captain, whom I intended to visit that
+evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl round, that I thought the
+Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me forward, roaring out I
+know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing round the
+windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson asked
+me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went, I
+would not take a friend along and introduce him.
+
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that night,
+I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to call on
+the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the fact,
+that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance of sea
+usages.
+
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin
+during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return
+to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a little
+pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm, where a
+watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half hours by,
+with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was. And it used
+to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through the pane of
+glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the proceedings in the
+cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for dinner, or
+the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little mahogany
+stand, or playing the game called solitaire, at cards, of an evening;
+for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as will ere long
+be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose society he did
+not dislike.
+
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be
+making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made
+his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked
+very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I
+thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.
+
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as
+he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very pleasant
+day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into such a rage;
+I thought he was going to knock me down; but after standing speechless
+awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his head and threw it at me.
+I don't know what impelled me, but I ran to the lee-scuppers where it
+fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a bow; when the mate came
+running up, and thrust me forward again; and after he had got me as far
+as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I was crazy or not; for if I
+was, he would put me in irons right off, and have done with it.
+
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that I
+had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by him
+and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told me if
+I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again presumed so
+much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into the rigging,
+and keep me there until I learned better manners. "You are very green,"
+said he, "but I'll ripen you." Indeed this chief mate seemed to have the
+keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some sort, seemed too
+dignified personally to protect his own dignity.
+
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.
+
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after,
+a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his
+nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop,
+began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft
+all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the street.
+
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and his
+boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but a
+shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their gloss,
+and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a sort of
+miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might have been
+owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of dye while at
+sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while ashore, a gentleman
+on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have treated another
+gentleman as he did me.
+
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+
+
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old clothes, I may as
+well speak of mine.
+
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had greatly
+rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be warm and
+pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be like a summer
+excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a
+change of scene and society.
+
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a
+belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers', whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+"long togs," as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the life
+I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my pantaloons
+were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction, particularly
+about the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with low
+waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was often placed
+in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the rigging, sometimes in
+plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen exposed in the most
+inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
+
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
+very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.
+
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
+in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try them
+on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
+spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
+a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
+he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
+for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing and
+blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with
+him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
+intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
+have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with a
+row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was a
+great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
+precisely in that way.
+
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
+deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
+"ftoig" them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
+of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
+very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
+genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
+from my cousin's, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
+
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.
+
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home. They
+had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had had a
+pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I
+walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see me, and
+I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at them
+during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they
+were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more
+for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which
+were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came
+near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such
+a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was
+obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were
+quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees, and the edges were
+mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call them my "gaff-
+topsail-boots." And sometimes they used to call me "Boots," and
+sometimes "Buttons," on account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and
+shooting-jacket.
+
+At last, I took their advice, and "razeed" them, as they phrased it.
+That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
+feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
+made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
+wore straps on the ice.
+
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved a
+real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a rain
+storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on
+deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and
+lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
+
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
+kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of
+them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
+obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like an
+Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a crucifix.
+
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
+that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like going
+to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and knife,
+fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a
+steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron
+pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave me
+a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much disposed to
+rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was drinking; and
+it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were deprived of
+all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a labor to me. And I
+was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup, three times a week,
+which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
+and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
+calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
+In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked
+like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of
+my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would
+have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in
+my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation
+and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a galling mockery,
+when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell all inquiring
+friends, that Wellingborough had gone "abroad" just as if I was visiting
+Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to
+the captain.
+
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.
+
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
+view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
+and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
+sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
+as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
+saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
+look-cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain in a green
+jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
+
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
+these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
+the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
+and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
+of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
+
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
+in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
+harder.
+
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in an
+elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass trumpet to
+his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, "Where from?"
+
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
+
+Hamburg!
+
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.
+
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains during
+their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective "poops"
+toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying their
+behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and
+drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting each
+other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great Atlantic
+Ocean was a puddle.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+
+
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle
+watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+
+The order was given to loose the main-skysail, which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the
+forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I
+have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail;
+called moon-sails, and skyscrapers, and cloud-rakers. But I shall not
+believe in them till I see them; a skysail seems high enough in all
+conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems
+preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush
+the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a
+flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these
+cloud-defying cloud-rakers.
+
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch sailor
+came up to me, and said, "Buttons, my boy, it's high time you be doing
+something; and it's boy's business, Buttons, to loose de royals, and not
+old men's business, like me. Now, d'ye see dat leelle fellow way up
+dare? dare, just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up, now, Buttons, I
+zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons."
+
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it
+was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing boy's business, as
+they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up I
+went, not dating to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were, to
+the shrouds, as I ascended.
+
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the Jacob's
+Ladder; and they may well call it so, for it took me almost into the
+clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself hanging on the
+skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and curling my feet
+round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands.
+
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far out
+upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my lofty
+perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all round, by
+beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds;
+and every second, expected to find myself falling--falling--falling, as I
+have felt when the nightmare has been on me.
+
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank in
+the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over which
+I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round the
+truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost
+frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at such a
+lofty and solitary height.
+
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship's motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.
+
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I
+could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the gaskets, or lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready,
+sung out as I had been told, to "hoist away!" And hoist they did, and me
+too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they
+were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was,
+going up higher and higher; the yard rising under me, as if it were
+alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at the time, I was in a
+good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I could not see well enough
+to feel afraid--at least on that account; though I felt frightened enough
+in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and made good the saying of
+old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard from the rigging is
+a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely; whereas old tars are
+less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something like
+a compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate,
+he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves
+some mention.
+
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe,
+and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea.
+His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a red
+shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever saw.
+
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable;
+and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and
+imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.
+
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when we
+got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American
+Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American ships, Max
+prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if
+he could, would have been very glad to have passed himself off for a
+born native.
+
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting discredit
+upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my wardrobe, by
+loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like many other
+well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also betrayed some
+anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when the ship's
+company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my awkwardness
+in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety on that head.
+
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about
+my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a
+finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+
+
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at the
+foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were dripping
+with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were standing on
+the roof of a house in a shower.
+
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
+of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
+he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
+imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend,
+Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane,
+between churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about
+myself.
+
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
+Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
+to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to
+think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
+school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
+cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
+name of the doctor.
+
+And doctors, cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
+serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
+green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jakp do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off a
+powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by a
+surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly I medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
+when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
+in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and
+used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat over
+his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled and
+covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little leather
+strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the water in
+which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
+found this book was the Bible.
+
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky
+studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five
+feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the
+pipe of which stuck out of the roof.
+
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read; and
+big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till they
+hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it was no
+wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious passage in
+the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read, he called
+me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over, demanding
+an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could explain;
+not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left him poring
+over it still.
+
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to
+be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a
+committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their
+natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed black
+hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon him,
+and remained conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more than an
+hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the sliding
+doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and
+preaching; and after that a psalm was sting and a benediction given;
+when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great
+perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of cold,
+wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and make his
+fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then dashing into
+his stove.
+
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did rip
+a little, for it would have tried old Job's temper, to be set to work
+making a fire in the water.
+
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket before
+the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into the door
+for a knocker; and wrote his name, "Mr. Thompson," over it, with a bit
+of red chalk.
+
+The men said he lived round the corner of Forecastle-square, opposite
+the Liberty Pole; because his cook-house was right behind the foremast,
+and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard. When
+a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he "takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street."
+
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward's, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by the
+name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when Mr.
+Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that turban
+at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair, just like
+the large, round brush, used for washing windows, called a Pope's Head.
+
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests, and
+buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black, which,
+with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a serious
+young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.
+
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something
+he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more
+like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring, and
+was always calling your attention to something, and pointing at it with
+his ornamented finger.
+
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the "Three Spaniards,"
+and "Charlotte Temple," and carried a lock of frizzled hair in his vest
+pocket, which he frequently volunteered to show to people, with his
+handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these two,
+the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the cook-house,
+leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from
+falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay
+till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events
+that had happened during the day in the cabin. And sometimes Mr.
+Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a chapter for the
+edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad profligate and gay
+deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful indiscretion. He would read
+over to him the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; and hold Joseph up
+to him as a young man of excellent principles, whom he ought to imitate,
+and not be guilty of his indiscretion any more. And Lavender would look
+serious, and say that he knew it was all true-he was a wicked youth, he
+knew it--he had broken a good many hearts, and many eyes were weeping for
+him even then, both in New York, and Liverpool, and London, and Havre.
+But how could he help it? He hadn't made his handsome face, and fine
+head of hair, and graceful figure. It was not he, but the others, that
+were to blame; for his bewitching person turned all heads and subdued
+all hearts, wherever he went. And then he would look very serious and
+penitent, and go up to the little glass, and pass his hands through his
+hair, and see how his whiskers were coming on.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+DREAM BOOK
+
+
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I thought
+I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's-
+eye, or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck
+to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found
+myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not
+suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the
+deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a
+coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay there till I dressed
+myself and went up to remove it--a kind of interruption to my studies
+which annoyed me very much, when diligently occupied in reading.
+
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole, where
+we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest time I
+had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my back,
+during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.
+
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they
+had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with Delirium Tremens in great gilt
+letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on the subject
+of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in the sailor
+book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in New York.
+
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great
+profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones,
+who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top shelf, where
+it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that although I was
+going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good education; and
+that there was hardly any situation in life, however humble and
+depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in it to store
+his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And he added, that
+though it did look rather unfavorable for my future prospects, to be
+going to sea as a common sailor so early in life; yet, it would no doubt
+turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate, if I would only
+take good care of myself, would give me a sound constitution, if nothing
+more; and that was not to be undervalued, for how many very rich men
+would give all their bonds and mortgages for my boyish robustness.
+
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined; and
+though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused the
+book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and unforeseen
+attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to retrieve the
+poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do in the world.
+
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at
+the back: "Smith's Wealth of Nations." This not satisfying me, I glanced
+at the title page, and found it was an "Enquiry into the Nature and
+Causes" of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to look further
+down, I caught sight of "Aberdeen," where the book was printed; and
+thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country, must prove
+some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very kindly, and
+promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page number
+one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and
+body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the philosopher's
+stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to
+silver and gold.
+
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as
+I commenced the first chapter, entitled "Of the causes of improvement in
+the productive power of labor." Dry as crackers and cheese, to be sure;
+and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only getting
+initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened to me. So
+I read on and on, about "wages and profits of labor," without getting
+any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank
+some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost
+work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home,
+lettered on the back, "The History of Rome" was quite as full of matter,
+and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had
+ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering, that he
+had to get on a chair when he reached it down from its dusty shelf; that
+certainly looked suspicious.
+
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect:
+"Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods, 1798." So it
+must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones' father; and I wondered
+whether he had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever read
+it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say, never read
+their own books; writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so
+sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it
+for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes
+waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book could not have
+been the cause of that.
+
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor, and
+his Dream Book.
+
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
+used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an Irish Cockney. By which I
+understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in London,
+somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue that I
+could hear.
+
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west cap
+flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked
+like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a
+walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle
+between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible
+story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a
+sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for
+a spell against the scurvy.
+
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a fortune-
+teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house was
+much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.
+
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some
+cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state
+made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down in
+a fray.
+
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
+all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling him
+an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
+apothecary's, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done for
+him.
+
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he called
+"Trafalgar Oil for restoring the hair," price one dollar; and told him
+that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have the desired
+effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called "Balm of Paradise, or the
+Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen." These high-sounding naval names
+delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there must be virtue in them.
+
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a
+young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in
+the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to
+his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large
+bottle, conspicuously labeled, "Balm of Paradise." It seemed from the
+text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil,
+and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of
+bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet, seized the precious
+bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed again, getting up in the
+morning without knowing any thing about it. Which, indeed, was a most
+mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how the
+engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was ignorant,
+and where there were no bystanders.
+
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to
+it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned
+with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual
+change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him
+to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle
+that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He
+would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and
+if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very
+great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his hair with oil,
+operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet, and want of a
+brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild horse's mane,
+and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue. Besides his
+collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself with several
+boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor doctor in New York,
+who by placards stuck on the posts along the wharves, advertised to
+remain standing at the northeast corner of Catharine Market, every
+Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and twelve in the morning,
+to receive calls from patients, distribute medicines, and give advice
+gratis.
+
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but at
+breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as they
+do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the boarding-
+houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along with the
+pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of toothpicks. But
+they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western country.
+
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of horse
+salts (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to sea
+without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also, take
+this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain storm.
+But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor themselves
+with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in this
+connection, some really frightful stories might be told; but I forbear.
+
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the
+death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you
+from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board
+this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently turned
+into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and smoking
+like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for then, I
+bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof to bodily
+ill.
+
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner of
+his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red
+cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.
+
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon
+Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor.
+Hence it was entitled the Bonaparte Dream Book; for the magic of it lay
+in the interpretation of dreams, and their application to the foreseeing
+of future events; so that all preparatory measures might be taken
+beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and satisfactory
+every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means of figures, in
+some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was facilitated by a
+set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something like the Logarithm
+Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator.
+
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this Bonaparte Dream Book of
+his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in his
+own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before taking
+his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his bunk
+before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet, and a
+bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin scratching his oily
+head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down strokes on his
+chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.
+
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.
+
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his
+bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice--"Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!"
+
+"What benches?" growled Max-"What's the matter?"
+
+"Benches! benches!" screamed Blunt, without heeding him, "cut down the
+forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment's coming!"
+
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his benches; till, shortly
+after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind would
+stand or sit at the Last Day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+
+
+This Dream Book of Blunt's reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+
+It was the larboard watch's turn to remain below from midnight till four
+o'clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out again
+about three o'clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he was
+desirous of at once having interpreted.
+
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on
+the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him
+and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship's company flying on
+deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.
+
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out Luff! Luff! to some one in the dark water before the ship. In
+that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black
+hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so
+near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind,
+the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of Luff! Luff! that
+our own mate, was raising.
+
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys jerked
+out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our jib-boom
+thumping against our bows.
+
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been injured;
+for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging mixed with
+ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar with another
+jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against emergencies.
+
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on
+board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our vessel
+was terribly reprimanded by the mate.
+
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet
+their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels coming
+together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the middle watch
+of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like fighting elks, sink
+down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in death.
+
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a good
+breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in about
+seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to behold.
+All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard anchor was
+gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while every one of the
+lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same direction; so that she now
+carried small and unsightly jury-yards.
+
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered,
+but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and
+gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now
+entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known
+at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was
+brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed from head to foot.
+
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.
+
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
+become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
+though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
+them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
+when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
+having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
+that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible
+that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
+the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
+upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
+But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things
+which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can
+only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when
+experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day;
+inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of
+adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too
+bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest
+ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been
+struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some
+lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
+fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
+suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into
+death.
+
+
+
+
+XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+
+
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and
+reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a
+spit?
+
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt
+in a mist, that no London in the Novem-berest November ever equaled. The
+chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday?
+So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail
+for fear of accidents; and not only that, but here am I, poor
+Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the top of the
+"Sampson-Post," a lofty tower of timber, so called; and tolling the
+ship's bell, as if for a funeral.
+
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from
+our track.
+
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord
+attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through
+my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like
+the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the lamented
+Cock-Robin.
+
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at
+both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred
+up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and
+no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.
+
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a
+vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.
+
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my duty
+as a sexton. But presently some one cried out--"There she blows! whales!
+whales close alongside!"
+
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to me, Wellingborough;--would my own
+brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long,
+black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought
+they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh!
+regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when
+they descended to feed!
+
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I
+lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the
+story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an
+elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
+
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter's, they say, and then go
+and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your
+high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale's belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.
+
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves sailing
+through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small craft; and
+when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor saying,
+intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being on the limits. It
+is like a fisherman's walk, say they, three steps and overboard.
+
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean
+between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run
+down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their lamps
+trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of three
+hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some forty or
+fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous to
+sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at the
+bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called "arming" the lead.
+
+We "hove" our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel's heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors
+carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the
+jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it went,
+with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern, when the
+line ran out of the tub like light.
+
+When we came to haul it up, I was astonished at the force necessary to
+perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove
+through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat
+porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine
+the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but
+the sailors did not seem to be much interested by it, calling me a fool
+for wanting to preserve a few grains of the sand.
+
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we
+found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact, of our being
+in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the drawing
+of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer. In the
+absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the temperature
+of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the ocean, and the
+temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than that of the Grand
+Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of temperature, for which
+there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen impute the fogs on the
+coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why there should always be
+such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that I do not know has ever
+been accounted for.
+
+It is curious to dip one's finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current
+comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North
+Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles,
+as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth
+being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger than that
+of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of
+hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of Florida, running
+at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+
+
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed
+his duty very well.
+
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his
+intimate acquaintance with the monsters.
+
+"They ar'n't sperm whales," said Larry, "their spouts ar'n't bushy
+enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
+they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
+Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
+Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye, men,
+them's Crinkum-crankum whales."
+
+"And what are them?" said a sailor.
+
+"Why, them is whales that can't be cotched."
+
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very
+hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
+strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.
+
+This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
+merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to "blubber-
+boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan.
+But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well
+understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
+order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise
+have encountered.
+
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
+the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+
+"Why," said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, "in Madagasky
+there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the
+midships; they don't have no dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat
+pigs and dogs; they don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all
+the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
+make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine
+country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!"
+
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.
+
+"And what's the use of bein' snivelized!" said he to me one night during
+our watch on deck; "snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on
+'bout life, and snivel. You don't see any Methodist chaps feelin'
+dreadful about their souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky
+constables in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
+their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say."
+
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+
+"Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?" coming
+close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. "No; you ar'n't a bit--but you're a good deal worse for it,
+Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this
+dog's life, if you hadn't been snivelized--that's the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say." And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole
+past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still
+lower down over the bridge of his nose.
+
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's man we had, who
+went by the name of "Gun-Deck," from his always talking of sailor life
+in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious
+mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
+braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly
+prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed
+down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always
+took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
+pretty toes to show his charming feet.
+
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida,
+and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through
+the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his
+telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from
+them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
+plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.
+This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot
+it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a
+rat-killing war, he said.
+
+Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and Madagasky.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+
+
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the
+like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain poured
+down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off
+the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our
+knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.
+
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.
+
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could
+hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But
+while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me
+look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a
+handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her
+wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish
+kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.
+
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue
+again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We
+bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain
+in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed
+alongside of it.
+
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that
+must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were
+pretty much gone; and here and there the bare stanchions, or posts, were
+left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the
+deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was snapt off less
+than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered remnant
+looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods. Every
+time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned
+into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a
+rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.
+
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck,
+something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic
+of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a
+signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark,
+green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise
+were motionless. I saw the captain's, glass directed toward them, and
+heard him say at last, "They must have been dead a long time." These
+were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for
+safety; but must have famished.
+
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain
+would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the
+schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so
+much as learning the schooner's name, though every one supposed her to
+be a New Brunswick lumberman.
+
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did
+not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.
+
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot
+for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+
+"Look there," said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing-"look
+there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons," turning round to
+me--"how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with
+them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?" And then he tried to laugh,
+but only coughed again. "Don't laugh at dem poor fellows," said Max,
+looking grave; "do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de
+Cape of Dood Hope."
+
+"Dood Hope, Dood Hope," shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking
+the Dutchman, "dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned
+and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights."
+
+"No, no," said Blunt, "all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft."
+
+"And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?" howled
+Jackson through a cough. "Don't talk of heaven to me--it's a lie--I know
+it--and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek,
+that there's any heaven for you? Will they let you in there, with that
+tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark gulps you
+down his hatchway one of these days, you'll find, that by dying, you'll
+only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney!
+Yes, you'll be bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like
+to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box
+on 'em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!" And so saying, he went
+off, holding his hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour
+was come.
+
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and
+mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the
+time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.
+
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his tawny
+skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and earth.
+He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable
+curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near
+him.
+
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness,
+there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and
+touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this
+Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+
+
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out.
+But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know
+that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in
+connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between
+the two ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader to
+Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she
+pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her
+voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination. Merchant
+vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come
+under the general head of transient ships; which implies that they are
+here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.
+
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
+aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is, that
+although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the
+best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years
+of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions--like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens
+--and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.
+
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many
+a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from
+Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of
+Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages
+at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the
+literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure
+and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across
+the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck, too, where
+these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of
+the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where
+reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria
+mundi! Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like a
+broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning
+business.
+
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
+five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
+on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.
+
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger--the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
+going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
+concerning the signs of the times.
+
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck
+with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise,
+and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But
+looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room, where you
+could see him through the little window, in an irregular sitting
+position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth, and his
+head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound meditation, with
+his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen reading; never took
+a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine; never conversed; and
+never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no
+need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe. Conjecture
+was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his business. The
+sailors, who are always curious with regard to such matters, and
+criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware
+at the time, completely exhausted themselves in suppositions, some of
+which are characteristically curious.
+
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to
+the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.
+
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes
+confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all
+sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this is
+the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling
+of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have done.
+
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions,
+this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and
+collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes,
+of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a
+hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the
+skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
+Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of
+salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called "making a spread
+eagle" of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted,
+that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship's company with
+money enough for a treat all round.
+
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the
+keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and he such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for levying
+contributions.
+
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way
+up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on
+with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully
+turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the
+nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must
+have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, "you will surely
+fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!"
+
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger,
+and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot. The
+stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently
+remonstrated; but in vain; for as his tearfulness of falling made him
+keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any
+effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome spread-eagle of, to
+the great satisfaction of the crew.
+
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his
+reservedness.
+
+"Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?"
+
+"Spread-eagle, sir," said the Greenlander, thinking that those few words
+would at once make the matter plain.
+
+"Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?"
+
+"Treats all round, sir," said the Greenlander, wondering at the other's
+obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.
+
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor,
+and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was
+suffered to descend.
+
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince's
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had
+nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked
+stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?--just the girl
+to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;
+her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were
+blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most
+devoted.
+
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain's charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.
+
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.
+
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of
+her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady's guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby
+they look.
+
+But for all this, the passage 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 passengers. 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 shirt
+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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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 molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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 ship 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
+passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
+heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
+the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
+between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
+two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head
+for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There are
+plenty of passengers 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 ship 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 tit-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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin
+and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing their
+best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers 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 ashore 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 Lancashire 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 ashore 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 passage 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire
+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 oakum. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 repetitions, 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
+ship 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 ship
+at sea, and a ship 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 rushing 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.
+
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
+before.
+
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright
+tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
+vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to
+it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm
+stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
+glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up
+and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on
+her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when
+he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
+and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say, did not fit
+him very well, for ever after he looked as if he limped. Then this
+figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one eye, and
+repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the painter came and made his
+toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of
+a beautiful pattern.
+
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and
+snug with a handsome pension in the "Sailors'-Snug-Harbor" on Staten
+Island.
+
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer
+was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art,
+upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage; for if
+the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he
+keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to its
+precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may be
+pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for John
+o' Groat's; all of which is worse than wasted time. Whereas, a true
+steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a
+bee-line from port to port.
+
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm,
+might make the ship "lurch to"--or "bring her by the lee." And what those
+things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when they found
+themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
+moon and stars.
+
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they
+are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence,
+is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the
+wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or
+looking out to windward.
+
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with
+one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind,
+might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving
+last wills and testaments.
+
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who
+might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the
+case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room
+occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of
+cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested with the
+underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark, that of
+the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or inefficient;
+and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and crying out:
+"Luff, you rascal; she's falling off!" or, "Keep her steady, you
+scoundrel, you're boxing the compass!" then hurry down to your state-
+room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery and
+go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus'
+log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next
+gale of wind.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+
+
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which
+I drew on a blank leaf of the "Wealth of Nations," and studied it every
+morning, like the multiplication table.
+
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; arid I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm.
+It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned
+in it by night.
+
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one
+side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I
+been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed them
+so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds within;
+and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different air may
+be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste. Nor must I
+omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction, and a
+particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of cogs and
+wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something like a
+printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it
+much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers,
+by catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances. Then,
+sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the
+helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like
+Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.
+
+The harness-cask, also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe,
+in which a week's allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves
+being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of the
+quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat, where he
+would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking teeth.
+He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+
+Then the magnificent capstan! The pride and glory of the whole ship's
+company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty
+it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of
+distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor center-
+table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with
+brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
+mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge, and the chief
+mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for
+memorandums.
+
+I might proceed and speak of the booby-hatch, used as a sort of settee
+by the officers, and the fife-rail round the mainmast, inclosing a
+little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue
+ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master's daughter, used to
+take his morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New
+York Bowling-Green.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+
+
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration,
+though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority.
+For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing
+yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the
+darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
+topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an
+indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he
+is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of
+ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other
+matters familiar to an "able seaman."
+
+What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast, and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have turned in a
+dead-eye, or in the approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the
+main-stay? What did I know of "passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton,"
+"strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse," and innumerable other
+intricacies?
+
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
+a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
+sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
+where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
+of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
+that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
+sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
+but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
+destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a
+bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the
+shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns
+for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to
+tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's roses, and Turk's
+heads; he must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the
+halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing
+rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of
+a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend
+the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline and Spanish foxes; a
+blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must
+be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And this,
+perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
+things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason
+we never know anything.
+
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
+to his calling--fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
+palms, heavers, and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries
+with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.
+
+The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul
+ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means
+that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an artist in the
+rigging.
+
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that
+these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had
+only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
+and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which
+instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to.
+All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my
+backbone--comparatively small though it was at that time--by way of a
+lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
+Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set
+to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a
+religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other,
+never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality
+attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they would
+drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers
+seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from
+the chief mate for my clumsiness.
+
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
+
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in
+the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+
+All but the "turning out" or rising from your berth when the watch was
+called at night--that I never fancied. It was a sort of acquaintance,
+which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless,
+miserable business, truly.
+
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below
+to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied
+limbs, you are started up--it seems but the next instant after closing
+your lids--and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark
+and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the
+forecastle.
+
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least
+the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch,
+just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my ear--
+"Watch below, Buttons; watch below"--which pleasantly reminded me of
+the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take another
+nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to
+the other sailor's one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen
+contemplating a voyage to sea.
+
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could
+not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on
+deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would call
+the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+
+As thus:--
+
+"Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand, bear
+a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine
+shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
+cold!"
+
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers
+would reply with--"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a
+hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of
+which were full of fury.
+
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of the
+ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became the
+wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+
+
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen days,
+employed us about thirty.
+
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
+in sight.
+
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard, but
+could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast. Was
+that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If that's the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
+have staid at home.
+
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
+say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed at
+it with increasing interest.
+
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
+Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
+thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my
+uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the
+gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I
+thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin and
+the Giant's Causeway.
+
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
+but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
+other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary man
+in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
+probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
+friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
+
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out--"Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my
+beautiful sailors?" And concluded by calling upon; us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed I the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, "pay out!
+pay out, my honeys; ah! but you're noble fellows!" Till at last the mate
+asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, "Haven't you enough
+rope yet?"
+
+"Sure and I have," replied the fisherman, "and it's time for Pat to cut
+and run!" and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a Kilkenny
+grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the wind, and
+bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.
+
+"And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!" cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.
+
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+
+Could this be really Wales?-Wales?--and I thought of the Prince of Wales.
+
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?--And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker's Hill.
+
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
+like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead
+and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had, was
+ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the water,
+and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance,
+which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself in
+conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near
+our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New
+York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a
+plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing
+through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner,
+that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve
+other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats,
+who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering in
+Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though, together;
+cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound vessels;
+smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns; till at
+last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different ships,
+and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool
+taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had
+been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for here
+was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon
+fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.
+
+After running till about midnight, we "hove-to" near the mouth of the
+Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the flood;
+and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth, is
+quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed
+immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
+shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.
+
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while
+the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a
+mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the
+vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous Bett-Buoy,
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow,
+according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a
+moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like
+the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of dirges
+for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no one can give ear
+to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far beneath it at the
+bottom of the deep.
+
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon, passing
+two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew near the
+town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.
+
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There
+they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good and
+substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends had
+in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.
+
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, "Why, this 'ere is a
+considerable place--I'm dummed if it ain't quite a place.--Why, them 'ere
+houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afrilcy, all
+hollow; nothing like this in Madagasky, I tell you;--I'm dummed, boys if
+Liverpool ain't a city!"
+
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a "realizing sense." He was accordingly
+astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for
+the country which could boast so extensive a town. Instead of holding
+Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of Madagascar, as he had been
+accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to that lady with feeling and
+respect.
+
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to kindle
+no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They looked
+around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as you or I
+would, if, after a morning's absence round the corner, we found
+ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages
+to Liverpool.
+
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them
+stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty
+years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among
+the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was
+forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of Sally.
+
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had often
+assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse of his;
+and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of seeing her.
+But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen, and
+their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round world over;
+and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between this very
+Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his, for what I
+thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my astonishment,
+therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming with a neat
+parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and ironed, and
+ready to put on at a moment's warning.
+
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife after
+long separations.
+
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself
+in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down
+into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having
+exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and
+this was precisely what the New York wife had done for Max, not thirty I
+days previous.
+
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.
+
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York wife,
+to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and equally
+devoted to the keeping in good order Max's wardrobe.
+
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg
+had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as
+Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives
+never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much as a
+difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being between them; and
+Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many years, he had been
+going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between wife and wife with
+great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic welcome on
+either side of the ocean.
+
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way
+immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject.
+But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and
+after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded
+by asking me triumphantly, whether old King Sol, as he called the son of
+David, did not have a whole frigate-full of wives; and that being the
+case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have just as good a right to
+have two? "What was not wrong then, is right now," said Max; "so, mind
+your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+
+
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up the
+anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming against
+other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and about
+dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in Prince's Dock. The hawsers
+and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go ashore,
+select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord's
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six weeks,
+as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however--the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch--feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give them
+at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed, is
+but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the scurvy.
+A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with immeasurable
+disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if their captains
+treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.
+
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time, I
+felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my
+eyes and lungs. As for stepping on it, that was out of the question, in
+the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have
+an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into
+the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal
+loam-but not till then.
+
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we stopped
+before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded
+bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn
+and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and lamb in
+the millennium.--A very judicious and tasty device, showing a delicate
+apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors in an
+English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the honor and
+dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon a footing
+of perfect equality.
+
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a
+young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding
+up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of
+basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing
+by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he
+answered, "Why, youngster, don't you know what that means? It's a young
+jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy."
+
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
+American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a
+buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and
+not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
+
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among the
+seamen went by the name of "Handsome Mary." But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and
+conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no means
+an Amazon to her husband, if she did play a masculine part in other
+matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
+attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
+about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
+fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
+The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
+thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
+so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
+of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
+upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
+
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.
+
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
+they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
+
+   "No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
+    Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
+    In jolly good ale and old,--
+    I stuff my skin so full within,
+    Of jolly good ale and old."
+
+Or this,
+
+   "Four wines and brandies I detest,
+    Here's richer juice from barley press'd.
+    It is the quintessence of malt,
+    And they that drink it want no salt.
+    Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
+    And water henceforth you'll forswear."
+
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
+with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
+Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
+paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
+with thy spouse?
+
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs pour
+out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air in a
+vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher
+in it.
+
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank
+in a fog and a drizzle.
+
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room
+on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a
+courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among our
+crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates
+were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room,
+with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a
+smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was
+horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the
+ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless
+succession of vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the
+apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map
+was hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
+nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
+bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+
+And this is England?
+
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not
+the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.
+
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to
+see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is
+not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St. James's.
+
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a
+sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go round the
+world, without going into it; and their reminiscences of travel are only
+a dim recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe,
+parallel with the Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle;
+hover about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and
+pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland to see
+Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending a car overland
+to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from
+room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, "Supper, supper ready."
+
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against
+the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting
+his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never heard.
+
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of
+solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?--the
+sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles' shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway
+was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese;
+and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over
+tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
+potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand
+adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper table.
+
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the
+girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing to
+take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was too late
+for tea; but she would get me a cup of "swipes" if I wanted it.
+
+Not knowing what "swipes" might be, I thought I would run the risk and
+try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour flavor,
+as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never patronized
+swipes again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it
+was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my shipmates,
+who pronounced it good.
+
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this stripes, as I
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of
+beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not
+remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that swipes
+was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it as
+answering to the name itself; which is certainly significant of
+something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by the poor people
+about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree, accounts for their
+poverty.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+SAILORS
+
+
+The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the
+general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and will
+then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and
+impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after the lapse of
+so many years.
+
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our
+stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the Arms Hotel, I believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.
+
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.
+
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad, roystering
+nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have delighted in. For
+company over the cabin-table, he would have four or five whiskered
+sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all
+the time. And once, the whole company were found under the table at four
+o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and tucked in by the two
+mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our woolly Doctor of Divinity,
+the black cook, that they should have been ashamed of themselves; but
+there is no shame in some sea-captains, who only blush after the third
+bottle.
+
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.
+
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down; then
+we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at the
+rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other, never
+mind how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally knocked of at four o'clock
+in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And after
+four o'clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required to be
+on board again till next morning at daylight.
+
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were light
+enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some employment
+for us.
+
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving
+us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran on, as at sea.
+Sundays we had to ourselves.
+
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships in
+Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure. They
+live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome
+exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month's advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the
+time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to him;
+sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most abounds
+in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which
+make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.
+
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are
+not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant
+parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and
+attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in the world. For
+in Liverpool they find their Paradise--not the well known street of that
+name--and one of them told me he would be content to lie in Prince's Dock
+till he hove up anchor for the world to come.
+
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever
+prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before
+the bane is removed.
+
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character,
+ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless
+and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are
+almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider
+that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
+of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a
+thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard even
+for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on crutches;
+consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better
+classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and
+improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must very
+soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very
+promising one.
+
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those
+chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.
+
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels,
+and launched into the docks; though the "Boatswain's Mate" and other
+clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains
+in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical
+boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of
+ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog
+while at sea:--notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the
+relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
+seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance, that
+unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one class
+makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because the
+sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the
+Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of
+Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and survived
+to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;--because the modern
+tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off some of his
+shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney queue:--therefore, in the
+estimation of some observers, he has begun to see the evils of his
+condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon a closer scrutiny, it
+will be seen that he has but drifted along with that great tide, which,
+perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of
+his own.
+
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and
+glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve
+in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift
+them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on
+something the insiders must roll.
+
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe;
+they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of
+fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate
+in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop
+here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the
+American Congress.
+
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun
+him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you
+throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?--No. You will do no such thing; but
+at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And
+the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more
+than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless
+to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the
+earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through
+romances.
+
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up
+from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems
+and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for
+with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as
+hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.
+
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who
+toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and tenderly
+cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father of all,
+and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.
+
+
+
+
+XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS
+
+
+Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
+great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
+studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
+embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
+of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
+others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
+here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
+entitled, "Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau
+Paris: Miroir Fidele" also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
+marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, "Itineraire
+Instructif de Rome, ou Description Generale des Monumens Antiques et
+Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur, de
+Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Celebre Ville;" on the russet
+title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly shaded by a
+scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock
+and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless
+foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
+twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground, with
+locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation; a large
+cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the wolf looks a good deal
+like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows; the work is published
+"Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife." There was also a velvet-bound old
+volume, in brass clasps, entitled, "The Conductor through Holland" with
+a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable "Picture of London"
+abounding in representations of St. Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and
+Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
+reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an
+elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the
+cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, "The Great Roads, both
+direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual
+Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
+describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those
+at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of the Mails' arrival
+and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which
+the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses and
+carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats situated near
+the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and
+Margate." It is dedicated "To the Right Honorable the Earls of
+Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient,
+and Obsequious Servant, John Gary, 1798." Also a green pamphlet, with a
+motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking
+like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, "A Description of
+York, its Antiquities and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral;
+compiled with great pains from the most authentic records." Also a small
+scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
+frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
+King's College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, "The Cambridge Guide: its
+Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
+and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral." Also a pamphlet,
+with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
+higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
+accurate representation of the "North or Grand Front of Blenheim," and
+entitled, "A Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
+Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and
+Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General
+Description of the famous China Gallery, 6-c.; with an Essay on
+Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a
+New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park." And lastly, and to the purpose,
+there was a volume called "THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL."
+
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.
+
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the
+life.
+
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to
+my boyhood,--the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned
+over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing
+sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
+
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
+myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles.
+I will, my beloved,--old family relic that you are;--till you drop leaf
+from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
+somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
+
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is bound in green
+morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
+tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
+red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that he
+who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+
+But let us open the volume.
+
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
+falling air-castles? Ah, no!--these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, "Drawn at the age of three
+years," and under this autograph, "Executed at the age of eight."
+
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
+the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain
+of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine;
+this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
+fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
+
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father's
+hand-writing, the following:--
+
+"WALTER REDBURN.
+
+"Riddough's Royal Hotel, Liverpool, March 20th, 1808."
+
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father's, which he must have made at various times during
+his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
+midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous effacements, it
+is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I must here copy a few
+at random:--
+
+                                      L  s. d
+
+    Guide-Book                           3  6
+    Dinner at the Star and Garter          10
+    Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)  2  6  3
+    Gratuities                              4
+    Hack                                 4  6
+    Thompson's Seasons                      5
+    Library                                 1
+    Boat on the river                       6
+    Port wine and cigar                     4
+
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+
+    Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.
+    Call upon Mr. Morille same day.
+    Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.
+    Theatre Friday night--Richard III. and new farce.
+    Present letter at Miss L----'s on Tuesday.
+    Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.
+    Get my draft on London cashed.
+    Write home by the Princess.
+    Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.
+
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
+British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is "A
+Plan of the Town of Liverpool." But there seems little plan in the
+confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a
+peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
+
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.
+
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all
+directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked "Riddough's
+Hotel," the house my father stopped at.
+
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
+the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
+penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
+
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
+foreign land; but attended St. John's Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.
+
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head
+with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval
+sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto
+elastically stretched for a border--"Deus nobis haec otia fecit."
+
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation
+of a now extinct fowl, called the "Liver," said to have inhabited a
+"pool," which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground
+where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool
+derives its name.
+
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.
+
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
+title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
+facsimile:--
+
+                         The Picture
+                         of Liverpool:
+                     or, Stranger's Guide
+               and Gentleman's Pocket Companion
+                         FOR THE TOWN.
+                          Embellished
+                        With Engravings
+          By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
+                           Liverpool:
+                   Printed in Swift's Court,
+      And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
+
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes "testimonies of respect which
+had lately appeared in various quarters--the British Critic, Review, and
+the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales"--and concludes
+by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition
+might "render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy
+also of the subject it is intended to illustrate."
+
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
+of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, 1st Sept.
+1803.
+
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of
+the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.
+
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
+must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him
+a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that
+his noblest epitaph.
+
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:--
+
+"Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain, Pours his full
+tribute to the circling main, A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
+Contented labor blessed the fair retreat, Inured to hardship, patient,
+bold, and rude, They braved the billows for precarious food: Their
+straggling huts were ranged along the shore, Their nets and little boats
+their only store."
+
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
+and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer's
+Shipwreck.
+
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his "Survey of the Town" are nine thickly
+printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
+of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
+saying, that "the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at
+present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no
+doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this
+noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest
+delicacy of feeling."
+
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
+author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
+that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
+reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
+
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
+style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
+Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
+"his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like
+all Parnassus with:--
+
+"Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds, From northern climes to
+India's distant bounds--Where'er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
+Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves; Where'er the honored flood
+extends his tide, That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride. Greenland
+for her its bulky whale resigns, And temperate Gallia rears her generous
+vines: 'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow, And the ripe fruitage
+bends the laboring bough; In every clime her prosperous fleets are
+known, She makes the wealth of every clime her own."
+
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:--
+
+   "And here R*s*o*, with genius all his own, New tracks explores,
+    and all before unknown?"
+
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the wannest appreciation
+of the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation
+which gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce.
+He is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with classical
+admiration.
+
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of
+William the Conqueror.
+
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of
+Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the
+soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
+
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town
+of Liverpool."
+
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, "On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants," and then skim over page after page
+throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur
+of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in population,
+opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must look back
+upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable
+superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
+of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the corner-
+stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in great part
+of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however imposing,
+we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander domes
+of posterity.
+
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now
+growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs,
+centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then
+obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
+going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house,
+and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a
+Hellenic antiquity.
+
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
+of this "Picture of Liverpool," so different from the brief, pert, and
+unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I shall
+now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as it is
+entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
+information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous town, to
+which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter,
+concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote
+my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
+information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as
+original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book its due.
+
+But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+
+No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will not quote thee, old Morocco,
+before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
+would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
+me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from
+a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE
+TOWN
+
+
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
+that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
+probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
+I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town,
+as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the
+columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored
+over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was
+determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a
+mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most
+students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with
+the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.
+
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.
+
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there
+depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the
+map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I could
+march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the most
+distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+
+Dear delusion!
+
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty
+years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove
+but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his
+son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any discrepancy,
+never entered my mind.
+
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, you, at least, are all right.
+
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew
+went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's Dock's walls;
+and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to compare notes,
+when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and my shipmates were
+standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my
+infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding, that
+it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while to visit it for the
+purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the evening.
+
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle?
+and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet not
+a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one small
+discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so faithfully served
+my own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern went by the
+name of "The Old Fort Tavern;" and when I was told that many of the old
+stones were yet in the walls, I almost completely exonerated my
+guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of misleading me.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought I,
+my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down lane,
+even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions "with
+Eastern scrupulosity," and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier, to
+one of the sailor.
+
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them
+not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.
+
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have
+been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken
+sailor passing, exclaimed, "Eyes right! quick step there!"
+
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and
+one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon
+me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and
+newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued
+forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the
+street, and commanded me to halt! I obeyed; when scanning my appearance
+pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that tarpaulin hat, not
+being able to account for the phenomenon of its roofing the head of a
+broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship, which lay at no great
+distance; when remarking from my voice that I was a Yankee, this
+faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks are
+extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy
+"shakings," and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
+out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls. And
+often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's clothes, even if he
+be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible pockets.
+
+But where was I going?
+
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough's
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and
+then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town,
+according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.
+
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.
+
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.
+
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat,
+buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of his
+would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was
+not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as
+thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My own
+father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so much as
+dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me; for if it
+had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never cast a
+thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father's having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.
+
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on
+my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going
+under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants' Exchange.
+
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my
+father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch at
+my back, into the paved square where I stood.
+
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow
+the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and
+overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son's search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.
+
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned
+to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to
+a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This,
+however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.
+
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated upon
+a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring in the
+arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other on a
+cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral's brow; while
+Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating his
+bony hand under the hero's robe, and groping after his heart. A very
+striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look at
+Death without a shudder.
+
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures
+in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of
+humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his
+knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever
+feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and no doubt
+looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted at the
+time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures of
+captives are emblematic of Nelson's principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.
+
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was
+once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I
+remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting our
+house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father's
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem ("the Wrongs of Africa"), several pamphlets; and in his place in
+Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had no
+small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact,
+that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the little
+arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to find
+Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory's wreath still hovering over his
+swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the four bronze
+captives still lamented their captivity.
+
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I
+have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to let
+him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so called
+from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and turning
+down into Lord.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for the
+hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined, when
+it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house at
+which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear
+my questions and give me an answer.
+
+"Riddough's Hotel?" said he, "upon my word, I think I have heard of such
+a place; let me see--yes, yes--that was the hotel where my father broke
+his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can't be
+inquiring for Riddough's Hotel! What do you want to find there?"
+
+"Oh! nothing," I replied, "I am much obliged for your information"--and
+away I walked.
+
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book; and
+all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly half
+a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the town,
+than the map of Pompeii.
+
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on which
+I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book with
+the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family associations;
+the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest style of art;
+this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing that had guided
+the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on a shop step, and
+gave loose to meditation.
+
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough's Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling up,
+they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may behold,
+when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come after
+his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father's guidebook is no
+guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a modern one
+to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you. Guide-books,
+Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all literature; and
+nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones
+tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts
+of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace,
+amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a
+clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and the old ones are used for
+waste paper. But there is one Holy Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will
+never lead you astray, if you but follow it aright; and some noble
+monuments that remain, though the pyramids crumble.
+
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.
+
+No.--Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now and
+then, concerning a Riddough's Hotel, or some other forgotten thing of
+the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves more
+than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning "The Old Dock,"
+which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place without
+delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right direction, at
+last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of sculptured
+brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from incontrovertible
+tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After admiring it awhile, I
+took out my guide-book again; and what was my amazement at discovering
+that, according to its authority, I was entirely mistaken with regard to
+this Custom-house; for precisely where I stood, "The Old Dock" must be
+standing, and reading on concerning it, I met with this very apposite
+passage:--"The first idea that strikes the stranger in coming to this
+dock, is the singularity of so great a number of ships afloat in the
+very heart of the town, without discovering any connection with the
+sea."
+
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good deal
+of "singularity" about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that it
+was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem to
+have no connection with the sea! However, the same author went on to
+say, that the "astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for awhile,
+and turn to the left." But, right or left, no place answering to the
+description was to be seen.
+
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted for,
+even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether he
+was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the "Old
+Dock." The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I was
+apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he whipped his
+well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his silver-laced
+coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the following facts.
+
+It seems that in this place originally stood the "pool," from which the
+town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound round the
+greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into the
+"Old Dock," for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago, it had
+been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house before me.
+
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern traveler
+standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of Gomorrah
+seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into substantial stone
+and mortar.
+
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into
+your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is
+several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, "The
+Wars of the Lord" quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up,
+Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your
+nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin:
+and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire your landmarks.
+
+No!--And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I'll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of tie venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on
+the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side,
+covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of the
+noble Derby's was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the
+water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit--a gull--a sham--a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the
+State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs--point out the vouchers.
+Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall? Show me
+Stonehenge!
+
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous shooting-jacket
+of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.
+
+True, true--that's it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am only a
+common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+
+After a weary day's walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer of tea, in
+which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. THE DOCKS
+
+
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately
+around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I
+never tired of admiring them.
+
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure, I
+could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.
+
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers
+of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely inclosed,
+and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind the great
+American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, and
+Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures, seemed equal to
+what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.
+
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the "Wet
+Dock," so called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected
+with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London
+was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In
+magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the
+present day surpass all others in the world.
+
+The first dock built by the town was the "Old Dock," alluded to in my
+Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since which
+period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now flanking
+the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock,
+like a chain of immense fortresses:--Prince's, George's, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and many more.
+
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their
+valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which Liverpool
+held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon its more
+modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might be proud
+of:--Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names
+upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file
+of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in
+connection with the commerce they defended.
+
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his Me. It is well enough that
+over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some vast
+marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having lived
+and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the
+marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build such
+a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his fame,
+and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built in the
+closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops himself could
+have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.
+
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the King's and
+Queens. At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal streets
+in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in
+the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to
+the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of
+freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where
+King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being
+immortalized by the village of L--. A country antiquary once told me,
+that a committee of two barbers were deputed to write and inform the
+distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much
+answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince's
+Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the Atlantic.
+
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest
+of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it is
+mostly frequented by the American ship-, ping. Here lie the noble New
+York packets, which at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and
+here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river,
+the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified
+again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince's
+Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive
+wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls, one
+of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed forms
+an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise about fifteen or
+twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor when I took it in,
+I will not be certain.
+
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays surrounding
+it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the interior from the
+streets is had through several gateways; so that, upon their being
+closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From the river, the
+entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships is only to be
+had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of the river; that
+is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the dock is always at
+that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river, the keels of the
+ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than twenty feet above
+those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course, produces a striking
+effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense ships floating high
+aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.
+
+Prince's Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance of
+a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older
+occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs
+worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of
+the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all
+directions:--"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer
+alongside the Neptune!"--"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!"--"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop
+astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.
+
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the open
+river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin forms a
+sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie waiting their
+turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this basin is obvious;
+for it would be impossible to "dock" a ship under full headway from a
+voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent waves, she first glides into
+the ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from thence into the docks.
+
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the King's
+Dock, comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at an
+expense of some L20,000.
+
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed the
+seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the ships
+which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King William's war,
+in 1688, entered the King's Dock on the first day of its being opened in
+1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a dark little brig,
+called the Port-a-Ferry. And probably, as her timbers must have been
+frequently renewed in the course of a hundred years, the name alone
+could have been all that was left of her at the time. A paved area, very
+wide, is included within the walls; and along the edge of the quays are
+ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary shelter for the goods
+unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the bustle and activity
+displayed along these quays during the day; bales, crates, boxes, and
+cases are being tumbled about by thousands of laborers; trucks are
+corning and going; dock-masters are shouting; sailors of all nations are
+singing out at their ropes; and all this commotion is greatly increased
+by the resoundings from the lofty walls that hem in the din.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+
+
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled
+town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago,
+an epitome of the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even
+those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in itself, each ship is an
+island, a floating colony of the tribe to which it belongs.
+
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and New
+Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway
+her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and
+Cam-peachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under the beneficent
+sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries embrace; and
+yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.
+
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious
+and liberal plan of the Astor House. Here ships are lodged at a moderate
+charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure. Here
+they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all
+weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can hardly credit a
+story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the
+very middle of the docks have lost their top-gallant-masts. Whatever the
+toils and hardships encountered on the voyage, whether they come from
+Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here their sufferings are ended, and
+they take their ease in their watery inn.
+
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince's
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects
+in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn,
+battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o--spruce, gay, and
+brilliant, in readiness for sea.
+
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid, thrifty-
+looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French hermaphrodite,
+its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck elastic from
+much dancing.
+
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart's or Delmonico's
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its
+live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending
+their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.
+
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-
+boat, but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which
+looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard. These
+little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for ships
+bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of those
+lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the carcass
+of a black buffalo.
+
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;
+and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying
+through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man
+at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.
+
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of
+these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an
+admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of
+himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was
+none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might
+only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a
+triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories of
+Alexander.
+
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charming-est, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair,
+as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple like
+this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of
+cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling
+forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.
+
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher,
+and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house
+all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had
+an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he
+invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together
+like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.
+
+"He, he," he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask of
+beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet--"You see, Jack, I
+keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just before
+going to bed, it ain't bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh! Jack?--here
+now, smack your lips over that, my boy--have a pipe?--but stop, let's to
+supper first."
+
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping
+in it awhile, and addressing it with--"What cheer here, what cheer?" at
+last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of butter.
+And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the pitcher of
+beer in the center. "Why that's but a two legged table," said I, "let's
+make it four."
+
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my
+soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+
+"Now Jack," said he, when supper was over, "now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?--Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+
+"He, he, my boy," then said he--"I don't never have any bugs here, I tell
+ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed."
+
+"And where may you sleep?" said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
+a bed.
+
+"Sleep?" says he, "why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?"
+
+"Very funny," says I.
+
+"Have some more ale?" says he; "plenty more." "No more, thank you," says
+I; "I guess I'll go;" for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I
+began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote me
+for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.
+
+"Now, don't go," said he; "don't go, my boy; don't go out into the damp;
+take an old Christian's advice," laying his hand on my shoulder; "it
+won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and get
+broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping off for
+a nice little nap."
+
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large
+New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing
+comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.
+
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
+ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.
+
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing
+the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom
+of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as
+they hie to the land of the stranger.
+
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
+valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has
+been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the
+prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations,
+all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of
+American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be he
+Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at
+an American, calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger of the
+judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew
+nationality--whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it,
+by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves. No: our blood is
+as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all
+pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we
+may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without
+father or mother.
+
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
+and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
+paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
+Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world's
+as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
+our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are
+forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see
+the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in
+Eden.
+
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in
+the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest
+must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning,
+shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of
+Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall
+speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots;
+and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions
+round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto
+them cloven tongues as of fire.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+
+
+Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name
+bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
+they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
+wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, "the King of the Oaks."
+The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.
+She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
+who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a
+higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,
+this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace,
+a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled
+by his bare feet.
+
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating
+the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice
+had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the
+tackle-rope, elastic as cats.
+
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed
+it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my
+motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately
+let me pass.
+
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of kayar,
+or cocoa-nut fiber.
+
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+"kids" full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite
+another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I
+found that several of them could also speak very good English. They were
+a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent
+seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.
+
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.
+
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
+of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
+never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
+the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about
+the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.
+
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the "fancy piece" astern
+comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
+while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head--a
+dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking
+tail.
+
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done "to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders"--something as work is done in the navy to the music
+of the boatswain's pipe--the Lascars were set to "stripping the ship"
+that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.
+
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped
+about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing
+much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.
+
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see
+this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of
+the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the
+regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his
+vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from
+it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied "Joggerry," which is a
+species of weed, used in place of tobacco.
+
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
+most smokers, I sat down by Dattabdool-mans, as he called himself, and
+we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when
+we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it
+is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you
+never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon--wholly
+strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an
+insight into things quaint, curious, .and marvelous, drop your books of
+travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.
+Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of
+mariners from all parts of the globe.
+
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I
+and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
+account of the teakwood and kayar rope, concerning which things I was
+curious, and sought information.
+
+The "sagoon" as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its
+greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another
+kind of wood, the "sissor," which supplies most of the "shin-logs," or
+"knees," and crooked timbers in the country ships. The sagoon grows to
+an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet
+through, before a single bough is put forth. Its leaves are very large;
+and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants'
+ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of
+staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier than water;
+it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its chief
+merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
+insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil
+called "poonja."
+
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
+the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
+the European artisans.
+
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the kayar, of which it
+is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
+well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend's
+account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
+ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
+hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
+this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar
+is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of
+the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with
+mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the
+sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The
+fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well
+adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of
+a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and
+buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
+
+But the elasticity of the kayar ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar
+told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.
+
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her kayar shrouds with hempen
+ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+
+
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat
+among modish beavers.
+
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
+northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
+this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
+these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.
+
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and
+spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished
+streak, usually banding round an American ship.
+
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
+and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
+on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
+leeway at a sad rate.
+
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly would I
+gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
+still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
+appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
+about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned
+by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an
+antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors,
+eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a
+tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's head; and
+by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear;
+and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions
+it had heard.
+
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap
+and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.
+
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled
+about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of
+swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.
+
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
+a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
+the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
+steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to
+see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
+Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the muezzin or
+cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
+strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
+account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
+round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
+old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
+found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of
+the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I
+ever experienced.
+
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
+one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
+Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
+of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
+them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
+them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
+can procure an audience.
+
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.
+
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the
+ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.
+And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing
+a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys
+in the neighborhood.
+
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
+clergy is like their divine Master's;--not to bring the righteous, but
+sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
+comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
+year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
+hearts of vice: then indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
+with; and a victory gained over him, would entitle them to a conqueror's
+wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is
+destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as from
+every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child
+Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so
+should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street
+corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+
+
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the "Old Church," well known to the
+seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands very
+near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town's
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
+preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship
+on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was
+a chapel-of-ease; though from the straight backed pews, there could have
+been but little comfort taken in it.
+
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it; something
+like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.
+"Wettingborough! Wettingborough! you must not forget to go to church,
+Wettingborough! Don't forget, Wettingborough! Wettingborough! don't
+forget."
+
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the
+death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:--
+
+    "HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER."
+
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the
+Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in
+the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another "sumptuous stall" was erected
+for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.
+
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris,
+where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their
+friends, or till buried at the public charge.
+
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.
+
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
+falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount
+if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and
+women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I
+observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from
+their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.
+
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get
+their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
+these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
+going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
+starvelings.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+
+
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
+the docks are many very painful sights.
+
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
+come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
+stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
+twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
+run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
+endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
+which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
+crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
+crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
+of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
+shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
+At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
+they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
+wail.
+
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
+but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
+its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
+motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
+her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
+crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
+die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
+stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
+them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
+soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
+the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
+seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
+Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
+beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
+queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
+with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
+
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.
+
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
+had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.
+"Yes," she replied, "to the church-yard." I said she was alive, and not
+dead.
+
+"Then she'll never die," was the rejoinder. "She's been down there these
+three days, with nothing to eat;--that I know myself."
+
+"She desarves it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
+shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that
+Betsy Jennings desarves it--was she ever married? tell me that."
+
+Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the
+girls.
+
+"It's none of my business, Jack," said he. "I don't belong to that
+street."
+
+"Who does then?"
+
+"I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
+so."
+
+"There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town."
+
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
+not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
+in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding
+away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
+
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
+time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
+irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a
+loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a
+sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the
+vault.
+
+"Well," said he, "what of it?"
+
+"Can't we get them out?" said I, "haven't you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?"
+
+"You're crazy, boy," said he; "do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?"
+
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
+seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without
+looking after the whole neighborhood.
+
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called Brandy-Nan; and
+begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to
+take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
+miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the
+room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had
+gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting
+it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I
+dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at it
+convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the
+other's arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a weak
+uncertain grasp like an infant's. She placed it to her mouth; but
+letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like "water." The
+woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen
+her.
+
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
+tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
+refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to the
+ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried to
+one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen running near
+the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house; and taking off
+a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day, filled it with
+water.
+
+With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw
+her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little
+babe--the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was
+dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
+balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who
+they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering
+something that could not be understood.
+
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.
+
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
+repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
+prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they
+must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I
+hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred to me
+as I stood there; but it was this-I felt an almost irresistible impulse
+to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting an end to their
+horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I think, had I not
+been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law,
+which would let them perish of themselves without giving them one cup of
+water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in convicting him
+who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
+existence.
+
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
+met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side,
+and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed.
+The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the
+morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped that morning
+remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that came from the
+vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
+before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that the
+persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have them
+removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it was
+not his street.
+
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom
+I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock
+Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not the right
+place to lodge my information.
+
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
+but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
+women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but
+my prayer was answered--they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
+shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
+do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
+that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
+as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to
+follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like
+people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the
+dead?
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+
+
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.
+
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
+of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.
+
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
+yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
+inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
+as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
+dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
+appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
+large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
+unlades at the quays.
+
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
+and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
+findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
+and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
+to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
+rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.
+
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
+and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
+in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
+how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
+heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.
+
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
+streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
+army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.
+
+At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
+is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
+outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
+the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
+long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
+misery could be furnished by any town in the world.
+
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
+girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
+men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
+young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
+babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
+art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:--
+
+   "I have had no food for three days;
+    My wife and children are dying."
+
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
+an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
+Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
+you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
+even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
+never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
+his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
+that the beggars treated the town's people differently.
+
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
+three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
+made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
+had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
+infest the dock walls as they did.
+
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
+an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
+occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
+He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
+dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.
+
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
+him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
+long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
+battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
+one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
+Victory.
+
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
+claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
+demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
+disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
+as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
+utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
+prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
+into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
+woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
+garden.
+
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+
+
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
+a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
+encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
+kept.
+
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-
+organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with
+the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.
+
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
+streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
+other parts of the town.
+
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
+and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
+receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
+words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
+head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
+lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
+effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
+did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
+this, drawn out in an endless groan--
+
+"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
+the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
+him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
+falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
+He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
+pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
+monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
+robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
+quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
+subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
+sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
+business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
+go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
+and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
+been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
+murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
+morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
+tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
+copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
+seamen.
+
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
+which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
+the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
+pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
+infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
+enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
+almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
+of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
+their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
+their arches like vermin.
+
+
+
+
+XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+
+
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning
+the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw into
+this chapter various minor things that I recall.
+
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the dock
+walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite different
+announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are principally
+notices of the approaching departure of "superior, fast-sailing,
+coppered and copper-fastened ships," for the United States, Canada, New
+South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the
+advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen
+where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with
+ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who
+prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving
+notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended
+Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby workhouse-looking knaves, whose
+business consists in haunting the dock walls about meal times, and
+silently thrusting mysterious little billets--duodecimo editions of the
+larger advertisements--into the astonished hands of the tars.
+
+They do this, with such a mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air;
+such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you
+are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements
+to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round
+bounty, and embark in her Majesty's navy.
+
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for
+the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships,
+going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be announced
+as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor, and noble
+father to his crew, Lord George Flagstaff.
+
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments
+in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the
+charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these
+placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for
+which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns,
+vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the landscape;
+and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are informed, that here
+is a chance for them to see the world at their leisure, and be paid for
+enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments for India are
+promised plantations among valleys of palms; while to those destined for
+New Holland, a novel sphere of life and activity is opened; and the
+companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia are lured by tales of summer
+suns, that ripen grapes in December. No word of war is breathed; hushed
+is the clang of arms in these announcements; and the sanguine recruit is
+almost tempted to expect that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be
+the weapons he will wield.
+
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Brace at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin's Bay
+and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the army
+as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow must
+groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and his
+Mary.
+
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool.
+Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of
+Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many
+young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to
+penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to carry them over the
+sea, without providing for future contingencies. How easily and
+naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter upon the military
+life, which promises them a free passage to the most distant and
+flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides holding
+out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the fullness of
+time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home at all, and
+embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a piece of
+adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts the army
+recruit to enlist.
+
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.
+
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their
+little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are another
+set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; 'who make
+strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some
+state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the
+commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a
+pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they saunter
+off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and family.
+
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I fancied
+him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm with my
+shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned round
+and paused.
+
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat;
+and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card
+with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark
+angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a cunning
+foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But though I did
+not look round, I felt him following me still; so once more I stopped.
+The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an air, that I began to
+fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that perhaps a plot had been
+laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was some Monteagle bent upon
+accomplishing my flight. I was determined to see what he was. With all
+my eyes about me, I followed him into the arch of a warehouse; when he
+gazed round furtively, and silently showing me a ring, whispered, "You
+may have it for a shilling; it's pure gold-I found it in the
+gutter-hush! don't speak! give me the money, and it's yours."
+
+"My friend," said I, "I don't trade in these articles; I don't want your
+ring."
+
+"Don't you? Then take, that," he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next
+time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice,
+pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly
+turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels.
+I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so given to
+running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of work to the
+shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.
+
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of Sheffield
+razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the
+police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and board the
+vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting their wares.
+Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and the gilding
+on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it on the spot
+for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On the following
+Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of tormented and
+tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to dress them. In old
+times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that suggested the
+propriety of a barber's practicing surgery in connection with the
+chin-harrowing vocation. Another class of knaves, who practice upon the
+sailors in Liverpool, are the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries
+among the narrow lanes adjoining the dock. I was astonished at die
+multitude of gilded balls in these streets, emblematic of their calling.
+They were generally next neighbors to the gilded grapes over the
+spirit-vaults; and no doubt, mutually to facilitate business operations,
+some of these establishments have connecting doors inside, so as to play
+their customers into each other's hands. I often saw sailors in a state
+of intoxication rushing from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker's;
+stripping off their boots, hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and
+sometimes even their pantaloons on the spot, and offering to pawn them
+for a song. Of course such applications were never refused. But though
+on shore, at Liverpool, poor Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he
+himself is by no means exempt from practices, that do not savor of a
+rigid morality; at least according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an
+adept: and when cool and collected, often manages to evade the Customs
+completely, and land goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the
+immense duties upon it in England, commands a very high price.
+
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.
+
+"Is that all?" asked the officers.
+
+"All," said the men.
+
+"We will see," returned the others.
+
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.
+
+"Very good," said the men.
+
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.
+
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his
+pocket; that he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about his
+person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates
+at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance of
+detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by.
+And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers
+passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard,
+as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting under a
+ship's bows.
+
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we came
+from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate; for in
+Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the docks
+they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners' mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little moral
+precepts printed in red on the back.
+
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the
+least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with
+such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by
+a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting
+their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay
+stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are
+guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a
+whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine
+truck-horses look--so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often
+I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though
+I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language,
+I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable information
+touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their dignified
+lives.
+
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a
+horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure
+he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries
+in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
+They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a
+species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to
+live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like
+the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of
+divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should
+forever exempt him from indignities. As for those majestic, magisterial
+truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on
+the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.
+
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The
+truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the
+lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large
+warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will tranquilly
+walk away with the whole.
+
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals.
+Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,--not of the same cut and
+color though,--which reach below their knees; and from the racket they
+make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think
+they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get
+any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set,
+who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals;
+now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in
+order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their
+lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended
+their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them
+something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to them
+a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is
+the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended
+in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse
+pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day
+a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the
+water. It was noon, when an interval of silence falls upon the docks;
+and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the horse, and having a mind
+for a chat, cried out to him, "Back! back! back!"
+
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the water.
+
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince's, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American
+boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying to
+all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of
+produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned
+into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with these
+inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand, seemingly
+penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July when the
+Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily coming
+over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the
+street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from
+Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the country;
+and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the corporation,
+took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+
+"Sing Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney," cried one fellow, tossing
+his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head of the
+rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+
+
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for
+so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who, thereby,
+was enabled after my day's work aboard the Highlander, to ramble about
+the town for several hours. After I had visited all the noted places I
+could discover, of those marked down upon my father's map, I began to
+extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a committee of one,
+to investigate all accessible parts of the town; though so many years
+have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my report.
+
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world, I
+have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering about,
+up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and speculating
+upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to pace along
+endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on the doors,
+admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a passing
+blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was stared at
+myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take on such
+occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a sensation
+in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a family went
+home to his children with a curious story, about a wandering phenomenon
+they had encountered, traversing the side-walks that day. In the words
+of the old song, "I cared for nobody, no not I, and nobody cared for
+me." I stared my fill with impunity, and took all stares myself in good
+part.
+
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with a
+wonderful relish.
+
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour, in
+those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the street,
+and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it in New
+York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes; and
+especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing along
+frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who clung
+to his arms and legs; and, in God's name, conjured him not to desert
+them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and drowning
+himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In these
+haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged me
+unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost endless
+vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these miserable
+streets.
+
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
+the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the "free states" of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute. But
+in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and with
+the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even Englishmen;
+as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords. This conveyed a
+strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded me that I was
+not in my own land. For there, such a being as a native beggar is almost
+unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against
+pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
+
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which negro-
+sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head
+like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in respect to
+him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our black
+steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to escape
+with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to them, and
+the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black cooks and
+stewards of American ships are very much attached to the place and like
+to make voyages to it.
+
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
+degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
+most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
+at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
+in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was but
+recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in some
+things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the
+principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.
+
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
+by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
+Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
+There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of houses
+with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the same
+elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
+could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St. John's
+Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to see that
+great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most discriminating
+observer would not have been able to detect any difference between the
+articles exposed for sale, and the articles exhibited in Fulton Market,
+New York.
+
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers' shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.
+
+It is true, that I often thought of London's being only seven or eight
+hours' travel by railroad from where I was; and that there, surely, must
+be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
+bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
+walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
+a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
+church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
+edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
+
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them in
+another.
+
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
+simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
+he pleases; and that even St. Peter's in Rome is open to him, as to a
+cardinal; that St. Paul's in London is not shut against him; and that
+the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to him,
+and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the better to
+allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this consideration of the
+hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most Christian and charming
+thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and Vatican libraries, for
+Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes farther home than all the
+sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, and Archbishop Tillotson.
+
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
+land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of
+any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
+broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
+myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a
+little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what could
+he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to be
+sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or hearing
+of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always some
+confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I used
+to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting
+on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in
+the churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of
+some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of
+the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation
+between myself and the clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know
+that I was a foreigner of distinction.
+
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached--just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
+roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
+winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
+my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
+long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
+and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking how
+I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen, with
+high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their cosy and
+comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for me except
+at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up .were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the immortal
+plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies. But to
+finish off with that abominable "swipes" almost spoiled all the rest:
+not that I myself patronized "swipes" but my shipmates did; and every
+cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in imagination, and
+even then the flavor was bad.
+
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The servant
+girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose dinners
+were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were collectively
+known by the names of their ships.
+
+"Where are the Arethusas?--Here's their beef been smoking this
+half-hour."--"Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the Splendids."--"Run,
+Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the Highlanders."--"You Peggy,
+where's the Siddons' pickle-pat?"--"I say, Judy, are you never coming
+with that pudding for the Lord Nelsons?"
+
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
+came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
+end of the Highlanders' table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared himself
+on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs, so as to
+include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby, the
+boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at the
+head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.
+
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
+of Jackson's address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
+recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
+disgust, and dined elsewhere.
+
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
+rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George's-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth's equestrian statue.
+
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
+but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
+dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and decorum
+prevailed.
+
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much toil,
+or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.
+
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to his
+hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic gestures.
+I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware that this
+youth was a Chartist.
+
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.
+
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the town,
+and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey's pillars, in the shape
+of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had previously
+seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be? Certainly, I had
+never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish arch! surely I
+remembered that very well. It was not till several months after reaching
+home in America, that my perplexity upon this matter was cleared away.
+In glancing over an old number of the Penny Magazine, there I saw a
+picture of the place to the life; and remembered having seen the same
+print years previous. It was a representation of the spot where the
+Manchester railroad enters the outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in a
+previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days after,
+which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by
+the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable legs
+crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out my
+guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the
+building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the
+opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.
+
+I'm a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be
+treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.
+
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from
+the London Times, which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the
+large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog
+with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine
+apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the
+spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up stepped a
+terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster on his
+back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down some
+papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders, and
+then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons, wheeled
+me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in
+vain; the door was closed upon me.
+
+These Englishmen have no manners, that's plain, thought I; and I trudged
+on down the street in a reverie.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+
+
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green
+hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with
+me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away
+without having a good, long look at the open fields.
+
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.
+
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last--there it
+was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that
+seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I
+breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles
+once respired by Rosamond the Fair.
+
+On I trudged along the London road--smooth as an entry floor--and every
+white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road
+became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field,
+would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little
+dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed
+over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful announcement,
+nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post--
+
+    "man-traps and spring-guns!"
+
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were
+not surely cannibals, that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale, and
+lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+
+"A man-trap!" It must be so. The announcement could bear but one
+meaning--that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.
+
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?
+
+And who put it there?
+
+The proprietor, probably.
+
+And what right had he to do so?
+
+Why, he owned the soil.
+
+And where are his title-deeds?
+
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a
+mighty traveler, indeed:--stopped on your travels by a man-trap! Do you
+think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was so
+entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much wiser
+than when you set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not having
+seen more sights, will be man-traps--mantraps, my masters! that
+frightened you!
+
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet,
+right down to the earth's axis, and, perhaps, straight through to the
+antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and enter the
+forbidden Eden.
+
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that at
+last I thought best to pace off.
+
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice
+little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just
+such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was
+viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the bees
+were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.
+
+Any man-traps here? thought I--any spring-guns?
+
+No.
+
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No
+Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They
+gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and
+conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at
+first I almost imagined they might.
+
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.
+
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics,
+drinking ale at a table.
+
+"Good day," said I.
+
+"Good day; from Liverpool?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"For London?"
+
+"No; not this time. I merely come to see the country."
+
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.
+
+"Take a seat," said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife's apron
+on, I thought.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of
+which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a
+good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the banks
+of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty millions of
+people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my knowledge.
+
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively
+conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:--fine old ale; yes,
+English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?--Hurra! what say you?
+let's have a peep at St. Paul's I Don't you want to see the queen? Have
+you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and the
+Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets--who's to pay the bill?--You can't beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father's son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign land;
+you must not turn pauper.
+
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul's or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+
+Well, well, up heart, you'll see it one of these days.
+
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames--think of that!--here I am--ay, treading in the wheel-tracks of
+coaches that are bound for the metropolis!--It was too bad; too bitterly
+bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on; till at last
+I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with broad
+branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a hen
+gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I threw
+myself and there lay my head, like a last year's nut. People passed by,
+on foot and in carriages, and little thought that the sad youth under
+the tree was the great-nephew of a late senator in the American
+Congress.
+
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me from
+the field, crying out--"What are you doing there, you young rascal?--run
+away from the work'us, have ye? Tramp, or I'll set Blucher on ye!"
+
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.
+
+"Come, are you going to start?" he cried.
+
+"Presently," said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got a
+few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me
+as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own
+premises, and said--"Stranger! if you ever Visit America, just call at
+our house, and you'll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don't fail."
+
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the
+cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to hapless
+young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway, sat
+an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A hale
+matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal by his
+side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were leaning out of
+the window close by.
+
+Ah! Wellingborough, don't you wish you could step in?
+
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when--is it
+possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "you look as if you had walked far; come, take a
+bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear" (how my heart jumped), "go fetch some
+from the dairy." And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and handed
+me--me, the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I could hardly drink
+down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England. But
+I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do away
+at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close scrutiny
+of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I declared
+myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a Sunday in the
+country.
+
+"And have you been to church to-day, young man?" said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+
+"Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know--a most
+excellent sermon--I am much the better for it."
+
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.
+
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.
+
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post like
+a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers in
+the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of them.
+But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young ladies, and
+vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the river Ohio,
+and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in harvest time, the
+laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand strong.
+
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don't give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you. At
+last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one
+side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins; and
+such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.
+
+And there they sat--the charmers, I mean--eating these buttered muffins in
+plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute they
+grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a fine
+thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my friends
+would stare! a lady from England!
+
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the
+one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in
+the direction where I sat. She certainly did look at my jacket; and I am
+constrained to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen in
+love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of the
+question; for what a looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off;
+but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and
+again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.
+
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I
+live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks, I
+passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll, was
+soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+
+
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I
+had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of
+a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He
+was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair,
+and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
+
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of
+a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from
+something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a
+voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to
+enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman--a kind of
+pleasure so long debarred me--I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket,
+and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing would
+afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in imparting
+any information concerning America that he needed.
+
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and
+at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to
+accompany him on a walk.
+
+We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.
+
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt
+and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus
+fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
+
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless
+of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession
+or business of any kind to engage his attention.
+
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him
+to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of
+her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
+
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty
+your glass and your purse as you list.
+
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie
+to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and
+dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
+
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a
+"guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of
+the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case,
+inapplicable.
+
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw
+up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London, and again
+his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to
+return home to his aunt, and amend--though she had often written him the
+kindest of letters to that effect--Harry resolved to precipitate himself
+upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this
+object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for
+Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the docks,
+to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered his brain,
+born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck browsers and
+tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor. There was a
+dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine coats,
+which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for
+all past conventionalities.
+
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some
+of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold
+Anchor in Union-street.
+
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all
+anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire
+to which he warmly responded.
+
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application
+to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our
+crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just
+upon the eve of our departure.
+
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to
+which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from
+the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have
+little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding
+them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the
+ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their
+sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they
+well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured,
+through the crimps of the port.
+
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the
+vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga
+was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to
+conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even
+indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the cheapness
+of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus,
+instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who
+would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the
+rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the
+end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving
+a. handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the harness-cask.
+
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine
+morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his
+virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
+
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain's
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression,
+that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first
+accosted him in the cabin.
+
+Alas, Harry! thought I,--as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,--that "gallant, gay deceiver" shall not altogether
+cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be
+the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going to
+America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a
+manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would
+be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a shore, where he
+must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide
+him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship;
+and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength
+of his wages.
+
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my
+young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration
+at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive
+my congratulations.
+
+"Harry," said I, "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga--that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the
+country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he
+gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his
+character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and
+sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than
+his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking
+wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows."
+
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of
+the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told
+him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could
+furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort
+of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any
+mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
+
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the
+precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;--whether he had a
+giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether,
+with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he
+felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
+
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and
+confident air; saying that in his "guinea-pig" days, he had often climbed
+the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he
+made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the
+Highlander's rigging.
+
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant
+sight of his most unseamanlike person--more suited to the Queen's
+drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to
+himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and
+indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for
+the most part, will "gang their ain gate;" and the most we can do is, to
+hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best
+cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough
+money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
+
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and
+as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.
+
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London Me; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me
+the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the
+sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.
+
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic
+narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds
+of reminiscences not his own.
+
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon;
+and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of
+chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.
+
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I
+cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I
+had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my
+pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more,
+than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously
+hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many days had passed.
+But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed it to my friend's
+good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes prompted him to out
+with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable. Besides, would this
+fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic acquaintances, walking
+down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of my
+shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that
+Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee
+credulity.
+
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed,
+he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of
+Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment;
+reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who
+might stare at so singular a couple.
+
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel,
+he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the
+square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat,
+was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the
+hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an
+ivory-headed riding-whip.
+
+"Who was he, Harry?" said I.
+
+"My old chum, Lord Lovely," said Harry, with a careless air, "and Heaven
+only knows what brings Lovely from London."
+
+"A lord?" said I starting; "then I must look at him again;" for lords
+are very scarce in Liverpool.
+
+Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and
+slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
+
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.
+
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought something
+of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done
+for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought
+best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to
+the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing
+himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it--a coronet--fell into a
+sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by
+a regal marabou feather, inside.
+
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it
+would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world,
+just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a
+drive into the country.
+
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might
+decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to his
+visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most Noble
+Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he might
+consider Ickworth his home.
+
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of
+the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry
+has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy
+address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his having
+consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous
+earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the
+slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has, he
+spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon to
+pluck; so that is out of the question;--perish such a thought, concerning
+my own bosom friend!
+
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this,
+I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high
+life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease
+in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in
+its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom
+of some immaculate friend.
+
+
+
+
+XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+
+
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry,
+who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter
+his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang
+down the hatchway into the between-decks, where, in perfect solitude, I
+was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for
+want of any thing better.
+
+"Hey for London, Wellingborough!" he cried. "Off tomorrow! first
+train--be there the same night--come! I have money to rig you all out--drop
+that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here! Come; up
+you jump!"
+
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+
+London? it could not be!--and Harry--how kind of him! he was then indeed
+what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden
+departure.
+
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had
+hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose
+to conceal.
+
+"But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?" said I; "they will not let me
+go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't care
+very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses."
+
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all
+the time.
+
+"Tut! my Yankee bantam," said Harry; "look here!" and he showed me a
+handful of gold.
+
+"But they are yours, and not mine, Harry," said I.
+
+"Yours and mine, my sweet fellow," exclaimed Harry. "Come, sink the
+ship, and let's go!"
+
+"But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a
+constable after me, won't they?"
+
+"What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait."
+
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I did take French leave of him. So, without further thought of
+the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship's bell
+struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the
+rest of the day.
+
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
+
+Arrived at the Golden Anchor, where Harry put up, he at once led me to
+his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what
+clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size--if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.
+
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me,
+arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that
+very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense,
+when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked,
+and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown
+ugly thoughts.
+
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and
+charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for
+it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we
+turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of
+the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to
+finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and
+presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+
+"It's me" said the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus
+metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice,
+which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going
+to turn gentleman forger.
+
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted
+this mode of disguising himself.
+
+"And why afraid of your friends?" asked I, in astonishment, "and we are
+not in London yet."
+
+"Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by."
+
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came
+to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are
+taken.
+
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
+
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+
+
+"No time to lose," said Harry, "come along."
+
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some
+street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the comers, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.
+
+"Stop," cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once--"stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house--No. 40 I told you--that's it--the high steps there, with the
+purple light!"
+
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and
+bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side,
+and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a
+little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
+
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and
+echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I
+started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
+
+The walk were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles--emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver,
+Sienna with porphyry--supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like
+a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East
+of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful
+Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites
+of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights,
+whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain
+spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every
+porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit
+garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica,
+lurked somewhere among the vines.
+
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned
+slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
+
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.
+
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with
+snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket--he looked like
+an almond tree in blossom--who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry
+over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the
+waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the guests.
+
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading
+some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud
+voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us,
+and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain
+where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
+
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential
+word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much
+surprised,--I thought, a Little disconcerted,--and then disappeared with
+him.
+
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all
+this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my
+head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought
+that I was really in London. What would my brother have said? What would
+Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have
+thought?
+
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a
+little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it
+was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation
+of the London-like scene around me.
+
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden
+visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me;
+and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some
+gentleman as "My Lord," or "four Grace." But if there were really any
+lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my hearing.
+
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
+
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.
+So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping
+the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy;
+but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the
+time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I
+kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes, and
+observed that every now and then little parties were made up among the
+gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going to a
+private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word Rouge; but
+he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly pale. Another
+said something about Loo.
+
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+
+"Come along, Redburn," said he.
+
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in
+the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the
+night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang
+up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he
+only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble
+Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's antlers, over
+the landing.
+
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.
+
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.
+
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven,
+like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And
+oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited
+serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there,
+they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringers of
+bullion and silk.
+
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with
+bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
+
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in
+the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii--in that
+part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as
+Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of
+the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze
+medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such
+pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the
+left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in
+Corinth.
+
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance
+of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It
+was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked
+expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His
+'marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
+
+"Sit down, Wellingborough," said Harry; "don't be frightened, we are at
+home.--Ring the bell, will you? But stop;"--and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
+
+"He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough," said he; "who stays in this one
+place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you
+don't breathe any secrets in his ear."
+
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.
+
+"Cigars," said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the
+middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example,
+and make myself happy.
+
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before,
+while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander,
+I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, "And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?"
+
+"Upon my soul," he cried, "you have hit it:--you must have been here
+before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name."
+
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been
+quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his
+general carriage was firm.
+
+"Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?" said he.
+
+"I am afraid, Harry," said I, "that when you left me just now, you must
+have been drinking something stronger than wine."
+
+"Hear him now," said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,--"a parson 'pon honor!--But remark you,
+Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably
+longer time than before:--I may not be back again to-night."
+
+"What?" said I.
+
+"Be still," he cried, "hear me, I know the old duke here, and-"
+
+"Who? not the Duke of Wellington," said I, wondering whether Harry was
+really going to include him too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+
+"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below;
+they call him the Duke:--he keeps the house. I say, I know him well, and
+he knows me; and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we have
+arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and sleep
+here tonight, and--and--" continued he, speaking low--"you must guard this
+letter--" slipping a sealed one into my hand-"and, if I am not back by
+morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the letter
+there;--here, take this paper--it's all set down here in black and
+white--where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that's
+done--mind, this is all in case I don't return--then you may do what you
+please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here's
+enough to pay all your expenses."
+
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.
+
+"What's the matter, Redburn?" he cried, with a wild sort of laugh--"you
+are not afraid of me, are you?--No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you
+would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter."
+
+"What in heaven's name do you mean?" at last I exclaimed, "you don't
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?" and I
+snatched him by the hand.
+
+"Pooh, pooh," he cried, "let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do as I
+say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!-no, no," he added,
+vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more--"no, I won't: I have
+nothing more to tell you--not a word. Will you swear?"
+
+"But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!"
+
+"Not a syllable! Will you swear?--you will not? then here, give me that
+purse:--there--there--take that--and that--and that;--that will pay your
+fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend," and he
+wheeled round his back.
+
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled
+me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered
+old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me
+as his friend--young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to
+the comforts of his lordship, while he--Harry--was gone.
+
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression,
+that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry
+then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one
+word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room, saying, "Leave not
+this room tonight; and remember the letter, and Bury!"
+
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose,
+and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard
+the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory
+rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the
+room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have given the
+world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in
+Prince's Dock.
+
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the house,
+my limbs seemed manacled.
+
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a
+confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
+
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul--in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to
+do this thing?--why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he
+want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour
+he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.
+
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;-would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
+I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
+search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
+sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
+Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
+over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
+the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and
+here I am--yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.
+
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
+around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
+never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
+squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
+marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
+myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
+still.
+
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
+upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
+night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of
+starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was; but
+remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and
+that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
+
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.
+
+"The letter and paper," he cried.
+
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+
+"There! there! there! thus I tear you," he cried, wrenching the letter
+to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. "I am off for America; the game is up."
+
+"For God's sake explain," said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. "Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?"
+
+"Ha, ha," he deliriously laughed. "Gambling? red and white, you mean?--
+cards?--dice?--the bones?--Ha, ha!--Gambling? gambling?" he ground out
+between his teeth--"what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they
+are!"
+
+"Wellingborough," he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
+blazing into mine--"Wellingborough"--and fumbling in his breast-pocket, he
+drew forth a dirk--"Here, Wellingborough, take it--take it, I say--are you
+stupid?-there, there"--and he pushed it into my hands. "Keep it away from
+me--keep it out of my sight--I don't want it near me, while I feel as I
+do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don't bury
+them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang
+myself'--and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it
+down from the wall.
+
+"In God's name, what ails you?" I cried.
+
+"Nothing, oh nothing," said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
+calmness--"nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the serenest of
+men."
+
+"But give me that dirk," he suddenly cried--"let me have it, I say. Oh! I
+don't mean to murder myself--I'm past that now--give it me"--and snatching
+it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a terrific stab,
+nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
+
+"There now," he cried, "there's something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me--that's my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning"--and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
+
+"And this, then," said I, "is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I
+did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will
+not regret not seeing the town."
+
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, "Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly."
+
+"And why?" said I, in alarm, "what more would you have me swear?"
+
+"Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!" he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips--"never to breathe it! swear!"
+
+"I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not
+desire it," said I, "but there's no need of swearing."
+
+"Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn," he added, imploringly.
+
+"Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as
+soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive."
+
+"And what am I?" cried Harry; "but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean to
+offend; if you knew all--but no, no!--never mind, never mind!" And he ran
+to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+
+"Brandy," whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+
+"Are you not going to sleep, then?" said I, more and more alarmed at his
+wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such
+a mood.
+
+"No sleep for me! sleep if you can--I mean to sit up with a decanter!--let
+me see"--looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel--"it's only two hours
+to morning."
+
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.
+
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the
+lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and
+then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the
+table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his
+glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits
+seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
+
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his
+shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+
+"Look! it is broad day," said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of
+the window.
+
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall
+of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets
+to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of
+the last thirty-six hours.
+
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our
+journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at
+the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the
+Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the
+mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was
+almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket,
+he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was
+shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing
+once more in our sailor habiliments.
+
+"Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?" said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+
+"Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course--what else?'
+he replied.
+
+"And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?" asked I.
+
+"That's as it may turn out," said Harry; "but I have now more than ever
+resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like
+me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf, you
+know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's see what
+they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel better
+already. Never say die, is my motto."
+
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay
+of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days' time.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours,
+and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to
+any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had
+absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or
+nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know
+nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the
+discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly
+believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The
+reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although
+the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was
+not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as
+cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward
+passage.
+
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, "Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good."
+
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the
+proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+
+"But turn to, sir, turn to," added the mate; "here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay--jump!"
+
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.
+
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had
+been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the
+between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for
+the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were
+already littering the decks.
+
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than
+upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of
+casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along
+the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing
+access to four rows of bunks,--three tiers, one above another,--against
+the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in
+the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse
+planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else;
+especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light coming down
+except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which were covered
+with little houses called "booby-hatches." Upon the main-hatches, which
+were well calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the
+"passengers-gattey" was solidly lashed down.
+
+This galley was a large open stove, or iron range--made expressly for
+emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the
+emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+
+After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the
+outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out
+with the tide in the morning.
+
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and
+God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the cheers
+of the surrounding ships.
+
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by
+the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit,
+now came a one-eyed crimp leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had
+been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated
+before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in
+port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a
+bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled
+out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely
+helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the
+quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his
+closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered
+on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who
+put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself
+carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him
+till the ship was away from the land.
+
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
+Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
+were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
+policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
+
+A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
+the river past the fort.
+
+The scene was most striking.
+
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
+days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
+for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
+merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in
+the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and
+from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo,
+cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.
+
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their
+voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing
+America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days
+would be an uncommonly long voyage.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
+
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet, all
+this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents
+from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants
+themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by
+one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into
+the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable.
+The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the
+emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the
+uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two "booby-hatches" came
+the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible
+wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and
+the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of
+the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.
+
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
+who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to
+run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly
+inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and even
+then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady, such
+ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as unendurable, and
+put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy annihilation; all of
+which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to preserve their
+valuable lives.
+
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching
+seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley on deck?
+How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a first
+voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just as
+hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter, and
+seventeen servants.
+
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head down
+the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
+
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
+some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
+prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the
+quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
+Consequently--even in fine weather--when they come up from below, they are
+crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and
+spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for
+unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
+
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and
+to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of
+the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the
+main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between
+those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid
+twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent
+in having this regulation maintained.
+
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
+humanity.
+
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is
+to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this
+circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation
+at these things.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+
+
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be
+marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which
+had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been
+brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their
+duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man
+yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had
+been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
+
+His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the
+sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand
+that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him;
+when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the
+quarterdeck.
+
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing
+be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously
+forbade this proceeding.
+
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the bowsprit-bitts--two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the
+men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to
+the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side
+planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to
+extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch,
+to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he
+exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the
+shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.
+
+"Blast that rat!" cried the Greenlander.
+
+"He's blasted already," said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. "It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead;
+and here he is"--and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm,
+exclaiming, "Dead as a timber-head!"
+
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he
+held to the man's face.
+
+"No, he's not dead," he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment
+at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped,
+when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
+forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
+cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
+over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
+silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
+like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
+
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
+every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
+curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
+death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
+
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.
+
+"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+
+"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed
+Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."
+
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
+rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+
+"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must
+go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
+say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
+partly out of the bunk.
+
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
+sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
+did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
+all serve to soothe me.
+
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill
+he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on
+board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in
+a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such
+things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned
+in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed
+familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of such things
+having happened to others.
+
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case
+like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I
+almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the
+Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal
+condemnation.
+
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the
+bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk
+was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict
+orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the
+emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
+
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX. CARLO
+
+
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a rich-
+cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued
+velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not
+above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full
+morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that
+his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's
+tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual
+radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility,
+deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of
+life.
+
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes
+of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of
+poetry, gushing from every rent.
+
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire;
+and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his hand-
+organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of Liverpool,
+playing the sunny airs of southern chines, among the northern fog and
+drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over the
+Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
+
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+
+"Carlo," said Harry, "how did you succeed in England?"
+
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing
+back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he
+looked up, and said in his broken English--that seemed like mixing the
+potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:--said he, "Ah! I succeed
+very well!--for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the
+sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the
+ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know
+from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop before a
+house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will soonest toss
+me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to
+the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and the poor the
+merry."
+
+"But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men," said
+Harry, "who would much rather have your room than your music?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," said Carlo, playing with his foot, "sometimes I do."
+
+"And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?"
+
+"No," continued the boy, "I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my
+only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off,
+not I; would I, poor organ?"--looking down the hatchway where it was.
+"No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for
+when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they
+themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are cracked,
+and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls."
+
+"No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps," said Harry, with a laugh.
+
+"Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords."
+
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
+vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
+and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
+gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
+went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
+
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
+be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars--never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a
+beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
+
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all
+the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on a
+moon-lit sward of violets.
+
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
+
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.
+
+But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.
+
+Behold the organ!
+
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
+melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
+we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
+almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
+buried.
+
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order;
+in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!--what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!--what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!--But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.
+
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air--a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here's
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and
+while I list to the organs twain--one yours, one mine--let me gaze
+fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;--'tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching--all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes,
+the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded
+damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm
+around me.
+
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband--soft, dulcet, dropping sounds,
+like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as
+if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts,
+called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
+
+Again-what blasted heath is this?--what goblin sounds of Macbeth's
+witches?--Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg's, demons dire.
+
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard-some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep
+dipped in silver gauzes.
+
+All this could Carlo do--make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me;
+and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and
+bowers of song.
+
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
+
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same
+wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure
+greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+
+His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's
+heaven, it turns on golden binges.
+
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded
+columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out
+come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of
+martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass
+on, and disappear.
+
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors,
+among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some
+emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back
+the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
+
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.
+
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.
+
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy,
+with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous
+box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!
+
+
+
+
+L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+
+
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
+sailor.
+
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
+even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried
+you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with
+your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
+glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it,
+that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.
+
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
+you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
+to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
+fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
+like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
+embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the
+world.
+
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
+same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
+show like a zebra, banding with elks.
+
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
+Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the
+soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds
+through Caffrarian woods.
+
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him
+before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
+knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors
+are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time,
+abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold
+and unsympathizing civility.
+
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
+the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
+every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
+money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
+him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
+
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity
+with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other
+extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
+brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap,
+to stand his morning watch.
+
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
+crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
+spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
+before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest
+acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
+it would seem, from enacting this folly.
+
+"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to
+Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
+in a trice."
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is
+not mine a morning gown?"
+
+But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+
+"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a
+mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"
+
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
+want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
+pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
+
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.
+
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by
+the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of
+silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they
+thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by
+abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
+Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test
+the color of his calves.
+
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
+easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company,
+the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible
+necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the
+constables.
+
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar.
+What else can bring them to sea?
+
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was
+put down for a very equivocal character.
+
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
+one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to
+mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
+mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
+or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
+tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
+if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
+to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga
+never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
+the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of
+his officers and crew.
+
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
+any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
+coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
+that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
+of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is,
+pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
+aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that
+when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be
+inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so
+absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round
+the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to
+mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However,
+after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting
+loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry
+for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
+would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from
+the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
+was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
+would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.
+
+"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what
+it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt
+you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you
+had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you
+only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find
+yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."
+
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his
+nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had
+drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
+altogether too many Havannas.
+
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
+morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
+short signal halyards.
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.
+
+"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.
+
+"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+
+"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once
+across his back, but lightly.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and
+then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him
+lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head,
+I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.
+
+"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up
+till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing
+the rope's end.
+
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there
+no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he
+made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice.
+I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
+little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for
+I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being
+lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top.
+Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and
+clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the
+tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.
+
+"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and
+help him; you understand?"
+
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
+bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives;
+and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my
+unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the
+wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.
+
+I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
+even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
+
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.
+
+At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the
+captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
+himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New
+York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a
+blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on
+board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within
+so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
+thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his
+pleasure.
+
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but
+go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else
+but that.
+
+This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
+reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a
+miserable life indeed.
+
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
+finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead,
+and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a
+sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would
+be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked
+without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of
+this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these
+evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional
+nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare
+to the merciless crew.
+
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself
+up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps
+his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to
+explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
+passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common
+tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that
+only He who made us can expound them.
+
+
+
+
+LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds', till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the
+last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and
+all the rest was broad ocean.
+
+Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
+At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
+America itself was at hand.
+
+"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. "Is that it?"
+
+"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.
+
+"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"
+
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when
+they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own
+native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a
+steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
+
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
+adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a
+place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see
+how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together,
+looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York
+city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles
+distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
+
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"
+
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.
+
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
+would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
+and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and
+play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who
+blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music by
+furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward,
+when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from the
+cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the
+gentlemen and ladies.
+
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes,
+by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's,
+for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or
+thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the
+other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling
+to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely
+unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest,
+were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the
+gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could to my
+little Italian's organ.
+
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any
+tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at
+one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or
+such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some
+ladles, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to
+Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+
+"Yes, ladies," said the captain, bowing, "by your leave, I think Carlo's
+organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig running after
+its dam."
+
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were
+all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.
+
+"Carlo"--said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the quarter-
+deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place during my
+watch on deck:--"Carlo"--said I, "what do the gentlemen and ladies give
+you for playing?"
+
+"Look!"--and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield--three English pennies.
+
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the
+natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers,
+regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not
+feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
+
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her
+own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not
+because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.
+
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked
+as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a
+short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf,
+but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable about him
+but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not remember
+it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the time, as if
+its owner was laboring under the mumps.
+
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the
+rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee
+of the spanker; or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the
+emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the
+upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help them
+to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to see
+Niagara Falls.
+
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four
+heavy files of the London Times, and other papers; and he spent all his
+hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg
+crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all.
+That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied.
+He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then
+were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
+
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are
+like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+
+
+
+
+LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+
+
+I have made some mention of the "galley," or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the
+steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty
+large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough, considering the
+number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire was only to be
+kindled at certain hours.
+
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in
+all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the
+captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well go
+to law with the Czar of Russia.
+
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of
+the spray over the uncovered "galley." Whenever I had the morning watch,
+from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from
+below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of
+rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the
+fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and children;
+each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a great tumult
+ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the more
+quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.
+
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed
+to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a
+great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his
+appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose
+coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in
+its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to
+him; and with that, he turned aside.
+
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed,
+made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no
+sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy
+snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about the
+fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary
+hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy,
+who by this time, however, had decamped.
+
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but
+scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the
+most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to
+which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by
+imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they
+themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their
+social superiors hold them subject.
+
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.
+
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called mush; by the Dutch is known as supaan; by
+sailors burgoo; by the New Englanders hasty-pudding; in which
+hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a
+sort of epic.
+
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.
+
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than
+the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages,
+Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
+
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would sometimes
+take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him, like an
+Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion, and eating
+his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk bottle, and
+smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made time jog
+along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife
+in some imaginary section of the ship, called the second cabin, which
+was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was
+young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in love
+with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
+
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do,
+from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their
+double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he
+would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial
+commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady was
+not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks
+would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun.
+The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a
+dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the
+mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided
+them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.
+
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him--
+
+"Billy, my dear;" and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+
+"Billy, my love!"
+
+The bow went faster and faster.
+
+"Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;" and she
+bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.
+
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour
+or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed,
+which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass
+from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+
+
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of
+Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:--"It happened, that in each
+family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity
+in point of age or of strength."
+
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.
+
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like
+as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms
+seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to
+form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all
+six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the
+O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the O'Regans. The
+former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their
+mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the
+O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to
+all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
+
+Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her
+spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made
+her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from
+the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and
+the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in shampooing them, though it was haphazard sort of work
+enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on
+a stray limb.
+
+"Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you, Teddy,
+you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your legs up
+with Pat's."
+
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's locker--or
+rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows--with a large old quarto
+Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and
+reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted
+us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O'Brien
+purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for
+the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
+
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted
+her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.
+
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion
+was curiously manifested.
+
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her,
+began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of
+the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The widow
+gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then ducking in
+the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and springing from
+the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs, biting and striking
+at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no sooner perceived,
+than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the amazed seaman
+found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the
+three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+
+"There now, you rascal," cried the mate, "throw overboard another Bible,
+and I'll send you after it without a bowline."
+
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel.
+That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by
+the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in
+them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in
+public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning
+their nurses.
+
+"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye
+run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+
+"Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?"
+
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken
+up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which
+resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
+
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me
+at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of
+the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?
+
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the
+particular benefit of twins?
+
+
+
+
+LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+
+
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their
+tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the
+end.
+
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid
+for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater
+portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender
+the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of the
+Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks out,
+on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.
+
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at
+sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called "High-low-
+Jack-and-the-game," which name, indeed, has a Jackish and nautical
+flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco, which,
+like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they play.
+Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into "chaws."
+
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if
+they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to be
+boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the forecastle by
+those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on deck, and make
+a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there was a great
+deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of nigging and
+cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were exchanged.
+
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but
+very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky;
+and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly
+torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the four suits might
+have seceded from their respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe,
+under the name of "Tar-spots."
+
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum
+constituting an ordinary "chaw," was made to last a whole day; and at
+night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same "chaw" was
+placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to do duty in a
+pipe.
+
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With
+touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings--the time of
+smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable "chawing," they
+beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
+
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea
+in his head--"Boys, let's search under the bunks!" Bless you, Blunt! what
+a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark places
+explored; and two sticks of nail-rod tobacco, and several old "chaws,"
+thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage, were their cheering
+reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon this
+occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally
+adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is
+desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to
+all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted
+this nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater
+would be forever rendered nugatory--"Expert not to understand any man
+till you have divided with him an inheritance."
+
+The nail-rods they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there
+were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the
+presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to
+the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with
+his knife, crying out, "Whose is this?" Whereupon a respondent,
+previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner
+of the forecastle, "Blunt's;" and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like
+manner, till all were served.
+
+I put it to you, lawyers--shade of Blackstone, I invoke you--if a more
+impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage "chaws" were soon gone, and then,
+after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped, and
+relapsed into gloom.
+
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however--but not altogether new
+among seamen--to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut
+up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes
+were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and
+had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient,
+cheese-like flavor.
+
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part,
+round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum,
+upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such
+times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever
+taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it
+slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic
+"heart;" for so this central piece is denominated.
+
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+
+Nor is this delectable morsel of old junk wanting in many interesting,
+mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have
+been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of
+seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it
+may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What
+outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the water, and what
+un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when forming part of a
+lofty stay or a shroud?
+
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little "cut" it was,
+that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting
+hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to
+see whether it had any "tenderloin."
+
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at
+all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an
+antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed,
+though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an
+astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with which the
+flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors seemed to
+like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They converted
+one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when solicited by a
+shipmate for a "chaw," would produce a small coil of rope.
+
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.
+
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine
+weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until
+very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
+
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace,
+when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper
+one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the
+mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
+
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the
+nail-rods they found.
+
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or
+fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left
+to the philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER
+
+
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of
+a circumstance--which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before--that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too
+unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here,
+with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine
+weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the
+remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
+
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a
+midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been the
+face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and blasted by
+lightning.
+
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was
+only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his
+excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in
+his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
+
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
+
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment
+of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before
+him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if
+he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse
+between his teeth.
+
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world--the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting
+his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond
+without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is
+no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a
+democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by
+side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though Milton's
+Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only because he is
+not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine original. We
+gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised fancies
+concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure. But
+in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up
+and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of
+wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.
+
+
+
+
+LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION
+
+
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps
+on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine
+before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those
+melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew
+on Hermon.
+
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.
+
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like
+his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the
+words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and
+pansied margins.
+
+"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his
+watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I
+stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and
+there I'll hum you an air."
+
+It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."
+
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be
+singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
+
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
+sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous
+quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from
+his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his
+feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
+even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry
+possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could
+not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the
+being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they
+did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
+accordion in their ears.
+
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in
+velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.
+
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
+more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
+with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
+all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
+intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
+cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if
+he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England;
+and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.
+
+"I have forgotten England," he said, "and never more mean to think of
+it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?"
+
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I
+was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in
+the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with
+one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave
+kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never
+actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can
+not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no
+true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust
+that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
+
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by
+talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I
+certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even
+as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward
+him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country;
+I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting,
+that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects
+and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.
+
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--"Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have," and then he went on to mention, that in some
+places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly
+respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in
+lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats--it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their
+livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery
+shillings.
+
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and
+gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not
+sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and
+when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a
+gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing
+you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting
+reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices,
+enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the
+conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well
+recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make
+the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+
+"Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?" said Harry,
+"or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?" he anxiously
+added.
+
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
+
+I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were,
+a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the
+civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have
+resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in
+wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney,
+and had shut up his Christendom in London.
+
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not
+play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such
+a business.
+
+Said I, "My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man
+has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think
+myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling."
+
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea
+of singing himself into a livelihood.
+
+"No, I won't sing for my mutton," said he--"what would Lady Georgiana
+say?"
+
+"If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry," returned I,
+who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+
+"But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you."
+
+"I do write a hand," he gladly rejoined--"there, look at the
+implement!--do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or
+cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?"
+
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small;
+and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the
+nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.
+
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of
+that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble
+birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son
+of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers
+in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration,
+would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
+
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or
+that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot,
+when even a fish has no foot at all!
+
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh,
+democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It
+is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+
+But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white
+as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had
+somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
+
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly,
+that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses
+to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?
+with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord
+Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she
+vowed she was mine?--Out of sight, recreant and apostate!--deep
+down--disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that
+upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few
+friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
+
+
+
+
+LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+
+
+"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
+children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where
+the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which,
+indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+
+"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
+over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.--"Pigs, is it?--and the day is close by, ye
+spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"
+
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their
+outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.
+
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
+to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
+the ship's stores, or starve.
+
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
+cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
+
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
+hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
+consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of
+the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
+plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the
+public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and
+carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not
+venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
+cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
+they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
+cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
+the name of the Church.
+
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
+Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
+emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
+rigging and flogged.
+
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
+such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants
+into an insurrection.
+
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
+the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith
+coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
+protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
+
+"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours,
+if you can."
+
+Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of
+food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
+time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain
+have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
+voyage.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
+THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+
+
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
+not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
+seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
+the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
+great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
+America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
+prevalence of westerly winds.
+
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
+by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
+visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
+a week.
+
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
+
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
+galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
+steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
+lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
+emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
+the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
+ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
+to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
+when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
+two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
+also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
+the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
+ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
+windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+
+During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
+noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
+marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
+close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
+
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
+known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
+
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
+out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
+to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
+disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
+being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess
+that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
+increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
+over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
+fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
+most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
+
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
+deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and
+tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
+beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
+continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of
+these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities,
+that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
+
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.
+
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
+that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
+captain's order.
+
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
+like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
+meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath
+with a gasp.
+
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which
+the fear of contagion had left open.
+
+"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."
+
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.
+
+"Haul it down!" roared the mate.
+
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.
+
+About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
+and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
+bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed
+nothing more frightful.
+
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
+By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
+rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
+rites, were dropped into the ocean.
+
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
+but the captain did not again go down to them.
+
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
+it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
+to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered
+decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their
+den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was
+out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the
+defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the
+emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly
+painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
+their own salvation.
+
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
+clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
+they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
+quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
+
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
+an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
+very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
+and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard
+against contagion.
+
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds
+and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
+prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest
+had been so often heard.
+
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
+that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
+
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the
+third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor,
+and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward
+supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
+brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers.
+All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed
+elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of
+another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
+swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair
+of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at
+least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
+this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in
+rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
+
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
+rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
+and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
+one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
+father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
+death, both mothers and babes survived.
+
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
+the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
+the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
+fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
+and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
+Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
+white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
+boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
+
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
+down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft;
+and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing
+the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and
+regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of
+late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of
+them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage,
+with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck,
+I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning
+out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
+three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
+convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied
+under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
+
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the
+fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the
+fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we
+made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for
+New York.
+
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at
+least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or
+children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and
+bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no
+indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality,
+that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and
+bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must
+toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down
+the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
+suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
+few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
+land?
+
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
+nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
+land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
+jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.
+
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative
+on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among
+strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
+
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
+in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon
+the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
+
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any
+one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of
+sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have
+perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would
+you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the
+scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites
+much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his
+behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life
+and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates
+died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in
+theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed,
+without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical
+skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the
+spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly
+discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
+Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
+last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
+
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
+against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who
+had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.
+In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
+the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions;
+supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest
+favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant
+steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
+bulk-head.
+
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.
+
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
+orders upon his arrival in New York.
+
+"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"
+
+"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man
+to be a parson, and pray."
+
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
+the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
+There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
+die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
+seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
+passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
+more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of Me and
+death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
+three-worded sentence!
+
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
+of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
+the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank.
+And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
+of the Highlander's calamity.
+
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes
+of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances
+of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate
+unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention
+at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
+light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
+
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.
+
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes
+of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive
+it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have
+God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with
+them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is
+no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we
+waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come
+hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.
+
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
+
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
+lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain
+of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and
+give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during
+a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to
+place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of
+shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet
+weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and
+let them have an occasional run fore and aft?--There is no law concerning
+these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see
+it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!
+
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them,
+go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet
+barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to
+its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief
+outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is
+striving to make us.
+
+
+
+
+LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck,
+where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping
+the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+
+"Off Cape Cod!"
+
+and in the shore-bloom that came to us--even from that desert of
+sand-hillocks--methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance of the
+rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at
+home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from
+afar.
+
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.
+
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last
+the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into
+all three top-sails.
+
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they
+had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several,
+Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four
+weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
+
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off
+duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering
+port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he
+expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon
+an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on
+deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
+
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were
+like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark
+tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering
+up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place
+at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard--which in reefing is
+accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of
+this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work
+in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would
+yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded
+dominion over the men.
+
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing
+and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his
+reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson,
+whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that
+they are the most profane.
+
+"Haul out to windward!" coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he
+threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped
+to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood
+from his lungs.
+
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong
+from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the
+sea.
+
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.
+
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the
+one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the
+waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an
+order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead
+of that, the next sound that greeted us was, "Bear a hand, and reef
+away, men!" from the mate.
+
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea--and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs--our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
+
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too
+many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching
+and cracking in the sun.
+
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet
+in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be
+sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in
+case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the
+souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of
+survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst
+of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at least of his
+servants escaped to report it.
+
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up
+his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage
+under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their
+secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing
+so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death
+was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits,
+unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to
+their now drawing near to their port.
+
+
+
+
+LX. HOME AT LAST
+
+
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading
+calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly
+towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all
+around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.
+
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air,
+the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue
+sea seemed to flow under them.
+
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient cabin-
+passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered
+around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down
+into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own;
+and turning to Harry, said, "This America's skies must be down in the
+sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also
+behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I
+go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool."
+
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore--the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless
+pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the
+throng.
+
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger
+of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces,
+and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw of wind.
+
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands
+among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a
+realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
+
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied
+round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands
+was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.--A command that was received by
+the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured,
+that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long
+detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore reluctantly
+complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following them, went old
+pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the sea was strewn
+with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the waves--couches for
+all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things of this sort,
+tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New York,
+drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten
+Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated
+upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces,
+and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water.
+And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced them
+to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then
+fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that by
+evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that the
+Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus,
+some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall not get
+a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
+
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the
+forts.
+
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a
+glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with
+aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses
+brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander
+was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
+
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and
+like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
+
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag,
+denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of
+the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world,
+taint the air with the streamings of their f ever-flag.
+
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were
+now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that they
+thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
+
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced
+the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail
+boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black
+rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately
+old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we
+caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
+
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what
+home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems
+to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you
+swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+
+"And that" said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a shark,
+showed tiers of teeth, "that, ladies, is a line-of-battle-ship, the
+North Carolina."
+
+"Oh, dear!"--and "Oh my!"--ejaculated the ladies, and--"Lord, save us,"
+responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
+
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor,
+fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of
+which was now worth a broad manor in England.
+
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were
+all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning. But
+nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like "Hail Columbia!" his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.
+
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and
+gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
+
+At sunrise, we warped into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a
+maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a
+rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd
+of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to
+embrace them.
+
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and
+the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.
+
+
+
+
+LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+
+
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted
+old ship, but the mate and the rats.
+
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond
+all doubt--like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the
+night, and no starb-o-leens ahoy! would annoy us again.
+
+"All night in! think of that, Harry, my friend!"
+
+"Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think I
+may now sleep as long as I please."
+
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+
+"I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers," cried
+Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds.
+"No! they will not come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look at my hand
+once, Wellingborough!"
+
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a
+rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+
+"Never mind, Harry," said I--"You know the ladies of the east steep the
+tips of their fingers in some golden dye."
+
+"And by Plutus," cried Harry--"I'd steep mine up to the armpits in gold;
+since you talk about that. But never mind, I'll swear I'm just from
+Persia, my boy."
+
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once,
+I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by
+one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat
+cakes.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what will you have?"--said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.
+
+"Gentlemen!" whispered Harry to me--"gentlemen!--hear him!--I say now,
+Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By
+heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:--Coffee and hot rolls," he added
+aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, "and fellow--come back--bring us a
+venison-steak."
+
+"Haven't got it, gentlemen."
+
+"Ham and eggs," suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.
+
+But the butter!
+
+"Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?"
+
+"Don't say a word,"--said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast "I'm
+going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so
+long as I live."
+
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold,
+bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
+
+"Now," said Harry, "lead on; and let's see something of these United
+States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the Great
+Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here, take my
+arm;--lead on."
+
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded
+me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the
+Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
+
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady's
+butcher's bill was not very large.
+
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned
+up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened
+during my absence.
+
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other,
+gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled
+my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+
+Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and
+strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a
+creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets
+seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found
+him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his pocket.
+
+"Where am I going to dine, this day week?"--he slowly said. "What's to be
+done, Wellingborough?"
+
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing
+a little cheering myself; even though I had got home again. But no more
+about that.
+
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and
+in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best
+for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:--Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry
+full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a
+small quota to the general entertainment.
+
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to
+retire for life on the profits of my first voyage; but nevertheless, I
+thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable
+things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as
+the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off
+the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board, with the rest.
+We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found myself, after an
+interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
+
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the
+Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes--beautiful sight!--paid them their wages.
+
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars
+coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in
+restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and
+who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy
+dollars as his due.
+
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was
+worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American "mitts." Only
+seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that
+stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only L5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.
+
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the
+old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing
+all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they
+would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:--the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper--I think it was the Herald--threw his leg over
+one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all
+parts of the world.
+
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
+
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+
+"Well, where do you come from? Who are you, pray? and what do you want?
+Steward, show these young gentlemen out."
+
+"I want my money," said Harry.
+
+"My wages are due," said I.
+
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us,
+letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+
+"Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry, enraged at his impudence--"I tell you what
+it is, Captain Riga; this won't do--where's the rhino?"
+
+"Captain Riga," added I, "do you not remember, that about four months
+ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this
+very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I
+have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank you for
+my pay."
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember," said the captain. "Mr. Jones! Ha! ha! I remember
+Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--you, too, are the son
+of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not your great-uncle
+a barber?"
+
+"No!" thundered I.
+
+"Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen--be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see," turning over his accounts--"Hum, hum!--yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
+dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?"
+
+"So it seems, sir," said I, with staring eyes.
+
+"And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the
+yards, Monsieur Redburn."
+
+Owe him! thought I--what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my
+resentment; and presently he said, "By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and
+as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers,
+seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me
+in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank you for the
+money;" and he extended his open palm across the desk.
+
+"Shall I pitch into him?" whispered Harry.
+
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of
+my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that
+he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were
+in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I could not
+help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit,
+for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
+
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be
+munificent. Peace to his dinners.
+
+"Mr. Bolton, I believe," said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. "Mr. Bolton, you also shipped for three dollars per month: and
+you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have
+been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half,
+Mr. Bolton; and here it is;" handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+
+"And this," said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, "this
+is the reward of my long and faithful services!"
+
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+"There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse,
+and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir."
+
+"Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again," said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.
+
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of
+his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried Pshaw! and that was the last of it.
+
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck,
+engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf,
+loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined
+for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw
+very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it
+turned out.
+
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage
+against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses--such as
+indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished,
+without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way, and
+without speaking to the sailors on the subject--by this, and kindred
+actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole
+ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name
+unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
+
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.
+
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon
+the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat--but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.
+
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the "Irish cockney," was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+gentlemen alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side
+next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about,
+presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute
+to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened
+to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared
+the ship.
+
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only
+lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
+
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so
+clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the
+wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated
+"The Flashes." And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among
+his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their
+looks, that his customers were "flush," and would spend their money
+freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+
+It was a touching scene.
+
+"Well, maties," said one of them, at last--"I spose we shan't see each
+other again:--come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and drink to
+the last voyage!"
+
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked
+his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as
+much as to say--"Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your
+liquor;--help yourselves, your honors."
+
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them
+all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared
+in couples, through the several doorways; for "The Flashes" was on a
+corner.
+
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+"Good-by, God bless you," is heard for every "How d'ye do, welcome, my
+boy"--then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most
+hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves,
+they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to
+and fro.
+
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood
+on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+
+"They are gone," said I.
+
+"Thank heaven!" said Harry.
+
+
+
+
+LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat
+on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub--oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?
+
+"I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry," said I, "he's
+a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know."
+
+"No doubt of it," said Harry, looking hopeless.
+
+"And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon."
+
+"And I am sorry enough myself," said Harry, looking very sincere.
+
+"But I will be soon back again, I doubt not," said I.
+
+"Perhaps so," said Harry, shaking his head. "How far is it off?"
+
+"Only a hundred and eighty miles," said I.
+
+"A hundred and eighty miles!" said Harry, drawing the words out like an
+endless ribbon. "Why, I couldn't walk that in a month."
+
+"Now, my dear friend," said I, "take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well."
+
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad,
+that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both
+gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he
+stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on
+the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play
+of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we
+parted. I never saw Harry again.
+
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:--I pass over this; and will conclude my first
+voyage by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks;
+during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter,
+now spread before me.
+
+"Dear Redburn--Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After
+you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified,
+are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
+get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
+melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
+those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars,
+but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times
+after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had
+permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her
+closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know,
+but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared
+he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in
+South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made
+inquiries among them; but without success. And this, I am heartily
+grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his
+melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a
+whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You
+must come down yourself, and help me seek him out."
+
+This! letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to
+the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered to
+think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him
+all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must
+indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter
+experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
+
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
+whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's crew
+that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
+
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
+Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
+to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that
+the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally
+bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him why he had
+abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of ships.
+
+"We had hardly been out three months," said he, "when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next day
+lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered
+the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a
+whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard
+time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son, and when you
+could coax him to it, he sang like a bird."
+
+"What was his name?" said I, trembling with expectation; "what kind of
+eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?"
+
+"Harry Bolton was not your brother?" cried the stranger, starting.
+
+Harry Bolton!
+
+It was even he!
+
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, My
+First Voyage--which here I end.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+This file should be named 7redb10.txt or 7redb10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7redb11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7redb10a.txt
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext05
+
+Or /etext04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92,
+91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+ PROJECT GUTENBERG LITERARY ARCHIVE FOUNDATION
+ 809 North 1500 West
+ Salt Lake City, UT 84116
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/7redb10.zip b/old/7redb10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40616b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/7redb10.zip
diff --git a/old/8118-8.txt b/old/8118-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4173172
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8118-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12669 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Redburn. His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Posting Date: April 13, 2014 [EBook #8118]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+First Posted: June 27, 2003
+[Last Updated: May 20, 2018]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Project Gutenberg volunteers from the HTML
+version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+REDBURN.
+
+HIS FIRST VOYAGE
+
+by
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE
+
+Being the Sailor Boy
+
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+
+In the Merchant Navy
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND
+         BRED IN HIM
+     II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+    III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+     IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+      V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS
+         UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+     VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN,
+         AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+    VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+   VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES
+         SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+     IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH
+         THEM
+      X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE
+         BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+     XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+    XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+   XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS
+         MIND
+    XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+     XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+    XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+   XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+  XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+         DREAM BOOK
+    XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+     XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD
+         OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+    XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+   XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+  XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+   XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY
+    XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+   XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+  XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+ XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+   XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+         SAILORS
+    XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH
+         OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
+   XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH
+         THE TOWN
+  XXXII. THE DOCKS
+ XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+  XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+   XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+ XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+  XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+     XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+    XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+   XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+  XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+         ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+   XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+         CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+    XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+   XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+  XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+ XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+   XLIX. CARLO
+      L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+     LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+    LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+   LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+    LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+    LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD
+         CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
+   LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+  LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE
+         AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+    LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+     LX. HOME AT LAST
+    LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+   LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+
+
+I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN
+HIM
+
+
+"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will
+save the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts,
+stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets."
+
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.
+
+"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money, and
+you want an outfit, and I have none to give, you may as well take my
+fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can get.--Nay,
+take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more."
+
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
+York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:
+
+"FOR BREMEN.
+
+"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
+cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."
+
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
+suggested volumes of thought.
+
+A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
+with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+
+Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
+different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
+green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before
+our house on the bank.
+
+Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting
+ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling
+me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which
+my river experience was familiar.
+
+"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date the
+fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
+an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
+so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+
+"For freight or passage apply on board!"
+
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking
+passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
+foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
+who talked French.
+
+"Coenties Slip."
+
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
+Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
+with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and
+chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much
+abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and
+out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
+residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
+large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
+remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
+woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their
+crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
+sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
+
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
+Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered
+sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me
+of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like
+twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the
+ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my
+thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old
+lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked
+streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially
+I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and
+Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
+Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
+school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned
+over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them
+to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots
+looked so manly.
+
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
+into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
+fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and
+down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to
+look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a man
+myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as
+the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+
+"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big, because
+when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once
+caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."
+
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am
+sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I
+wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she
+said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this
+wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and several
+times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown still
+larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
+
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
+foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We
+had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
+from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
+grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
+could be doing with themselves now.
+
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.
+
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.
+
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
+castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
+
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
+than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
+used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
+them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
+
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
+
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
+and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a
+great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats
+sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
+
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
+brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
+with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
+doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had been
+printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library
+edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and
+many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there
+was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I
+would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight
+along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to
+every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk
+French, as he sometimes did to a servant we had.
+
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that
+he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed;
+for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a
+foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in America.
+
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
+bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
+other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
+entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
+hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
+no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
+my subsequent rovings.
+
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days of
+the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
+
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of
+my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
+tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
+admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and
+delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many of
+whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see the
+ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which they
+were accustomed to give it.
+
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and
+often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was
+inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,
+that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little,
+I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break
+the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something
+wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in
+want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of
+insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order
+to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind
+to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that,
+the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and
+until I should recover my reason.
+
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
+it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd's
+ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands,
+full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to
+dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever
+thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost a hundred
+years.
+
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
+ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
+till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
+people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
+little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
+like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
+the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little chaps,
+and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for all
+that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
+oath.
+
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
+over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
+was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the
+cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
+steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of
+glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;
+while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
+quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
+head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
+
+The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
+dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
+whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
+and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till
+I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in
+the world.
+
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
+
+So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not
+have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat,
+lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea
+under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get
+on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my
+sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I
+left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.
+
+
+
+II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+
+
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with
+me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I
+was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that
+had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time;
+all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early
+age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.
+
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing
+patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take
+none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as
+December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is
+no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth
+of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter enough
+even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must be
+uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let me go on
+with my story.
+
+"Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can," murmured I, as
+she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my safe
+arrival in New York.
+
+"And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I'll be back in four months--it will be autumn then, and
+we'll go into the woods after nuts, an I'll tell you all about Europe.
+Good-by! good-by!"
+
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage advice
+above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning me
+again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I would;
+for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself, when he
+sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,--he
+was in ill health then,--and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and
+the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with
+comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I
+thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your
+hand!
+
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel
+all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen;
+and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with
+him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never again can such
+blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave such a scar
+that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a hard and cruel
+thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be
+reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become
+bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before
+and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and
+not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
+
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.
+
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain's office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day, owing
+to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to pay
+for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a dollar
+did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat was off,
+and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing to any
+body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged
+on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If I
+had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them of
+my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain's clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on my
+leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his object
+in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and silent,
+and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have spoken and
+told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my dollar, and
+then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He did not wait a
+great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff voice, very unlike
+his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar party, demanded my
+ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded the money; and upon
+my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry voice that attracted
+all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the storm. The devil in me
+then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my frame, till it tingled
+at my finger ends; and I muttered out my resolution to stay where I was,
+in such a manner, that the ticket man faltered back. "There's a dollar
+for you," I added, offering it.
+
+"I want two," said he.
+
+"Take that or nothing," I answered; "it is all I have."
+
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that
+such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the
+buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon me.
+
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I
+pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man,
+with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his,
+gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him, and he
+looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming, he
+pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead. I
+then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.
+
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range,
+for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons
+starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at that
+time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac feelings,
+of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have been,
+indeed; and much more than that.
+
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle,
+marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was
+wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+
+Such is boyhood.
+
+
+
+
+III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+
+
+From the boat's bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother's directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John's Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a drink
+of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were playing
+dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They winked, and
+asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy day, but I
+only gulped down my water and stalked off.
+
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother's friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+
+"What do you want?" said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+
+"I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor."
+
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing
+who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his
+fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me
+that day.
+
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, and returning to the table, found that the interval
+had been well improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler was spread and
+I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil that had been
+tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till at last I
+entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.
+
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to
+bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly
+believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal's.
+
+Next day, my brother's friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get
+me a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very handsome
+one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an elegant looking
+mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort of sideboard
+some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was only Britannia
+ware highly polished.
+
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.
+
+"Good morning, sir," said my friend.
+
+"Good morning, good morning, sir," said the captain. "Steward, chairs
+for the gentlemen."
+
+"Oh! never mind, sir," said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his extreme
+civility. "I merely called to see whether you want a fine young lad to
+go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a sailor; and
+his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one voyage, and see
+how he likes it."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+"He's a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?" added he, affectionately patting my head. "It's a hard life, though;
+a hard life."
+
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin,
+and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying to
+frighten me, and I answered, "Well, sir, I am ready to try it."
+
+"I hope he's a country lad, sir," said the captain to my friend, "these
+city boys are sometimes hard cases."
+
+"Oh! yes, he's from the country," was the reply, "and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator."
+
+"But his great-uncle don't want to go to sea too?" said the captain,
+looking funny.
+
+"Oh! no, oh, no!--Ha! ha!"
+
+"Ha! ha!" echoed the captain.
+
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.
+
+"Well, my lad," said the captain, "I suppose you know we haven't any
+pastures and cows on board; you can't get any milk at sea, you know."
+
+"Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven't."
+
+"Yes," cried my friend, "his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business."
+
+"Embassador extraordinary?" said the captain, looking funny again.
+
+"Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant."
+
+"Ah! indeed;" said the captain, looking grave and bland again, "then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?"
+
+"Certainly," said my friend, "and he's only going to sea for the humor
+of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he will go
+to sea as a sailor."
+
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five)
+was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the
+kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of creating
+a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.
+
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour
+with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome
+captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that he himself
+would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for the privilege.
+
+"Ah!" said my friend, "that reminds me of business. Pray, captain, how
+much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?"
+
+"Well," said the captain, looking grave and profound, "we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that's your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!--Upon my soul, a fine sounding name."
+
+"Why, captain," said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, "that won't
+pay for his clothing."
+
+"But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that," replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.
+
+"Oh! yes, I forgot that," said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish. "His
+friends will of course see to that."
+
+"Of course," said the captain smiling.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+
+"You are quite a sportsman I see," said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand opportunity
+to befriend me.
+
+"Yes, he's quite a sportsman," said he, "he's got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It's cheap."
+
+"Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations," said the captain,
+"so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England."
+
+"Yes, perhaps that would be better, after all," said my friend,
+pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. "Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?"
+
+"Only three dollars a month," said the captain.
+
+"And I believe," said my friend, "that you generally give something in
+advance, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices," said the
+captain, with a bow, "but in this case, as the boy has rich relations,
+there will be no need of that, you know."
+
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that it
+would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
+
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and
+as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, "Well,
+Redburn, my boy, you won't get home-sick before you sail, because that
+will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea."
+
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times,
+and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with
+a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my
+shooting-jacket. And so we left.
+
+
+
+
+IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+
+
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and
+there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I
+was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in
+a great flapping sou'wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy
+monkey-jacket, "Twig his coat, d'ye see the buttons, that chap ain't
+going to sea in a merchantman, he's going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty--look here--how d'ye sell them big buttons by the pound?"
+
+"Give us one for a saucer, will ye?" said another.
+
+"Let the youngster alone," said a third. "Come here, my little boy, has
+your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?"
+
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of
+the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they
+can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried
+to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my
+name and beat a retreat.
+
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day
+I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece
+for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street
+with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a
+hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a
+strange-looking shop, with three gilded balls hanging over it.
+
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to
+him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told him
+that was just what I wanted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will not
+try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, "I thought it was a
+better article, it's very old."
+
+"Not," said I, starting in surprise, "it's not been used more than three
+times; what will you give for it?"
+
+"We don't buy any thing here," said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, "this is a place where people pawn things." Pawn being a
+word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he
+replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their
+fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+
+"And pray," said I, "how much will you let me have for my gun, by way of
+a pawn?"
+
+"Well, I suppose it's worth six dollars, and seeing you're a boy, I'll
+let you have three dollars upon it."
+
+"No," exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, "it's worth five times
+that, I'll go somewhere else."
+
+"Good morning, then," said he, "I hope you'll do better," and he bowed
+me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.
+
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging over
+a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of picket-fence,
+running all along from end to end, and three little holes, with three
+little old men standing inside of them, like prisoners looking out of a
+jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of things, piled up and
+labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and swords, and canes, and
+chests, and planes, and books, and writing-desks, and every thing else.
+And in a glass case were lots of watches, and seals, chains, and rings,
+and breastpins, and all kinds of trinkets. At one of the little holes,
+earnestly talking with one of the hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a
+faded silk gown and shawl, holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I
+drew near, she spoke lower in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and
+looked cross and rude; and then some more words were exchanged over a
+miniature, and some money was passed through the hole, and the woman and
+child shrank out of the door.
+
+I won't sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young man
+in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust through
+to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that came
+along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety of
+fish.
+
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, "one
+dollar."
+
+"What about one dollar?" said I.
+
+"That's all I'll give," he replied.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" and he turned to the next person. This was a
+young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.
+
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, "None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don't deal in them things here."
+
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who
+had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his
+pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+
+"Where did you get this ring?" said the pawnbroker.
+
+"I want to pawn it," whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+
+"What's your name?" said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+
+"How much will you give?" whispered the other in reply, leaning over,
+and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a
+little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket;
+all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question which
+embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain number
+in Broadway.
+
+"That's the City Hotel: you don't live there," said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+
+"Oh! well," stammered the other blushing scarlet, "I thought this was
+only a sort of form to go through; I don't like to tell where I do live,
+for I ain't in the habit of going to pawnbrokers."
+
+"You stole that ring, you know you did," roared out the hook-nosed man,
+incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man's character for life. "I'm a good mind to call a
+constable; we don't take stolen goods here, I tell you."
+
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man; who
+looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a night-cap,
+with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the
+pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.
+
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more from
+them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a great
+many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular occasion for
+mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and rich, to treat
+people so cavalierly.
+
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the
+curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.
+
+"Ought to have taken it when you could get it," he replied. "I won't
+give but two dollars and a half for it now."
+
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money
+and departed.
+
+
+
+
+V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS
+BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+
+
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my
+promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in
+buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which
+I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and two
+or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny left, so I
+walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into the water.
+The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost desperate
+again, and didn't care what became of me. But if the penny had been a
+dollar, I would have kept it.
+
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones', and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I
+had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and
+thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so
+bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward, when I
+expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very keen,
+and I said to myself, "Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can, for this
+may be the last supper you will have."
+
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a
+towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and
+then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see what
+sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got into the
+shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about the face, which I found
+was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool upon my skin. After that, I
+took a pair of scissors and went to cutting my hair, which was very
+long. I thought every little would help, in making me a light hand to
+run aloft.
+
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the house
+with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate again.
+
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to sea
+that day.
+
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to
+Mr. Jones' again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So
+I concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+
+"What do you want, Pillgarlic?" said he.
+
+"I've shipped to sail in this ship," I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+
+"What for? a tailor?" said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+
+I answered that I was going as a "boy;" for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.
+
+"Well," said he, "have you got your traps aboard?"
+
+I told him I didn't know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn't
+brought any "trap."
+
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.
+
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn't be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.
+
+"Where's your clothes?" said he.
+
+"Here in my bundle," said I, holding it up.
+
+"Well if that's all you've got," he cried, "you'd better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that's the
+place you'll live in aboard here."
+
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow of
+the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him for
+a light.
+
+"Strike your eyes together and make one," said he, "we don't have any
+lights here." So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which smelt
+so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After waiting
+patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last perceived
+I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes stuck round the
+sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which I at once
+supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that method of
+appropriating their "Trunks," as I afterward found these boxes were
+called. And so it turned out.
+
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my
+bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that
+the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and
+walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the
+forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary, and went into
+a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on, and not looking
+very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better place, for fear of
+being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel very hungry; and
+seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think what a fool I had
+been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but a penny
+apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never saw
+doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in, and
+ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little by
+drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere that this was a good
+plan to follow in a case like the present. I did not feel thirsty, but
+only hungry; so had much ado to get down the water; for it tasted warm;
+and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the negro had been drinking some
+spirits out of it just before.
+
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some more
+water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop twice, till
+night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it had been
+raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could not help
+thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in that damp
+and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to lie on but
+the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such thoughts, I
+gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough outside and
+in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I had just been
+eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward I
+unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon as
+he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a
+curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew
+not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me he
+was an English boy, from Lancashire.
+
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last
+voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work
+very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to work his passage back.
+
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but
+found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I
+asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn't
+traveled any in America and didn't know any thing about the rivers here.
+And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he showed no
+surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times more
+stupid than before.
+
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best to
+get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud, for
+me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the place,
+my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt damp and
+clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening to the
+Lancashire boy's snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to go on
+deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would never come.
+
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left the
+ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But this
+made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy;
+and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a
+heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally
+myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off.
+Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my friend's
+house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it was, only
+it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk in such a
+state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND
+SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+
+
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the rigging,
+and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and went
+to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the captain
+came up the side, and began to order about both of them.
+
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father's, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, "Do you think we
+take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking at
+sea; don't let the 'old man' see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can."
+
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty of
+tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as a
+tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me
+feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus,
+for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief
+mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him, would have
+knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.
+
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great
+hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with
+you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you,
+with that shooting-jacket!"
+
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.
+
+"A sailor!" he cried, "a barber's clerk, you mean; you going out in the
+ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn't been
+shipping any more greenhorns like you--he'll make a shipwreck of it if he
+has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few dollars in seamen's
+wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of farmers and
+clodhoppers and baby-boys. What's your name, Pillgarlic?"
+
+"Redburn," said I.
+
+"A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it; haven't
+you got any other?"
+
+"Wellingborough," said I.
+
+"Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn't they call you Jack,
+or Jill, or something short and handy. But I'll baptize you over again.
+D'ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is Buttons. And now do you go,
+Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d'ye hear;
+there's them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now."
+
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?
+
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey orders,
+and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel, or spade,
+or something else to work with.
+
+"We don't dig gardens here," was the reply; "dig it out with your
+teeth!"
+
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen,
+which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the "jolly-boat,"
+was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them almost close
+together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck. I managed to
+crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins against the
+seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along to the stern,
+where the pig-pen was.
+
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to
+his comrades, "Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you 'bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say."
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal
+ashore.
+
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I found
+it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as it
+looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as well
+as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a dry
+spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed with
+an oath, "Didn't I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else? Do
+what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!"
+
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was
+my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me
+why he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this, he
+flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his order
+like a clap of thunder.
+
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave reasons
+for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they command it,
+so that the motto is, "Obey orders, though you break owners."
+
+I now began to feel very faint and sick again, and longed for the ship
+to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be having
+something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on board, and as
+for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they were
+"riggers," that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day in getting
+ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for yielding to
+the kind blandishment of one of these riggers, I had swapped away my
+jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own, thinking to secure
+a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my chance, and while
+people's backs were turned, I seized a carrot from several bunches lying
+on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my shooting-jacket, went
+forward to eat it; for I had often eaten raw carrots, which taste
+something like chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me a good deal, though
+at the expense of a little pain in my stomach. Hardly had I disposed of
+it, when I heard the chief mate's voice crying out for "Buttons." I ran
+after him, and received an order to go aloft and "slush down the
+main-top mast."
+
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring
+about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the mate had
+turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I followed after
+him, and asked what I must do.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?" he shouted.
+
+"You did," said I, "but I don't know what that means."
+
+"Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!" he exclaimed to himself. "A
+fine time I'll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you, youngster.
+Look up to that long pole there--d'ye see it? that piece of a tree there,
+you timber-head--well--take this bucket here, and go up the rigging--that
+rope-ladder there--do you understand?--and dab this slush all over the
+mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls on deck. Be off now,
+Buttons."
+
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to
+ascend a ship's mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have
+felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint,
+the bare thought appalled me.
+
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I could
+not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of food; so
+rallying again, I took up the bucket.
+
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of it
+was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several times
+about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and slipping
+off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the "top," the
+clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about between my
+legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the "top," I came
+to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that overhanging
+impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much
+straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the "top;" and then,
+trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road
+was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was obliged
+to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more. I only
+recollect my safe return to the deck.
+
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage passengers,
+besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor,
+and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board
+but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in
+Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in
+the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt
+in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats and
+swaggered on deck, "it's your turn now, but it will be mine before long.
+Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I'll do the yawing after the
+anchor's up."
+
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on
+board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped
+him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their
+appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of their
+drink.
+
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner
+fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my
+long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with eating
+and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and potatoes which
+the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and though this left the
+whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found that I could eat little
+or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint, but not hungry.
+
+
+
+
+VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+
+
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and all
+hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could not
+help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they suffered
+from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in which they
+had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors breathe
+nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all alive and
+hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.
+
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south point
+of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor's Island, and
+pointed right out for the Narrows.
+
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then,
+there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.
+
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be forced
+to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the Atlantic
+Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability he ever
+would.
+
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my
+heavy-heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the
+first day of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must
+elapse before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might happen
+to me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and thought how
+often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure enough that some
+luckless day or other, I would certainly fall overboard and be drowned.
+And then, I thought of lying down at the bottom of the sea, stark alone,
+with the great waves rolling over me, and no one in the wide world
+knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it
+must be, to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny
+south side of our village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to
+walk after church in the afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now;
+yes, dead and buried in that churchyard. All the time my eyes were
+filled with tears, and I kept holding my breath, to choke down the sobs,
+for indeed I could not help feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in
+the world would have felt just as I did then.
+
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so many
+beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the beautiful
+fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing if instead
+of sailing out of the bay, we were only coming into it; if we had
+crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and my heart
+leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really entering
+that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant, that it
+seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
+again.
+
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
+sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about
+the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how
+that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the
+ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square
+where they lived; and how that they would have a good dinner ready, and
+plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I say this kind of
+talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider, as I did, that
+before any thing like that could happen, we must cross the great
+Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back again, many
+thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this much
+I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to the
+Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used words
+that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind to
+me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
+
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.
+
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like this
+of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not a
+soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great Atlantic
+Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down to the
+water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly believe,
+as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or any place
+like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed
+too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
+really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
+farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away
+beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of
+steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land
+behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy;
+and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who
+could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many
+times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never
+dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a
+marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
+by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
+credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever
+sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water
+line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was
+too wonderful to believe.
+
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
+quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
+all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
+Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with
+white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and
+who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain
+Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
+Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle,
+because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white
+hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me,
+that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one
+visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the White Sea some years
+after.
+
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water was
+a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this grove, in
+a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the fort, dark as
+night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults, twisting and
+turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of green grass and
+sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in the middle of the
+castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing, or ruminating
+under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf frisking about, and
+trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy
+ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides
+of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long
+beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on
+the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a
+ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and
+though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as
+ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh,
+and have as great a memory as he must have had. Yes, the fort was a
+beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to build a little cottage
+in the middle of it, and live there all my life. It was noon-day when I
+was there, in the month of June, and there was little wind to stir the
+trees, and every thing looked as if it was waiting for something, and
+the sky overhead was blue as my mother's eye, and I was so glad and
+happy then. But I must not think of those delightful days, before my
+father became a bankrupt, and died, and we removed from the city; for
+when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost
+strangles me.
+
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful
+fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now, with
+what it was when with my father and uncle I went there so long ago. Then
+I never thought of working for my living, and never knew that there were
+hard hearts in the world; and knew so little of money, that when I
+bought a stick of candy, and laid down a sixpence, I thought the
+confectioner returned five cents, only that I might have money to buy
+something else, and not because the pennies were my change, and
+therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and had
+vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in the
+city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she used
+to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was the
+ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some boys
+who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.
+
+About sunset we got fairly "outside," and well may it so be called; for
+I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left
+us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat, who
+to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of the
+captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart talking
+with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave him some
+newspapers.
+
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the
+little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell to
+me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got into
+the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the schooner
+made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and waving
+their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of America.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME
+OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+
+
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on
+the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were
+going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a
+stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate's turn
+came to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it
+was not me;--no; and I noticed, as they went on choosing, one after the
+other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so much as
+looked at me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into their
+faces, for it was dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves away so
+in their jackets. But the sailors, especially the stout good-looking
+ones, seemed to make a point of lounging as much out of the way as
+possible, and slouching their hats over their eyes; and although it may
+only be a fancy of mine, I certainly thought that they affected a sort
+of lordly indifference as to whose watch they were going to be in; and
+did not think it worth while to look any way anxious about the matter.
+And the very men who, a few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity
+and promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at the
+word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if
+they were quite sure, that by this time the officers must know who the
+best men were, and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to
+put the officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were
+worth having, they were worth seeking.
+
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate's next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+I was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next column,
+like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.
+
+"Well, Buttons," said the chief mate, "I thought I'd got rid of you. And
+as it is, Mr. Rigs," he added, speaking to the second mate, "I guess you
+had better take him into your watch;--there, I'll let you have him, and
+then you'll be one stronger than me."
+
+"No, I thank you," said Mr. Rigs.
+
+"You had better," said the chief mate--"see, he's not a bad looking
+chap--he's a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself, you
+know, Rigs."
+
+"No, I thank you," said the second mate again. "Take him yourself--he's
+yours by good rights--I don't want him." And so they put me in the chief
+mate's division, that is the larboard watch.
+
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood, just
+like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing that
+had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what I had
+come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.
+
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-"You, Bill?" and Bill answered, "Sir?" just as if the second mate
+was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man in such
+a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had been
+quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him Mr. Rigs
+during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this Mr. Rigs was a great
+merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very
+long in finding out, that at sea all officers are Misters, and would
+take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them so.
+And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be called sir when
+addressed--Yes, sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir; and they are as particular
+about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though their titles
+are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in
+England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his titles are the
+only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish life
+indeed. He is not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the
+chief mate occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the
+cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine,
+and sup off the leavings of the cabin table, and even the steward, who
+is accountable to nobody but the captain, sometimes treats him
+cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails are reefed; and put
+his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the
+boatswain's locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
+seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing
+many other things, which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather
+die and give up his title than stand.
+
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could not
+eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked to
+have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.
+
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to tea aboard of a
+ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we were told
+it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from eight
+o'clock till midnight.
+
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
+matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the
+head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of
+the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses very
+civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and spend the
+night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said something about my
+mother not being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
+that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare to take such
+a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of blasphemy, and it seemed
+like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets of my soul, for at
+that time the name of mother was the center of all my heart's finest
+feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my
+being.
+
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
+the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
+his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
+hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
+and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
+his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in his
+broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook,
+which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
+men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came along.
+He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking
+fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a new silk
+handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones
+of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear white
+duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and a tarpaulin hat
+bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon streaming behind,
+and getting entangled every now and then in the rigging; and he had gold
+anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one of his fingers, which was
+very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other work on board ship.
+I thought he might better have left his jewelry at home.
+
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
+from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
+how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
+he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
+about, and go to bed again, and get up again--there was no telling how
+many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his country,
+he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland baby was
+sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said to be a day
+old.
+
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
+that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
+which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
+wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
+only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book meant
+to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean; but
+this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till I saw this
+Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland, only made
+me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from Greenland to
+be in my company? Why was he not at home among the icebergs, and how
+could he stand a warm summer's sun, and not be melted away? Besides,
+instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and he
+did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge muff; things,
+which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all Greenlanders.
+
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the
+night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor and
+cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back with a brown
+jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the
+brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it, for it
+smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be full of Jamaica
+spirits.
+
+"Now, Buttons," said he, "one little dose of this will be better for you
+than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or
+eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast."
+
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples
+about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not
+ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which
+my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept
+the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him. There was
+three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he brought in his
+accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove on the
+river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him
+as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the
+side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits would
+now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that when I
+signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert a little
+clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness. And I
+would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in future; and
+then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking their
+pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with me. And a hard
+thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken; especially as
+the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth
+so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had
+become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could
+really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the
+Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off
+with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long,
+for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed
+overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the spirits
+I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could have had
+a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well, and perhaps
+much better. But that was not to be had at that time of night, or,
+indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called coffee, which was
+given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious tasting
+drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as it did like
+lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally as cold as lemonade, and
+I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and dropt ice into his coffee.
+But what was more curious still, was the different quality and taste of
+it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a
+decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very salty, as if
+some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and then again it
+would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his
+cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it
+would have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some
+old stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made
+of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always remained a
+mystery; for when at work at his vocation, our old cook used to keep
+himself close shut-up in his caboose, a little cook-house, and never
+told any of his secrets.
+
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for
+all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don't believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico's in New York. It was well for him that
+he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing
+his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at one of
+his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him. What
+induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out; but I
+suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some real
+estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have; and
+though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding
+another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in
+the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that
+respect as before.
+
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I did;
+and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for breaking
+my bond, which I would not have done except in case of necessity. But
+the evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion whatever, was
+witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened the way to
+subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet carried no
+apology with them.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+
+
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather cloudy,
+it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to
+count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it was not
+very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth as a
+sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held so
+steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes, and
+scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a lighted
+long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but few words
+to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of thinking to
+attend to, which in truth is the case with most seamen the first night
+out of port, especially when they have thrown away their money in
+foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For when
+ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in their
+way, as the sailors they command.
+
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
+mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
+It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a little
+higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began pulling
+upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no words to it,
+only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark night, and
+far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and made me feel as
+I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin of mine, with
+black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the piano. I almost
+looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit afraid. But I soon
+got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without
+it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling,
+whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the
+mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and
+raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every
+man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull
+as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure
+the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing
+in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it
+from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates.
+Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can
+sing out at a rope.
+
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
+and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
+about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and
+I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a
+volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most struck me
+was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each other, and
+would fall into long and violent disputes about who was keeping the Foul
+Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether the King of
+Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the bar-maid of a
+particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes; with many other
+mooted points of that sort.
+
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
+chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
+to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle ashore;
+and also by way of tapering off, as I mentioned a little while ago. But
+I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them,
+instead of spirits and cigars.
+
+Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter at
+a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the Temperance
+Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did afterward upon
+the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I declined; with a good
+deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that the cigars were real
+genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he said, and had them made
+there under his own eye. According to his account, he was very
+particular about his cigars and other things, and never made any
+importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself
+direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he
+wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats,
+to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his
+cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he
+would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his halter; the wit of
+which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is
+the best; though that is not wit which needs explaining.
+
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
+united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
+biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck before
+the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness, and
+finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
+themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing on
+earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
+pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and another
+ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived their
+true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a parcel of
+wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction to
+associate with them.
+
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but more
+with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind
+dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made
+outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for
+the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if
+they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a
+church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called them strayed lambs
+from the fold, and compared them to poor lost children, babes in the
+wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors' Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
+seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their
+latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good sailors
+among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on deck apart
+from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them: so I did not
+disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at discovering that
+he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.
+
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men went
+into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take a
+"swig at the halyards," as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them "to taper off" handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then. Yet
+this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to them,
+then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they turned
+about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
+
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.
+
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
+his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him more
+and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was grateful that
+I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel
+wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing to confess to
+myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors, so much as my
+education, which I had received from others, that had made me the
+upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to be. And it was
+now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction
+in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had previously
+associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there was
+little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with my
+neighbors.
+
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
+upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
+him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
+was far from being vain and conceited.
+
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
+some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
+forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
+astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his--tit for tat,--I inquired
+of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and
+whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to
+the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams;
+and in asking these questions I was particular to address him in a civil
+and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I did not
+deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all things
+together, and not going into particulars. But to my great surprise and
+mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed aloud in my face,
+and called me a "Jimmy Dux," though that was not my real name, and he
+must have known it; and also the "son of a farmer," though as I have
+previously related, my father was a great merchant and French importer
+in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh and joke about
+me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not
+felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much like a
+fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is
+very lucky for people in a passion.
+
+
+
+
+X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
+MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+
+
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
+horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
+came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
+hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
+I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
+
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
+and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
+the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
+uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
+forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
+about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
+ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
+loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
+but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the
+sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into his
+bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
+suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
+the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place,
+and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a
+fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
+
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and
+almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the
+sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I
+been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the Hudson
+River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which
+had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best friends, that is
+to say, my mother and sisters.
+
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
+more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it worse,
+was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they
+took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I had entered
+upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea, and they were
+used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the suicide came
+rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as frightened as I
+did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened still
+plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
+could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by
+them. However, they lay in their bunks smoking, and kept talking on some
+time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin
+my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into
+the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far
+off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of
+sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.
+
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
+and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
+I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.
+And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,
+but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked
+me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread
+out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and
+asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a
+gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like
+nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And
+one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal
+more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,
+for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the
+death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he
+would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with
+an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
+then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they
+could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that
+the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
+night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I
+loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
+heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable
+wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a
+boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked
+within me, but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared
+them to do their worst.
+
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+
+
+
+
+XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+
+
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as
+the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and
+when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The
+men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and
+some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell off like little
+boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was broad day, and an
+order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub was dragged into the
+waist, and then one of the men went over into the chains, and slipped in
+behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and leaning over, began to swing
+a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that way with much
+expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a very
+short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and
+I began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of
+cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told him I thought I would just
+step below, till this miserable wetting was over; for I did not have any
+water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had died of consumption. But he
+only roared out for me to get a broom and go to scrubbing, or he would
+prove a worse consumption to me than ever got hold of my poor aunt. So I
+scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back was almost broke, for the
+brooms had uncommon short handles, and we were told to scrub hard.
+
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of
+water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He must
+have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to
+point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him with full
+buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck,
+with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of a
+scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the
+world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse than
+my mother's house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+
+At eight o'clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend to
+tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I should
+have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for my own
+part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no table to sit
+down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide every
+thing themselves. But so it was.
+
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house
+with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having
+no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little tub
+called a "kid," was passed down into the forecastle, filled with
+something they called "burgoo." This was like mush, made of Indian corn,
+meal, and water. With the "kid," a little tin cannikin was passed down
+with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put the kid
+between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like an old
+landlord mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole in the
+middle of the mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all the world
+like a little black pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other,
+with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after
+stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down
+their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very
+good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I wasn't
+sure.
+
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little
+burgoo toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready open
+to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was about,
+knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned my
+manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn't that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to
+eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon, for
+he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.
+
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But my side was scraped clean, so I got no
+burgoo that morning.
+
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to
+be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard biscuit,
+very sociably, over each other's heads, which was very convenient
+indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first four or five
+days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much about it, only
+it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to bring a fine comb
+and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward over the bulwarks
+every evening.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+
+
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the burgoo, called upon them in a loud voice to cease their
+clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall
+have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I will
+here try to describe him a little.
+
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor. He
+was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have
+on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in
+the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was stuck over
+with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out shoe-brush. His nose
+had broken down in the middle, and he squinted with one eye, and did not
+look very straight out of the other. He dressed a good deal like a
+Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig; wearing a pair of
+great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and three red
+woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject to the rheumatism,
+and was not in good health, he said; and he had a large white wool hat,
+with a broad rolling brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a
+good deal to say about highlanders, and rowdies, whom he denounced as
+only good for the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a
+highlander himself.
+
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was a
+great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict him,
+or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful was,
+that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have no
+doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now, I
+could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with him;
+such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and withal
+was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have run
+from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that
+I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it
+must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no beard,
+and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might have
+seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own account,
+he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he first went
+as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according
+to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation
+and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in
+Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish
+used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel
+and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and
+weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks;
+how he had been in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an English
+cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull, which raked
+through and through a whole file of slaves, that were chained.
+
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
+man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
+got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
+would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their
+money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of
+Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to make him
+point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
+
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.
+
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
+the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
+Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
+out of the world by wasps and hornets.
+
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
+he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
+to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes
+fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable, broken-down
+condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in consequence of
+his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with such malevolence
+as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my mother so thought
+me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my
+low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and,
+spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being
+consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was
+more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will not
+put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even now,
+I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.
+
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his
+eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship's
+helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called
+for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy
+duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming
+them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health,
+he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be
+jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion
+under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids
+will sometimes show.
+
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire
+to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this
+Jackson was a notorious old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all
+things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and
+in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have passed
+unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call him to
+account in any way; or to let him so much as think, what they thought of
+his conduct. But I often heard them call him many hard names behind his
+back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been tenderly
+inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood in mortal
+fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him like so many spaniels; and
+used to rub his back, after he was undressed and lying in his bunk; and
+used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some cold coffee for
+him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco, and mend
+his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and tend, and nurse him
+every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling on them, and found
+fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most for
+him, and cringed the most before him, were the very ones he most abused;
+while two or three who held more aloof, he treated with a little
+consideration.
+
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship's company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
+know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
+in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
+would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
+that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
+from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
+crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
+butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being abused
+and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially, because of his
+great strength and fine person, and particularly because of his red
+cheeks.
+
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an able-seaman,
+was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man in the eyes of a
+ship's company; I mean, when he ships for an able-seaman, but is not
+able to do the duty of one. For sailors are of three
+classes--able-seaman, ordinary-seaman, and boys; and they receive
+different wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship's company of
+twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if they prove to
+understand their duty every way (and that is no small matter either, as
+I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to, and thought much of
+by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets,
+and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
+
+But you must not think from this, that persons called boys aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
+called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a boy means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
+enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work is
+put upon him.
+
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson's
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's age
+just like a horse's--by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened his
+mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the light
+came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while he
+looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a baboon
+peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just as if I
+had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to cut his
+throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the lather on, to
+be shaved. For I watched Jackson's eye and saw it snapping, and a sort
+of going in and out, very quick, as if it were something like a forked
+tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were longing to kill the man; but
+at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his examination,
+said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for the ends of his
+teeth were the evenest and most worn down; which, he said, arose from
+eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this was the reason he could tell a
+sailor's age like a horse's.
+
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+say--come, boys, let's laugh; and they did laugh; and declared it was a
+rare joke.
+
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out,
+whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to them
+that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes from
+others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell
+the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that is, when his
+back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a grave face;
+when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or otherwise,
+they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking perplexed enough;
+till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and
+idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had purposely
+put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look grave, too;
+even when he was telling something that ought to split their sides. And
+with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed them all to
+scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue
+together at the corners with a fine white foam.
+
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every
+body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him
+some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart.
+Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened at
+him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling him
+Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some terrible thing at
+last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up; for the captain
+would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward again.
+
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly all
+hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink off
+during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more submit
+to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good their
+oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old way; so
+that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of
+Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up a
+little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson; yet
+in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.
+
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to greenhorns and landsmen, who
+know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think, that an able seaman
+is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little boy. And the
+able seamen in the Highlander had such grand notions about their
+seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen received diplomas,
+like those given at colleges; and were made a sort A.M.S, or Masters of
+Arts.
+
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew
+that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed
+endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson's
+evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many
+of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me
+before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the
+ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began to feel a hatred
+growing up in me against the whole crew--so much so, that I prayed
+against it, that it might not master my heart completely, and so make a
+fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
+over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
+hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
+I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in
+during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
+could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
+blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
+forbidding.
+
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out
+on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over
+at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost
+happy for a time.
+
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
+least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
+could now look around me, and make observations.
+
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
+at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight
+of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round
+us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen
+but water--water--water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
+smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till
+now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
+boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
+squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
+I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
+lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
+great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
+
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my
+little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It
+had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little
+wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a pasture;
+and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be
+patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them,
+that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them,
+scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
+like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most
+strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the
+sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and
+swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very
+well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
+It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes
+off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
+
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear
+myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the
+deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist
+aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these
+stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out
+beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like
+the wings of a great bird.
+
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the
+name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt
+very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I
+was; every thing was so strange and new.
+
+While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
+
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
+with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
+managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a
+fool as at first.
+
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
+imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
+barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, and dress in
+strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own
+names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing
+by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber.
+This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to draw some
+water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I thought I had
+committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
+said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that they were
+always called buckets. And once I was talking about sticking a little
+wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew out again, and
+said there were no pegs at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with
+every thing else.
+
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
+names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
+to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked
+what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
+entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of
+these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy,
+like the names of young royal princes, such as the
+starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line, or the
+larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.
+
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes
+of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in
+the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists
+give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something
+like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews
+the small running ropes, that manage all the motions.
+
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
+which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
+very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
+breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they
+use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people
+seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names,
+seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be
+surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the
+world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
+
+At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
+as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the
+breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the
+foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber
+seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with life and joy; and I
+felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be glad to
+bound along so round the world.
+
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to
+all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on
+with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at
+the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as
+if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling
+along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+
+Yes I yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
+briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
+very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe,
+let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an
+eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
+
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we
+were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
+chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+
+Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
+to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I
+were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a
+speedy end to this abominable voyage!
+
+
+
+
+XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+
+
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.
+
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good humor,
+and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to appreciate the
+difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I was thrown.
+Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special manner take me
+under his protection, and prove a kind friend and benefactor to me; as I
+had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to their crew; and so they
+are; but such fathers as Solomon's precepts tend to make--severe and
+chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of duty overcomes the sense of
+love, and who every day, in some sort, play the part of Brutus, who
+ordered his son away to execution, as I have read in our old family
+Plutarch.
+
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother's friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.
+
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.
+
+When two or three days had passed without the captain's speaking to me
+in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not expect
+it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that might
+have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it more
+proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he might be
+offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender feelings.
+So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second dog-watch, when
+there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call and see him.
+
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off
+some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of my
+red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck ones,
+and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my shooting-jacket,
+I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made quite a genteel
+figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not have looked so
+well in a drawing-room.
+
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make of
+it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told them
+no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to pay
+my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed and shouted, as
+if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so very simple in
+going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some of them tried to
+dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson, who sat looking
+on, cried out, with a hideous grin, "Let him go, let him go, men--he's a
+nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and raisins for him."
+And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits of coughing seized
+him, and he almost choked.
+
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands,
+and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the
+mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I
+thought it would never do to present myself before a gentleman that way;
+so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which my
+mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was putting them on,
+Jackson asked me whether he shouldn't call a carriage; and another bade
+me not forget to present his best respects to the skipper. I left them
+all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the cook-house, when the
+old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched my
+hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought his
+eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and with a
+voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by playing such tricks
+aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to let go of me, or I
+would complain to my friend the captain, whom I intended to visit that
+evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl round, that I thought the
+Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me forward, roaring out I
+know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing round the
+windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson asked
+me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went, I
+would not take a friend along and introduce him.
+
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that night,
+I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to call on
+the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the fact,
+that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance of sea
+usages.
+
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin
+during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return
+to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a little
+pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm, where a
+watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half hours by,
+with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was. And it used
+to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through the pane of
+glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the proceedings in the
+cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for dinner, or
+the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little mahogany
+stand, or playing the game called solitaire, at cards, of an evening;
+for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as will ere long
+be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose society he did
+not dislike.
+
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be
+making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made
+his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked
+very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I
+thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.
+
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as
+he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very pleasant
+day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into such a rage;
+I thought he was going to knock me down; but after standing speechless
+awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his head and threw it at me.
+I don't know what impelled me, but I ran to the lee-scuppers where it
+fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a bow; when the mate came
+running up, and thrust me forward again; and after he had got me as far
+as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I was crazy or not; for if I
+was, he would put me in irons right off, and have done with it.
+
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that I
+had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by him
+and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told me if
+I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again presumed so
+much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into the rigging,
+and keep me there until I learned better manners. "You are very green,"
+said he, "but I'll ripen you." Indeed this chief mate seemed to have the
+keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some sort, seemed too
+dignified personally to protect his own dignity.
+
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.
+
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after,
+a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his
+nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop,
+began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft
+all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the street.
+
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and his
+boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but a
+shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their gloss,
+and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a sort of
+miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might have been
+owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of dye while at
+sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while ashore, a gentleman
+on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have treated another
+gentleman as he did me.
+
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+
+
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old clothes, I may as
+well speak of mine.
+
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had greatly
+rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be warm and
+pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be like a summer
+excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a
+change of scene and society.
+
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a
+belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers', whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+"long togs," as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the life
+I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my pantaloons
+were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction, particularly
+about the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with low
+waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was often placed
+in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the rigging, sometimes in
+plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen exposed in the most
+inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
+
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
+very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.
+
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
+in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try them
+on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
+spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
+a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
+he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
+for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing and
+blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with
+him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
+intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
+have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with a
+row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was a
+great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
+precisely in that way.
+
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
+deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
+"twig" them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
+of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
+very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
+genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
+from my cousin's, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
+
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.
+
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home. They
+had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had had a
+pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I
+walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see me, and
+I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at them
+during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they
+were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more
+for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which
+were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came
+near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such
+a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was
+obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were
+quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees, and the edges were
+mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call them my
+"gaff-topsail-boots." And sometimes they used to call me "Boots," and
+sometimes "Buttons," on account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and
+shooting-jacket.
+
+At last, I took their advice, and "razeed" them, as they phrased it.
+That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
+feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
+made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
+wore straps on the ice.
+
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved a
+real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a rain
+storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on
+deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and
+lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
+
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
+kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of
+them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
+obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like an
+Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a crucifix.
+
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
+that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like going
+to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and knife,
+fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a
+steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron
+pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave me
+a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much disposed to
+rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was drinking; and
+it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were deprived of
+all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a labor to me. And I
+was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup, three times a week,
+which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
+and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
+calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
+In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked
+like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of
+my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would
+have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in
+my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation
+and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a galling mockery,
+when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell all inquiring
+friends, that Wellingborough had gone "abroad" just as if I was visiting
+Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to
+the captain.
+
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.
+
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
+view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
+and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
+sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
+as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
+saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
+looking out of his cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain
+in a green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
+
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
+these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
+the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
+and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
+of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
+
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
+in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
+harder.
+
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in an
+elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass trumpet to
+his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, "Where from?"
+
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
+
+Hamburg!
+
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.
+
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains during
+their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective "poops"
+toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying their
+behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and
+drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting each
+other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great Atlantic
+Ocean was a puddle.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+
+
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle
+watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+
+The order was given to loose the main-skysail, which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the
+forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I
+have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail;
+called moon-sails, and skyscrapers, and cloud-rakers. But I shall not
+believe in them till I see them; a skysail seems high enough in all
+conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems
+preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush
+the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a
+flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these
+cloud-defying cloud-rakers.
+
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch sailor
+came up to me, and said, "Buttons, my boy, it's high time you be doing
+something; and it's boy's business, Buttons, to loose de royals, and not
+old men's business, like me. Now, d'ye see dat leelle fellow way up
+dare? dare, just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up, now, Buttons, I
+zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons."
+
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it
+was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing boy's business, as
+they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up I
+went, not daring to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were, to
+the shrouds, as I ascended.
+
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the Jacob's
+Ladder; and they may well call it so, for it took me almost into the
+clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself hanging on the
+skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and curling my feet
+round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands.
+
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far out
+upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my lofty
+perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all round, by
+beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds;
+and every second, expected to find myself falling--falling--falling, as I
+have felt when the nightmare has been on me.
+
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank in
+the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over which
+I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round the
+truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost
+frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at such a
+lofty and solitary height.
+
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship's motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.
+
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I
+could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the gaskets, or lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready,
+sung out as I had been told, to "hoist away!" And hoist they did, and me
+too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they
+were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was,
+going up higher and higher; the yard rising under me, as if it were
+alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at the time, I was in a
+good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I could not see well enough
+to feel afraid--at least on that account; though I felt frightened enough
+in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and made good the saying of
+old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard from the rigging is
+a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely; whereas old tars are
+less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something like
+a compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate,
+he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves
+some mention.
+
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe,
+and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea.
+His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a red
+shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever saw.
+
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable;
+and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and
+imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.
+
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when we
+got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American
+Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American ships, Max
+prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if
+he could, would have been very glad to have passed himself off for a
+born native.
+
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting discredit
+upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my wardrobe, by
+loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like many other
+well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also betrayed some
+anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when the ship's
+company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my awkwardness
+in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety on that head.
+
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about
+my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a
+finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+
+
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at the
+foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were dripping
+with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were standing on
+the roof of a house in a shower.
+
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
+of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
+he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
+imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend,
+Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane,
+between churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about
+myself.
+
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
+Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
+to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to
+think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
+school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
+cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
+name of the doctor.
+
+And doctors, cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
+serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
+green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jalap do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off a
+powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by a
+surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
+when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
+in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and
+used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat over
+his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled and
+covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little leather
+strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the water in
+which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
+found this book was the Bible.
+
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky
+studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five
+feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the
+pipe of which stuck out of the roof.
+
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read; and
+big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till they
+hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it was no
+wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious passage in
+the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read, he called
+me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over, demanding
+an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could explain;
+not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left him poring
+over it still.
+
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to
+be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a
+committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their
+natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed black
+hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon him,
+and remained conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more than an
+hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the sliding
+doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and
+preaching; and after that a psalm was sung and a benediction given;
+when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great
+perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of cold,
+wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and make his
+fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then dashing into
+his stove.
+
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did rip
+a little, for it would have tried old Job's temper, to be set to work
+making a fire in the water.
+
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket before
+the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into the door
+for a knocker; and wrote his name, "Mr. Thompson," over it, with a bit
+of red chalk.
+
+The men said he lived round the corner of Forecastle-square, opposite
+the Liberty Pole; because his cook-house was right behind the foremast,
+and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard. When
+a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he "takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street."
+
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward's, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by the
+name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when Mr.
+Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that turban
+at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair, just like
+the large, round brush, used for washing windows, called a Pope's Head.
+
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests, and
+buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black, which,
+with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a serious
+young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.
+
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something
+he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more
+like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring, and
+was always calling your attention to something, and pointing at it with
+his ornamented finger.
+
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the "Three Spaniards,"
+and "Charlotte Temple," and carried a lock of frizzled hair in his vest
+pocket, which he frequently volunteered to show to people, with his
+handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these two,
+the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the cook-house,
+leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from
+falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay
+till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events
+that had happened during the day in the cabin.
+
+And sometimes Mr. Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a chapter
+for the edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad profligate and
+gay deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful indiscretion. He would
+read over to him the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; and hold
+Joseph up to him as a young man of excellent principles, whom he ought
+to imitate, and not be guilty of his indiscretion any more. And Lavender
+would look serious, and say that he knew it was all true--he was a
+wicked youth, he knew it--he had broken a good many hearts, and many
+eyes were weeping for him even then, both in New York, and Liverpool,
+and London, and Havre.
+But how could he help it? He hadn't made his handsome face, and fine
+head of hair, and graceful figure. It was not he, but the others, that
+were to blame; for his bewitching person turned all heads and subdued
+all hearts, wherever he went. And then he would look very serious and
+penitent, and go up to the little glass, and pass his hands through his
+hair, and see how his whiskers were coming on.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+DREAM BOOK
+
+
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I thought
+I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's-eye,
+or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck
+to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found
+myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not
+suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the
+deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a
+coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay there till I dressed
+myself and went up to remove it--a kind of interruption to my studies
+which annoyed me very much, when diligently occupied in reading.
+
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole, where
+we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest time I
+had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my back,
+during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.
+
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they
+had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with Delirium Tremens in great gilt
+letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on the subject
+of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in the sailor
+book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in New York.
+
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great
+profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones,
+who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top shelf, where
+it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that although I was
+going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good education; and
+that there was hardly any situation in life, however humble and
+depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in it to store
+his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And he added, that
+though it did look rather unfavorable for my future prospects, to be
+going to sea as a common sailor so early in life; yet, it would no doubt
+turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate, if I would only
+take good care of myself, would give me a sound constitution, if nothing
+more; and that was not to be undervalued, for how many very rich men
+would give all their bonds and mortgages for my boyish robustness.
+
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined; and
+though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused the
+book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and unforeseen
+attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to retrieve the
+poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do in the world.
+
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at
+the back: "Smith's Wealth of Nations." This not satisfying me, I glanced
+at the title page, and found it was an "Enquiry into the Nature and
+Causes" of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to look further
+down, I caught sight of "Aberdeen," where the book was printed; and
+thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country, must prove
+some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very kindly, and
+promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page number
+one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and
+body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the philosopher's
+stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to
+silver and gold.
+
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as
+I commenced the first chapter, entitled "Of the causes of improvement in
+the productive power of labor." Dry as crackers and cheese, to be sure;
+and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only getting
+initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened to me. So
+I read on and on, about "wages and profits of labor," without getting
+any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank
+some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost
+work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home,
+lettered on the back, "The History of Rome" was quite as full of matter,
+and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had
+ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering, that he
+had to get on a chair when he reached it down from its dusty shelf; that
+certainly looked suspicious.
+
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect:
+"Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods, 1798." So it
+must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones' father; and I wondered
+whether he had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever read
+it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say, never read
+their own books; writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so
+sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it
+for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes
+waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book could not have
+been the cause of that.
+
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor, and
+his Dream Book.
+
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
+used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an Irish Cockney. By which I
+understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in London,
+somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue that I
+could hear.
+
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west cap
+flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked
+like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a
+walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle
+between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible
+story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a
+sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for
+a spell against the scurvy.
+
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a
+fortune-teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house
+was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.
+
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some
+cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state
+made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down in
+a fray.
+
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
+all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling him
+an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
+apothecary's, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done for
+him.
+
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he called
+"Trafalgar Oil for restoring the hair," price one dollar; and told him
+that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have the desired
+effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called "Balm of Paradise, or the
+Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen." These high-sounding naval names
+delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there must be virtue in them.
+
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a
+young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in
+the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to
+his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large
+bottle, conspicuously labeled, "Balm of Paradise." It seemed from the
+text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil,
+and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of
+bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet, seized the precious
+bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed again, getting up in the
+morning without knowing any thing about it. Which, indeed, was a most
+mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how the
+engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was ignorant,
+and where there were no bystanders.
+
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to
+it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned
+with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual
+change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him
+to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle
+that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He
+would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and
+if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very
+great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his hair with oil,
+operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet, and want of a
+brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild horse's mane,
+and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue. Besides his
+collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself with several
+boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor doctor in New York,
+who by placards stuck on the posts along the wharves, advertised to
+remain standing at the northeast corner of Catharine Market, every
+Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and twelve in the morning,
+to receive calls from patients, distribute medicines, and give advice
+gratis.
+
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but at
+breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as they
+do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the
+boarding-houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along
+with the pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of toothpicks.
+But they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western country.
+
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of horse
+salts (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to sea
+without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also, take
+this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain storm.
+But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor themselves
+with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in this
+connection, some really frightful stories might be told; but I forbear.
+
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the
+death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you
+from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board
+this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently turned
+into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and smoking
+like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for then, I
+bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof to bodily
+ill.
+
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner of
+his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red
+cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.
+
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon
+Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor.
+Hence it was entitled the Bonaparte Dream Book; for the magic of it lay
+in the interpretation of dreams, and their application to the foreseeing
+of future events; so that all preparatory measures might be taken
+beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and satisfactory
+every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means of figures, in
+some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was facilitated by a
+set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something like the Logarithm
+Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator.
+
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this Bonaparte Dream Book of
+his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in his
+own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before taking
+his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his bunk
+before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet, and a
+bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin scratching his oily
+head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down strokes on his
+chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.
+
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.
+
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his
+bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice--"Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!"
+
+"What benches?" growled Max--"What's the matter?"
+
+"Benches! benches!" screamed Blunt, without heeding him, "cut down the
+forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment's coming!"
+
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his benches; till, shortly
+after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind would
+stand or sit at the Last Day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+
+
+This Dream Book of Blunt's reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+
+It was the larboard watch's turn to remain below from midnight till four
+o'clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out again
+about three o'clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he was
+desirous of at once having interpreted.
+
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on
+the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him
+and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship's company flying on
+deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.
+
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out Luff! Luff! to some one in the dark water before the ship. In
+that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black
+hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so
+near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind,
+the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of Luff! Luff! that
+our own mate, was raising.
+
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys jerked
+out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our jib-boom
+thumping against our bows.
+
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been injured;
+for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging mixed with
+ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar with another
+jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against emergencies.
+
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on
+board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our vessel
+was terribly reprimanded by the mate.
+
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet
+their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels coming
+together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the middle watch
+of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like fighting elks, sink
+down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in death.
+
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a good
+breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in about
+seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to behold.
+All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard anchor was
+gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while every one of the
+lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same direction; so that she now
+carried small and unsightly jury-yards.
+
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered,
+but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and
+gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now
+entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known
+at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was
+brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed from head to foot.
+
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.
+
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
+become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
+though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
+them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
+when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
+having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
+that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible
+that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
+the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
+upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
+But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things
+which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can
+only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when
+experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day;
+inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of
+adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too
+bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest
+ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been
+struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some
+lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
+fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
+suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into
+death.
+
+
+
+
+XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+
+
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and
+reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a
+spit?
+
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt
+in a mist, that no London in the Novemberest November ever equaled. The
+chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday?
+So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail
+for fear of accidents; and not only that, but here am I, poor
+Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the top of the
+"Sampson-Post," a lofty tower of timber, so called; and tolling the
+ship's bell, as if for a funeral.
+
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from
+our track.
+
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord
+attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through
+my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like
+the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the lamented
+Cock-Robin.
+
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at
+both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred
+up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and
+no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.
+
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a
+vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.
+
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my duty
+as a sexton. But presently some one cried out--"There she blows! whales!
+whales close alongside!"
+
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to me, Wellingborough;--would my own
+brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long,
+black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought
+they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh!
+regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when
+they descended to feed!
+
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I
+lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the
+story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an
+elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
+
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter's, they say, and then go
+and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your
+high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale's belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.
+
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves sailing
+through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small craft; and
+when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor saying,
+intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being on the limits. It
+is like a fisherman's walk, say they, three steps and overboard.
+
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean
+between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run
+down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their lamps
+trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of three
+hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some forty or
+fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous to
+sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at the
+bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called "arming" the lead.
+
+We "hove" our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel's heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors
+carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the
+jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it went,
+with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern, when the
+line ran out of the tub like light.
+
+When we came to haul it up, I was astonished at the force necessary to
+perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove
+through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat
+porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine
+the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but
+the sailors did not seem to be much interested by it, calling me a fool
+for wanting to preserve a few grains of the sand.
+
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we
+found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact of our being
+in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the drawing
+of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer. In the
+absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the temperature
+of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the ocean, and the
+temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than that of the Grand
+Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of temperature, for which
+there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen impute the fogs on the
+coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why there should always be
+such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that I do not know has ever
+been accounted for.
+
+It is curious to dip one's finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current
+comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North
+Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles,
+as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth
+being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger than that
+of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of
+hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of Florida, running
+at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+
+
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed
+his duty very well.
+
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his
+intimate acquaintance with the monsters.
+
+"They ar'n't sperm whales," said Larry, "their spouts ar'n't bushy
+enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
+they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
+Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
+Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye, men,
+them's Crinkum-crankum whales."
+
+"And what are them?" said a sailor.
+
+"Why, them is whales that can't be cotched."
+
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very
+hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
+strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.
+
+This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
+merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to
+"blubber-boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the
+leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so
+well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
+order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise
+have encountered.
+
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
+the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+
+"Why," said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, "in Madagasky
+there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the
+midships; they don't have no dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat
+pigs and dogs; they don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all
+the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
+make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine
+country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!"
+
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.
+
+"And what's the use of bein' snivelized!" said he to me one night during
+our watch on deck; "snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on
+'bout life, and snivel. You don't see any Methodist chaps feelin'
+dreadful about their souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky
+constables in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
+their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say."
+
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+
+"Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?" coming
+close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. "No; you ar'n't a bit--but you're a good deal worse for it,
+Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this
+dog's life, if you hadn't been snivelized--that's the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say." And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole
+past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still
+lower down over the bridge of his nose.
+
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's man we had, who
+went by the name of "Gun-Deck," from his always talking of sailor life
+in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious
+mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
+braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly
+prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed
+down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always
+took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
+pretty toes to show his charming feet.
+
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida,
+and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through
+the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his
+telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from
+them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
+plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.
+This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot
+it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a
+rat-killing war, he said.
+
+Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and Madagasky.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+
+
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the
+like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain poured
+down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off
+the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our
+knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.
+
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.
+
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could
+hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But
+while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me
+look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a
+handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her
+wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish
+kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.
+
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue
+again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We
+bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain
+in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed
+alongside of it.
+
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that
+must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were
+pretty much gone; and here and there the bare stanchions, or posts, were
+left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the
+deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was snapt off less
+than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered remnant
+looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods. Every
+time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned
+into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a
+rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.
+
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck,
+something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic
+of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a
+signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark,
+green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise
+were motionless. I saw the captain's, glass directed toward them, and
+heard him say at last, "They must have been dead a long time." These
+were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for
+safety; but must have famished.
+
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain
+would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the
+schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so
+much as learning the schooner's name, though every one supposed her to
+be a New Brunswick lumberman.
+
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did
+not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.
+
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot
+for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+
+"Look there," said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing--"look
+there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons," turning round to
+me--"how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with
+them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?" And then he tried to laugh,
+but only coughed again. "Don't laugh at dem poor fellows," said Max,
+looking grave; "do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de
+Cape of Dood Hope."
+
+"Dood Hope, Dood Hope," shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking
+the Dutchman, "dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned
+and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights."
+
+"No, no," said Blunt, "all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft."
+
+"And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?" howled
+Jackson through a cough. "Don't talk of heaven to me--it's a lie--I know
+it--and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek,
+that there's any heaven for you? Will they let you in there, with that
+tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark gulps you
+down his hatchway one of these days, you'll find, that by dying, you'll
+only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney!
+Yes, you'll be bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like
+to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box
+on 'em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!" And so saying, he went
+off, holding his hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour
+was come.
+
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and
+mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the
+time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.
+
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his tawny
+skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and earth.
+He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable
+curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near
+him.
+
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness,
+there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and
+touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this
+Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+
+
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out.
+But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know
+that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in
+connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between
+the two ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader to
+Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she
+pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her
+voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination. Merchant
+vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come
+under the general head of transient ships; which implies that they are
+here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.
+
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
+aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is, that
+although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the
+best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years
+of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions--like robust young men, who live too fast in their
+teens--and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.
+
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many
+a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from
+Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of
+Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages
+at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the
+literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure
+and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across
+the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck, too, where
+these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of
+the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where
+reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria
+mundi! Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like a
+broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning
+business.
+
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
+five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
+on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.
+
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger--the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
+going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
+concerning the signs of the times.
+
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck
+with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise,
+and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But
+looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room, where you
+could see him through the little window, in an irregular sitting
+position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth, and his
+head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound meditation, with
+his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen reading; never took
+a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine; never conversed; and
+never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no
+need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe. Conjecture
+was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his business. The
+sailors, who are always curious with regard to such matters, and
+criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware
+at the time, completely exhausted themselves in suppositions, some of
+which are characteristically curious.
+
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to
+the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.
+
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes
+confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all
+sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this is
+the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling
+of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have done.
+
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions,
+this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and
+collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes,
+of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a
+hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the
+skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
+Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of
+salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called "making a spread
+eagle" of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted,
+that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship's company with
+money enough for a treat all round.
+
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the
+keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and he such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for levying
+contributions.
+
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way
+up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on
+with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully
+turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the
+nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must
+have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, "you will surely
+fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!"
+
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger,
+and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot. The
+stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently
+remonstrated; but in vain; for as his fearfulness of falling made him
+keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any
+effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome spread-eagle of, to
+the great satisfaction of the crew.
+
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his
+reservedness.
+
+"Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?"
+
+"Spread-eagle, sir," said the Greenlander, thinking that those few words
+would at once make the matter plain.
+
+"Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?"
+
+"Treats all round, sir," said the Greenlander, wondering at the other's
+obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.
+
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor,
+and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was
+suffered to descend.
+
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince's
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had
+nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked
+stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?--just the girl
+to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;
+her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were
+blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most
+devoted.
+
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain's charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.
+
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.
+
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of
+her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady's guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby
+they look.
+
+But for all this, the passage 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 passengers. 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 shirt
+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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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 molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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 ship 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
+passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
+heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
+the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
+between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
+two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head
+for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There are
+plenty of passengers 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 ship must be out of sight of
+land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough
+shaking, and threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin
+and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing their
+best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers 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 ashore 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 Lancashire 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 ashore 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 passage 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire
+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 oakum. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 repetitions, 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
+ship 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 ship
+at sea, and a ship 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 rushing 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 like 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.
+
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
+before.
+
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright
+tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
+vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to
+it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm
+stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
+glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up
+and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on
+her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when
+he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
+and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say, did not fit
+him very well, for ever after he looked as if he limped. Then this
+figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one eye, and
+repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the painter came and made his
+toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of
+a beautiful pattern.
+
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and
+snug with a handsome pension in the "Sailors'-Snug-Harbor" on Staten
+Island.
+
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer
+was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art,
+upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage; for if
+the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he
+keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to its
+precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may be
+pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for John
+o' Groat's; all of which is worse than wasted time. Whereas, a true
+steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a
+bee-line from port to port.
+
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm,
+might make the ship "lurch to"--or "bring her by the lee." And what those
+things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when they found
+themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
+moon and stars.
+
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they
+are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence,
+is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the
+wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or
+looking out to windward.
+
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with
+one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind,
+might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving
+last wills and testaments.
+
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who
+might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the
+case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room
+occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of
+cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested with the
+underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark, that of
+the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or inefficient;
+and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and crying out:
+"Luff, you rascal; she's falling off!" or, "Keep her steady, you
+scoundrel, you're boxing the compass!" then hurry down to your
+state-room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery
+and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus'
+log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next
+gale of wind.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+
+
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which
+I drew on a blank leaf of the "Wealth of Nations," and studied it every
+morning, like the multiplication table.
+
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; and I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm.
+It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned
+in it by night.
+
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one
+side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I
+been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed them
+so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds within;
+and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different air may
+be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste. Nor must I
+omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction, and a
+particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of cogs and
+wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something like a
+printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it
+much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers,
+by catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances. Then,
+sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the
+helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like
+Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.
+
+The harness-cask, also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe,
+in which a week's allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves
+being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of the
+quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat, where he
+would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking teeth.
+He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+
+Then the magnificent capstan! The pride and glory of the whole ship's
+company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty
+it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of
+distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor
+center-table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant
+with brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
+mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge, and the chief
+mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for
+memorandums.
+
+I might proceed and speak of the booby-hatch, used as a sort of settee
+by the officers, and the fife-rail round the mainmast, inclosing a
+little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue
+ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master's daughter, used to
+take his morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New
+York Bowling-Green.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+
+
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration,
+though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority.
+For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing
+yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the
+darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
+topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an
+indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he
+is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of
+ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other
+matters familiar to an "able seaman."
+
+What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast, and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have turned in a
+dead-eye, or in the approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the
+main-stay? What did I know of "passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton,"
+"strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse," and innumerable other
+intricacies?
+
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
+a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
+sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
+where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
+of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
+that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
+sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
+but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
+destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a
+bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the
+shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns
+for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to
+tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's roses, and Turk's
+heads; he must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the
+halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing
+rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of
+a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend
+the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline and Spanish foxes; a
+blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must
+be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And this,
+perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
+things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason
+we never know anything.
+
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
+to his calling--fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
+palms, heavers, and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries
+with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.
+
+The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul
+ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means
+that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an artist in the
+rigging.
+
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that
+these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had
+only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
+and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which
+instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to.
+All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my
+backbone--comparatively small though it was at that time--by way of a
+lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
+Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set
+to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a
+religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other,
+never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality
+attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they would
+drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers
+seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from
+the chief mate for my clumsiness.
+
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
+
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in
+the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+
+All but the "turning out" or rising from your berth when the watch was
+called at night--that I never fancied. It was a sort of acquaintance,
+which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless,
+miserable business, truly.
+
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below
+to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied
+limbs, you are started up--it seems but the next instant after closing
+your lids--and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark
+and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the
+forecastle.
+
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least
+the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch,
+just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my
+ear--"Watch below, Buttons; watch below"--which pleasantly reminded me of
+the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take another
+nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to
+the other sailor's one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen
+contemplating a voyage to sea.
+
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could
+not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on
+deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would call
+the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+
+As thus:--
+
+"Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand, bear
+a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine
+shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
+cold!"
+
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers
+would reply with--"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a
+hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of
+which were full of fury.
+
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of the
+ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became the
+wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+
+
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen days,
+employed us about thirty.
+
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
+in sight.
+
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard, but
+could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast. Was
+that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If that's the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
+have staid at home.
+
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
+say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed at
+it with increasing interest.
+
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
+Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
+thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my
+uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the
+gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I
+thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin and
+the Giant's Causeway.
+
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
+but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
+other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary man
+in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
+probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
+friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
+
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out--"Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my
+beautiful sailors?" And concluded by calling upon us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, "pay out!
+pay out, my honeys; ah! but you're noble fellows!" Till at last the mate
+asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, "Haven't you enough
+rope yet?"
+
+"Sure and I have," replied the fisherman, "and it's time for Pat to cut
+and run!" and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a Kilkenny
+grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the wind, and
+bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.
+
+"And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!" cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.
+
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+
+Could this be really Wales?--Wales?--and I thought of the Prince of Wales.
+
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?--And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker's Hill.
+
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
+like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead
+and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had, was
+ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the water,
+and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance,
+which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself in
+conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near
+our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New
+York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a
+plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing
+through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner,
+that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve
+other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats,
+who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering in
+Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though, together;
+cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound vessels;
+smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns; till at
+last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different ships,
+and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool
+taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had
+been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for here
+was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon
+fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.
+
+After running till about midnight, we "hove-to" near the mouth of the
+Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the flood;
+and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth, is
+quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed
+immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
+shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.
+
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while
+the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a
+mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the
+vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous Bett-Buoy,
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow,
+according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a
+moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like
+the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of dirges
+for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no one can give ear
+to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far beneath it at the
+bottom of the deep.
+
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon, passing
+two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew near the
+town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.
+
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There
+they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good and
+substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends had
+in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.
+
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, "Why, this 'ere is a
+considerable place--I'm dummed if it ain't quite a place.--Why, them 'ere
+houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afriky, all
+hollow; nothing like this in Madagasky, I tell you;--I'm dummed, boys if
+Liverpool ain't a city!"
+
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a "realizing sense." He was accordingly
+astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for
+the country which could boast so extensive a town. Instead of holding
+Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of Madagascar, as he had been
+accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to that lady with feeling and
+respect.
+
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to kindle
+no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They looked
+around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as you or I
+would, if, after a morning's absence round the corner, we found
+ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages
+to Liverpool.
+
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them
+stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty
+years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among
+the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was
+forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of Sally.
+
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had often
+assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse of his;
+and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of seeing her.
+But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen, and
+their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round world over;
+and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between this very
+Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his, for what I
+thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my astonishment,
+therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming with a neat
+parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and ironed, and
+ready to put on at a moment's warning.
+
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife after
+long separations.
+
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself
+in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down
+into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having
+exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and
+this was precisely what the New York wife had done for Max, not thirty
+days previous.
+
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.
+
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York wife,
+to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and equally
+devoted to the keeping in good order Max's wardrobe.
+
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg
+had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as
+Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives
+never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much as a
+difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being between them; and
+Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many years, he had been
+going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between wife and wife with
+great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic welcome on
+either side of the ocean.
+
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way
+immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject.
+But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and
+after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded
+by asking me triumphantly, whether old King Sol, as he called the son of
+David, did not have a whole frigate-full of wives; and that being the
+case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have just as good a right to
+have two? "What was not wrong then, is right now," said Max; "so, mind
+your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+
+
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up the
+anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming against
+other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and about
+dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in Prince's Dock. The hawsers
+and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go ashore,
+select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord's
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six weeks,
+as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however--the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch--feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give them
+at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed, is
+but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the scurvy.
+A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with immeasurable
+disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if their captains
+treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.
+
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time, I
+felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my
+eyes and lungs. As for stepping on it, that was out of the question, in
+the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have
+an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into
+the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal
+loam--but not till then.
+
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we stopped
+before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded
+bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn
+and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and lamb in
+the millennium.--A very judicious and tasty device, showing a delicate
+apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors in an
+English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the honor and
+dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon a footing
+of perfect equality.
+
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a
+young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding
+up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of
+basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing
+by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he
+answered, "Why, youngster, don't you know what that means? It's a young
+jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy."
+
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
+American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a
+buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and
+not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
+
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among the
+seamen went by the name of "Handsome Mary." But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and
+conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no means
+an Amazon to her husband, if she did play a masculine part in other
+matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
+attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
+about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
+fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
+The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
+thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
+so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
+of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
+upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
+
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.
+
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
+they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
+
+   "No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
+    Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
+    In jolly good ale and old,--
+    I stuff my skin so full within,
+    Of jolly good ale and old."
+
+Or this,
+
+   "Four wines and brandies I detest,
+    Here's richer juice from barley press'd.
+    It is the quintessence of malt,
+    And they that drink it want no salt.
+    Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
+    And water henceforth you'll forswear."
+
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
+with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
+Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
+paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
+with thy spouse?
+
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs pour
+out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air in a
+vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher
+in it.
+
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank
+in a fog and a drizzle.
+
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room
+on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a
+courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among our
+crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates
+were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room,
+with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a
+smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was
+horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the
+ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless
+succession of vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the
+apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map
+was hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
+nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
+bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+
+And this is England?
+
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not
+the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.
+
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to
+see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is
+not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St. James's.
+
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a
+sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go round the
+world, without going into it; and their reminiscences of travel are only
+a dim recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe,
+parallel with the Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle;
+hover about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and
+pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland to see
+Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending a car overland
+to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from
+room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, "Supper, supper ready."
+
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against
+the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting
+his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never heard.
+
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of
+solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?--the
+sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles' shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway
+was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese;
+and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over
+tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
+potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand
+adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper table.
+
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the
+girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing to
+take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was too late
+for tea; but she would get me a cup of "swipes" if I wanted it.
+
+Not knowing what "swipes" might be, I thought I would run the risk and
+try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour flavor,
+as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never patronized
+swipes again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it
+was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my shipmates,
+who pronounced it good.
+
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this stripes, as I
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of
+beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not
+remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that swipes
+was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it as
+answering to the name itself; which is certainly significant of
+something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by the poor people
+about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree, accounts for their
+poverty.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+SAILORS
+
+
+The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the
+general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and will
+then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and
+impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after the lapse of
+so many years.
+
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our
+stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the Arms Hotel, I believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.
+
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.
+
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad, roystering
+nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have delighted in. For
+company over the cabin-table, he would have four or five whiskered
+sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all
+the time. And once, the whole company were found under the table at four
+o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and tucked in by the two
+mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our woolly Doctor of Divinity,
+the black cook, that they should have been ashamed of themselves; but
+there is no shame in some sea-captains, who only blush after the third
+bottle.
+
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.
+
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down; then
+we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at the
+rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other, never
+mind how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally knocked off at four o'clock
+in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And after
+four o'clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required to be
+on board again till next morning at daylight.
+
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were light
+enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some employment
+for us.
+
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving
+us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran on, as at sea.
+Sundays we had to ourselves.
+
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships in
+Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure. They
+live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome
+exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month's advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the
+time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to him;
+sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most abounds
+in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which
+make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.
+
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are
+not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant
+parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and
+attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in the world. For
+in Liverpool they find their Paradise--not the well known street of that
+name--and one of them told me he would be content to lie in Prince's Dock
+till he hove up anchor for the world to come.
+
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever
+prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before
+the bane is removed.
+
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character,
+ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless
+and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are
+almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider
+that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
+of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a
+thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard even
+for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on crutches;
+consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better
+classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and
+improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must very
+soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very
+promising one.
+
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those
+chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.
+
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels,
+and launched into the docks; though the "Boatswain's Mate" and other
+clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains
+in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical
+boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of
+ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog
+while at sea:--notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the
+relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
+seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance, that
+unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one class
+makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because the
+sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the
+Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of
+Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and survived
+to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;--because the modern
+tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off some of his
+shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney queue:--therefore, in the
+estimation of some observers, he has begun to see the evils of his
+condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon a closer scrutiny, it
+will be seen that he has but drifted along with that great tide, which,
+perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of
+his own.
+
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and
+glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve
+in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift
+them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on
+something the insiders must roll.
+
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe;
+they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of
+fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate
+in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop
+here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the
+American Congress.
+
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun
+him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you
+throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?--No. You will do no such thing; but
+at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And
+the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more
+than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless
+to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the
+earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through
+romances.
+
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up
+from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems
+and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for
+with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as
+hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.
+
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who
+toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and tenderly
+cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father of all,
+and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.
+
+
+
+
+XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS
+
+
+Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
+great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
+studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
+embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
+of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
+others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
+here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
+entitled, "Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau
+Paris: Miroir Fidele" also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
+marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, "Itineraire
+Instructif de Rome, ou Description Generale des Monumens Antiques et
+Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur, de
+Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Celebre Ville;" on the russet
+title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly shaded by a
+scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock
+and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless
+foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
+twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground, with
+locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation; a large
+cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the wolf looks a good deal
+like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows; the work is published
+"Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife." There was also a velvet-bound old
+volume, in brass clasps, entitled, "The Conductor through Holland" with
+a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable "Picture of London"
+abounding in representations of St. Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and
+Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
+reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an
+elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the
+cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, "The Great Roads, both
+direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual
+Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
+describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those
+at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of the Mails' arrival
+and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which
+the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses and
+carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats situated near
+the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and
+Margate." It is dedicated "To the Right Honorable the Earls of
+Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient,
+and Obsequious Servant, John Gary, 1798." Also a green pamphlet, with a
+motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking
+like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, "A Description of
+York, its Antiquities and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral;
+compiled with great pains from the most authentic records." Also a small
+scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
+frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
+King's College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, "The Cambridge Guide: its
+Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
+and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral." Also a pamphlet,
+with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
+higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
+accurate representation of the "North or Grand Front of Blenheim," and
+entitled, "A Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
+Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and
+Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General
+Description of the famous China Gallery, &.; with an Essay on
+Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a
+New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park." And lastly, and to the purpose,
+there was a volume called "THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL."
+
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.
+
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the
+life.
+
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to
+my boyhood,--the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned
+over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing
+sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
+
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
+myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles.
+I will, my beloved,--old family relic that you are;--till you drop leaf
+from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
+somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
+
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is bound in green
+morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
+tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
+red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that he
+who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+
+But let us open the volume.
+
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
+falling air-castles? Ah, no!--these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, "Drawn at the age of three
+years," and under this autograph, "Executed at the age of eight."
+
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
+the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain
+of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine;
+this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
+fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
+
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father's
+hand-writing, the following:--
+
+"WALTER REDBURN.
+
+"Riddough's Royal Hotel, Liverpool, March 20th, 1808."
+
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father's, which he must have made at various times during
+his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
+midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous effacements, it
+is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I must here copy a few
+at random:--
+
+                                      �  s. d
+
+    Guide-Book                           3  6
+    Dinner at the Star and Garter          10
+    Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)  2  6  3
+    Gratuities                              4
+    Hack                                 4  6
+    Thompson's Seasons                      5
+    Library                                 1
+    Boat on the river                       6
+    Port wine and cigar                     4
+
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+
+    Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.
+    Call upon Mr. Morille same day.
+    Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.
+    Theatre Friday night--Richard III. and new farce.
+    Present letter at Miss L----'s on Tuesday.
+    Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.
+    Get my draft on London cashed.
+    Write home by the Princess.
+    Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.
+
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
+British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is "A
+Plan of the Town of Liverpool." But there seems little plan in the
+confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a
+peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
+
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.
+
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all
+directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked "Riddough's
+Hotel," the house my father stopped at.
+
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
+the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
+penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
+
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
+foreign land; but attended St. John's Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.
+
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head
+with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval
+sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto
+elastically stretched for a border--"Deus nobis haec otia fecit."
+
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation
+of a now extinct fowl, called the "Liver," said to have inhabited a
+"pool," which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground
+where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool
+derives its name.
+
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.
+
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
+title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
+facsimile:--
+
+                         The Picture
+                         of Liverpool:
+                     or, Stranger's Guide
+               and Gentleman's Pocket Companion
+                         FOR THE TOWN.
+                          Embellished
+                        With Engravings
+          By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
+                           Liverpool:
+                   Printed in Swift's Court,
+      And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
+
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes "testimonies of respect which
+had lately appeared in various quarters--the British Critic, Review, and
+the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales"--and concludes
+by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition
+might "render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy
+also of the subject it is intended to illustrate."
+
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
+of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, 1st Sept.
+1803.
+
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of
+the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.
+
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
+must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him
+a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that
+his noblest epitaph.
+
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:--
+
+  Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain,
+  Pours his full tribute to the circling main,
+  A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
+  Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,
+  Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,
+  They braved the billows for precarious food:
+  Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,
+  Their nets and little boats their only store.
+
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
+and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer's
+Shipwreck.
+
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his "Survey of the Town" are nine thickly
+printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
+of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
+saying, that "the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at
+present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no
+doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this
+noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest
+delicacy of feeling."
+
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
+author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
+that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
+reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
+
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
+style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
+Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
+"his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like
+all Parnassus with:--
+
+  "Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds,
+  From northern climes to India's distant bounds--
+  Where'er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
+  Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves;
+  Where'er the honored flood extends his tide,
+  That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride.
+  Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns,
+  And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines:
+  'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow,
+  And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough;
+  In every clime her prosperous fleets are known,
+  She makes the wealth of every clime her own."
+
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:--
+
+   "And here R*s*o*, with genius all his own,
+    New tracks explores, and all before unknown?"
+
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the warmest appreciation
+of the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation
+which gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce.
+He is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with classical
+admiration.
+
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of
+William the Conqueror.
+
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of
+Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the
+soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
+
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town
+of Liverpool."
+
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, "On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants," and then skim over page after page
+throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur
+of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in population,
+opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must look back
+upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable
+superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
+of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the corner-stone
+of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in great part
+of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however imposing,
+we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander domes
+of posterity.
+
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now
+growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs,
+centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then
+obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
+going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house,
+and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a
+Hellenic antiquity.
+
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
+of this "Picture of Liverpool," so different from the brief, pert, and
+unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I shall
+now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as it is
+entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
+information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous town, to
+which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter,
+concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote
+my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
+information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as
+original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book its due.
+
+But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+
+No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will not quote thee, old Morocco,
+before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
+would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
+me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from
+a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE
+TOWN
+
+
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
+that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
+probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
+I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town,
+as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the
+columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored
+over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was
+determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a
+mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most
+students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with
+the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.
+
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.
+
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there
+depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the
+map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I could
+march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the most
+distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+
+Dear delusion!
+
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty
+years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove
+but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his
+son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any discrepancy,
+never entered my mind.
+
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, you, at least, are all right.
+
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew
+went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's Dock's walls;
+and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to compare notes,
+when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and my shipmates were
+standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my
+infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding, that
+it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while to visit it for the
+purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the evening.
+
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle?
+and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet not
+a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one small
+discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so faithfully served
+my own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern went by the
+name of "The Old Fort Tavern;" and when I was told that many of the old
+stones were yet in the walls, I almost completely exonerated my
+guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of misleading me.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought I,
+my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down lane,
+even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions "with
+Eastern scrupulosity," and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier, to
+one of the sailor.
+
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them
+not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.
+
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have
+been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken
+sailor passing, exclaimed, "Eyes right! quick step there!"
+
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and
+one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon
+me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and
+newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued
+forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the
+street, and commanded me to halt! I obeyed; when scanning my appearance
+pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that tarpaulin hat, not
+being able to account for the phenomenon of its roofing the head of a
+broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship, which lay at no great
+distance; when remarking from my voice that I was a Yankee, this
+faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks are
+extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy
+"shakings," and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
+out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls. And
+often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's clothes, even if he
+be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible pockets.
+
+But where was I going?
+
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough's
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and
+then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town,
+according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.
+
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.
+
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.
+
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat,
+buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of his
+would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was
+not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as
+thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My own
+father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so much as
+dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me; for if it
+had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never cast a
+thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father's having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.
+
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on
+my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going
+under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants' Exchange.
+
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my
+father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch at
+my back, into the paved square where I stood.
+
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow
+the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and
+overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son's search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.
+
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned
+to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to
+a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This,
+however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.
+
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated upon
+a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring in the
+arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other on a
+cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral's brow; while
+Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating his
+bony hand under the hero's robe, and groping after his heart. A very
+striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look at
+Death without a shudder.
+
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures
+in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of
+humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his
+knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever
+feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and no doubt
+looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted at the
+time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures of
+captives are emblematic of Nelson's principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.
+
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was
+once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I
+remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting our
+house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father's
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem ("the Wrongs of Africa"), several pamphlets; and in his place in
+Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had no
+small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact,
+that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the little
+arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to find
+Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory's wreath still hovering over his
+swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the four bronze
+captives still lamented their captivity.
+
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I
+have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to let
+him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so called
+from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and turning
+down into Lord.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for the
+hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined, when
+it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house at
+which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear
+my questions and give me an answer.
+
+"Riddough's Hotel?" said he, "upon my word, I think I have heard of such
+a place; let me see--yes, yes--that was the hotel where my father broke
+his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can't be
+inquiring for Riddough's Hotel! What do you want to find there?"
+
+"Oh! nothing," I replied, "I am much obliged for your information"--and
+away I walked.
+
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book; and
+all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly half
+a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the town,
+than the map of Pompeii.
+
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on which
+I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book with
+the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family associations;
+the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest style of art;
+this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing that had guided
+the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on a shop step, and
+gave loose to meditation.
+
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough's Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling up,
+they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may behold,
+when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come after
+his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father's guidebook is no
+guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a modern one
+to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you. Guide-books,
+Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all literature; and
+nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones
+tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts
+of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace,
+amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a
+clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and the old ones are used for
+waste paper. But there is one Holy Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will
+never lead you astray, if you but follow it aright; and some noble
+monuments that remain, though the pyramids crumble.
+
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.
+
+No.--Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now and
+then, concerning a Riddough's Hotel, or some other forgotten thing of
+the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves more
+than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning "The Old Dock,"
+which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place without
+delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right direction, at
+last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of sculptured
+brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from incontrovertible
+tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After admiring it awhile, I
+took out my guide-book again; and what was my amazement at discovering
+that, according to its authority, I was entirely mistaken with regard to
+this Custom-house; for precisely where I stood, "The Old Dock" must be
+standing, and reading on concerning it, I met with this very apposite
+passage:--"The first idea that strikes the stranger in coming to this
+dock, is the singularity of so great a number of ships afloat in the
+very heart of the town, without discovering any connection with the
+sea."
+
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good deal
+of "singularity" about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that it
+was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem to
+have no connection with the sea! However, the same author went on to
+say, that the "astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for awhile,
+and turn to the left." But, right or left, no place answering to the
+description was to be seen.
+
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted for,
+even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether he
+was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the "Old
+Dock." The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I was
+apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he whipped his
+well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his silver-laced
+coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the following facts.
+
+It seems that in this place originally stood the "pool," from which the
+town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound round the
+greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into the
+"Old Dock," for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago, it had
+been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house before me.
+
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern traveler
+standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of Gomorrah
+seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into substantial stone
+and mortar.
+
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into
+your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is
+several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, "The
+Wars of the Lord" quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up,
+Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your
+nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin:
+and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire your landmarks.
+
+No!--And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I'll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of the venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on
+the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side,
+covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of the
+noble Derby's was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the
+water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit--a gull--a sham--a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the
+State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs--point out the vouchers.
+Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall? Show me
+Stonehenge!
+
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous shooting-jacket
+of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.
+
+True, true--that's it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am only a
+common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+
+After a weary day's walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer of tea, in
+which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. THE DOCKS
+
+
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately
+around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I
+never tired of admiring them.
+
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure, I
+could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.
+
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers
+of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely inclosed,
+and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind the great
+American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, and
+Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures, seemed equal to
+what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.
+
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the "Wet
+Dock," so called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected
+with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London
+was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In
+magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the
+present day surpass all others in the world.
+
+The first dock built by the town was the "Old Dock," alluded to in my
+Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since which
+period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now flanking
+the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock,
+like a chain of immense fortresses:--Prince's, George's, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and many more.
+
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their
+valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which Liverpool
+held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon its more
+modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might be proud
+of:--Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names
+upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file
+of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in
+connection with the commerce they defended.
+
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his life. It is well enough that
+over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some vast
+marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having lived
+and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the
+marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build such
+a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his fame,
+and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built in the
+closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops himself could
+have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.
+
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the King's and
+Queens. At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal streets
+in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in
+the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to
+the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of
+freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where
+King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being
+immortalized by the village of L--. A country antiquary once told me,
+that a committee of two barbers were deputed to write and inform the
+distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much
+answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince's
+Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the Atlantic.
+
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest
+of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it is
+mostly frequented by the American shipping. Here lie the noble New
+York packets, which at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and
+here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river,
+the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified
+again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince's
+Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive
+wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls, one
+of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed forms
+an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise about fifteen or
+twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor when I took it in,
+I will not be certain.
+
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays surrounding
+it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the interior from the
+streets is had through several gateways; so that, upon their being
+closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From the river, the
+entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships is only to be
+had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of the river; that
+is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the dock is always at
+that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river, the keels of the
+ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than twenty feet above
+those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course, produces a striking
+effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense ships floating high
+aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.
+
+Prince's Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance of
+a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older
+occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs
+worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of
+the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all
+directions:--"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer
+alongside the Neptune!"--"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!"--"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop
+astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.
+
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the open
+river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin forms a
+sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie waiting their
+turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this basin is obvious;
+for it would be impossible to "dock" a ship under full headway from a
+voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent waves, she first glides into
+the ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from thence into the docks.
+
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the King's
+Dock, comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at an
+expense of some �20,000.
+
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed the
+seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the ships
+which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King William's war,
+in 1688, entered the King's Dock on the first day of its being opened in
+1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a dark little brig,
+called the Port-a-Ferry. And probably, as her timbers must have been
+frequently renewed in the course of a hundred years, the name alone
+could have been all that was left of her at the time. A paved area, very
+wide, is included within the walls; and along the edge of the quays are
+ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary shelter for the goods
+unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the bustle and activity
+displayed along these quays during the day; bales, crates, boxes, and
+cases are being tumbled about by thousands of laborers; trucks are
+coming and going; dock-masters are shouting; sailors of all nations are
+singing out at their ropes; and all this commotion is greatly increased
+by the resoundings from the lofty walls that hem in the din.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+
+
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled
+town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago,
+an epitome of the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even
+those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in itself, each ship is an
+island, a floating colony of the tribe to which it belongs.
+
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and New
+Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway
+her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and
+Campeachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under the beneficent
+sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries embrace; and
+yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.
+
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious
+and liberal plan of the Astor House. Here ships are lodged at a moderate
+charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure. Here
+they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all
+weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can hardly credit a
+story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the
+very middle of the docks have lost their top-gallant-masts. Whatever the
+toils and hardships encountered on the voyage, whether they come from
+Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here their sufferings are ended, and
+they take their ease in their watery inn.
+
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince's
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects
+in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn,
+battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o--spruce, gay, and
+brilliant, in readiness for sea.
+
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid,
+thrifty-looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French
+hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck
+elastic from much dancing.
+
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart's or Delmonico's
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its
+live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending
+their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.
+
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-boat,
+but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which
+looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard. These
+little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for ships
+bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of those
+lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the carcass
+of a black buffalo.
+
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;
+and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying
+through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man
+at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.
+
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of
+these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an
+admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of
+himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was
+none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might
+only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a
+triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories of
+Alexander.
+
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair,
+as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple like
+this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of
+cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling
+forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.
+
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher,
+and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house
+all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had
+an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he
+invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together
+like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.
+
+"He, he," he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask of
+beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet--"You see, Jack, I
+keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just before
+going to bed, it ain't bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh! Jack?--here
+now, smack your lips over that, my boy--have a pipe?--but stop, let's to
+supper first."
+
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping
+in it awhile, and addressing it with--"What cheer here, what cheer?" at
+last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of butter.
+And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the pitcher of
+beer in the center. "Why that's but a two legged table," said I, "let's
+make it four."
+
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my
+soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+
+"Now Jack," said he, when supper was over, "now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?--Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+
+"He, he, my boy," then said he--"I don't never have any bugs here, I tell
+ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed."
+
+"And where may you sleep?" said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
+a bed.
+
+"Sleep?" says he, "why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?"
+
+"Very funny," says I.
+
+"Have some more ale?" says he; "plenty more." "No more, thank you," says
+I; "I guess I'll go;" for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I
+began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote me
+for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.
+
+"Now, don't go," said he; "don't go, my boy; don't go out into the damp;
+take an old Christian's advice," laying his hand on my shoulder; "it
+won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and get
+broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping off for
+a nice little nap."
+
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large
+New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing
+comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.
+
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
+ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.
+
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing
+the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom
+of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as
+they hie to the land of the stranger.
+
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
+valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has
+been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the
+prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations,
+all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of
+American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be he
+Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at
+an American, calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger of the
+judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew
+nationality--whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it,
+by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves. No: our blood is
+as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all
+pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we
+may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without
+father or mother.
+
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
+and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
+paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
+Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world's
+as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
+our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are
+forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see
+the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in
+Eden.
+
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in
+the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest
+must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning,
+shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of
+Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall
+speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots;
+and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions
+round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto
+them cloven tongues as of fire.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+
+
+Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name
+bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
+they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
+wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, "the King of the Oaks."
+The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.
+She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
+who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a
+higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,
+this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace,
+a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled
+by his bare feet.
+
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating
+the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice
+had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the
+tackle-rope, elastic as cats.
+
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed
+it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my
+motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately
+let me pass.
+
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of kayar,
+or cocoa-nut fiber.
+
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+"kids" full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite
+another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I
+found that several of them could also speak very good English. They were
+a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent
+seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.
+
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.
+
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
+of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
+never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
+the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about
+the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.
+
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the "fancy piece" astern
+comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
+while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head--a
+dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking
+tail.
+
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done "to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders"--something as work is done in the navy to the music
+of the boatswain's pipe--the Lascars were set to "stripping the ship"
+that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.
+
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped
+about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing
+much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.
+
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see
+this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of
+the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the
+regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his
+vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from
+it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied "Joggerry," which is a
+species of weed, used in place of tobacco.
+
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
+most smokers, I sat down by Dattabdool-mans, as he called himself, and
+we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when
+we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it
+is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you
+never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon--wholly
+strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an
+insight into things quaint, curious, and marvelous, drop your books of
+travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.
+Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of
+mariners from all parts of the globe.
+
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I
+and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
+account of the teakwood and kayar rope, concerning which things I was
+curious, and sought information.
+
+The "sagoon" as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its
+greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another
+kind of wood, the "sissor," which supplies most of the "shin-logs," or
+"knees," and crooked timbers in the country ships. The sagoon grows to
+an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet
+through, before a single bough is put forth. Its leaves are very large;
+and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants'
+ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of
+staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier than water;
+it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its chief
+merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
+insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil
+called "poonja."
+
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
+the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
+the European artisans.
+
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the kayar, of which it
+is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
+well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend's
+account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
+ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
+hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
+this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar
+is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of
+the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with
+mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the
+sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The
+fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well
+adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of
+a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and
+buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
+
+But the elasticity of the kayar ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar
+told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.
+
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her kayar shrouds with hempen
+ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+
+
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat
+among modish beavers.
+
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
+northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
+this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
+these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.
+
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and
+spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished
+streak, usually banding round an American ship.
+
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
+and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
+on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
+leeway at a sad rate.
+
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly would I
+gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
+still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
+appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
+about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned
+by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an
+antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors,
+eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a
+tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's head; and
+by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear;
+and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions
+it had heard.
+
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap
+and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.
+
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled
+about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of
+swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.
+
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
+a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
+the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
+steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to
+see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
+Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the muezzin or
+cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
+strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
+account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
+round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
+old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
+found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of
+the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I
+ever experienced.
+
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
+one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
+Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
+of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
+them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
+them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
+can procure an audience.
+
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.
+
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the
+ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.
+And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing
+a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys
+in the neighborhood.
+
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
+clergy is like their divine Master's;--not to bring the righteous, but
+sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
+comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
+year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
+hearts of vice: then indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
+with; and a victory gained over him, would entitle them to a conqueror's
+wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is
+destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as from
+every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child
+Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so
+should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street
+corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+
+
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the "Old Church," well known to the
+seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands very
+near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town's
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
+preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship
+on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was
+a chapel-of-ease; though from the straight backed pews, there could have
+been but little comfort taken in it.
+
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it; something
+like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.
+"Wellingborough! Wellingborough! you must not forget to go to church,
+Wellingborough! Don't forget, Wellingborough! Wellingborough! don't
+forget."
+
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the
+death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:--
+
+    "HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER."
+
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the
+Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in
+the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another "sumptuous stall" was erected
+for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.
+
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris,
+where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their
+friends, or till buried at the public charge.
+
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.
+
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
+falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount
+if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and
+women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I
+observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from
+their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.
+
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get
+their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
+these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
+going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
+starvelings.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+
+
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
+the docks are many very painful sights.
+
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
+come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
+stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
+twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
+run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
+endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
+which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
+crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
+crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
+of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
+shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
+At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
+they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
+wail.
+
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
+but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
+its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
+motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
+her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
+crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
+die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
+stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
+them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
+soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
+the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
+seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
+Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
+beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
+queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
+with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
+
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.
+
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
+had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.
+"Yes," she replied, "to the church-yard." I said she was alive, and not
+dead.
+
+"Then she'll never die," was the rejoinder. "She's been down there these
+three days, with nothing to eat;--that I know myself."
+
+"She desarves it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
+shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that
+Betsy Jennings desarves it--was she ever married? tell me that."
+
+Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the
+girls.
+
+"It's none of my business, Jack," said he. "I don't belong to that
+street."
+
+"Who does then?"
+
+"I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
+so."
+
+"There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town."
+
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
+not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
+in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding
+away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
+
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
+time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
+irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a
+loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a
+sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the
+vault.
+
+"Well," said he, "what of it?"
+
+"Can't we get them out?" said I, "haven't you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?"
+
+"You're crazy, boy," said he; "do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?"
+
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
+seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without
+looking after the whole neighborhood.
+
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called Brandy-Nan; and
+begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to
+take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
+miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the
+room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had
+gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting
+it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I
+dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at it
+convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the
+other's arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a weak
+uncertain grasp like an infant's. She placed it to her mouth; but
+letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like "water." The
+woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen
+her.
+
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
+tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
+refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to the
+ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried to
+one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen running near
+the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house; and taking off
+a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day, filled it with
+water.
+
+With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw
+her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little
+babe--the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was
+dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
+balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who
+they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering
+something that could not be understood.
+
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.
+
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
+repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
+prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they
+must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I
+hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred to me
+as I stood there; but it was this--I felt an almost irresistible impulse
+to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting an end to their
+horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I think, had I not
+been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law,
+which would let them perish of themselves without giving them one cup of
+water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in convicting him
+who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
+existence.
+
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
+met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side,
+and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed.
+The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the
+morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped that morning
+remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that came from the
+vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
+before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that the
+persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have them
+removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it was
+not his street.
+
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom
+I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock
+Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not the right
+place to lodge my information.
+
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
+but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
+women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but
+my prayer was answered--they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
+shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
+do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
+that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
+as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to
+follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like
+people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the
+dead?
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+
+
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.
+
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in the
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
+of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.
+
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
+yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
+inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
+as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
+dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
+appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
+large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
+unlades at the quays.
+
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
+and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
+findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
+and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
+to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
+rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.
+
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
+and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
+in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
+how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
+heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.
+
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
+streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
+army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.
+
+At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
+is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
+outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
+the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
+long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
+misery could be furnished by any town in the world.
+
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
+girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
+men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
+young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
+babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
+art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:--
+
+   "I have had no food for three days;
+    My wife and children are dying."
+
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
+an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
+Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
+you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
+even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
+never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
+his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
+that the beggars treated the town's people differently.
+
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
+three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
+made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
+had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
+infest the dock walls as they did.
+
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
+an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
+occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
+He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
+dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.
+
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
+him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
+long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
+battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
+one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
+Victory.
+
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
+claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
+demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
+disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
+as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
+utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
+prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
+into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
+woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
+garden.
+
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+
+
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
+a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
+encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
+kept.
+
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them.
+Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix
+with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.
+
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
+streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
+other parts of the town.
+
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
+and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
+receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
+words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
+head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
+lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
+effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
+did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
+this, drawn out in an endless groan--
+
+"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
+the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
+him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
+falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
+He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
+pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
+monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
+robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
+quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
+subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
+sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
+business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
+go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
+and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
+been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
+murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
+morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
+tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
+copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
+seamen.
+
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
+which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
+the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
+pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
+infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
+enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
+almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
+of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
+their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
+their arches like vermin.
+
+
+
+
+XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+
+
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning
+the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw into
+this chapter various minor things that I recall.
+
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the dock
+walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite different
+announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are principally
+notices of the approaching departure of "superior, fast-sailing,
+coppered and copper-fastened ships," for the United States, Canada, New
+South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the
+advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen
+where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with
+ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who
+prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving
+notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended
+Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby workhouse-looking knaves, whose
+business consists in haunting the dock walls about meal times, and
+silently thrusting mysterious little billets--duodecimo editions of the
+larger advertisements--into the astonished hands of the tars.
+
+They do this, with such _a_ mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air;
+such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you
+are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements
+to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round
+bounty, and embark in her Majesty's navy.
+
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for
+the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships,
+going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be announced
+as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor, and noble
+father to his crew, Lord George Flagstaff.
+
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments
+in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the
+charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these
+placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for
+which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns,
+vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the landscape;
+and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are informed, that here
+is a chance for them to see the world at their leisure, and be paid for
+enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments for India are
+promised plantations among valleys of palms; while to those destined for
+New Holland, a novel sphere of life and activity is opened; and the
+companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia are lured by tales of summer
+suns, that ripen grapes in December. No word of war is breathed; hushed
+is the clang of arms in these announcements; and the sanguine recruit is
+almost tempted to expect that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be
+the weapons he will wield.
+
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Bruce at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin's Bay
+and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the army
+as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow must
+groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and his
+Mary.
+
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool.
+Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of
+Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many
+young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to
+penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to carry them over the
+sea, without providing for future contingencies. How easily and
+naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter upon the military
+life, which promises them a free passage to the most distant and
+flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides holding
+out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the fullness of
+time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home at all, and
+embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a piece of
+adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts the army
+recruit to enlist.
+
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.
+
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their
+little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are another
+set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; who make
+strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some
+state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the
+commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a
+pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they saunter
+off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and family.
+
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I fancied
+him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm with my
+shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned round
+and paused.
+
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat;
+and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card
+with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark
+angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a cunning
+foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But though I did
+not look round, I felt him following me still; so once more I stopped.
+The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an air, that I began to
+fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that perhaps a plot had been
+laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was some Monteagle bent upon
+accomplishing my flight. I was determined to see what he was. With all
+my eyes about me, I followed him into the arch of a warehouse; when he
+gazed round furtively, and silently showing me a ring, whispered, "You
+may have it for a shilling; it's pure gold--I found it in the
+gutter--hush! don't speak! give me the money, and it's yours."
+
+"My friend," said I, "I don't trade in these articles; I don't want your
+ring."
+
+"Don't you? Then take that," he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next
+time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice,
+pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly
+turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels.
+I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so given to
+running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of work to the
+shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.
+
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of Sheffield
+razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the
+police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and board the
+vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting their wares.
+Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and the gilding
+on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it on the spot
+for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On the following
+Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of tormented and
+tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to dress them. In old
+times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that suggested the
+propriety of a barber's practicing surgery in connection with the
+chin-harrowing vocation.
+
+Another class of knaves, who practice upon the sailors in Liverpool, are
+the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries among the narrow lanes
+adjoining the dock. I was astonished at the multitude of gilded balls in
+these streets, emblematic of their calling. They were generally next
+neighbors to the gilded grapes over the spirit-vaults; and no doubt,
+mutually to facilitate business operations, some of these establishments
+have connecting doors inside, so as to play their customers into each
+other's hands. I often saw sailors in a state of intoxication rushing
+from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker's; stripping off their boots,
+hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and sometimes even their pantaloons on
+the spot, and offering to pawn them for a song. Of course such
+applications were never refused. But though on shore, at Liverpool, poor
+Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he himself is by no means exempt
+from practices, that do not savor of a rigid morality; at least
+according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when cool and
+collected, often manages to evade the Customs completely, and land
+goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the immense duties upon it
+in England, commands a very high price.
+
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.
+
+"Is that all?" asked the officers.
+
+"All," said the men.
+
+"We will see," returned the others.
+
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.
+
+"Very good," said the men.
+
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.
+
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his
+pocket; that he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about his
+person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates
+at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance of
+detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by.
+And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers
+passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard,
+as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting under a
+ship's bows.
+
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we came
+from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate; for in
+Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the docks
+they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners' mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little moral
+precepts printed in red on the back.
+
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the
+least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with
+such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by
+a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting
+their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay
+stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are
+guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a
+whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine
+truck-horses look--so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often
+I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though
+I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language,
+I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable information
+touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their dignified
+lives.
+
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a
+horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure
+he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries
+in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
+They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a
+species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to
+live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like
+the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of
+divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should
+forever exempt him from indignities. As for those majestic, magisterial
+truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on
+the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.
+
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The
+truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the
+lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large
+warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will tranquilly
+walk away with the whole.
+
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals.
+Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,--not of the same cut and
+color though,--which reach below their knees; and from the racket they
+make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think
+they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get
+any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set,
+who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals;
+now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in
+order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their
+lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended
+their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them
+something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to them
+a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is
+the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended
+in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse
+pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day
+a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the
+water. It was noon, when an interval of silence falls upon the docks;
+and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the horse, and having a mind
+for a chat, cried out to him, "Back! back! back!"
+
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the water.
+
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince's, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American
+boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying to
+all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of
+produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned
+into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with these
+inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand, seemingly
+penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July when the
+Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily coming
+over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the
+street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from
+Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the country;
+and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the corporation,
+took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+
+"Sing Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney," cried one fellow, tossing
+his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head of the
+rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+
+
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for
+so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who, thereby,
+was enabled after my day's work aboard the Highlander, to ramble about
+the town for several hours. After I had visited all the noted places I
+could discover, of those marked down upon my father's map, I began to
+extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a committee of one,
+to investigate all accessible parts of the town; though so many years
+have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my report.
+
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world, I
+have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering about,
+up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and speculating
+upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to pace along
+endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on the doors,
+admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a passing
+blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was stared at
+myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take on such
+occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a sensation
+in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a family went
+home to his children with a curious story, about a wandering phenomenon
+they had encountered, traversing the side-walks that day. In the words
+of the old song, "I cared for nobody, no not I, and nobody cared for
+me." I stared my fill with impunity, and took all stares myself in good
+part.
+
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with a
+wonderful relish.
+
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour, in
+those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the street,
+and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it in New
+York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes; and
+especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing along
+frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who clung
+to his arms and legs; and, in God's name, conjured him not to desert
+them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and drowning
+himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In these
+haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged me
+unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost endless
+vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these miserable
+streets.
+
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
+the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the "free states" of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute. But
+in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and with
+the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even Englishmen;
+as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords. This conveyed a
+strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded me that I was
+not in my own land. For there, such a being as a native beggar is almost
+unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against
+pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
+
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which
+negro-sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head
+like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in respect to
+him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our black
+steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to escape
+with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to them, and
+the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black cooks and
+stewards of American ships are very much attached to the place and like
+to make voyages to it.
+
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
+degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
+most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
+at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
+in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was but
+recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in some
+things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the
+principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.
+
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
+by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
+Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
+There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of houses
+with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the same
+elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
+could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St. John's
+Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to see that
+great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most discriminating
+observer would not have been able to detect any difference between the
+articles exposed for sale, and the articles exhibited in Fulton Market,
+New York.
+
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers' shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.
+
+It is true, that I often thought of London's being only seven or eight
+hours' travel by railroad from where I was; and that there, surely, must
+be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
+bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
+walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
+a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
+church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
+edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
+
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them in
+another.
+
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
+simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
+he pleases; and that even St. Peter's in Rome is open to him, as to a
+cardinal; that St. Paul's in London is not shut against him; and that
+the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to him,
+and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the better to
+allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this consideration of the
+hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most Christian and charming
+thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and Vatican libraries, for
+Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes farther home than all the
+sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, and Archbishop Tillotson.
+
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
+land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of
+any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
+broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
+myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a
+little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what could
+he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to be
+sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or hearing
+of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always some
+confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I used
+to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting
+on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in
+the churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of
+some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of
+the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation
+between myself and the clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know
+that I was a foreigner of distinction.
+
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached--just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
+roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
+winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
+my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
+long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
+and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking how
+I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen, with
+high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their cosy and
+comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for me except
+at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the immortal
+plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies. But to
+finish off with that abominable "swipes" almost spoiled all the rest:
+not that I myself patronized "swipes" but my shipmates did; and every
+cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in imagination, and
+even then the flavor was bad.
+
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The servant
+girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose dinners
+were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were collectively
+known by the names of their ships.
+
+"Where are the Arethusas?--Here's their beef been smoking this
+half-hour."--"Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the Splendids."--"Run,
+Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the Highlanders."--"You Peggy,
+where's the Siddons' pickle-pat?"--"I say, Judy, are you never coming
+with that pudding for the Lord Nelsons?"
+
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
+came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
+end of the Highlanders' table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared himself
+on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs, so as to
+include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby, the
+boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at the
+head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.
+
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
+of Jackson's address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
+recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
+disgust, and dined elsewhere.
+
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
+rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George's-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth's equestrian statue.
+
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
+but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
+dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and decorum
+prevailed.
+
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much toil,
+or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.
+
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to his
+hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic gestures.
+I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware that this
+youth was a Chartist.
+
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.
+
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the town,
+and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey's pillars, in the shape
+of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had previously
+seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be? Certainly, I had
+never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish arch! surely I
+remembered that very well. It was not till several months after reaching
+home in America, that my perplexity upon this matter was cleared away.
+In glancing over an old number of the Penny Magazine, there I saw a
+picture of the place to the life; and remembered having seen the same
+print years previous. It was a representation of the spot where the
+Manchester railroad enters the outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in a
+previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days after,
+which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by
+the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable legs
+crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out my
+guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the
+building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the
+opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.
+
+I'm a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be
+treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.
+
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from
+the London Times, which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the
+large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog
+with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine
+apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the
+spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up stepped a
+terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster on his
+back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down some
+papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders, and
+then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons, wheeled
+me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in
+vain; the door was closed upon me.
+
+These Englishmen have no manners, that's plain, thought I; and I trudged
+on down the street in a reverie.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+
+
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green
+hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with
+me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away
+without having a good, long look at the open fields.
+
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.
+
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last--there it
+was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that
+seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I
+breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles
+once respired by Rosamond the Fair.
+
+On I trudged along the London road--smooth as an entry floor--and every
+white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road
+became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field,
+would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little
+dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed
+over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful announcement,
+nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post--
+
+    "MAN-TRAPS AND SPRING-GUNS!"
+
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were
+not surely cannibals, that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale, and
+lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+
+"A man-trap!" It must be so. The announcement could bear but one
+meaning--that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.
+
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?
+
+And who put it there?
+
+The proprietor, probably.
+
+And what right had he to do so?
+
+Why, he owned the soil.
+
+And where are his title-deeds?
+
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a
+mighty traveler, indeed:--stopped on your travels by a man-trap! Do you
+think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was so
+entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much wiser
+than when you set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not having
+seen more sights, will be man-traps--mantraps, my masters! that
+frightened you!
+
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet,
+right down to the earth's axis, and, perhaps, straight through to the
+antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and enter the
+forbidden Eden.
+
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that at
+last I thought best to pace off.
+
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice
+little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just
+such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was
+viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the bees
+were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.
+
+Any man-traps here? thought I--any spring-guns?
+
+No.
+
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No
+Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They
+gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and
+conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at
+first I almost imagined they might.
+
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.
+
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics,
+drinking ale at a table.
+
+"Good day," said I.
+
+"Good day; from Liverpool?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"For London?"
+
+"No; not this time. I merely come to see the country."
+
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.
+
+"Take a seat," said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife's apron
+on, I thought.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of
+which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a
+good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the banks
+of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty millions of
+people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my knowledge.
+
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively
+conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:--fine old ale; yes,
+English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?--Hurra! what say you?
+let's have a peep at St. Paul's? Don't you want to see the queen? Have
+you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and the
+Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets--who's to pay the bill?--You can't beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father's son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign land;
+you must not turn pauper.
+
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul's or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+
+Well, well, up heart, you'll see it one of these days.
+
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames--think of that!--here I am--ay, treading in the wheel-tracks of
+coaches that are bound for the metropolis!--It was too bad; too bitterly
+bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on; till at last
+I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with broad
+branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a hen
+gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I threw
+myself and there lay my head, like a last year's nut. People passed by,
+on foot and in carriages, and little thought that the sad youth under
+the tree was the great-nephew of a late senator in the American
+Congress.
+
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me from
+the field, crying out--"What are you doing there, you young rascal?--run
+away from the work'us, have ye? Tramp, or I'll set Blucher on ye!"
+
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.
+
+"Come, are you going to start?" he cried.
+
+"Presently," said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got a
+few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me
+as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own
+premises, and said--"Stranger! if you ever visit America, just call at
+our house, and you'll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don't fail."
+
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the
+cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to hapless
+young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway, sat
+an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A hale
+matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal by his
+side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were leaning out of
+the window close by.
+
+Ah! Wellingborough, don't you wish you could step in?
+
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when--is it
+possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "you look as if you had walked far; come, take a
+bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear" (how my heart jumped), "go fetch some
+from the dairy." And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and handed
+me--me, the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I could hardly drink
+down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England. But
+I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do away
+at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close scrutiny
+of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I declared
+myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a Sunday in the
+country.
+
+"And have you been to church to-day, young man?" said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+
+"Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know--a most
+excellent sermon--I am much the better for it."
+
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.
+
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.
+
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post like
+a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers in
+the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of them.
+But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young ladies, and
+vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the river Ohio,
+and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in harvest time, the
+laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand strong.
+
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don't give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you. At
+last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one
+side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins; and
+such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.
+
+And there they sat--the charmers, I mean--eating these buttered muffins in
+plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute they
+grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a fine
+thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my friends
+would stare! a lady from England!
+
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the
+one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in
+the direction where I sat. She certainly did look at my jacket; and I am
+constrained to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen in
+love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of the
+question; for what a looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off;
+but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and
+again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.
+
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I
+live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks, I
+passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll, was
+soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+
+
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I
+had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of
+a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He
+was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair,
+and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
+
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of
+a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from
+something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a
+voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to
+enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman--a kind of
+pleasure so long debarred me--I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket,
+and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing would
+afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in imparting
+any information concerning America that he needed.
+
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and
+at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to
+accompany him on a walk.
+
+We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.
+
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt
+and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus
+fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
+
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless
+of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession
+or business of any kind to engage his attention.
+
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him
+to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of
+her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
+
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty
+your glass and your purse as you list.
+
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie
+to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and
+dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
+
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a
+"guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of
+the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case,
+inapplicable.
+
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw
+up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London, and again
+his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to
+return home to his aunt, and amend--though she had often written him the
+kindest of letters to that effect--Harry resolved to precipitate himself
+upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this
+object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for
+Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the docks,
+to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered his brain,
+born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck browsers and
+tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor. There was a
+dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine coats,
+which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for
+all past conventionalities.
+
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some
+of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold
+Anchor in Union-street.
+
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all
+anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire
+to which he warmly responded.
+
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application
+to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our
+crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just
+upon the eve of our departure.
+
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to
+which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from
+the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have
+little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding
+them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the
+ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their
+sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they
+well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured,
+through the crimps of the port.
+
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the
+vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga
+was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to
+conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even
+indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the cheapness
+of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus,
+instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who
+would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the
+rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the
+end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving
+a handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the harness-cask.
+
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine
+morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his
+virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
+
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain's
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression,
+that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first
+accosted him in the cabin.
+
+Alas, Harry! thought I,--as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,--that "gallant, gay deceiver" shall not altogether
+cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be
+the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going to
+America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a
+manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would
+be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a shore, where he
+must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide
+him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship;
+and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength
+of his wages.
+
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my
+young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration
+at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive
+my congratulations.
+
+"Harry," said I, "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga--that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the
+country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he
+gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his
+character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and
+sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than
+his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking
+wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows."
+
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of
+the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told
+him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could
+furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort
+of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any
+mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
+
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the
+precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;--whether he had a
+giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether,
+with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he
+felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
+
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and
+confident air; saying that in his "guinea-pig" days, he had often climbed
+the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he
+made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the
+Highlander's rigging.
+
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant
+sight of his most unseamanlike person--more suited to the Queen's
+drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to
+himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and
+indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for
+the most part, will "gang their ain gate;" and the most we can do is, to
+hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best
+cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough
+money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
+
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and
+as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.
+
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London life; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me
+the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the
+sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.
+
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic
+narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds
+of reminiscences not his own.
+
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon;
+and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of
+chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.
+
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I
+cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I
+had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my
+pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more,
+than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously
+hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many days had passed.
+But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed it to my friend's
+good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes prompted him to out
+with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable. Besides, would this
+fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic acquaintances, walking
+down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of my
+shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that
+Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee
+credulity.
+
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed,
+he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of
+Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment;
+reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who
+might stare at so singular a couple.
+
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel,
+he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the
+square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat,
+was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the
+hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an
+ivory-headed riding-whip.
+
+"Who was he, Harry?" said I.
+
+"My old chum, Lord Lovely," said Harry, with a careless air, "and Heaven
+only knows what brings Lovely from London."
+
+"A lord?" said I starting; "then I must look at him again;" for lords
+are very scarce in Liverpool.
+
+Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and
+slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
+
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.
+
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought something
+of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done
+for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought
+best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to
+the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing
+himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it--a coronet--fell into a
+sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by
+a regal marabou feather, inside.
+
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it
+would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world,
+just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a
+drive into the country.
+
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might
+decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to his
+visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most Noble
+Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he might
+consider Ickworth his home.
+
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of
+the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry
+has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy
+address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his having
+consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous
+earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the
+slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has, he
+spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon to
+pluck; so that is out of the question;--perish such a thought, concerning
+my own bosom friend!
+
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this,
+I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high
+life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease
+in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in
+its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom
+of some immaculate friend.
+
+
+
+
+XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+
+
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry,
+who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter
+his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang
+down the hatchway into the between-decks, where, in perfect solitude, I
+was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for
+want of any thing better.
+
+"Hey for London, Wellingborough!" he cried. "Off tomorrow! first
+train--be there the same night--come! I have money to rig you all out--drop
+that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here! Come; up
+you jump!"
+
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+
+London? it could not be!--and Harry--how kind of him! he was then indeed
+what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden
+departure.
+
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had
+hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose
+to conceal.
+
+"But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?" said I; "they will not let me
+go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't care
+very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses."
+
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all
+the time.
+
+"Tut! my Yankee bantam," said Harry; "look here!" and he showed me a
+handful of gold.
+
+"But they are yours, and not mine, Harry," said I.
+
+"Yours and mine, my sweet fellow," exclaimed Harry. "Come, sink the
+ship, and let's go!"
+
+"But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a
+constable after me, won't they?"
+
+"What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait."
+
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I did take French leave of him. So, without further thought of
+the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship's bell
+struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the
+rest of the day.
+
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
+
+Arrived at the Golden Anchor, where Harry put up, he at once led me to
+his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what
+clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size--if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.
+
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me,
+arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that
+very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense,
+when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked,
+and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown
+ugly thoughts.
+
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and
+charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for
+it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we
+turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of
+the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to
+finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and
+presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+
+"It's me" said the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus
+metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice,
+which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going
+to turn gentleman forger.
+
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted
+this mode of disguising himself.
+
+"And why afraid of your friends?" asked I, in astonishment, "and we are
+not in London yet."
+
+"Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by."
+
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came
+to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are
+taken.
+
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
+
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+
+
+"No time to lose," said Harry, "come along."
+
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some
+street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the corners, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.
+
+"Stop," cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once--"stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house--No. 40 I told you--that's it--the high steps there, with the
+purple light!"
+
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and
+bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side,
+and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a
+little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
+
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and
+echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I
+started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
+
+The walls were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles--emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver,
+Sienna with porphyry--supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like
+a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East
+of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful
+Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites
+of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights,
+whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain
+spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every
+porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit
+garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica,
+lurked somewhere among the vines.
+
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned
+slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
+
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.
+
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with
+snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket--he looked like
+an almond tree in blossom--who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry
+over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the
+waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the guests.
+
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading
+some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud
+voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us,
+and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain
+where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
+
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential
+word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much
+surprised,--I thought, a little disconcerted,--and then disappeared with
+him.
+
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all
+this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my
+head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought
+that I was really in London. What would my brother have said? What would
+Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have
+thought?
+
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a
+little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it
+was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation
+of the London-like scene around me.
+
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden
+visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me;
+and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some
+gentleman as "My Lord," or "four Grace." But if there were really any
+lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my hearing.
+
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
+
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.
+So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping
+the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy;
+but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the
+time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I
+kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes, and
+observed that every now and then little parties were made up among the
+gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going to a
+private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word Rouge; but
+he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly pale. Another
+said something about Loo.
+
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+
+"Come along, Redburn," said he.
+
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in
+the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the
+night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang
+up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he
+only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble
+Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's antlers, over
+the landing.
+
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.
+
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.
+
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven,
+like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And
+oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited
+serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there,
+they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringes of
+bullion and silk.
+
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with
+bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
+
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in
+the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii--in that
+part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as
+Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of
+the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze
+medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such
+pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the
+left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in
+Corinth.
+
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance
+of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It
+was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked
+expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His
+marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
+
+"Sit down, Wellingborough," said Harry; "don't be frightened, we are at
+home.--Ring the bell, will you? But stop;"--and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
+
+"He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough," said he; "who stays in this one
+place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you
+don't breathe any secrets in his ear."
+
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.
+
+"Cigars," said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the
+middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example,
+and make myself happy.
+
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before,
+while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander,
+I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, "And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?"
+
+"Upon my soul," he cried, "you have hit it:--you must have been here
+before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name."
+
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been
+quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his
+general carriage was firm.
+
+"Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?" said he.
+
+"I am afraid, Harry," said I, "that when you left me just now, you must
+have been drinking something stronger than wine."
+
+"Hear him now," said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,--"a parson 'pon honor!--But remark you,
+Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably
+longer time than before:--I may not be back again to-night."
+
+"What?" said I.
+
+"Be still," he cried, "hear me, I know the old duke here, and--"
+
+"Who? not the Duke of Wellington," said I, wondering whether Harry was
+really going to include him too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+
+"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below;
+they call him the Duke:--he keeps the house. I say, I know him well, and
+he knows me; and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we have
+arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and sleep
+here tonight, and--and--" continued he, speaking low--"you must guard this
+letter--" slipping a sealed one into my hand--"and, if I am not back by
+morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the letter
+there;--here, take this paper--it's all set down here in black and
+white--where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that's
+done--mind, this is all in case I don't return--then you may do what you
+please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here's
+enough to pay all your expenses."
+
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.
+
+"What's the matter, Redburn?" he cried, with a wild sort of laugh--"you
+are not afraid of me, are you?--No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you
+would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter."
+
+"What in heaven's name do you mean?" at last I exclaimed, "you don't
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?" and I
+snatched him by the hand.
+
+"Pooh, pooh," he cried, "let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do as I
+say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!--no, no," he added,
+vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more--"no, I won't: I have
+nothing more to tell you--not a word. Will you swear?"
+
+"But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!"
+
+"Not a syllable! Will you swear?--you will not? then here, give me that
+purse:--there--there--take that--and that--and that;--that will pay your
+fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend," and he
+wheeled round his back.
+
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled
+me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered
+old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me
+as his friend--young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to
+the comforts of his lordship, while he--Harry--was gone.
+
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression,
+that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry
+then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one
+word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room, saying, "Leave not
+this room tonight; and remember the letter, and Bury!"
+
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose,
+and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard
+the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory
+rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the
+room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have given the
+world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in
+Prince's Dock.
+
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the house,
+my limbs seemed manacled.
+
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a
+confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
+
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul--in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to
+do this thing?--why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he
+want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour
+he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.
+
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;--would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
+I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
+search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
+sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
+Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
+over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
+the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and
+here I am--yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.
+
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
+around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
+never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
+squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
+marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
+myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
+still.
+
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
+upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
+night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of
+starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was; but
+remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and
+that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
+
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.
+
+"The letter and paper," he cried.
+
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+
+"There! there! there! thus I tear you," he cried, wrenching the letter
+to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. "I am off for America; the game is up."
+
+"For God's sake explain," said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. "Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?"
+
+"Ha, ha," he deliriously laughed. "Gambling? red and white, you
+mean?--cards?--dice?--the bones?--Ha, ha!--Gambling? gambling?" he ground
+out between his teeth--"what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables
+they are!"
+
+"Wellingborough," he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
+blazing into mine--"Wellingborough"--and fumbling in his breast-pocket, he
+drew forth a dirk--"Here, Wellingborough, take it--take it, I say--are you
+stupid?--there, there"--and he pushed it into my hands. "Keep it away from
+me--keep it out of my sight--I don't want it near me, while I feel as I
+do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don't bury
+them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang
+myself"--and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it
+down from the wall.
+
+"In God's name, what ails you?" I cried.
+
+"Nothing, oh nothing," said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
+calmness--"nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the serenest of
+men."
+
+"But give me that dirk," he suddenly cried--"let me have it, I say. Oh! I
+don't mean to murder myself--I'm past that now--give it me"--and snatching
+it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a terrific stab,
+nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
+
+"There now," he cried, "there's something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me--that's my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning"--and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
+
+"And this, then," said I, "is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I
+did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will
+not regret not seeing the town."
+
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, "Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly."
+
+"And why?" said I, in alarm, "what more would you have me swear?"
+
+"Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!" he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips--"never to breathe it! swear!"
+
+"I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not
+desire it," said I, "but there's no need of swearing."
+
+"Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn," he added, imploringly.
+
+"Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as
+soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive."
+
+"And what am I?" cried Harry; "but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean to
+offend; if you knew all--but no, no!--never mind, never mind!" And he ran
+to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+
+"Brandy," whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+
+"Are you not going to sleep, then?" said I, more and more alarmed at his
+wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such
+a mood.
+
+"No sleep for me! sleep if you can--I mean to sit up with a decanter!--let
+me see"--looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel--"it's only two hours
+to morning."
+
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.
+
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the
+lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and
+then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the
+table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his
+glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits
+seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
+
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his
+shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+
+"Look! it is broad day," said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of
+the window.
+
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall
+of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets
+to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of
+the last thirty-six hours.
+
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our
+journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at
+the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the
+Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the
+mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was
+almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket,
+he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was
+shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing
+once more in our sailor habiliments.
+
+"Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?" said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+
+"Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course--what else?"
+he replied.
+
+"And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?" asked I.
+
+"That's as it may turn out," said Harry; "but I have now more than ever
+resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like
+me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf, you
+know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's see what
+they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel better
+already. Never say die, is my motto."
+
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay
+of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days' time.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours,
+and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to
+any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had
+absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or
+nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know
+nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the
+discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly
+believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The
+reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although
+the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was
+not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as
+cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward
+passage.
+
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, "Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good."
+
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the
+proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+
+"But turn to, sir, turn to," added the mate; "here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay--jump!"
+
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.
+
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had
+been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the
+between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for
+the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were
+already littering the decks.
+
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than
+upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of
+casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along
+the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing
+access to four rows of bunks,--three tiers, one above another,--against
+the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in
+the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse
+planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else;
+especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light coming down
+except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which were covered
+with little houses called "booby-hatches." Upon the main-hatches, which
+were well calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the
+"passengers-galley" was solidly lashed down.
+
+This galley was a large open stove, or iron range--made expressly for
+emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the
+emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+
+After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the
+outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out
+with the tide in the morning.
+
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and
+God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the cheers
+of the surrounding ships.
+
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by
+the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit,
+now came a one-eyed crimp leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had
+been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated
+before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in
+port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a
+bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled
+out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely
+helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the
+quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his
+closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered
+on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who
+put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself
+carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him
+till the ship was away from the land.
+
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
+Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
+were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
+policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
+
+A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
+the river past the fort.
+
+The scene was most striking.
+
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
+days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
+for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
+merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in
+the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and
+from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo,
+cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.
+
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their
+voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing
+America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days
+would be an uncommonly long voyage.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
+
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet, all
+this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents
+from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants
+themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by
+one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into
+the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable.
+The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the
+emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the
+uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two "booby-hatches" came
+the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible
+wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and
+the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of
+the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.
+
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
+who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to
+run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly
+inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and even
+then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady, such
+ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as unendurable, and
+put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy annihilation; all of
+which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to preserve their
+valuable lives.
+
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching
+seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley on deck?
+How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a first
+voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just as
+hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter, and
+seventeen servants.
+
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head down
+the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
+
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
+some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
+prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the
+quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
+Consequently--even in fine weather--when they come up from below, they are
+crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and
+spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for
+unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
+
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and
+to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of
+the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the
+main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between
+those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid
+twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent
+in having this regulation maintained.
+
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
+humanity.
+
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is
+to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this
+circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation
+at these things.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+
+
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be
+marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which
+had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been
+brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their
+duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man
+yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had
+been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
+
+His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the
+sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand
+that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him;
+when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the
+quarterdeck.
+
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing
+be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously
+forbade this proceeding.
+
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the bowsprit-bitts--two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the
+men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to
+the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side
+planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to
+extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch,
+to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he
+exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the
+shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.
+
+"Blast that rat!" cried the Greenlander.
+
+"He's blasted already," said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. "It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead;
+and here he is"--and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm,
+exclaiming, "Dead as a timber-head!"
+
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he
+held to the man's face.
+
+"No, he's not dead," he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment
+at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped,
+when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
+forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
+cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
+over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
+silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
+like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
+
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
+every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
+curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
+death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
+
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.
+
+"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+
+"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed
+Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."
+
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
+rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+
+"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must
+go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
+say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
+partly out of the bunk.
+
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
+sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
+did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
+all serve to soothe me.
+
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill
+he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on
+board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in
+a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such
+things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned
+in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed
+familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of such things
+having happened to others.
+
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case
+like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I
+almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the
+Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal
+condemnation.
+
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the
+bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk
+was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict
+orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the
+emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
+
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX. CARLO
+
+
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a
+rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued
+velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not
+above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full
+morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that
+his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's
+tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual
+radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility,
+deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of
+life.
+
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes
+of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of
+poetry, gushing from every rent.
+
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire;
+and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his
+hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of
+Liverpool, playing the sunny airs of southern climes, among the northern
+fog and drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over
+the Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
+
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+
+"Carlo," said Harry, "how did you succeed in England?"
+
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing
+back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he
+looked up, and said in his broken English--that seemed like mixing the
+potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:--said he, "Ah! I succeed
+very well!--for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the
+sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the
+ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know
+from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop before a
+house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will soonest toss
+me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to
+the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and the poor the
+merry."
+
+"But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men," said
+Harry, "who would much rather have your room than your music?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," said Carlo, playing with his foot, "sometimes I do."
+
+"And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?"
+
+"No," continued the boy, "I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my
+only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off,
+not I; would I, poor organ?"--looking down the hatchway where it was.
+"No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for
+when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they
+themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are cracked,
+and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls."
+
+"No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps," said Harry, with a laugh.
+
+"Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords."
+
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
+vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
+and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
+gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
+went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
+
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
+be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars--never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a
+beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
+
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all
+the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on a
+moon-lit sward of violets.
+
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
+
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.
+
+But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.
+
+Behold the organ!
+
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
+melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
+we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
+almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
+buried.
+
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order;
+in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!--what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!--what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!--But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.
+
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air--a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here's
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and
+while I list to the organs twain--one yours, one mine--let me gaze
+fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;--'tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching--all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes,
+the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded
+damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm
+around me.
+
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband--soft, dulcet, dropping sounds,
+like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as
+if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts,
+called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
+
+Again-what blasted heath is this?--what goblin sounds of Macbeth's
+witches?--Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg's, demons dire.
+
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard--some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep
+dipped in silver gauzes.
+
+All this could Carlo do--make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me;
+and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and
+bowers of song.
+
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
+
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same
+wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure
+greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+
+His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's
+heaven, it turns on golden hinges.
+
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded
+columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out
+come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of
+martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass
+on, and disappear.
+
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors,
+among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some
+emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back
+the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
+
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.
+
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.
+
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy,
+with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous
+box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!
+
+
+
+
+L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+
+
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
+sailor.
+
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
+even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried
+you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with
+your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
+glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it,
+that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.
+
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
+you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
+to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
+fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
+like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
+embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the
+world.
+
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
+same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
+show like a zebra, banding with elks.
+
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
+Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the
+soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds
+through Caffrarian woods.
+
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him
+before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
+knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors
+are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time,
+abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold
+and unsympathizing civility.
+
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
+the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
+every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
+money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
+him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
+
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity
+with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other
+extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
+brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap,
+to stand his morning watch.
+
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
+crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
+spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
+before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest
+acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
+it would seem, from enacting this folly.
+
+"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to
+Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
+in a trice."
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is
+not mine a morning gown?"
+
+But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+
+"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a
+mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"
+
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
+want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
+pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
+
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.
+
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by
+the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of
+silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they
+thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by
+abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
+Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test
+the color of his calves.
+
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
+easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company,
+the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible
+necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the
+constables.
+
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar.
+What else can bring them to sea?
+
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was
+put down for a very equivocal character.
+
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
+one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to
+mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
+mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
+or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
+tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
+if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
+to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga
+never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
+the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of
+his officers and crew.
+
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
+any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
+coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
+that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
+of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is,
+pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
+aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that
+when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be
+inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so
+absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round
+the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to
+mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However,
+after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting
+loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry
+for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
+would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from
+the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
+was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
+would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.
+
+"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what
+it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt
+you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you
+had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you
+only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find
+yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."
+
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his
+nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had
+drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
+altogether too many Havannas.
+
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
+morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
+short signal halyards.
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.
+
+"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.
+
+"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+
+"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once
+across his back, but lightly.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and
+then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him
+lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head,
+I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.
+
+"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up
+till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing
+the rope's end.
+
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there
+no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he
+made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice.
+I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
+little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for
+I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being
+lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top.
+Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and
+clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the
+tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.
+
+"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and
+help him; you understand?"
+
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
+bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives;
+and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my
+unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the
+wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.
+
+I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
+even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
+
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.
+
+At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the
+captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
+himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New
+York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a
+blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on
+board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within
+so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
+thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his
+pleasure.
+
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but
+go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else
+but that.
+
+This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
+reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a
+miserable life indeed.
+
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
+finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead,
+and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a
+sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would
+be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked
+without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of
+this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these
+evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional
+nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare
+to the merciless crew.
+
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself
+up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps
+his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to
+explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
+passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common
+tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that
+only He who made us can expound them.
+
+
+
+
+LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds, till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the
+last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and
+all the rest was broad ocean.
+
+Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
+At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
+America itself was at hand.
+
+"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. "Is that it?"
+
+"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.
+
+"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"
+
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when
+they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own
+native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a
+steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
+
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
+adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a
+place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see
+how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together,
+looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York
+city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles
+distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
+
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"
+
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.
+
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
+would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
+and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and
+play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who
+blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music by
+furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward,
+when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from the
+cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the
+gentlemen and ladies.
+
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes,
+by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's,
+for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or
+thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the
+other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling
+to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely
+unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest,
+were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the
+gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could to my
+little Italian's organ.
+
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any
+tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at
+one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or
+such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some
+ladies, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to
+Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+
+"Yes, ladies," said the captain, bowing, "by your leave, I think Carlo's
+organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig running after
+its dam."
+
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were
+all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.
+
+"Carlo"--said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the
+quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place
+during my watch on deck:--"Carlo"--said I, "what do the gentlemen and
+ladies give you for playing?"
+
+"Look!"--and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield--three English pennies.
+
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the
+natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers,
+regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not
+feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
+
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her
+own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not
+because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.
+
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked
+as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a
+short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf,
+but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable about him
+but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not remember
+it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the time, as if
+its owner was laboring under the mumps.
+
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the
+rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee
+of the spanker; or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the
+emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the
+upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help them
+to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to see
+Niagara Falls.
+
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four
+heavy files of the London Times, and other papers; and he spent all his
+hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg
+crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all.
+That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied.
+He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then
+were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
+
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are
+like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+
+
+
+
+LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+
+
+I have made some mention of the "galley," or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the
+steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty
+large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough, considering the
+number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire was only to be
+kindled at certain hours.
+
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in
+all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the
+captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well go
+to law with the Czar of Russia.
+
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of
+the spray over the uncovered "galley." Whenever I had the morning watch,
+from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from
+below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of
+rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the
+fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and children;
+each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a great tumult
+ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the more
+quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.
+
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed
+to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a
+great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his
+appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose
+coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in
+its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to
+him; and with that, he turned aside.
+
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed,
+made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no
+sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy
+snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about the
+fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary
+hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy,
+who by this time, however, had decamped.
+
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but
+scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the
+most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to
+which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by
+imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they
+themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their
+social superiors hold them subject.
+
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.
+
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called mush; by the Dutch is known as supaan; by
+sailors burgoo; by the New Englanders hasty-pudding; in which
+hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a
+sort of epic.
+
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.
+
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than
+the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages,
+Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
+
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would sometimes
+take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him, like an
+Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion, and eating
+his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk bottle, and
+smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made time jog
+along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife
+in some imaginary section of the ship, called the second cabin, which
+was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was
+young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in love
+with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
+
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do,
+from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their
+double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he
+would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial
+commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady was
+not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks
+would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun.
+The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a
+dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the
+mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided
+them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.
+
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him--
+
+"Billy, my dear;" and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+
+"Billy, my love!"
+
+The bow went faster and faster.
+
+"Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;" and she
+bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.
+
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour
+or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed,
+which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass
+from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+
+
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of
+Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:--"It happened, that in each
+family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity
+in point of age or of strength."
+
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.
+
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like
+as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms
+seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to
+form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all
+six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the
+O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the O'Regans. The
+former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their
+mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the
+O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to
+all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
+
+Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her
+spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made
+her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from
+the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and
+the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in shampooing them, though it was haphazard sort of work
+enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on
+a stray limb.
+
+"Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you, Teddy,
+you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your legs up
+with Pat's."
+
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's locker--or
+rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows--with a large old quarto
+Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and
+reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted
+us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O'Brien
+purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for
+the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
+
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted
+her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.
+
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion
+was curiously manifested.
+
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her,
+began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of
+the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The widow
+gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then ducking in
+the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and springing from
+the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs, biting and striking
+at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no sooner perceived,
+than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the amazed seaman
+found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the
+three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+
+"There now, you rascal," cried the mate, "throw overboard another Bible,
+and I'll send you after it without a bowline."
+
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel.
+That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by
+the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in
+them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in
+public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning
+their nurses.
+
+"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye
+run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+
+"Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?"
+
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken
+up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which
+resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
+
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me
+at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of
+the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?
+
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the
+particular benefit of twins?
+
+
+
+
+LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+
+
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their
+tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the
+end.
+
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid
+for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater
+portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender
+the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of the
+Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks out,
+on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.
+
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at
+sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called
+"High-low-Jack-and-the-game," which name, indeed, has a Jackish and
+nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco,
+which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they
+play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into "chaws."
+
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if
+they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to be
+boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the forecastle by
+those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on deck, and make
+a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there was a great
+deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of nigging and
+cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were exchanged.
+
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but
+very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky;
+and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly
+torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the four suits might
+have seceded from their respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe,
+under the name of "Tar-spots."
+
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum
+constituting an ordinary "chaw," was made to last a whole day; and at
+night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same "chaw" was
+placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to do duty in a
+pipe.
+
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With
+touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings--the time of
+smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable "chawing," they
+beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
+
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea
+in his head--"Boys, let's search under the bunks!" Bless you, Blunt! what
+a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark places
+explored; and two sticks of nail-rod tobacco, and several old "chaws,"
+thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage, were their cheering
+reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon this
+occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally
+adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is
+desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to
+all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted
+this nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater
+would be forever rendered nugatory--"Expect not to understand any man
+till you have divided with him an inheritance."
+
+The nail-rods they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there
+were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the
+presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to
+the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with
+his knife, crying out, "Whose is this?" Whereupon a respondent,
+previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner
+of the forecastle, "Blunt's;" and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like
+manner, till all were served.
+
+I put it to you, lawyers--shade of Blackstone, I invoke you--if a more
+impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage "chaws" were soon gone, and then,
+after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped, and
+relapsed into gloom.
+
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however--but not altogether new
+among seamen--to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut
+up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes
+were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and
+had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient,
+cheese-like flavor.
+
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part,
+round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum,
+upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such
+times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever
+taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it
+slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic
+"heart;" for so this central piece is denominated.
+
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+
+Nor is this delectable morsel of old junk wanting in many interesting,
+mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have
+been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of
+seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it
+may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What
+outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the water, and what
+un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when forming part of a
+lofty stay or a shroud?
+
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little "cut" it was,
+that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting
+hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to
+see whether it had any "tenderloin."
+
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at
+all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an
+antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed,
+though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an
+astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with which the
+flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors seemed to
+like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They converted
+one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when solicited by a
+shipmate for a "chaw," would produce a small coil of rope.
+
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.
+
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine
+weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until
+very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
+
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace,
+when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper
+one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the
+mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
+
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the
+nail-rods they found.
+
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or
+fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left
+to the philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER
+
+
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of
+a circumstance--which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before--that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too
+unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here,
+with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine
+weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the
+remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
+
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a
+midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been the
+face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and blasted by
+lightning.
+
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was
+only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his
+excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in
+his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
+
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
+
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment
+of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before
+him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if
+he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse
+between his teeth.
+
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world--the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting
+his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond
+without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is
+no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a
+democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by
+side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though Milton's
+Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only because he is
+not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine original. We
+gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised fancies
+concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure. But
+in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up
+and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of
+wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.
+
+
+
+
+LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION
+
+
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps
+on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine
+before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those
+melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew
+on Hermon.
+
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.
+
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like
+his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the
+words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and
+pansied margins.
+
+"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his
+watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I
+stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and
+there I'll hum you an air."
+
+It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."
+
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be
+singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
+
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
+sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous
+quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from
+his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his
+feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
+even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry
+possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could
+not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the
+being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they
+did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
+accordion in their ears.
+
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in
+velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.
+
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
+more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
+with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
+all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
+intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
+cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if
+he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England;
+and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.
+
+"I have forgotten England," he said, "and never more mean to think of
+it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?"
+
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I
+was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in
+the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with
+one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave
+kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never
+actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can
+not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no
+true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust
+that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
+
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by
+talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I
+certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even
+as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward
+him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country;
+I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting,
+that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects
+and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.
+
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--"Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have," and then he went on to mention, that in some
+places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly
+respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in
+lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats--it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their
+livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery
+shillings.
+
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and
+gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not
+sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and
+when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a
+gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing
+you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting
+reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices,
+enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the
+conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well
+recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make
+the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+
+"Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?" said Harry,
+"or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?" he anxiously
+added.
+
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
+
+I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were,
+a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the
+civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have
+resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in
+wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney,
+and had shut up his Christendom in London.
+
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not
+play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such
+a business.
+
+Said I, "My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man
+has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think
+myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling."
+
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea
+of singing himself into a livelihood.
+
+"No, I won't sing for my mutton," said he--"what would Lady Georgiana
+say?"
+
+"If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry," returned I,
+who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+
+"But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you."
+
+"I do write a hand," he gladly rejoined--"there, look at the
+implement!--do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or
+cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?"
+
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small;
+and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the
+nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.
+
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of
+that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble
+birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son
+of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers
+in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration,
+would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
+
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or
+that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot,
+when even a fish has no foot at all!
+
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh,
+democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It
+is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+
+But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white
+as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had
+somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
+
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly,
+that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses
+to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?
+with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord
+Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she
+vowed she was mine?--Out of sight, recreant and apostate!--deep
+down--disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that
+upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few
+friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
+
+
+
+
+LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+
+
+"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
+children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where
+the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which,
+indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+
+"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
+over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.--"Pigs, is it?--and the day is close by, ye
+spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"
+
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their
+outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.
+
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
+to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
+the ship's stores, or starve.
+
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
+cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
+
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
+hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
+consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of
+the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
+plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the
+public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and
+carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not
+venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
+cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
+they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
+cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
+the name of the Church.
+
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
+Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
+emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
+rigging and flogged.
+
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
+such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants
+into an insurrection.
+
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
+the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith
+coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
+protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
+
+"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours,
+if you can."
+
+Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of
+food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
+time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain
+have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
+voyage.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
+THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+
+
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
+not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
+seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
+the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
+great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
+America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
+prevalence of westerly winds.
+
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
+by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
+visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
+a week.
+
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
+
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
+galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
+steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
+lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
+emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
+the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
+ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
+to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
+when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
+two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
+also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
+the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
+ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
+windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+
+During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
+noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
+marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
+close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
+
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
+known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
+
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
+out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
+to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
+disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
+being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess
+that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
+increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
+over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
+fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
+most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
+
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
+deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and
+tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
+beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
+continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of
+these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities,
+that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
+
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.
+
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
+that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
+captain's order.
+
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
+like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
+meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath
+with a gasp.
+
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which
+the fear of contagion had left open.
+
+"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."
+
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.
+
+"Haul it down!" roared the mate.
+
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.
+
+About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
+and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
+bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed
+nothing more frightful.
+
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
+By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
+rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
+rites, were dropped into the ocean.
+
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
+but the captain did not again go down to them.
+
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
+it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
+to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered
+decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their
+den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was
+out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the
+defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the
+emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly
+painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
+their own salvation.
+
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
+clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
+they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
+quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
+
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
+an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
+very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
+and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard
+against contagion.
+
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds
+and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
+prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest
+had been so often heard.
+
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
+that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
+
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the
+third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor,
+and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward
+supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
+brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers.
+All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed
+elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of
+another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
+swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair
+of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at
+least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
+this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in
+rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
+
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
+rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
+and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
+one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
+father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
+death, both mothers and babes survived.
+
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
+the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
+the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
+fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
+and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
+Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
+white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
+boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
+
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
+down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft;
+and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing
+the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and
+regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of
+late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of
+them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage,
+with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck,
+I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning
+out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
+three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
+convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied
+under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
+
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the
+fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the
+fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we
+made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for
+New York.
+
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at
+least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or
+children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and
+bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no
+indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality,
+that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and
+bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must
+toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down
+the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
+suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
+few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
+land?
+
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
+nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
+land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
+jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.
+
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative
+on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among
+strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
+
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
+in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon
+the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
+
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any
+one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of
+sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have
+perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would
+you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the
+scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites
+much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his
+behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life
+and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates
+died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in
+theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed,
+without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical
+skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the
+spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly
+discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
+Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
+last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
+
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
+against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who
+had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.
+In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
+the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions;
+supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest
+favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant
+steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
+bulk-head.
+
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.
+
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
+orders upon his arrival in New York.
+
+"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"
+
+"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man
+to be a parson, and pray."
+
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
+the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
+There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
+die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
+seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
+passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
+more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life and
+death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
+three-worded sentence!
+
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
+of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
+the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank.
+And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
+of the Highlander's calamity.
+
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes
+of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances
+of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate
+unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention
+at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
+light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
+
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.
+
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes
+of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive
+it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have
+God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with
+them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is
+no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we
+waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come
+hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.
+
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
+
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
+lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain
+of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and
+give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during
+a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to
+place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of
+shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet
+weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and
+let them have an occasional run fore and aft?--There is no law concerning
+these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see
+it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!
+
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them,
+go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet
+barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to
+its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief
+outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is
+striving to make us.
+
+
+
+
+LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck,
+where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping
+the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" and in the shore-bloom that came to us--even from that
+desert of sand-hillocks--methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance
+of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at
+home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from
+afar.
+
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.
+
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last
+the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into
+all three top-sails.
+
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they
+had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several,
+Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four
+weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
+
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off
+duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering
+port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he
+expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon
+an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on
+deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
+
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were
+like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark
+tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering
+up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place
+at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard--which in reefing is
+accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of
+this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work
+in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would
+yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded
+dominion over the men.
+
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing
+and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his
+reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson,
+whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that
+they are the most profane.
+
+"Haul out to windward!" coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he
+threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped
+to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood
+from his lungs.
+
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong
+from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the
+sea.
+
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.
+
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the
+one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the
+waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an
+order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead
+of that, the next sound that greeted us was, "Bear a hand, and reef
+away, men!" from the mate.
+
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea--and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs--our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
+
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too
+many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching
+and cracking in the sun.
+
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet
+in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be
+sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in
+case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the
+souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of
+survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst
+of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at least of his
+servants escaped to report it.
+
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up
+his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage
+under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their
+secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing
+so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death
+was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits,
+unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to
+their now drawing near to their port.
+
+
+
+
+LX. HOME AT LAST
+
+
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading
+calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly
+towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all
+around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.
+
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air,
+the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue
+sea seemed to flow under them.
+
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient
+cabin-passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered
+around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down
+into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own;
+and turning to Harry, said, "This America's skies must be down in the
+sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also
+behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I
+go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool."
+
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore--the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless
+pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the
+throng.
+
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger
+of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces,
+and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw of wind.
+
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands
+among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a
+realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
+
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied
+round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands
+was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.--A command that was received by
+the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured,
+that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long
+detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore reluctantly
+complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following them, went old
+pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the sea was strewn
+with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the waves--couches for
+all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things of this sort,
+tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New York,
+drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten
+Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated
+upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces,
+and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water.
+And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced them
+to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then
+fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that by
+evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that the
+Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus,
+some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall not get
+a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
+
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the
+forts.
+
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a
+glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with
+aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses
+brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander
+was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
+
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and
+like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
+
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag,
+denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of
+the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world,
+taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag.
+
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were
+now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that they
+thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
+
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced
+the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail
+boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black
+rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately
+old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we
+caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
+
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what
+home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems
+to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you
+swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+
+"And that" said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a shark,
+showed tiers of teeth, "that, ladies, is a line-of-battle-ship, the
+North Carolina."
+
+"Oh, dear!"--and "Oh my!"--ejaculated the ladies, and--"Lord, save us,"
+responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
+
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor,
+fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of
+which was now worth a broad manor in England.
+
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were
+all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning. But
+nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like "Hail Columbia!" his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.
+
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and
+gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
+
+At sunrise, we warped into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a
+maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a
+rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd
+of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to
+embrace them.
+
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and
+the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.
+
+
+
+
+LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+
+
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted
+old ship, but the mate and the rats.
+
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond
+all doubt--like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the
+night, and no starb-o-leens ahoy! would annoy us again.
+
+"All night in! think of that, Harry, my friend!"
+
+"Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think I
+may now sleep as long as I please."
+
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+
+"I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers," cried
+Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds.
+"No! they will not come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look at my hand
+once, Wellingborough!"
+
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a
+rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+
+"Never mind, Harry," said I--"You know the ladies of the east steep the
+tips of their fingers in some golden dye."
+
+"And by Plutus," cried Harry--"I'd steep mine up to the armpits in gold;
+since you talk about that. But never mind, I'll swear I'm just from
+Persia, my boy."
+
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once,
+I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by
+one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat
+cakes.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what will you have?"--said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.
+
+"Gentlemen!" whispered Harry to me--"gentlemen!--hear him!--I say now,
+Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By
+heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:--Coffee and hot rolls," he added
+aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, "and fellow--come back--bring us a
+venison-steak."
+
+"Haven't got it, gentlemen."
+
+"Ham and eggs," suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.
+
+But the butter!
+
+"Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?"
+
+"Don't say a word,"--said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast "I'm
+going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so
+long as I live."
+
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold,
+bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
+
+"Now," said Harry, "lead on; and let's see something of these United
+States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the Great
+Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here, take my
+arm;--lead on."
+
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded
+me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the
+Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
+
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady's
+butcher's bill was not very large.
+
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned
+up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened
+during my absence.
+
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other,
+gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled
+my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+
+Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and
+strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a
+creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets
+seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found
+him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his pocket.
+
+"Where am I going to dine, this day week?"--he slowly said. "What's to be
+done, Wellingborough?"
+
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing
+a little cheering myself; even though I had got home again. But no more
+about that.
+
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and
+in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best
+for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:--Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry
+full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a
+small quota to the general entertainment.
+
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to
+retire for life on the profits of my first voyage; but nevertheless, I
+thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable
+things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as
+the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off
+the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board, with the rest.
+We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found myself, after an
+interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
+
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the
+Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes--beautiful sight!--paid them their wages.
+
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars
+coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in
+restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and
+who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy
+dollars as his due.
+
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was
+worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American "mitts." Only
+seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that
+stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only �5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.
+
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the
+old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing
+all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they
+would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:--the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper--I think it was the Herald--threw his leg over
+one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all
+parts of the world.
+
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
+
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+
+"Well, where do you come from? Who are you, pray? and what do you want?
+Steward, show these young gentlemen out."
+
+"I want my money," said Harry.
+
+"My wages are due," said I.
+
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us,
+letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+
+"Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry, enraged at his impudence--"I tell you what
+it is, Captain Riga; this won't do--where's the rhino?"
+
+"Captain Riga," added I, "do you not remember, that about four months
+ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this
+very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I
+have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank you for
+my pay."
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember," said the captain. "Mr. Jones! Ha! ha! I remember
+Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--you, too, are the son
+of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not your great-uncle
+a barber?"
+
+"No!" thundered I.
+
+"Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen--be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see," turning over his accounts--"Hum, hum!--yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
+dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?"
+
+"So it seems, sir," said I, with staring eyes.
+
+"And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the
+yards, Monsieur Redburn."
+
+Owe him! thought I--what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my
+resentment; and presently he said, "By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and
+as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers,
+seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me
+in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank you for the
+money;" and he extended his open palm across the desk.
+
+"Shall I pitch into him?" whispered Harry.
+
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of
+my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that
+he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were
+in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I could not
+help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit,
+for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
+
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be
+munificent. Peace to his dinners.
+
+"Mr. Bolton, I believe," said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. "Mr. Bolton, you also shipped for three dollars per month: and
+you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have
+been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half,
+Mr. Bolton; and here it is;" handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+
+"And this," said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, "this
+is the reward of my long and faithful services!"
+
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+"There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse,
+and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir."
+
+"Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again," said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.
+
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of
+his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried Pshaw! and that was the last of it.
+
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck,
+engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf,
+loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined
+for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw
+very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it
+turned out.
+
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage
+against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses--such as
+indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished,
+without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way, and
+without speaking to the sailors on the subject--by this, and kindred
+actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole
+ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name
+unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
+
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.
+
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon
+the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat--but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.
+
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the "Irish cockney," was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+gentlemen alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side
+next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about,
+presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute
+to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened
+to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared
+the ship.
+
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only
+lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
+
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so
+clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the
+wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated
+"The Flashes." And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among
+his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their
+looks, that his customers were "flush," and would spend their money
+freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+
+It was a touching scene.
+
+"Well, maties," said one of them, at last--"I spose we shan't see each
+other again:--come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and drink to
+the last voyage!"
+
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked
+his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as
+much as to say--"Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your
+liquor;--help yourselves, your honors."
+
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them
+all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared
+in couples, through the several doorways; for "The Flashes" was on a
+corner.
+
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+"Good-by, God bless you," is heard for every "How d'ye do, welcome, my
+boy"--then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most
+hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves,
+they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to
+and fro.
+
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood
+on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+
+"They are gone," said I.
+
+"Thank heaven!" said Harry.
+
+
+
+
+LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat
+on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub--oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?
+
+"I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry," said I, "he's
+a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know."
+
+"No doubt of it," said Harry, looking hopeless.
+
+"And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon."
+
+"And I am sorry enough myself," said Harry, looking very sincere.
+
+"But I will be soon back again, I doubt not," said I.
+
+"Perhaps so," said Harry, shaking his head. "How far is it off?"
+
+"Only a hundred and eighty miles," said I.
+
+"A hundred and eighty miles!" said Harry, drawing the words out like an
+endless ribbon. "Why, I couldn't walk that in a month."
+
+"Now, my dear friend," said I, "take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well."
+
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad,
+that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both
+gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he
+stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on
+the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play
+of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we
+parted. I never saw Harry again.
+
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:--I pass over this; and will conclude my first
+voyage by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks;
+during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter,
+now spread before me.
+
+"Dear Redburn--Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After
+you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified,
+are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
+get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
+melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
+those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars,
+but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times
+after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had
+permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her
+closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know,
+but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared
+he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in
+South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made
+inquiries among them; but without success. And this, I am heartily
+grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his
+melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a
+whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You
+must come down yourself, and help me seek him out."
+
+This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to
+the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered to
+think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him
+all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must
+indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter
+experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
+
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
+whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's crew
+that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
+
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
+Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
+to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that
+the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally
+bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him why he had
+abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of ships.
+
+"We had hardly been out three months," said he, "when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next day
+lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered
+the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a
+whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard
+time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son, and when you
+could coax him to it, he sang like a bird."
+
+"What was his name?" said I, trembling with expectation; "what kind of
+eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?"
+
+"Harry Bolton was not your brother?" cried the stranger, starting.
+
+Harry Bolton!
+
+It was even he!
+
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, My
+First Voyage--which here I end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8118-8.txt or 8118-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/1/8118/
+
+Produced by Project Gutenberg volunteers from the HTML
+version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/8118-8.zip b/old/8118-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83eeae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8118-8.zip
diff --git a/old/8118.txt b/old/8118.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f0f5bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8118.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12668 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Redburn. His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Posting Date: April 13, 2014 [EBook #8118]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+First Posted: June 27, 2003
+[Last Updated: May 20, 2018]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Project Gutenberg volunteers from the HTML
+version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+REDBURN.
+
+HIS FIRST VOYAGE
+
+by
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE
+
+Being the Sailor Boy
+
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+
+In the Merchant Navy
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND
+         BRED IN HIM
+     II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+    III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+     IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+      V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS
+         UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+     VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN,
+         AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+    VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+   VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES
+         SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+     IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH
+         THEM
+      X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE
+         BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+     XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+    XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+   XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS
+         MIND
+    XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+     XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+    XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+   XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+  XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+         DREAM BOOK
+    XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+     XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD
+         OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+    XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+   XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+  XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+   XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY
+    XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+   XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+  XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+ XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+   XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+         SAILORS
+    XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH
+         OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
+   XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH
+         THE TOWN
+  XXXII. THE DOCKS
+ XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+  XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+   XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+ XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+  XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+     XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+    XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+   XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+  XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+         ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+   XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+         CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+    XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+   XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+  XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+ XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+   XLIX. CARLO
+      L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+     LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+    LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+   LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+    LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+    LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD
+         CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
+   LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+  LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE
+         AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+    LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+     LX. HOME AT LAST
+    LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+   LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+
+
+I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN
+HIM
+
+
+"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will
+save the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts,
+stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets."
+
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.
+
+"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money, and
+you want an outfit, and I have none to give, you may as well take my
+fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can get.--Nay,
+take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more."
+
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
+York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:
+
+"FOR BREMEN.
+
+"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
+cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."
+
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
+suggested volumes of thought.
+
+A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
+with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+
+Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
+different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
+green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before
+our house on the bank.
+
+Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting
+ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling
+me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which
+my river experience was familiar.
+
+"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date the
+fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
+an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
+so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+
+"For freight or passage apply on board!"
+
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking
+passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
+foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
+who talked French.
+
+"Coenties Slip."
+
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
+Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
+with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and
+chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much
+abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and
+out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
+residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
+large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
+remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
+woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their
+crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
+sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
+
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
+Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered
+sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me
+of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like
+twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the
+ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my
+thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old
+lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked
+streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially
+I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and
+Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
+Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
+school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned
+over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them
+to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots
+looked so manly.
+
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
+into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
+fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and
+down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to
+look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a man
+myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as
+the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+
+"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big, because
+when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once
+caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."
+
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am
+sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I
+wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she
+said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this
+wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and several
+times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown still
+larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
+
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
+foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We
+had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
+from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
+grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
+could be doing with themselves now.
+
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.
+
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.
+
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
+castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
+
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
+than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
+used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
+them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
+
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
+
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
+and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a
+great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats
+sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
+
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
+brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
+with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
+doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had been
+printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library
+edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and
+many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there
+was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I
+would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight
+along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to
+every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk
+French, as he sometimes did to a servant we had.
+
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that
+he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed;
+for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a
+foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in America.
+
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
+bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
+other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
+entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
+hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
+no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
+my subsequent rovings.
+
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days of
+the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
+
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of
+my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
+tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
+admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and
+delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many of
+whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see the
+ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which they
+were accustomed to give it.
+
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and
+often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was
+inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,
+that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little,
+I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break
+the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something
+wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in
+want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of
+insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order
+to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind
+to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that,
+the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and
+until I should recover my reason.
+
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
+it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd's
+ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands,
+full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to
+dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever
+thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost a hundred
+years.
+
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
+ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
+till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
+people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
+little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
+like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
+the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little chaps,
+and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for all
+that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
+oath.
+
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
+over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
+was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the
+cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
+steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of
+glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;
+while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
+quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
+head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
+
+The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
+dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
+whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
+and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till
+I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in
+the world.
+
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
+
+So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not
+have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat,
+lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea
+under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get
+on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my
+sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I
+left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.
+
+
+
+II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+
+
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with
+me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I
+was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that
+had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time;
+all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early
+age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.
+
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing
+patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take
+none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as
+December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is
+no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth
+of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter enough
+even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must be
+uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let me go on
+with my story.
+
+"Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can," murmured I, as
+she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my safe
+arrival in New York.
+
+"And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I'll be back in four months--it will be autumn then, and
+we'll go into the woods after nuts, an I'll tell you all about Europe.
+Good-by! good-by!"
+
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage advice
+above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning me
+again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I would;
+for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself, when he
+sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,--he
+was in ill health then,--and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and
+the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with
+comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I
+thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your
+hand!
+
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel
+all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen;
+and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with
+him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never again can such
+blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave such a scar
+that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a hard and cruel
+thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be
+reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become
+bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before
+and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and
+not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
+
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.
+
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain's office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day, owing
+to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to pay
+for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a dollar
+did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat was off,
+and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing to any
+body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged
+on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If I
+had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them of
+my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain's clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on my
+leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his object
+in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and silent,
+and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have spoken and
+told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my dollar, and
+then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He did not wait a
+great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff voice, very unlike
+his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar party, demanded my
+ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded the money; and upon
+my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry voice that attracted
+all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the storm. The devil in me
+then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my frame, till it tingled
+at my finger ends; and I muttered out my resolution to stay where I was,
+in such a manner, that the ticket man faltered back. "There's a dollar
+for you," I added, offering it.
+
+"I want two," said he.
+
+"Take that or nothing," I answered; "it is all I have."
+
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that
+such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the
+buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon me.
+
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I
+pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man,
+with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his,
+gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him, and he
+looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming, he
+pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead. I
+then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.
+
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range,
+for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons
+starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at that
+time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac feelings,
+of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have been,
+indeed; and much more than that.
+
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle,
+marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was
+wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+
+Such is boyhood.
+
+
+
+
+III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+
+
+From the boat's bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother's directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John's Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a drink
+of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were playing
+dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They winked, and
+asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy day, but I
+only gulped down my water and stalked off.
+
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother's friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+
+"What do you want?" said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+
+"I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor."
+
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing
+who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his
+fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me
+that day.
+
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, and returning to the table, found that the interval
+had been well improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler was spread and
+I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil that had been
+tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till at last I
+entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.
+
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to
+bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly
+believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal's.
+
+Next day, my brother's friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get
+me a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very handsome
+one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an elegant looking
+mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort of sideboard
+some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was only Britannia
+ware highly polished.
+
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.
+
+"Good morning, sir," said my friend.
+
+"Good morning, good morning, sir," said the captain. "Steward, chairs
+for the gentlemen."
+
+"Oh! never mind, sir," said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his extreme
+civility. "I merely called to see whether you want a fine young lad to
+go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a sailor; and
+his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one voyage, and see
+how he likes it."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+"He's a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?" added he, affectionately patting my head. "It's a hard life, though;
+a hard life."
+
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin,
+and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying to
+frighten me, and I answered, "Well, sir, I am ready to try it."
+
+"I hope he's a country lad, sir," said the captain to my friend, "these
+city boys are sometimes hard cases."
+
+"Oh! yes, he's from the country," was the reply, "and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator."
+
+"But his great-uncle don't want to go to sea too?" said the captain,
+looking funny.
+
+"Oh! no, oh, no!--Ha! ha!"
+
+"Ha! ha!" echoed the captain.
+
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.
+
+"Well, my lad," said the captain, "I suppose you know we haven't any
+pastures and cows on board; you can't get any milk at sea, you know."
+
+"Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven't."
+
+"Yes," cried my friend, "his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business."
+
+"Embassador extraordinary?" said the captain, looking funny again.
+
+"Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant."
+
+"Ah! indeed;" said the captain, looking grave and bland again, "then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?"
+
+"Certainly," said my friend, "and he's only going to sea for the humor
+of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he will go
+to sea as a sailor."
+
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five)
+was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the
+kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of creating
+a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.
+
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour
+with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome
+captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that he himself
+would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for the privilege.
+
+"Ah!" said my friend, "that reminds me of business. Pray, captain, how
+much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?"
+
+"Well," said the captain, looking grave and profound, "we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that's your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!--Upon my soul, a fine sounding name."
+
+"Why, captain," said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, "that won't
+pay for his clothing."
+
+"But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that," replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.
+
+"Oh! yes, I forgot that," said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish. "His
+friends will of course see to that."
+
+"Of course," said the captain smiling.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+
+"You are quite a sportsman I see," said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand opportunity
+to befriend me.
+
+"Yes, he's quite a sportsman," said he, "he's got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It's cheap."
+
+"Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations," said the captain,
+"so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England."
+
+"Yes, perhaps that would be better, after all," said my friend,
+pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. "Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?"
+
+"Only three dollars a month," said the captain.
+
+"And I believe," said my friend, "that you generally give something in
+advance, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices," said the
+captain, with a bow, "but in this case, as the boy has rich relations,
+there will be no need of that, you know."
+
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that it
+would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
+
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and
+as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, "Well,
+Redburn, my boy, you won't get home-sick before you sail, because that
+will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea."
+
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times,
+and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with
+a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my
+shooting-jacket. And so we left.
+
+
+
+
+IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+
+
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and
+there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I
+was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in
+a great flapping sou'wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy
+monkey-jacket, "Twig his coat, d'ye see the buttons, that chap ain't
+going to sea in a merchantman, he's going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty--look here--how d'ye sell them big buttons by the pound?"
+
+"Give us one for a saucer, will ye?" said another.
+
+"Let the youngster alone," said a third. "Come here, my little boy, has
+your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?"
+
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of
+the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they
+can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried
+to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my
+name and beat a retreat.
+
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day
+I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece
+for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street
+with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a
+hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a
+strange-looking shop, with three gilded balls hanging over it.
+
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to
+him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told him
+that was just what I wanted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will not
+try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, "I thought it was a
+better article, it's very old."
+
+"Not," said I, starting in surprise, "it's not been used more than three
+times; what will you give for it?"
+
+"We don't buy any thing here," said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, "this is a place where people pawn things." Pawn being a
+word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he
+replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their
+fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+
+"And pray," said I, "how much will you let me have for my gun, by way of
+a pawn?"
+
+"Well, I suppose it's worth six dollars, and seeing you're a boy, I'll
+let you have three dollars upon it."
+
+"No," exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, "it's worth five times
+that, I'll go somewhere else."
+
+"Good morning, then," said he, "I hope you'll do better," and he bowed
+me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.
+
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging over
+a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of picket-fence,
+running all along from end to end, and three little holes, with three
+little old men standing inside of them, like prisoners looking out of a
+jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of things, piled up and
+labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and swords, and canes, and
+chests, and planes, and books, and writing-desks, and every thing else.
+And in a glass case were lots of watches, and seals, chains, and rings,
+and breastpins, and all kinds of trinkets. At one of the little holes,
+earnestly talking with one of the hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a
+faded silk gown and shawl, holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I
+drew near, she spoke lower in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and
+looked cross and rude; and then some more words were exchanged over a
+miniature, and some money was passed through the hole, and the woman and
+child shrank out of the door.
+
+I won't sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young man
+in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust through
+to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that came
+along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety of
+fish.
+
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, "one
+dollar."
+
+"What about one dollar?" said I.
+
+"That's all I'll give," he replied.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" and he turned to the next person. This was a
+young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.
+
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, "None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don't deal in them things here."
+
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who
+had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his
+pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+
+"Where did you get this ring?" said the pawnbroker.
+
+"I want to pawn it," whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+
+"What's your name?" said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+
+"How much will you give?" whispered the other in reply, leaning over,
+and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a
+little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket;
+all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question which
+embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain number
+in Broadway.
+
+"That's the City Hotel: you don't live there," said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+
+"Oh! well," stammered the other blushing scarlet, "I thought this was
+only a sort of form to go through; I don't like to tell where I do live,
+for I ain't in the habit of going to pawnbrokers."
+
+"You stole that ring, you know you did," roared out the hook-nosed man,
+incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man's character for life. "I'm a good mind to call a
+constable; we don't take stolen goods here, I tell you."
+
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man; who
+looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a night-cap,
+with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the
+pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.
+
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more from
+them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a great
+many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular occasion for
+mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and rich, to treat
+people so cavalierly.
+
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the
+curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.
+
+"Ought to have taken it when you could get it," he replied. "I won't
+give but two dollars and a half for it now."
+
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money
+and departed.
+
+
+
+
+V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS
+BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+
+
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my
+promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in
+buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which
+I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and two
+or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny left, so I
+walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into the water.
+The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost desperate
+again, and didn't care what became of me. But if the penny had been a
+dollar, I would have kept it.
+
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones', and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I
+had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and
+thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so
+bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward, when I
+expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very keen,
+and I said to myself, "Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can, for this
+may be the last supper you will have."
+
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a
+towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and
+then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see what
+sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got into the
+shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about the face, which I found
+was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool upon my skin. After that, I
+took a pair of scissors and went to cutting my hair, which was very
+long. I thought every little would help, in making me a light hand to
+run aloft.
+
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the house
+with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate again.
+
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to sea
+that day.
+
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to
+Mr. Jones' again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So
+I concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+
+"What do you want, Pillgarlic?" said he.
+
+"I've shipped to sail in this ship," I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+
+"What for? a tailor?" said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+
+I answered that I was going as a "boy;" for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.
+
+"Well," said he, "have you got your traps aboard?"
+
+I told him I didn't know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn't
+brought any "trap."
+
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.
+
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn't be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.
+
+"Where's your clothes?" said he.
+
+"Here in my bundle," said I, holding it up.
+
+"Well if that's all you've got," he cried, "you'd better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that's the
+place you'll live in aboard here."
+
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow of
+the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him for
+a light.
+
+"Strike your eyes together and make one," said he, "we don't have any
+lights here." So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which smelt
+so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After waiting
+patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last perceived
+I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes stuck round the
+sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which I at once
+supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that method of
+appropriating their "Trunks," as I afterward found these boxes were
+called. And so it turned out.
+
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my
+bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that
+the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and
+walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the
+forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary, and went into
+a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on, and not looking
+very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better place, for fear of
+being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel very hungry; and
+seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think what a fool I had
+been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but a penny
+apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never saw
+doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in, and
+ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little by
+drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere that this was a good
+plan to follow in a case like the present. I did not feel thirsty, but
+only hungry; so had much ado to get down the water; for it tasted warm;
+and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the negro had been drinking some
+spirits out of it just before.
+
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some more
+water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop twice, till
+night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it had been
+raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could not help
+thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in that damp
+and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to lie on but
+the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such thoughts, I
+gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough outside and
+in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I had just been
+eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward I
+unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon as
+he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a
+curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew
+not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me he
+was an English boy, from Lancashire.
+
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last
+voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work
+very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to work his passage back.
+
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but
+found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I
+asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn't
+traveled any in America and didn't know any thing about the rivers here.
+And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he showed no
+surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times more
+stupid than before.
+
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best to
+get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud, for
+me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the place,
+my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt damp and
+clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening to the
+Lancashire boy's snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to go on
+deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would never come.
+
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left the
+ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But this
+made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy;
+and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a
+heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally
+myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off.
+Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my friend's
+house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it was, only
+it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk in such a
+state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND
+SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+
+
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the rigging,
+and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and went
+to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the captain
+came up the side, and began to order about both of them.
+
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father's, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, "Do you think we
+take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking at
+sea; don't let the 'old man' see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can."
+
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty of
+tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as a
+tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me
+feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus,
+for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief
+mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him, would have
+knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.
+
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great
+hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with
+you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you,
+with that shooting-jacket!"
+
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.
+
+"A sailor!" he cried, "a barber's clerk, you mean; you going out in the
+ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn't been
+shipping any more greenhorns like you--he'll make a shipwreck of it if he
+has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few dollars in seamen's
+wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of farmers and
+clodhoppers and baby-boys. What's your name, Pillgarlic?"
+
+"Redburn," said I.
+
+"A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it; haven't
+you got any other?"
+
+"Wellingborough," said I.
+
+"Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn't they call you Jack,
+or Jill, or something short and handy. But I'll baptize you over again.
+D'ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is Buttons. And now do you go,
+Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d'ye hear;
+there's them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now."
+
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?
+
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey orders,
+and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel, or spade,
+or something else to work with.
+
+"We don't dig gardens here," was the reply; "dig it out with your
+teeth!"
+
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen,
+which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the "jolly-boat,"
+was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them almost close
+together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck. I managed to
+crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins against the
+seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along to the stern,
+where the pig-pen was.
+
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to
+his comrades, "Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you 'bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say."
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal
+ashore.
+
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I found
+it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as it
+looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as well
+as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a dry
+spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed with
+an oath, "Didn't I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else? Do
+what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!"
+
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was
+my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me
+why he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this, he
+flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his order
+like a clap of thunder.
+
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave reasons
+for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they command it,
+so that the motto is, "Obey orders, though you break owners."
+
+I now began to feel very faint and sick again, and longed for the ship
+to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be having
+something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on board, and as
+for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they were
+"riggers," that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day in getting
+ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for yielding to
+the kind blandishment of one of these riggers, I had swapped away my
+jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own, thinking to secure
+a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my chance, and while
+people's backs were turned, I seized a carrot from several bunches lying
+on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my shooting-jacket, went
+forward to eat it; for I had often eaten raw carrots, which taste
+something like chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me a good deal, though
+at the expense of a little pain in my stomach. Hardly had I disposed of
+it, when I heard the chief mate's voice crying out for "Buttons." I ran
+after him, and received an order to go aloft and "slush down the
+main-top mast."
+
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring
+about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the mate had
+turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I followed after
+him, and asked what I must do.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?" he shouted.
+
+"You did," said I, "but I don't know what that means."
+
+"Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!" he exclaimed to himself. "A
+fine time I'll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you, youngster.
+Look up to that long pole there--d'ye see it? that piece of a tree there,
+you timber-head--well--take this bucket here, and go up the rigging--that
+rope-ladder there--do you understand?--and dab this slush all over the
+mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls on deck. Be off now,
+Buttons."
+
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to
+ascend a ship's mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have
+felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint,
+the bare thought appalled me.
+
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I could
+not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of food; so
+rallying again, I took up the bucket.
+
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of it
+was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several times
+about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and slipping
+off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the "top," the
+clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about between my
+legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the "top," I came
+to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that overhanging
+impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much
+straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the "top;" and then,
+trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road
+was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was obliged
+to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more. I only
+recollect my safe return to the deck.
+
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage passengers,
+besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor,
+and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board
+but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in
+Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in
+the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt
+in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats and
+swaggered on deck, "it's your turn now, but it will be mine before long.
+Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I'll do the yawing after the
+anchor's up."
+
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on
+board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped
+him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their
+appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of their
+drink.
+
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner
+fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my
+long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with eating
+and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and potatoes which
+the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and though this left the
+whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found that I could eat little
+or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint, but not hungry.
+
+
+
+
+VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+
+
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and all
+hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could not
+help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they suffered
+from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in which they
+had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors breathe
+nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all alive and
+hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.
+
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south point
+of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor's Island, and
+pointed right out for the Narrows.
+
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then,
+there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.
+
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be forced
+to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the Atlantic
+Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability he ever
+would.
+
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my
+heavy-heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the
+first day of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must
+elapse before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might happen
+to me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and thought how
+often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure enough that some
+luckless day or other, I would certainly fall overboard and be drowned.
+And then, I thought of lying down at the bottom of the sea, stark alone,
+with the great waves rolling over me, and no one in the wide world
+knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it
+must be, to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny
+south side of our village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to
+walk after church in the afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now;
+yes, dead and buried in that churchyard. All the time my eyes were
+filled with tears, and I kept holding my breath, to choke down the sobs,
+for indeed I could not help feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in
+the world would have felt just as I did then.
+
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so many
+beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the beautiful
+fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing if instead
+of sailing out of the bay, we were only coming into it; if we had
+crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and my heart
+leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really entering
+that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant, that it
+seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
+again.
+
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
+sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about
+the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how
+that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the
+ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square
+where they lived; and how that they would have a good dinner ready, and
+plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I say this kind of
+talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider, as I did, that
+before any thing like that could happen, we must cross the great
+Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back again, many
+thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this much
+I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to the
+Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used words
+that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind to
+me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
+
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.
+
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like this
+of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not a
+soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great Atlantic
+Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down to the
+water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly believe,
+as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or any place
+like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed
+too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
+really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
+farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away
+beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of
+steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land
+behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy;
+and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who
+could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many
+times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never
+dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a
+marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
+by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
+credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever
+sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water
+line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was
+too wonderful to believe.
+
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
+quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
+all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
+Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with
+white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and
+who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain
+Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
+Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle,
+because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white
+hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me,
+that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one
+visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the White Sea some years
+after.
+
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water was
+a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this grove, in
+a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the fort, dark as
+night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults, twisting and
+turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of green grass and
+sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in the middle of the
+castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing, or ruminating
+under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf frisking about, and
+trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy
+ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides
+of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long
+beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on
+the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a
+ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and
+though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as
+ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh,
+and have as great a memory as he must have had. Yes, the fort was a
+beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to build a little cottage
+in the middle of it, and live there all my life. It was noon-day when I
+was there, in the month of June, and there was little wind to stir the
+trees, and every thing looked as if it was waiting for something, and
+the sky overhead was blue as my mother's eye, and I was so glad and
+happy then. But I must not think of those delightful days, before my
+father became a bankrupt, and died, and we removed from the city; for
+when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost
+strangles me.
+
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful
+fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now, with
+what it was when with my father and uncle I went there so long ago. Then
+I never thought of working for my living, and never knew that there were
+hard hearts in the world; and knew so little of money, that when I
+bought a stick of candy, and laid down a sixpence, I thought the
+confectioner returned five cents, only that I might have money to buy
+something else, and not because the pennies were my change, and
+therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and had
+vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in the
+city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she used
+to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was the
+ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some boys
+who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.
+
+About sunset we got fairly "outside," and well may it so be called; for
+I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left
+us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat, who
+to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of the
+captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart talking
+with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave him some
+newspapers.
+
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the
+little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell to
+me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got into
+the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the schooner
+made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and waving
+their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of America.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME
+OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+
+
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on
+the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were
+going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a
+stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate's turn
+came to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it
+was not me;--no; and I noticed, as they went on choosing, one after the
+other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so much as
+looked at me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into their
+faces, for it was dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves away so
+in their jackets. But the sailors, especially the stout good-looking
+ones, seemed to make a point of lounging as much out of the way as
+possible, and slouching their hats over their eyes; and although it may
+only be a fancy of mine, I certainly thought that they affected a sort
+of lordly indifference as to whose watch they were going to be in; and
+did not think it worth while to look any way anxious about the matter.
+And the very men who, a few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity
+and promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at the
+word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if
+they were quite sure, that by this time the officers must know who the
+best men were, and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to
+put the officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were
+worth having, they were worth seeking.
+
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate's next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+I was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next column,
+like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.
+
+"Well, Buttons," said the chief mate, "I thought I'd got rid of you. And
+as it is, Mr. Rigs," he added, speaking to the second mate, "I guess you
+had better take him into your watch;--there, I'll let you have him, and
+then you'll be one stronger than me."
+
+"No, I thank you," said Mr. Rigs.
+
+"You had better," said the chief mate--"see, he's not a bad looking
+chap--he's a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself, you
+know, Rigs."
+
+"No, I thank you," said the second mate again. "Take him yourself--he's
+yours by good rights--I don't want him." And so they put me in the chief
+mate's division, that is the larboard watch.
+
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood, just
+like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing that
+had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what I had
+come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.
+
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-"You, Bill?" and Bill answered, "Sir?" just as if the second mate
+was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man in such
+a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had been
+quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him Mr. Rigs
+during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this Mr. Rigs was a great
+merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very
+long in finding out, that at sea all officers are Misters, and would
+take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them so.
+And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be called sir when
+addressed--Yes, sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir; and they are as particular
+about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though their titles
+are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in
+England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his titles are the
+only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish life
+indeed. He is not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the
+chief mate occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the
+cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine,
+and sup off the leavings of the cabin table, and even the steward, who
+is accountable to nobody but the captain, sometimes treats him
+cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails are reefed; and put
+his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the
+boatswain's locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
+seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing
+many other things, which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather
+die and give up his title than stand.
+
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could not
+eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked to
+have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.
+
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to tea aboard of a
+ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we were told
+it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from eight
+o'clock till midnight.
+
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
+matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the
+head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of
+the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses very
+civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and spend the
+night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said something about my
+mother not being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
+that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare to take such
+a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of blasphemy, and it seemed
+like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets of my soul, for at
+that time the name of mother was the center of all my heart's finest
+feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my
+being.
+
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
+the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
+his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
+hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
+and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
+his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in his
+broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook,
+which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
+men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came along.
+He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking
+fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a new silk
+handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones
+of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear white
+duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and a tarpaulin hat
+bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon streaming behind,
+and getting entangled every now and then in the rigging; and he had gold
+anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one of his fingers, which was
+very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other work on board ship.
+I thought he might better have left his jewelry at home.
+
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
+from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
+how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
+he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
+about, and go to bed again, and get up again--there was no telling how
+many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his country,
+he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland baby was
+sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said to be a day
+old.
+
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
+that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
+which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
+wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
+only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book meant
+to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean; but
+this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till I saw this
+Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland, only made
+me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from Greenland to
+be in my company? Why was he not at home among the icebergs, and how
+could he stand a warm summer's sun, and not be melted away? Besides,
+instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and he
+did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge muff; things,
+which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all Greenlanders.
+
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the
+night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor and
+cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back with a brown
+jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the
+brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it, for it
+smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be full of Jamaica
+spirits.
+
+"Now, Buttons," said he, "one little dose of this will be better for you
+than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or
+eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast."
+
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples
+about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not
+ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which
+my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept
+the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him. There was
+three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he brought in his
+accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove on the
+river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him
+as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the
+side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits would
+now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that when I
+signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert a little
+clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness. And I
+would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in future; and
+then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking their
+pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with me. And a hard
+thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken; especially as
+the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth
+so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had
+become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could
+really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the
+Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off
+with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long,
+for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed
+overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the spirits
+I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could have had
+a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well, and perhaps
+much better. But that was not to be had at that time of night, or,
+indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called coffee, which was
+given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious tasting
+drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as it did like
+lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally as cold as lemonade, and
+I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and dropt ice into his coffee.
+But what was more curious still, was the different quality and taste of
+it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a
+decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very salty, as if
+some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and then again it
+would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his
+cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it
+would have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some
+old stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made
+of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always remained a
+mystery; for when at work at his vocation, our old cook used to keep
+himself close shut-up in his caboose, a little cook-house, and never
+told any of his secrets.
+
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for
+all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don't believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico's in New York. It was well for him that
+he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing
+his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at one of
+his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him. What
+induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out; but I
+suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some real
+estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have; and
+though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding
+another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in
+the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that
+respect as before.
+
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I did;
+and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for breaking
+my bond, which I would not have done except in case of necessity. But
+the evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion whatever, was
+witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened the way to
+subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet carried no
+apology with them.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+
+
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather cloudy,
+it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to
+count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it was not
+very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth as a
+sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held so
+steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes, and
+scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a lighted
+long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but few words
+to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of thinking to
+attend to, which in truth is the case with most seamen the first night
+out of port, especially when they have thrown away their money in
+foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For when
+ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in their
+way, as the sailors they command.
+
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
+mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
+It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a little
+higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began pulling
+upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no words to it,
+only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark night, and
+far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and made me feel as
+I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin of mine, with
+black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the piano. I almost
+looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit afraid. But I soon
+got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without
+it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling,
+whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the
+mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and
+raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every
+man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull
+as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure
+the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing
+in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it
+from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates.
+Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can
+sing out at a rope.
+
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
+and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
+about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and
+I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a
+volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most struck me
+was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each other, and
+would fall into long and violent disputes about who was keeping the Foul
+Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether the King of
+Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the bar-maid of a
+particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes; with many other
+mooted points of that sort.
+
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
+chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
+to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle ashore;
+and also by way of tapering off, as I mentioned a little while ago. But
+I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them,
+instead of spirits and cigars.
+
+Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter at
+a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the Temperance
+Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did afterward upon
+the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I declined; with a good
+deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that the cigars were real
+genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he said, and had them made
+there under his own eye. According to his account, he was very
+particular about his cigars and other things, and never made any
+importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself
+direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he
+wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats,
+to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his
+cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he
+would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his halter; the wit of
+which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is
+the best; though that is not wit which needs explaining.
+
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
+united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
+biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck before
+the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness, and
+finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
+themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing on
+earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
+pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and another
+ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived their
+true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a parcel of
+wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction to
+associate with them.
+
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but more
+with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind
+dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made
+outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for
+the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if
+they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a
+church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called them strayed lambs
+from the fold, and compared them to poor lost children, babes in the
+wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors' Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
+seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their
+latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good sailors
+among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on deck apart
+from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them: so I did not
+disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at discovering that
+he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.
+
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men went
+into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take a
+"swig at the halyards," as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them "to taper off" handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then. Yet
+this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to them,
+then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they turned
+about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
+
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.
+
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
+his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him more
+and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was grateful that
+I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel
+wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing to confess to
+myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors, so much as my
+education, which I had received from others, that had made me the
+upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to be. And it was
+now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction
+in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had previously
+associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there was
+little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with my
+neighbors.
+
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
+upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
+him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
+was far from being vain and conceited.
+
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
+some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
+forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
+astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his--tit for tat,--I inquired
+of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and
+whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to
+the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams;
+and in asking these questions I was particular to address him in a civil
+and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I did not
+deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all things
+together, and not going into particulars. But to my great surprise and
+mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed aloud in my face,
+and called me a "Jimmy Dux," though that was not my real name, and he
+must have known it; and also the "son of a farmer," though as I have
+previously related, my father was a great merchant and French importer
+in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh and joke about
+me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not
+felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much like a
+fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is
+very lucky for people in a passion.
+
+
+
+
+X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
+MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+
+
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
+horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
+came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
+hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
+I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
+
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
+and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
+the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
+uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
+forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
+about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
+ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
+loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
+but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the
+sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into his
+bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
+suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
+the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place,
+and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a
+fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
+
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and
+almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the
+sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I
+been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the Hudson
+River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which
+had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best friends, that is
+to say, my mother and sisters.
+
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
+more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it worse,
+was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they
+took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I had entered
+upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea, and they were
+used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the suicide came
+rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as frightened as I
+did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened still
+plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
+could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by
+them. However, they lay in their bunks smoking, and kept talking on some
+time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin
+my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into
+the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far
+off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of
+sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.
+
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
+and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
+I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.
+And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,
+but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked
+me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread
+out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and
+asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a
+gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like
+nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And
+one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal
+more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,
+for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the
+death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he
+would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with
+an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
+then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they
+could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that
+the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
+night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I
+loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
+heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable
+wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a
+boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked
+within me, but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared
+them to do their worst.
+
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+
+
+
+
+XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+
+
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as
+the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and
+when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The
+men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and
+some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell off like little
+boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was broad day, and an
+order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub was dragged into the
+waist, and then one of the men went over into the chains, and slipped in
+behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and leaning over, began to swing
+a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that way with much
+expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a very
+short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and
+I began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of
+cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told him I thought I would just
+step below, till this miserable wetting was over; for I did not have any
+water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had died of consumption. But he
+only roared out for me to get a broom and go to scrubbing, or he would
+prove a worse consumption to me than ever got hold of my poor aunt. So I
+scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back was almost broke, for the
+brooms had uncommon short handles, and we were told to scrub hard.
+
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of
+water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He must
+have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to
+point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him with full
+buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck,
+with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of a
+scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the
+world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse than
+my mother's house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+
+At eight o'clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend to
+tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I should
+have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for my own
+part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no table to sit
+down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide every
+thing themselves. But so it was.
+
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house
+with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having
+no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little tub
+called a "kid," was passed down into the forecastle, filled with
+something they called "burgoo." This was like mush, made of Indian corn,
+meal, and water. With the "kid," a little tin cannikin was passed down
+with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put the kid
+between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like an old
+landlord mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole in the
+middle of the mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all the world
+like a little black pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other,
+with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after
+stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down
+their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very
+good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I wasn't
+sure.
+
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little
+burgoo toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready open
+to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was about,
+knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned my
+manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn't that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to
+eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon, for
+he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.
+
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But my side was scraped clean, so I got no
+burgoo that morning.
+
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to
+be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard biscuit,
+very sociably, over each other's heads, which was very convenient
+indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first four or five
+days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much about it, only
+it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to bring a fine comb
+and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward over the bulwarks
+every evening.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+
+
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the burgoo, called upon them in a loud voice to cease their
+clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall
+have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I will
+here try to describe him a little.
+
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor. He
+was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have
+on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in
+the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was stuck over
+with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out shoe-brush. His nose
+had broken down in the middle, and he squinted with one eye, and did not
+look very straight out of the other. He dressed a good deal like a
+Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig; wearing a pair of
+great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and three red
+woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject to the rheumatism,
+and was not in good health, he said; and he had a large white wool hat,
+with a broad rolling brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a
+good deal to say about highlanders, and rowdies, whom he denounced as
+only good for the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a
+highlander himself.
+
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was a
+great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict him,
+or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful was,
+that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have no
+doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now, I
+could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with him;
+such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and withal
+was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have run
+from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that
+I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it
+must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no beard,
+and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might have
+seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own account,
+he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he first went
+as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according
+to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation
+and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in
+Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish
+used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel
+and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and
+weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks;
+how he had been in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an English
+cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull, which raked
+through and through a whole file of slaves, that were chained.
+
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
+man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
+got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
+would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their
+money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of
+Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to make him
+point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
+
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.
+
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
+the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
+Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
+out of the world by wasps and hornets.
+
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
+he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
+to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes
+fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable, broken-down
+condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in consequence of
+his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with such malevolence
+as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my mother so thought
+me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my
+low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and,
+spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being
+consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was
+more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will not
+put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even now,
+I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.
+
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his
+eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship's
+helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called
+for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy
+duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming
+them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health,
+he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be
+jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion
+under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids
+will sometimes show.
+
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire
+to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this
+Jackson was a notorious old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all
+things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and
+in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have passed
+unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call him to
+account in any way; or to let him so much as think, what they thought of
+his conduct. But I often heard them call him many hard names behind his
+back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been tenderly
+inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood in mortal
+fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him like so many spaniels; and
+used to rub his back, after he was undressed and lying in his bunk; and
+used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some cold coffee for
+him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco, and mend
+his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and tend, and nurse him
+every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling on them, and found
+fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most for
+him, and cringed the most before him, were the very ones he most abused;
+while two or three who held more aloof, he treated with a little
+consideration.
+
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship's company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
+know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
+in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
+would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
+that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
+from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
+crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
+butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being abused
+and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially, because of his
+great strength and fine person, and particularly because of his red
+cheeks.
+
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an able-seaman,
+was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man in the eyes of a
+ship's company; I mean, when he ships for an able-seaman, but is not
+able to do the duty of one. For sailors are of three
+classes--able-seaman, ordinary-seaman, and boys; and they receive
+different wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship's company of
+twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if they prove to
+understand their duty every way (and that is no small matter either, as
+I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to, and thought much of
+by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets,
+and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
+
+But you must not think from this, that persons called boys aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
+called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a boy means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
+enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work is
+put upon him.
+
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson's
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's age
+just like a horse's--by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened his
+mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the light
+came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while he
+looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a baboon
+peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just as if I
+had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to cut his
+throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the lather on, to
+be shaved. For I watched Jackson's eye and saw it snapping, and a sort
+of going in and out, very quick, as if it were something like a forked
+tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were longing to kill the man; but
+at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his examination,
+said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for the ends of his
+teeth were the evenest and most worn down; which, he said, arose from
+eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this was the reason he could tell a
+sailor's age like a horse's.
+
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+say--come, boys, let's laugh; and they did laugh; and declared it was a
+rare joke.
+
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out,
+whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to them
+that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes from
+others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell
+the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that is, when his
+back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a grave face;
+when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or otherwise,
+they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking perplexed enough;
+till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and
+idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had purposely
+put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look grave, too;
+even when he was telling something that ought to split their sides. And
+with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed them all to
+scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue
+together at the corners with a fine white foam.
+
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every
+body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him
+some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart.
+Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened at
+him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling him
+Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some terrible thing at
+last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up; for the captain
+would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward again.
+
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly all
+hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink off
+during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more submit
+to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good their
+oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old way; so
+that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of
+Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up a
+little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson; yet
+in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.
+
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to greenhorns and landsmen, who
+know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think, that an able seaman
+is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little boy. And the
+able seamen in the Highlander had such grand notions about their
+seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen received diplomas,
+like those given at colleges; and were made a sort A.M.S, or Masters of
+Arts.
+
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew
+that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed
+endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson's
+evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many
+of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me
+before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the
+ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began to feel a hatred
+growing up in me against the whole crew--so much so, that I prayed
+against it, that it might not master my heart completely, and so make a
+fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
+over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
+hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
+I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in
+during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
+could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
+blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
+forbidding.
+
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out
+on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over
+at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost
+happy for a time.
+
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
+least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
+could now look around me, and make observations.
+
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
+at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight
+of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round
+us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen
+but water--water--water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
+smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till
+now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
+boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
+squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
+I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
+lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
+great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
+
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my
+little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It
+had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little
+wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a pasture;
+and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be
+patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them,
+that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them,
+scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
+like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most
+strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the
+sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and
+swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very
+well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
+It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes
+off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
+
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear
+myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the
+deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist
+aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these
+stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out
+beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like
+the wings of a great bird.
+
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the
+name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt
+very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I
+was; every thing was so strange and new.
+
+While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
+
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
+with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
+managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a
+fool as at first.
+
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
+imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
+barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, and dress in
+strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own
+names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing
+by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber.
+This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to draw some
+water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I thought I had
+committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
+said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that they were
+always called buckets. And once I was talking about sticking a little
+wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew out again, and
+said there were no pegs at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with
+every thing else.
+
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
+names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
+to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked
+what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
+entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of
+these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy,
+like the names of young royal princes, such as the
+starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line, or the
+larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.
+
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes
+of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in
+the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists
+give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something
+like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews
+the small running ropes, that manage all the motions.
+
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
+which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
+very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
+breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they
+use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people
+seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names,
+seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be
+surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the
+world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
+
+At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
+as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the
+breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the
+foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber
+seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with life and joy; and I
+felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be glad to
+bound along so round the world.
+
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to
+all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on
+with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at
+the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as
+if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling
+along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+
+Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
+briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
+very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe,
+let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an
+eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
+
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we
+were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
+chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+
+Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
+to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I
+were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a
+speedy end to this abominable voyage!
+
+
+
+
+XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+
+
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.
+
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good humor,
+and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to appreciate the
+difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I was thrown.
+Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special manner take me
+under his protection, and prove a kind friend and benefactor to me; as I
+had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to their crew; and so they
+are; but such fathers as Solomon's precepts tend to make--severe and
+chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of duty overcomes the sense of
+love, and who every day, in some sort, play the part of Brutus, who
+ordered his son away to execution, as I have read in our old family
+Plutarch.
+
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother's friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.
+
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.
+
+When two or three days had passed without the captain's speaking to me
+in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not expect
+it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that might
+have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it more
+proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he might be
+offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender feelings.
+So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second dog-watch, when
+there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call and see him.
+
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off
+some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of my
+red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck ones,
+and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my shooting-jacket,
+I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made quite a genteel
+figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not have looked so
+well in a drawing-room.
+
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make of
+it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told them
+no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to pay
+my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed and shouted, as
+if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so very simple in
+going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some of them tried to
+dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson, who sat looking
+on, cried out, with a hideous grin, "Let him go, let him go, men--he's a
+nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and raisins for him."
+And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits of coughing seized
+him, and he almost choked.
+
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands,
+and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the
+mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I
+thought it would never do to present myself before a gentleman that way;
+so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which my
+mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was putting them on,
+Jackson asked me whether he shouldn't call a carriage; and another bade
+me not forget to present his best respects to the skipper. I left them
+all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the cook-house, when the
+old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched my
+hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought his
+eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and with a
+voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by playing such tricks
+aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to let go of me, or I
+would complain to my friend the captain, whom I intended to visit that
+evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl round, that I thought the
+Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me forward, roaring out I
+know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing round the
+windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson asked
+me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went, I
+would not take a friend along and introduce him.
+
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that night,
+I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to call on
+the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the fact,
+that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance of sea
+usages.
+
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin
+during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return
+to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a little
+pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm, where a
+watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half hours by,
+with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was. And it used
+to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through the pane of
+glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the proceedings in the
+cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for dinner, or
+the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little mahogany
+stand, or playing the game called solitaire, at cards, of an evening;
+for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as will ere long
+be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose society he did
+not dislike.
+
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be
+making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made
+his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked
+very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I
+thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.
+
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as
+he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very pleasant
+day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into such a rage;
+I thought he was going to knock me down; but after standing speechless
+awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his head and threw it at me.
+I don't know what impelled me, but I ran to the lee-scuppers where it
+fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a bow; when the mate came
+running up, and thrust me forward again; and after he had got me as far
+as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I was crazy or not; for if I
+was, he would put me in irons right off, and have done with it.
+
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that I
+had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by him
+and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told me if
+I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again presumed so
+much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into the rigging,
+and keep me there until I learned better manners. "You are very green,"
+said he, "but I'll ripen you." Indeed this chief mate seemed to have the
+keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some sort, seemed too
+dignified personally to protect his own dignity.
+
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.
+
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after,
+a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his
+nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop,
+began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft
+all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the street.
+
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and his
+boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but a
+shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their gloss,
+and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a sort of
+miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might have been
+owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of dye while at
+sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while ashore, a gentleman
+on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have treated another
+gentleman as he did me.
+
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+
+
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old clothes, I may as
+well speak of mine.
+
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had greatly
+rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be warm and
+pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be like a summer
+excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a
+change of scene and society.
+
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a
+belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers', whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+"long togs," as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the life
+I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my pantaloons
+were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction, particularly
+about the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with low
+waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was often placed
+in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the rigging, sometimes in
+plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen exposed in the most
+inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
+
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
+very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.
+
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
+in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try them
+on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
+spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
+a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
+he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
+for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing and
+blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with
+him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
+intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
+have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with a
+row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was a
+great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
+precisely in that way.
+
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
+deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
+"twig" them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
+of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
+very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
+genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
+from my cousin's, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
+
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.
+
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home. They
+had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had had a
+pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I
+walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see me, and
+I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at them
+during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they
+were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more
+for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which
+were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came
+near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such
+a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was
+obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were
+quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees, and the edges were
+mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call them my
+"gaff-topsail-boots." And sometimes they used to call me "Boots," and
+sometimes "Buttons," on account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and
+shooting-jacket.
+
+At last, I took their advice, and "razeed" them, as they phrased it.
+That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
+feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
+made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
+wore straps on the ice.
+
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved a
+real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a rain
+storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on
+deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and
+lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
+
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
+kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of
+them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
+obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like an
+Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a crucifix.
+
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
+that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like going
+to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and knife,
+fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a
+steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron
+pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave me
+a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much disposed to
+rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was drinking; and
+it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were deprived of
+all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a labor to me. And I
+was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup, three times a week,
+which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
+and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
+calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
+In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked
+like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of
+my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would
+have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in
+my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation
+and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a galling mockery,
+when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell all inquiring
+friends, that Wellingborough had gone "abroad" just as if I was visiting
+Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to
+the captain.
+
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.
+
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
+view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
+and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
+sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
+as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
+saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
+looking out of his cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain
+in a green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
+
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
+these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
+the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
+and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
+of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
+
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
+in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
+harder.
+
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in an
+elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass trumpet to
+his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, "Where from?"
+
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
+
+Hamburg!
+
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.
+
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains during
+their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective "poops"
+toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying their
+behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and
+drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting each
+other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great Atlantic
+Ocean was a puddle.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+
+
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle
+watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+
+The order was given to loose the main-skysail, which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the
+forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I
+have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail;
+called moon-sails, and skyscrapers, and cloud-rakers. But I shall not
+believe in them till I see them; a skysail seems high enough in all
+conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems
+preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush
+the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a
+flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these
+cloud-defying cloud-rakers.
+
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch sailor
+came up to me, and said, "Buttons, my boy, it's high time you be doing
+something; and it's boy's business, Buttons, to loose de royals, and not
+old men's business, like me. Now, d'ye see dat leelle fellow way up
+dare? dare, just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up, now, Buttons, I
+zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons."
+
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it
+was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing boy's business, as
+they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up I
+went, not daring to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were, to
+the shrouds, as I ascended.
+
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the Jacob's
+Ladder; and they may well call it so, for it took me almost into the
+clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself hanging on the
+skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and curling my feet
+round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands.
+
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far out
+upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my lofty
+perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all round, by
+beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds;
+and every second, expected to find myself falling--falling--falling, as I
+have felt when the nightmare has been on me.
+
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank in
+the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over which
+I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round the
+truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost
+frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at such a
+lofty and solitary height.
+
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship's motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.
+
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I
+could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the gaskets, or lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready,
+sung out as I had been told, to "hoist away!" And hoist they did, and me
+too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they
+were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was,
+going up higher and higher; the yard rising under me, as if it were
+alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at the time, I was in a
+good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I could not see well enough
+to feel afraid--at least on that account; though I felt frightened enough
+in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and made good the saying of
+old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard from the rigging is
+a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely; whereas old tars are
+less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something like
+a compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate,
+he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves
+some mention.
+
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe,
+and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea.
+His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a red
+shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever saw.
+
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable;
+and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and
+imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.
+
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when we
+got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American
+Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American ships, Max
+prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if
+he could, would have been very glad to have passed himself off for a
+born native.
+
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting discredit
+upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my wardrobe, by
+loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like many other
+well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also betrayed some
+anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when the ship's
+company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my awkwardness
+in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety on that head.
+
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about
+my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a
+finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+
+
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at the
+foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were dripping
+with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were standing on
+the roof of a house in a shower.
+
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
+of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
+he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
+imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend,
+Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane,
+between churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about
+myself.
+
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
+Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
+to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to
+think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
+school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
+cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
+name of the doctor.
+
+And doctors, cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
+serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
+green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jalap do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off a
+powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by a
+surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
+when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
+in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and
+used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat over
+his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled and
+covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little leather
+strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the water in
+which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
+found this book was the Bible.
+
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky
+studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five
+feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the
+pipe of which stuck out of the roof.
+
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read; and
+big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till they
+hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it was no
+wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious passage in
+the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read, he called
+me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over, demanding
+an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could explain;
+not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left him poring
+over it still.
+
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to
+be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a
+committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their
+natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed black
+hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon him,
+and remained conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more than an
+hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the sliding
+doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and
+preaching; and after that a psalm was sung and a benediction given;
+when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great
+perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of cold,
+wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and make his
+fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then dashing into
+his stove.
+
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did rip
+a little, for it would have tried old Job's temper, to be set to work
+making a fire in the water.
+
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket before
+the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into the door
+for a knocker; and wrote his name, "Mr. Thompson," over it, with a bit
+of red chalk.
+
+The men said he lived round the corner of Forecastle-square, opposite
+the Liberty Pole; because his cook-house was right behind the foremast,
+and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard. When
+a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he "takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street."
+
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward's, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by the
+name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when Mr.
+Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that turban
+at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair, just like
+the large, round brush, used for washing windows, called a Pope's Head.
+
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests, and
+buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black, which,
+with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a serious
+young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.
+
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something
+he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more
+like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring, and
+was always calling your attention to something, and pointing at it with
+his ornamented finger.
+
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the "Three Spaniards,"
+and "Charlotte Temple," and carried a lock of frizzled hair in his vest
+pocket, which he frequently volunteered to show to people, with his
+handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these two,
+the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the cook-house,
+leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from
+falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay
+till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events
+that had happened during the day in the cabin.
+
+And sometimes Mr. Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a chapter
+for the edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad profligate and
+gay deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful indiscretion. He would
+read over to him the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; and hold
+Joseph up to him as a young man of excellent principles, whom he ought
+to imitate, and not be guilty of his indiscretion any more. And Lavender
+would look serious, and say that he knew it was all true--he was a
+wicked youth, he knew it--he had broken a good many hearts, and many
+eyes were weeping for him even then, both in New York, and Liverpool,
+and London, and Havre. But how could he help it? He hadn't made his
+handsome face, and fine head of hair, and graceful figure. It was not
+he, but the others, that were to blame; for his bewitching person turned
+all heads and subdued all hearts, wherever he went. And then he would
+look very serious and penitent, and go up to the little glass, and pass
+his hands through his hair, and see how his whiskers were coming on.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+DREAM BOOK
+
+
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I thought
+I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's-eye,
+or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck
+to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found
+myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not
+suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the
+deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a
+coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay there till I dressed
+myself and went up to remove it--a kind of interruption to my studies
+which annoyed me very much, when diligently occupied in reading.
+
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole, where
+we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest time I
+had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my back,
+during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.
+
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they
+had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with Delirium Tremens in great gilt
+letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on the subject
+of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in the sailor
+book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in New York.
+
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great
+profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones,
+who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top shelf, where
+it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that although I was
+going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good education; and
+that there was hardly any situation in life, however humble and
+depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in it to store
+his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And he added, that
+though it did look rather unfavorable for my future prospects, to be
+going to sea as a common sailor so early in life; yet, it would no doubt
+turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate, if I would only
+take good care of myself, would give me a sound constitution, if nothing
+more; and that was not to be undervalued, for how many very rich men
+would give all their bonds and mortgages for my boyish robustness.
+
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined; and
+though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused the
+book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and unforeseen
+attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to retrieve the
+poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do in the world.
+
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at
+the back: "Smith's Wealth of Nations." This not satisfying me, I glanced
+at the title page, and found it was an "Enquiry into the Nature and
+Causes" of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to look further
+down, I caught sight of "Aberdeen," where the book was printed; and
+thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country, must prove
+some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very kindly, and
+promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page number
+one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and
+body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the philosopher's
+stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to
+silver and gold.
+
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as
+I commenced the first chapter, entitled "Of the causes of improvement in
+the productive power of labor." Dry as crackers and cheese, to be sure;
+and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only getting
+initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened to me. So
+I read on and on, about "wages and profits of labor," without getting
+any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank
+some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost
+work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home,
+lettered on the back, "The History of Rome" was quite as full of matter,
+and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had
+ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering, that he
+had to get on a chair when he reached it down from its dusty shelf; that
+certainly looked suspicious.
+
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect:
+"Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods, 1798." So it
+must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones' father; and I wondered
+whether he had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever read
+it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say, never read
+their own books; writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so
+sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it
+for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes
+waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book could not have
+been the cause of that.
+
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor, and
+his Dream Book.
+
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
+used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an Irish Cockney. By which I
+understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in London,
+somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue that I
+could hear.
+
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west cap
+flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked
+like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a
+walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle
+between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible
+story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a
+sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for
+a spell against the scurvy.
+
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a
+fortune-teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house
+was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.
+
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some
+cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state
+made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down in
+a fray.
+
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
+all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling him
+an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
+apothecary's, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done for
+him.
+
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he called
+"Trafalgar Oil for restoring the hair," price one dollar; and told him
+that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have the desired
+effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called "Balm of Paradise, or the
+Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen." These high-sounding naval names
+delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there must be virtue in them.
+
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a
+young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in
+the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to
+his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large
+bottle, conspicuously labeled, "Balm of Paradise." It seemed from the
+text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil,
+and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of
+bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet, seized the precious
+bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed again, getting up in the
+morning without knowing any thing about it. Which, indeed, was a most
+mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how the
+engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was ignorant,
+and where there were no bystanders.
+
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to
+it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned
+with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual
+change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him
+to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle
+that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He
+would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and
+if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very
+great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his hair with oil,
+operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet, and want of a
+brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild horse's mane,
+and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue. Besides his
+collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself with several
+boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor doctor in New York,
+who by placards stuck on the posts along the wharves, advertised to
+remain standing at the northeast corner of Catharine Market, every
+Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and twelve in the morning,
+to receive calls from patients, distribute medicines, and give advice
+gratis.
+
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but at
+breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as they
+do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the
+boarding-houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along
+with the pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of toothpicks.
+But they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western country.
+
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of horse
+salts (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to sea
+without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also, take
+this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain storm.
+But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor themselves
+with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in this
+connection, some really frightful stories might be told; but I forbear.
+
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the
+death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you
+from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board
+this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently turned
+into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and smoking
+like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for then, I
+bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof to bodily
+ill.
+
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner of
+his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red
+cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.
+
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon
+Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor.
+Hence it was entitled the Bonaparte Dream Book; for the magic of it lay
+in the interpretation of dreams, and their application to the foreseeing
+of future events; so that all preparatory measures might be taken
+beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and satisfactory
+every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means of figures, in
+some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was facilitated by a
+set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something like the Logarithm
+Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator.
+
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this Bonaparte Dream Book of
+his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in his
+own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before taking
+his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his bunk
+before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet, and a
+bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin scratching his oily
+head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down strokes on his
+chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.
+
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.
+
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his
+bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice--"Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!"
+
+"What benches?" growled Max--"What's the matter?"
+
+"Benches! benches!" screamed Blunt, without heeding him, "cut down the
+forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment's coming!"
+
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his benches; till, shortly
+after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind would
+stand or sit at the Last Day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+
+
+This Dream Book of Blunt's reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+
+It was the larboard watch's turn to remain below from midnight till four
+o'clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out again
+about three o'clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he was
+desirous of at once having interpreted.
+
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on
+the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him
+and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship's company flying on
+deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.
+
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out Luff! Luff! to some one in the dark water before the ship. In
+that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black
+hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so
+near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind,
+the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of Luff! Luff! that
+our own mate, was raising.
+
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys jerked
+out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our jib-boom
+thumping against our bows.
+
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been injured;
+for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging mixed with
+ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar with another
+jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against emergencies.
+
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on
+board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our vessel
+was terribly reprimanded by the mate.
+
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet
+their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels coming
+together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the middle watch
+of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like fighting elks, sink
+down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in death.
+
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a good
+breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in about
+seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to behold.
+All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard anchor was
+gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while every one of the
+lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same direction; so that she now
+carried small and unsightly jury-yards.
+
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered,
+but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and
+gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now
+entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known
+at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was
+brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed from head to foot.
+
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.
+
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
+become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
+though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
+them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
+when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
+having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
+that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible
+that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
+the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
+upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
+But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things
+which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can
+only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when
+experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day;
+inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of
+adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too
+bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest
+ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been
+struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some
+lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
+fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
+suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into
+death.
+
+
+
+
+XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+
+
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and
+reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a
+spit?
+
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt
+in a mist, that no London in the Novemberest November ever equaled. The
+chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday?
+So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail
+for fear of accidents; and not only that, but here am I, poor
+Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the top of the
+"Sampson-Post," a lofty tower of timber, so called; and tolling the
+ship's bell, as if for a funeral.
+
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from
+our track.
+
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord
+attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through
+my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like
+the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the lamented
+Cock-Robin.
+
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at
+both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred
+up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and
+no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.
+
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a
+vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.
+
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my duty
+as a sexton. But presently some one cried out--"There she blows! whales!
+whales close alongside!"
+
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to me, Wellingborough;--would my own
+brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long,
+black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought
+they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh!
+regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when
+they descended to feed!
+
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I
+lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the
+story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an
+elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
+
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter's, they say, and then go
+and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your
+high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale's belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.
+
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves sailing
+through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small craft; and
+when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor saying,
+intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being on the limits. It
+is like a fisherman's walk, say they, three steps and overboard.
+
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean
+between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run
+down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their lamps
+trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of three
+hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some forty or
+fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous to
+sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at the
+bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called "arming" the lead.
+
+We "hove" our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel's heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors
+carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the
+jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it went,
+with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern, when the
+line ran out of the tub like light.
+
+When we came to haul it up, I was astonished at the force necessary to
+perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove
+through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat
+porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine
+the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but
+the sailors did not seem to be much interested by it, calling me a fool
+for wanting to preserve a few grains of the sand.
+
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we
+found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact of our being
+in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the drawing
+of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer. In the
+absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the temperature
+of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the ocean, and the
+temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than that of the Grand
+Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of temperature, for which
+there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen impute the fogs on the
+coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why there should always be
+such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that I do not know has ever
+been accounted for.
+
+It is curious to dip one's finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current
+comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North
+Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles,
+as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth
+being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger than that
+of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of
+hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of Florida, running
+at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+
+
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed
+his duty very well.
+
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his
+intimate acquaintance with the monsters.
+
+"They ar'n't sperm whales," said Larry, "their spouts ar'n't bushy
+enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
+they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
+Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
+Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye, men,
+them's Crinkum-crankum whales."
+
+"And what are them?" said a sailor.
+
+"Why, them is whales that can't be cotched."
+
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very
+hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
+strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.
+
+This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
+merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to
+"blubber-boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the
+leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so
+well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
+order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise
+have encountered.
+
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
+the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+
+"Why," said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, "in Madagasky
+there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the
+midships; they don't have no dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat
+pigs and dogs; they don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all
+the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
+make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine
+country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!"
+
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.
+
+"And what's the use of bein' snivelized!" said he to me one night during
+our watch on deck; "snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on
+'bout life, and snivel. You don't see any Methodist chaps feelin'
+dreadful about their souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky
+constables in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
+their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say."
+
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+
+"Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?" coming
+close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. "No; you ar'n't a bit--but you're a good deal worse for it,
+Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this
+dog's life, if you hadn't been snivelized--that's the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say." And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole
+past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still
+lower down over the bridge of his nose.
+
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's man we had, who
+went by the name of "Gun-Deck," from his always talking of sailor life
+in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious
+mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
+braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly
+prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed
+down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always
+took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
+pretty toes to show his charming feet.
+
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida,
+and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through
+the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his
+telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from
+them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
+plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.
+This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot
+it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a
+rat-killing war, he said.
+
+Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and Madagasky.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+
+
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the
+like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain poured
+down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off
+the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our
+knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.
+
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.
+
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could
+hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But
+while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me
+look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a
+handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her
+wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish
+kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.
+
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue
+again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We
+bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain
+in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed
+alongside of it.
+
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that
+must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were
+pretty much gone; and here and there the bare stanchions, or posts, were
+left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the
+deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was snapt off less
+than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered remnant
+looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods. Every
+time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned
+into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a
+rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.
+
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck,
+something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic
+of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a
+signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark,
+green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise
+were motionless. I saw the captain's, glass directed toward them, and
+heard him say at last, "They must have been dead a long time." These
+were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for
+safety; but must have famished.
+
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain
+would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the
+schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so
+much as learning the schooner's name, though every one supposed her to
+be a New Brunswick lumberman.
+
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did
+not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.
+
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot
+for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+
+"Look there," said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing--"look
+there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons," turning round to
+me--"how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with
+them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?" And then he tried to laugh,
+but only coughed again. "Don't laugh at dem poor fellows," said Max,
+looking grave; "do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de
+Cape of Dood Hope."
+
+"Dood Hope, Dood Hope," shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking
+the Dutchman, "dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned
+and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights."
+
+"No, no," said Blunt, "all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft."
+
+"And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?" howled
+Jackson through a cough. "Don't talk of heaven to me--it's a lie--I know
+it--and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek,
+that there's any heaven for you? Will they let you in there, with that
+tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark gulps you
+down his hatchway one of these days, you'll find, that by dying, you'll
+only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney!
+Yes, you'll be bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like
+to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box
+on 'em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!" And so saying, he went
+off, holding his hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour
+was come.
+
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and
+mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the
+time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.
+
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his tawny
+skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and earth.
+He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable
+curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near
+him.
+
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness,
+there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and
+touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this
+Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+
+
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out.
+But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know
+that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in
+connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between
+the two ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader to
+Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she
+pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her
+voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination. Merchant
+vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come
+under the general head of transient ships; which implies that they are
+here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.
+
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
+aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is, that
+although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the
+best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years
+of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions--like robust young men, who live too fast in their
+teens--and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.
+
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many
+a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from
+Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of
+Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages
+at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the
+literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure
+and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across
+the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck, too, where
+these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of
+the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where
+reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria
+mundi! Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like a
+broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning
+business.
+
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
+five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
+on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.
+
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger--the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
+going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
+concerning the signs of the times.
+
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck
+with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise,
+and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But
+looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room, where you
+could see him through the little window, in an irregular sitting
+position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth, and his
+head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound meditation, with
+his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen reading; never took
+a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine; never conversed; and
+never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no
+need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe. Conjecture
+was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his business. The
+sailors, who are always curious with regard to such matters, and
+criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware
+at the time, completely exhausted themselves in suppositions, some of
+which are characteristically curious.
+
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to
+the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.
+
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes
+confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all
+sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this is
+the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling
+of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have done.
+
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions,
+this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and
+collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes,
+of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a
+hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the
+skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
+Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of
+salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called "making a spread
+eagle" of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted,
+that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship's company with
+money enough for a treat all round.
+
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the
+keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and he such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for levying
+contributions.
+
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way
+up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on
+with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully
+turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the
+nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must
+have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, "you will surely
+fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!"
+
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger,
+and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot. The
+stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently
+remonstrated; but in vain; for as his fearfulness of falling made him
+keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any
+effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome spread-eagle of, to
+the great satisfaction of the crew.
+
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his
+reservedness.
+
+"Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?"
+
+"Spread-eagle, sir," said the Greenlander, thinking that those few words
+would at once make the matter plain.
+
+"Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?"
+
+"Treats all round, sir," said the Greenlander, wondering at the other's
+obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.
+
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor,
+and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was
+suffered to descend.
+
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince's
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had
+nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked
+stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?--just the girl
+to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;
+her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were
+blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most
+devoted.
+
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain's charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.
+
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.
+
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of
+her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady's guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby
+they look.
+
+But for all this, the passage 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 passengers. 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 shirt
+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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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 molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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 ship 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
+passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
+heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
+the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
+between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
+two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head
+for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There are
+plenty of passengers 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 ship must be out of sight of
+land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough
+shaking, and threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin
+and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing their
+best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers 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 ashore 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 Lancashire 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 ashore 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 passage 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire
+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 oakum. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 repetitions, 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
+ship 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 ship
+at sea, and a ship 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 rushing 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 like 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.
+
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
+before.
+
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright
+tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
+vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to
+it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm
+stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
+glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up
+and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on
+her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when
+he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
+and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say, did not fit
+him very well, for ever after he looked as if he limped. Then this
+figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one eye, and
+repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the painter came and made his
+toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of
+a beautiful pattern.
+
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and
+snug with a handsome pension in the "Sailors'-Snug-Harbor" on Staten
+Island.
+
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer
+was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art,
+upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage; for if
+the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he
+keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to its
+precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may be
+pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for John
+o' Groat's; all of which is worse than wasted time. Whereas, a true
+steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a
+bee-line from port to port.
+
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm,
+might make the ship "lurch to"--or "bring her by the lee." And what those
+things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when they found
+themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
+moon and stars.
+
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they
+are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence,
+is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the
+wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or
+looking out to windward.
+
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with
+one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind,
+might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving
+last wills and testaments.
+
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who
+might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the
+case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room
+occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of
+cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested with the
+underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark, that of
+the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or inefficient;
+and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and crying out:
+"Luff, you rascal; she's falling off!" or, "Keep her steady, you
+scoundrel, you're boxing the compass!" then hurry down to your
+state-room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery
+and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus'
+log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next
+gale of wind.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+
+
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which
+I drew on a blank leaf of the "Wealth of Nations," and studied it every
+morning, like the multiplication table.
+
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; and I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm.
+It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned
+in it by night.
+
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one
+side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I
+been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed them
+so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds within;
+and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different air may
+be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste. Nor must I
+omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction, and a
+particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of cogs and
+wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something like a
+printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it
+much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers,
+by catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances. Then,
+sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the
+helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like
+Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.
+
+The harness-cask, also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe,
+in which a week's allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves
+being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of the
+quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat, where he
+would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking teeth.
+He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+
+Then the magnificent capstan! The pride and glory of the whole ship's
+company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty
+it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of
+distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor
+center-table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant
+with brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
+mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge, and the chief
+mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for
+memorandums.
+
+I might proceed and speak of the booby-hatch, used as a sort of settee
+by the officers, and the fife-rail round the mainmast, inclosing a
+little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue
+ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master's daughter, used to
+take his morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New
+York Bowling-Green.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+
+
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration,
+though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority.
+For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing
+yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the
+darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
+topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an
+indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he
+is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of
+ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other
+matters familiar to an "able seaman."
+
+What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast, and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have turned in a
+dead-eye, or in the approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the
+main-stay? What did I know of "passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton,"
+"strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse," and innumerable other
+intricacies?
+
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
+a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
+sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
+where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
+of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
+that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
+sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
+but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
+destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a
+bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the
+shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns
+for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to
+tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's roses, and Turk's
+heads; he must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the
+halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing
+rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of
+a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend
+the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline and Spanish foxes; a
+blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must
+be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And this,
+perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
+things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason
+we never know anything.
+
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
+to his calling--fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
+palms, heavers, and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries
+with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.
+
+The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul
+ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means
+that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an artist in the
+rigging.
+
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that
+these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had
+only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
+and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which
+instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to.
+All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my
+backbone--comparatively small though it was at that time--by way of a
+lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
+Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set
+to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a
+religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other,
+never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality
+attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they would
+drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers
+seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from
+the chief mate for my clumsiness.
+
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
+
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in
+the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+
+All but the "turning out" or rising from your berth when the watch was
+called at night--that I never fancied. It was a sort of acquaintance,
+which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless,
+miserable business, truly.
+
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below
+to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied
+limbs, you are started up--it seems but the next instant after closing
+your lids--and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark
+and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the
+forecastle.
+
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least
+the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch,
+just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my
+ear--"Watch below, Buttons; watch below"--which pleasantly reminded me of
+the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take another
+nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to
+the other sailor's one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen
+contemplating a voyage to sea.
+
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could
+not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on
+deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would call
+the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+
+As thus:--
+
+"Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand, bear
+a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine
+shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
+cold!"
+
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers
+would reply with--"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a
+hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of
+which were full of fury.
+
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of the
+ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became the
+wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+
+
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen days,
+employed us about thirty.
+
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
+in sight.
+
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard, but
+could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast. Was
+that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If that's the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
+have staid at home.
+
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
+say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed at
+it with increasing interest.
+
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
+Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
+thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my
+uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the
+gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I
+thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin and
+the Giant's Causeway.
+
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
+but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
+other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary man
+in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
+probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
+friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
+
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out--"Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my
+beautiful sailors?" And concluded by calling upon us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, "pay out!
+pay out, my honeys; ah! but you're noble fellows!" Till at last the mate
+asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, "Haven't you enough
+rope yet?"
+
+"Sure and I have," replied the fisherman, "and it's time for Pat to cut
+and run!" and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a Kilkenny
+grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the wind, and
+bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.
+
+"And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!" cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.
+
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+
+Could this be really Wales?--Wales?--and I thought of the Prince of Wales.
+
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?--And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker's Hill.
+
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
+like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead
+and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had, was
+ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the water,
+and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance,
+which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself in
+conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near
+our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New
+York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a
+plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing
+through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner,
+that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve
+other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats,
+who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering in
+Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though, together;
+cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound vessels;
+smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns; till at
+last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different ships,
+and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool
+taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had
+been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for here
+was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon
+fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.
+
+After running till about midnight, we "hove-to" near the mouth of the
+Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the flood;
+and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth, is
+quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed
+immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
+shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.
+
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while
+the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a
+mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the
+vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous Bett-Buoy,
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow,
+according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a
+moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like
+the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of dirges
+for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no one can give ear
+to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far beneath it at the
+bottom of the deep.
+
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon, passing
+two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew near the
+town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.
+
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There
+they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good and
+substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends had
+in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.
+
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, "Why, this 'ere is a
+considerable place--I'm dummed if it ain't quite a place.--Why, them 'ere
+houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afriky, all
+hollow; nothing like this in Madagasky, I tell you;--I'm dummed, boys if
+Liverpool ain't a city!"
+
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a "realizing sense." He was accordingly
+astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for
+the country which could boast so extensive a town. Instead of holding
+Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of Madagascar, as he had been
+accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to that lady with feeling and
+respect.
+
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to kindle
+no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They looked
+around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as you or I
+would, if, after a morning's absence round the corner, we found
+ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages
+to Liverpool.
+
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them
+stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty
+years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among
+the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was
+forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of Sally.
+
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had often
+assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse of his;
+and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of seeing her.
+But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen, and
+their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round world over;
+and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between this very
+Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his, for what I
+thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my astonishment,
+therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming with a neat
+parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and ironed, and
+ready to put on at a moment's warning.
+
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife after
+long separations.
+
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself
+in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down
+into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having
+exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and
+this was precisely what the New York wife had done for Max, not thirty
+days previous.
+
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.
+
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York wife,
+to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and equally
+devoted to the keeping in good order Max's wardrobe.
+
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg
+had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as
+Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives
+never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much as a
+difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being between them; and
+Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many years, he had been
+going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between wife and wife with
+great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic welcome on
+either side of the ocean.
+
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way
+immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject.
+But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and
+after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded
+by asking me triumphantly, whether old King Sol, as he called the son of
+David, did not have a whole frigate-full of wives; and that being the
+case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have just as good a right to
+have two? "What was not wrong then, is right now," said Max; "so, mind
+your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+
+
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up the
+anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming against
+other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and about
+dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in Prince's Dock. The hawsers
+and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go ashore,
+select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord's
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six weeks,
+as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however--the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch--feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give them
+at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed, is
+but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the scurvy.
+A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with immeasurable
+disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if their captains
+treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.
+
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time, I
+felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my
+eyes and lungs. As for stepping on it, that was out of the question, in
+the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have
+an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into
+the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal
+loam--but not till then.
+
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we stopped
+before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded
+bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn
+and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and lamb in
+the millennium.--A very judicious and tasty device, showing a delicate
+apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors in an
+English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the honor and
+dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon a footing
+of perfect equality.
+
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a
+young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding
+up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of
+basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing
+by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he
+answered, "Why, youngster, don't you know what that means? It's a young
+jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy."
+
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
+American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a
+buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and
+not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
+
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among the
+seamen went by the name of "Handsome Mary." But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and
+conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no means
+an Amazon to her husband, if she did play a masculine part in other
+matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
+attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
+about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
+fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
+The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
+thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
+so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
+of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
+upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
+
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.
+
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
+they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
+
+   "No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
+    Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
+    In jolly good ale and old,--
+    I stuff my skin so full within,
+    Of jolly good ale and old."
+
+Or this,
+
+   "Four wines and brandies I detest,
+    Here's richer juice from barley press'd.
+    It is the quintessence of malt,
+    And they that drink it want no salt.
+    Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
+    And water henceforth you'll forswear."
+
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
+with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
+Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
+paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
+with thy spouse?
+
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs pour
+out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air in a
+vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher
+in it.
+
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank
+in a fog and a drizzle.
+
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room
+on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a
+courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among our
+crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates
+were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room,
+with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a
+smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was
+horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the
+ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless
+succession of vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the
+apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map
+was hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
+nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
+bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+
+And this is England?
+
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not
+the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.
+
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to
+see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is
+not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St. James's.
+
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a
+sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go round the
+world, without going into it; and their reminiscences of travel are only
+a dim recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe,
+parallel with the Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle;
+hover about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and
+pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland to see
+Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending a car overland
+to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from
+room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, "Supper, supper ready."
+
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against
+the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting
+his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never heard.
+
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of
+solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?--the
+sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles' shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway
+was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese;
+and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over
+tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
+potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand
+adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper table.
+
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the
+girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing to
+take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was too late
+for tea; but she would get me a cup of "swipes" if I wanted it.
+
+Not knowing what "swipes" might be, I thought I would run the risk and
+try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour flavor,
+as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never patronized
+swipes again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it
+was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my shipmates,
+who pronounced it good.
+
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this stripes, as I
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of
+beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not
+remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that swipes
+was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it as
+answering to the name itself; which is certainly significant of
+something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by the poor people
+about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree, accounts for their
+poverty.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+SAILORS
+
+
+The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the
+general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and will
+then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and
+impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after the lapse of
+so many years.
+
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our
+stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the Arms Hotel, I believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.
+
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.
+
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad, roystering
+nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have delighted in. For
+company over the cabin-table, he would have four or five whiskered
+sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all
+the time. And once, the whole company were found under the table at four
+o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and tucked in by the two
+mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our woolly Doctor of Divinity,
+the black cook, that they should have been ashamed of themselves; but
+there is no shame in some sea-captains, who only blush after the third
+bottle.
+
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.
+
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down; then
+we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at the
+rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other, never
+mind how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally knocked off at four o'clock
+in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And after
+four o'clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required to be
+on board again till next morning at daylight.
+
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were light
+enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some employment
+for us.
+
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving
+us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran on, as at sea.
+Sundays we had to ourselves.
+
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships in
+Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure. They
+live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome
+exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month's advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the
+time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to him;
+sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most abounds
+in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which
+make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.
+
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are
+not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant
+parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and
+attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in the world. For
+in Liverpool they find their Paradise--not the well known street of that
+name--and one of them told me he would be content to lie in Prince's Dock
+till he hove up anchor for the world to come.
+
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever
+prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before
+the bane is removed.
+
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character,
+ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless
+and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are
+almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider
+that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
+of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a
+thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard even
+for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on crutches;
+consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better
+classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and
+improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must very
+soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very
+promising one.
+
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those
+chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.
+
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels,
+and launched into the docks; though the "Boatswain's Mate" and other
+clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains
+in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical
+boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of
+ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog
+while at sea:--notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the
+relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
+seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance, that
+unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one class
+makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because the
+sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the
+Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of
+Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and survived
+to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;--because the modern
+tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off some of his
+shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney queue:--therefore, in the
+estimation of some observers, he has begun to see the evils of his
+condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon a closer scrutiny, it
+will be seen that he has but drifted along with that great tide, which,
+perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of
+his own.
+
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and
+glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve
+in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift
+them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on
+something the insiders must roll.
+
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe;
+they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of
+fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate
+in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop
+here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the
+American Congress.
+
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun
+him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you
+throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?--No. You will do no such thing; but
+at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And
+the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more
+than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless
+to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the
+earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through
+romances.
+
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up
+from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems
+and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for
+with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as
+hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.
+
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who
+toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and tenderly
+cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father of all,
+and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.
+
+
+
+
+XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS
+
+
+Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
+great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
+studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
+embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
+of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
+others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
+here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
+entitled, "Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau
+Paris: Miroir Fidele" also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
+marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, "Itineraire
+Instructif de Rome, ou Description Generale des Monumens Antiques et
+Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur, de
+Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Celebre Ville;" on the russet
+title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly shaded by a
+scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock
+and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless
+foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
+twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground, with
+locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation; a large
+cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the wolf looks a good deal
+like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows; the work is published
+"Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife." There was also a velvet-bound old
+volume, in brass clasps, entitled, "The Conductor through Holland" with
+a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable "Picture of London"
+abounding in representations of St. Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and
+Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
+reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an
+elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the
+cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, "The Great Roads, both
+direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual
+Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
+describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those
+at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of the Mails' arrival
+and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which
+the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses and
+carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats situated near
+the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and
+Margate." It is dedicated "To the Right Honorable the Earls of
+Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient,
+and Obsequious Servant, John Gary, 1798." Also a green pamphlet, with a
+motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking
+like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, "A Description of
+York, its Antiquities and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral;
+compiled with great pains from the most authentic records." Also a small
+scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
+frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
+King's College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, "The Cambridge Guide: its
+Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
+and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral." Also a pamphlet,
+with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
+higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
+accurate representation of the "North or Grand Front of Blenheim," and
+entitled, "A Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
+Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and
+Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General
+Description of the famous China Gallery, &.; with an Essay on
+Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a
+New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park." And lastly, and to the purpose,
+there was a volume called "THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL."
+
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.
+
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the
+life.
+
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to
+my boyhood,--the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned
+over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing
+sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
+
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
+myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles.
+I will, my beloved,--old family relic that you are;--till you drop leaf
+from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
+somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
+
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is bound in green
+morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
+tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
+red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that he
+who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+
+But let us open the volume.
+
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
+falling air-castles? Ah, no!--these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, "Drawn at the age of three
+years," and under this autograph, "Executed at the age of eight."
+
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
+the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain
+of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine;
+this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
+fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
+
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father's
+hand-writing, the following:--
+
+"WALTER REDBURN.
+
+"Riddough's Royal Hotel, Liverpool, March 20th, 1808."
+
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father's, which he must have made at various times during
+his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
+midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous effacements, it
+is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I must here copy a few
+at random:--
+
+                                      L  s. d
+
+    Guide-Book                           3  6
+    Dinner at the Star and Garter          10
+    Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)  2  6  3
+    Gratuities                              4
+    Hack                                 4  6
+    Thompson's Seasons                      5
+    Library                                 1
+    Boat on the river                       6
+    Port wine and cigar                     4
+
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+
+    Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.
+    Call upon Mr. Morille same day.
+    Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.
+    Theatre Friday night--Richard III. and new farce.
+    Present letter at Miss L----'s on Tuesday.
+    Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.
+    Get my draft on London cashed.
+    Write home by the Princess.
+    Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.
+
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
+British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is "A
+Plan of the Town of Liverpool." But there seems little plan in the
+confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a
+peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
+
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.
+
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all
+directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked "Riddough's
+Hotel," the house my father stopped at.
+
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
+the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
+penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
+
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
+foreign land; but attended St. John's Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.
+
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head
+with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval
+sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto
+elastically stretched for a border--"Deus nobis haec otia fecit."
+
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation
+of a now extinct fowl, called the "Liver," said to have inhabited a
+"pool," which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground
+where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool
+derives its name.
+
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.
+
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
+title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
+facsimile:--
+
+                         The Picture
+                         of Liverpool:
+                     or, Stranger's Guide
+               and Gentleman's Pocket Companion
+                         FOR THE TOWN.
+                          Embellished
+                        With Engravings
+          By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
+                           Liverpool:
+                   Printed in Swift's Court,
+      And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
+
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes "testimonies of respect which
+had lately appeared in various quarters--the British Critic, Review, and
+the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales"--and concludes
+by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition
+might "render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy
+also of the subject it is intended to illustrate."
+
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
+of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, 1st Sept.
+1803.
+
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of
+the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.
+
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
+must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him
+a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that
+his noblest epitaph.
+
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:--
+
+  Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain,
+  Pours his full tribute to the circling main,
+  A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
+  Contented labor blessed the fair retreat,
+  Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude,
+  They braved the billows for precarious food:
+  Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore,
+  Their nets and little boats their only store.
+
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
+and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer's
+Shipwreck.
+
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his "Survey of the Town" are nine thickly
+printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
+of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
+saying, that "the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at
+present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no
+doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this
+noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest
+delicacy of feeling."
+
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
+author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
+that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
+reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
+
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
+style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
+Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
+"his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like
+all Parnassus with:--
+
+  "Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds,
+  From northern climes to India's distant bounds--
+  Where'er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
+  Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves;
+  Where'er the honored flood extends his tide,
+  That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride.
+  Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns,
+  And temperate Gallia rears her generous vines:
+  'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow,
+  And the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough;
+  In every clime her prosperous fleets are known,
+  She makes the wealth of every clime her own."
+
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:--
+
+   "And here R*s*o*, with genius all his own,
+    New tracks explores, and all before unknown?"
+
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the warmest appreciation
+of the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation
+which gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce.
+He is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with classical
+admiration.
+
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of
+William the Conqueror.
+
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of
+Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the
+soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
+
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town
+of Liverpool."
+
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, "On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants," and then skim over page after page
+throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur
+of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in population,
+opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must look back
+upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable
+superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
+of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the corner-stone
+of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in great part
+of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however imposing,
+we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander domes
+of posterity.
+
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now
+growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs,
+centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then
+obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
+going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house,
+and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a
+Hellenic antiquity.
+
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
+of this "Picture of Liverpool," so different from the brief, pert, and
+unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I shall
+now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as it is
+entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
+information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous town, to
+which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter,
+concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote
+my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
+information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as
+original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book its due.
+
+But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+
+No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will not quote thee, old Morocco,
+before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
+would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
+me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from
+a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE
+TOWN
+
+
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
+that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
+probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
+I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town,
+as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the
+columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored
+over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was
+determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a
+mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most
+students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with
+the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.
+
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.
+
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there
+depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the
+map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I could
+march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the most
+distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+
+Dear delusion!
+
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty
+years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove
+but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his
+son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any discrepancy,
+never entered my mind.
+
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, you, at least, are all right.
+
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew
+went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's Dock's walls;
+and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to compare notes,
+when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and my shipmates were
+standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my
+infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding, that
+it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while to visit it for the
+purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the evening.
+
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle?
+and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet not
+a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one small
+discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so faithfully served
+my own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern went by the
+name of "The Old Fort Tavern;" and when I was told that many of the old
+stones were yet in the walls, I almost completely exonerated my
+guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of misleading me.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought I,
+my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down lane,
+even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions "with
+Eastern scrupulosity," and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier, to
+one of the sailor.
+
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them
+not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.
+
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have
+been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken
+sailor passing, exclaimed, "Eyes right! quick step there!"
+
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and
+one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon
+me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and
+newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued
+forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the
+street, and commanded me to halt! I obeyed; when scanning my appearance
+pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that tarpaulin hat, not
+being able to account for the phenomenon of its roofing the head of a
+broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship, which lay at no great
+distance; when remarking from my voice that I was a Yankee, this
+faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks are
+extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy
+"shakings," and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
+out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls. And
+often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's clothes, even if he
+be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible pockets.
+
+But where was I going?
+
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough's
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and
+then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town,
+according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.
+
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.
+
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.
+
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat,
+buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of his
+would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was
+not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as
+thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My own
+father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so much as
+dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me; for if it
+had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never cast a
+thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father's having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.
+
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on
+my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going
+under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants' Exchange.
+
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my
+father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch at
+my back, into the paved square where I stood.
+
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow
+the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and
+overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son's search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.
+
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned
+to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to
+a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This,
+however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.
+
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated upon
+a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring in the
+arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other on a
+cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral's brow; while
+Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating his
+bony hand under the hero's robe, and groping after his heart. A very
+striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look at
+Death without a shudder.
+
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures
+in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of
+humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his
+knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever
+feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and no doubt
+looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted at the
+time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures of
+captives are emblematic of Nelson's principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.
+
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was
+once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I
+remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting our
+house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father's
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem ("the Wrongs of Africa"), several pamphlets; and in his place in
+Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had no
+small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact,
+that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the little
+arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to find
+Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory's wreath still hovering over his
+swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the four bronze
+captives still lamented their captivity.
+
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I
+have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to let
+him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so called
+from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and turning
+down into Lord.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for the
+hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined, when
+it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house at
+which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear
+my questions and give me an answer.
+
+"Riddough's Hotel?" said he, "upon my word, I think I have heard of such
+a place; let me see--yes, yes--that was the hotel where my father broke
+his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can't be
+inquiring for Riddough's Hotel! What do you want to find there?"
+
+"Oh! nothing," I replied, "I am much obliged for your information"--and
+away I walked.
+
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book; and
+all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly half
+a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the town,
+than the map of Pompeii.
+
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on which
+I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book with
+the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family associations;
+the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest style of art;
+this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing that had guided
+the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on a shop step, and
+gave loose to meditation.
+
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough's Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling up,
+they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may behold,
+when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come after
+his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father's guidebook is no
+guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a modern one
+to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you. Guide-books,
+Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all literature; and
+nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones
+tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts
+of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace,
+amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a
+clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and the old ones are used for
+waste paper. But there is one Holy Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will
+never lead you astray, if you but follow it aright; and some noble
+monuments that remain, though the pyramids crumble.
+
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.
+
+No.--Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now and
+then, concerning a Riddough's Hotel, or some other forgotten thing of
+the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves more
+than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning "The Old Dock,"
+which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place without
+delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right direction, at
+last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of sculptured
+brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from incontrovertible
+tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After admiring it awhile, I
+took out my guide-book again; and what was my amazement at discovering
+that, according to its authority, I was entirely mistaken with regard to
+this Custom-house; for precisely where I stood, "The Old Dock" must be
+standing, and reading on concerning it, I met with this very apposite
+passage:--"The first idea that strikes the stranger in coming to this
+dock, is the singularity of so great a number of ships afloat in the
+very heart of the town, without discovering any connection with the
+sea."
+
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good deal
+of "singularity" about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that it
+was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem to
+have no connection with the sea! However, the same author went on to
+say, that the "astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for awhile,
+and turn to the left." But, right or left, no place answering to the
+description was to be seen.
+
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted for,
+even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether he
+was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the "Old
+Dock." The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I was
+apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he whipped his
+well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his silver-laced
+coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the following facts.
+
+It seems that in this place originally stood the "pool," from which the
+town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound round the
+greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into the
+"Old Dock," for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago, it had
+been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house before me.
+
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern traveler
+standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of Gomorrah
+seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into substantial stone
+and mortar.
+
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into
+your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is
+several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, "The
+Wars of the Lord" quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up,
+Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your
+nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin:
+and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire your landmarks.
+
+No!--And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I'll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of the venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on
+the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side,
+covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of the
+noble Derby's was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the
+water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit--a gull--a sham--a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the
+State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs--point out the vouchers.
+Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall? Show me
+Stonehenge!
+
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous shooting-jacket
+of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.
+
+True, true--that's it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am only a
+common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+
+After a weary day's walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer of tea, in
+which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. THE DOCKS
+
+
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately
+around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I
+never tired of admiring them.
+
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure, I
+could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.
+
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers
+of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely inclosed,
+and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind the great
+American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, and
+Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures, seemed equal to
+what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.
+
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the "Wet
+Dock," so called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected
+with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London
+was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In
+magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the
+present day surpass all others in the world.
+
+The first dock built by the town was the "Old Dock," alluded to in my
+Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since which
+period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now flanking
+the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock,
+like a chain of immense fortresses:--Prince's, George's, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and many more.
+
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their
+valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which Liverpool
+held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon its more
+modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might be proud
+of:--Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names
+upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file
+of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in
+connection with the commerce they defended.
+
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his life. It is well enough that
+over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some vast
+marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having lived
+and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the
+marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build such
+a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his fame,
+and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built in the
+closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops himself could
+have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.
+
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the King's and
+Queens. At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal streets
+in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in
+the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to
+the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of
+freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where
+King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being
+immortalized by the village of L--. A country antiquary once told me,
+that a committee of two barbers were deputed to write and inform the
+distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much
+answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince's
+Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the Atlantic.
+
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest
+of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it is
+mostly frequented by the American shipping. Here lie the noble New
+York packets, which at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and
+here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river,
+the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified
+again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince's
+Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive
+wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls, one
+of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed forms
+an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise about fifteen or
+twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor when I took it in,
+I will not be certain.
+
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays surrounding
+it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the interior from the
+streets is had through several gateways; so that, upon their being
+closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From the river, the
+entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships is only to be
+had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of the river; that
+is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the dock is always at
+that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river, the keels of the
+ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than twenty feet above
+those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course, produces a striking
+effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense ships floating high
+aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.
+
+Prince's Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance of
+a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older
+occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs
+worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of
+the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all
+directions:--"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer
+alongside the Neptune!"--"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!"--"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop
+astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.
+
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the open
+river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin forms a
+sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie waiting their
+turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this basin is obvious;
+for it would be impossible to "dock" a ship under full headway from a
+voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent waves, she first glides into
+the ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from thence into the docks.
+
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the King's
+Dock, comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at an
+expense of some L20,000.
+
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed the
+seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the ships
+which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King William's war,
+in 1688, entered the King's Dock on the first day of its being opened in
+1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a dark little brig,
+called the Port-a-Ferry. And probably, as her timbers must have been
+frequently renewed in the course of a hundred years, the name alone
+could have been all that was left of her at the time. A paved area, very
+wide, is included within the walls; and along the edge of the quays are
+ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary shelter for the goods
+unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the bustle and activity
+displayed along these quays during the day; bales, crates, boxes, and
+cases are being tumbled about by thousands of laborers; trucks are
+coming and going; dock-masters are shouting; sailors of all nations are
+singing out at their ropes; and all this commotion is greatly increased
+by the resoundings from the lofty walls that hem in the din.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+
+
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled
+town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago,
+an epitome of the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even
+those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in itself, each ship is an
+island, a floating colony of the tribe to which it belongs.
+
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and New
+Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway
+her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and
+Campeachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under the beneficent
+sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries embrace; and
+yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.
+
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious
+and liberal plan of the Astor House. Here ships are lodged at a moderate
+charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure. Here
+they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all
+weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can hardly credit a
+story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the
+very middle of the docks have lost their top-gallant-masts. Whatever the
+toils and hardships encountered on the voyage, whether they come from
+Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here their sufferings are ended, and
+they take their ease in their watery inn.
+
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince's
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects
+in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn,
+battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o--spruce, gay, and
+brilliant, in readiness for sea.
+
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid,
+thrifty-looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French
+hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck
+elastic from much dancing.
+
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart's or Delmonico's
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its
+live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending
+their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.
+
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-boat,
+but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which
+looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard. These
+little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for ships
+bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of those
+lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the carcass
+of a black buffalo.
+
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;
+and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying
+through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man
+at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.
+
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of
+these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an
+admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of
+himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was
+none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might
+only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a
+triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories of
+Alexander.
+
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair,
+as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple like
+this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of
+cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling
+forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.
+
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher,
+and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house
+all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had
+an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he
+invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together
+like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.
+
+"He, he," he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask of
+beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet--"You see, Jack, I
+keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just before
+going to bed, it ain't bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh! Jack?--here
+now, smack your lips over that, my boy--have a pipe?--but stop, let's to
+supper first."
+
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping
+in it awhile, and addressing it with--"What cheer here, what cheer?" at
+last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of butter.
+And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the pitcher of
+beer in the center. "Why that's but a two legged table," said I, "let's
+make it four."
+
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my
+soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+
+"Now Jack," said he, when supper was over, "now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?--Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+
+"He, he, my boy," then said he--"I don't never have any bugs here, I tell
+ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed."
+
+"And where may you sleep?" said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
+a bed.
+
+"Sleep?" says he, "why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?"
+
+"Very funny," says I.
+
+"Have some more ale?" says he; "plenty more." "No more, thank you," says
+I; "I guess I'll go;" for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I
+began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote me
+for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.
+
+"Now, don't go," said he; "don't go, my boy; don't go out into the damp;
+take an old Christian's advice," laying his hand on my shoulder; "it
+won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and get
+broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping off for
+a nice little nap."
+
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large
+New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing
+comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.
+
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
+ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.
+
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing
+the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom
+of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as
+they hie to the land of the stranger.
+
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
+valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has
+been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the
+prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations,
+all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of
+American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be he
+Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at
+an American, calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger of the
+judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew
+nationality--whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it,
+by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves. No: our blood is
+as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all
+pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we
+may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without
+father or mother.
+
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
+and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
+paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
+Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world's
+as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
+our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are
+forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see
+the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in
+Eden.
+
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in
+the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest
+must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning,
+shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of
+Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall
+speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots;
+and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions
+round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto
+them cloven tongues as of fire.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+
+
+Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name
+bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
+they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
+wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, "the King of the Oaks."
+The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.
+She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
+who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a
+higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,
+this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace,
+a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled
+by his bare feet.
+
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating
+the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice
+had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the
+tackle-rope, elastic as cats.
+
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed
+it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my
+motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately
+let me pass.
+
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of kayar,
+or cocoa-nut fiber.
+
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+"kids" full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite
+another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I
+found that several of them could also speak very good English. They were
+a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent
+seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.
+
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.
+
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
+of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
+never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
+the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about
+the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.
+
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the "fancy piece" astern
+comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
+while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head--a
+dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking
+tail.
+
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done "to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders"--something as work is done in the navy to the music
+of the boatswain's pipe--the Lascars were set to "stripping the ship"
+that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.
+
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped
+about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing
+much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.
+
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see
+this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of
+the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the
+regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his
+vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from
+it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied "Joggerry," which is a
+species of weed, used in place of tobacco.
+
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
+most smokers, I sat down by Dattabdool-mans, as he called himself, and
+we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when
+we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it
+is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you
+never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon--wholly
+strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an
+insight into things quaint, curious, and marvelous, drop your books of
+travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.
+Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of
+mariners from all parts of the globe.
+
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I
+and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
+account of the teakwood and kayar rope, concerning which things I was
+curious, and sought information.
+
+The "sagoon" as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its
+greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another
+kind of wood, the "sissor," which supplies most of the "shin-logs," or
+"knees," and crooked timbers in the country ships. The sagoon grows to
+an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet
+through, before a single bough is put forth. Its leaves are very large;
+and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants'
+ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of
+staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier than water;
+it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its chief
+merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
+insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil
+called "poonja."
+
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
+the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
+the European artisans.
+
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the kayar, of which it
+is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
+well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend's
+account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
+ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
+hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
+this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar
+is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of
+the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with
+mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the
+sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The
+fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well
+adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of
+a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and
+buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
+
+But the elasticity of the kayar ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar
+told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.
+
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her kayar shrouds with hempen
+ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+
+
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat
+among modish beavers.
+
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
+northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
+this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
+these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.
+
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and
+spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished
+streak, usually banding round an American ship.
+
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
+and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
+on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
+leeway at a sad rate.
+
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly would I
+gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
+still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
+appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
+about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned
+by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an
+antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors,
+eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a
+tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's head; and
+by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear;
+and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions
+it had heard.
+
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap
+and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.
+
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled
+about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of
+swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.
+
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
+a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
+the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
+steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to
+see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
+Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the muezzin or
+cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
+strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
+account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
+round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
+old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
+found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of
+the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I
+ever experienced.
+
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
+one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
+Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
+of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
+them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
+them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
+can procure an audience.
+
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.
+
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the
+ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.
+And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing
+a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys
+in the neighborhood.
+
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
+clergy is like their divine Master's;--not to bring the righteous, but
+sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
+comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
+year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
+hearts of vice: then indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
+with; and a victory gained over him, would entitle them to a conqueror's
+wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is
+destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as from
+every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child
+Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so
+should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street
+corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+
+
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the "Old Church," well known to the
+seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands very
+near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town's
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
+preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship
+on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was
+a chapel-of-ease; though from the straight backed pews, there could have
+been but little comfort taken in it.
+
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it; something
+like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.
+"Wellingborough! Wellingborough! you must not forget to go to church,
+Wellingborough! Don't forget, Wellingborough! Wellingborough! don't
+forget."
+
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the
+death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:--
+
+    "HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER."
+
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the
+Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in
+the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another "sumptuous stall" was erected
+for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.
+
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris,
+where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their
+friends, or till buried at the public charge.
+
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.
+
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
+falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount
+if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and
+women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I
+observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from
+their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.
+
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get
+their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
+these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
+going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
+starvelings.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+
+
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
+the docks are many very painful sights.
+
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
+come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
+stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
+twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
+run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
+endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
+which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
+crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
+crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
+of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
+shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
+At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
+they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
+wail.
+
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
+but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
+its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
+motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
+her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
+crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
+die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
+stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
+them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
+soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
+the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
+seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
+Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
+beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
+queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
+with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
+
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.
+
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
+had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.
+"Yes," she replied, "to the church-yard." I said she was alive, and not
+dead.
+
+"Then she'll never die," was the rejoinder. "She's been down there these
+three days, with nothing to eat;--that I know myself."
+
+"She desarves it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
+shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that
+Betsy Jennings desarves it--was she ever married? tell me that."
+
+Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the
+girls.
+
+"It's none of my business, Jack," said he. "I don't belong to that
+street."
+
+"Who does then?"
+
+"I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
+so."
+
+"There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town."
+
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
+not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
+in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding
+away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
+
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
+time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
+irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a
+loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a
+sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the
+vault.
+
+"Well," said he, "what of it?"
+
+"Can't we get them out?" said I, "haven't you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?"
+
+"You're crazy, boy," said he; "do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?"
+
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
+seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without
+looking after the whole neighborhood.
+
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called Brandy-Nan; and
+begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to
+take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
+miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the
+room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had
+gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting
+it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I
+dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at it
+convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the
+other's arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a weak
+uncertain grasp like an infant's. She placed it to her mouth; but
+letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like "water." The
+woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen
+her.
+
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
+tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
+refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to the
+ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried to
+one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen running near
+the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house; and taking off
+a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day, filled it with
+water.
+
+With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw
+her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little
+babe--the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was
+dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
+balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who
+they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering
+something that could not be understood.
+
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.
+
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
+repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
+prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they
+must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I
+hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred to me
+as I stood there; but it was this--I felt an almost irresistible impulse
+to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting an end to their
+horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I think, had I not
+been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law,
+which would let them perish of themselves without giving them one cup of
+water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in convicting him
+who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
+existence.
+
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
+met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side,
+and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed.
+The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the
+morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped that morning
+remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that came from the
+vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
+before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that the
+persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have them
+removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it was
+not his street.
+
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom
+I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock
+Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not the right
+place to lodge my information.
+
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
+but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
+women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but
+my prayer was answered--they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
+shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
+do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
+that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
+as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to
+follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like
+people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the
+dead?
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+
+
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.
+
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in the
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
+of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.
+
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
+yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
+inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
+as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
+dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
+appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
+large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
+unlades at the quays.
+
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
+and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
+findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
+and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
+to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
+rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.
+
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
+and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
+in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
+how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
+heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.
+
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
+streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
+army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.
+
+At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
+is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
+outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
+the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
+long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
+misery could be furnished by any town in the world.
+
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
+girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
+men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
+young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
+babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
+art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:--
+
+   "I have had no food for three days;
+    My wife and children are dying."
+
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
+an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
+Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
+you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
+even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
+never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
+his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
+that the beggars treated the town's people differently.
+
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
+three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
+made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
+had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
+infest the dock walls as they did.
+
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
+an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
+occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
+He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
+dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.
+
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
+him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
+long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
+battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
+one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
+Victory.
+
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
+claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
+demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
+disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
+as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
+utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
+prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
+into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
+woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
+garden.
+
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+
+
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
+a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
+encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
+kept.
+
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them.
+Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix
+with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.
+
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
+streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
+other parts of the town.
+
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
+and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
+receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
+words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
+head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
+lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
+effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
+did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
+this, drawn out in an endless groan--
+
+"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
+the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
+him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
+falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
+He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
+pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
+monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
+robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
+quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
+subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
+sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
+business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
+go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
+and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
+been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
+murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
+morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
+tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
+copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
+seamen.
+
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
+which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
+the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
+pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
+infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
+enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
+almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
+of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
+their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
+their arches like vermin.
+
+
+
+
+XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+
+
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning
+the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw into
+this chapter various minor things that I recall.
+
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the dock
+walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite different
+announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are principally
+notices of the approaching departure of "superior, fast-sailing,
+coppered and copper-fastened ships," for the United States, Canada, New
+South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the
+advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen
+where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with
+ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who
+prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving
+notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended
+Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby workhouse-looking knaves, whose
+business consists in haunting the dock walls about meal times, and
+silently thrusting mysterious little billets--duodecimo editions of the
+larger advertisements--into the astonished hands of the tars.
+
+They do this, with such _a_ mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air;
+such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you
+are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements
+to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round
+bounty, and embark in her Majesty's navy.
+
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for
+the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships,
+going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be announced
+as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor, and noble
+father to his crew, Lord George Flagstaff.
+
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments
+in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the
+charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these
+placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for
+which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns,
+vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the landscape;
+and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are informed, that here
+is a chance for them to see the world at their leisure, and be paid for
+enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments for India are
+promised plantations among valleys of palms; while to those destined for
+New Holland, a novel sphere of life and activity is opened; and the
+companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia are lured by tales of summer
+suns, that ripen grapes in December. No word of war is breathed; hushed
+is the clang of arms in these announcements; and the sanguine recruit is
+almost tempted to expect that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be
+the weapons he will wield.
+
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Bruce at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin's Bay
+and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the army
+as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow must
+groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and his
+Mary.
+
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool.
+Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of
+Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many
+young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to
+penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to carry them over the
+sea, without providing for future contingencies. How easily and
+naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter upon the military
+life, which promises them a free passage to the most distant and
+flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides holding
+out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the fullness of
+time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home at all, and
+embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a piece of
+adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts the army
+recruit to enlist.
+
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.
+
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their
+little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are another
+set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; who make
+strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some
+state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the
+commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a
+pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they saunter
+off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and family.
+
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I fancied
+him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm with my
+shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned round
+and paused.
+
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat;
+and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card
+with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark
+angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a cunning
+foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But though I did
+not look round, I felt him following me still; so once more I stopped.
+The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an air, that I began to
+fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that perhaps a plot had been
+laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was some Monteagle bent upon
+accomplishing my flight. I was determined to see what he was. With all
+my eyes about me, I followed him into the arch of a warehouse; when he
+gazed round furtively, and silently showing me a ring, whispered, "You
+may have it for a shilling; it's pure gold--I found it in the
+gutter--hush! don't speak! give me the money, and it's yours."
+
+"My friend," said I, "I don't trade in these articles; I don't want your
+ring."
+
+"Don't you? Then take that," he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next
+time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice,
+pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly
+turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels.
+I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so given to
+running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of work to the
+shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.
+
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of Sheffield
+razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the
+police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and board the
+vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting their wares.
+Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and the gilding
+on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it on the spot
+for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On the following
+Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of tormented and
+tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to dress them. In old
+times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that suggested the
+propriety of a barber's practicing surgery in connection with the
+chin-harrowing vocation.
+
+Another class of knaves, who practice upon the sailors in Liverpool, are
+the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries among the narrow lanes
+adjoining the dock. I was astonished at the multitude of gilded balls in
+these streets, emblematic of their calling. They were generally next
+neighbors to the gilded grapes over the spirit-vaults; and no doubt,
+mutually to facilitate business operations, some of these establishments
+have connecting doors inside, so as to play their customers into each
+other's hands. I often saw sailors in a state of intoxication rushing
+from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker's; stripping off their boots,
+hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and sometimes even their pantaloons on
+the spot, and offering to pawn them for a song. Of course such
+applications were never refused. But though on shore, at Liverpool, poor
+Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he himself is by no means exempt
+from practices, that do not savor of a rigid morality; at least
+according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when cool and
+collected, often manages to evade the Customs completely, and land
+goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the immense duties upon it
+in England, commands a very high price.
+
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.
+
+"Is that all?" asked the officers.
+
+"All," said the men.
+
+"We will see," returned the others.
+
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.
+
+"Very good," said the men.
+
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.
+
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his
+pocket; that he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about his
+person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates
+at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance of
+detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by.
+And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers
+passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard,
+as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting under a
+ship's bows.
+
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we came
+from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate; for in
+Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the docks
+they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners' mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little moral
+precepts printed in red on the back.
+
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the
+least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with
+such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by
+a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting
+their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay
+stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are
+guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a
+whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine
+truck-horses look--so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often
+I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though
+I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language,
+I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable information
+touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their dignified
+lives.
+
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a
+horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure
+he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries
+in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
+They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a
+species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to
+live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like
+the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of
+divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should
+forever exempt him from indignities. As for those majestic, magisterial
+truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on
+the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.
+
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The
+truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the
+lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large
+warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will tranquilly
+walk away with the whole.
+
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals.
+Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,--not of the same cut and
+color though,--which reach below their knees; and from the racket they
+make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think
+they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get
+any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set,
+who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals;
+now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in
+order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their
+lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended
+their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them
+something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to them
+a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is
+the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended
+in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse
+pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day
+a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the
+water. It was noon, when an interval of silence falls upon the docks;
+and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the horse, and having a mind
+for a chat, cried out to him, "Back! back! back!"
+
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the water.
+
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince's, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American
+boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying to
+all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of
+produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned
+into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with these
+inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand, seemingly
+penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July when the
+Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily coming
+over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the
+street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from
+Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the country;
+and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the corporation,
+took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+
+"Sing Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney," cried one fellow, tossing
+his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head of the
+rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+
+
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for
+so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who, thereby,
+was enabled after my day's work aboard the Highlander, to ramble about
+the town for several hours. After I had visited all the noted places I
+could discover, of those marked down upon my father's map, I began to
+extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a committee of one,
+to investigate all accessible parts of the town; though so many years
+have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my report.
+
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world, I
+have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering about,
+up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and speculating
+upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to pace along
+endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on the doors,
+admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a passing
+blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was stared at
+myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take on such
+occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a sensation
+in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a family went
+home to his children with a curious story, about a wandering phenomenon
+they had encountered, traversing the side-walks that day. In the words
+of the old song, "I cared for nobody, no not I, and nobody cared for
+me." I stared my fill with impunity, and took all stares myself in good
+part.
+
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with a
+wonderful relish.
+
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour, in
+those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the street,
+and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it in New
+York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes; and
+especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing along
+frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who clung
+to his arms and legs; and, in God's name, conjured him not to desert
+them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and drowning
+himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In these
+haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged me
+unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost endless
+vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these miserable
+streets.
+
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
+the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the "free states" of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute. But
+in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and with
+the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even Englishmen;
+as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords. This conveyed a
+strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded me that I was
+not in my own land. For there, such a being as a native beggar is almost
+unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against
+pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
+
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which
+negro-sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head
+like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in respect to
+him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our black
+steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to escape
+with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to them, and
+the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black cooks and
+stewards of American ships are very much attached to the place and like
+to make voyages to it.
+
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
+degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
+most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
+at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
+in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was but
+recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in some
+things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the
+principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.
+
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
+by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
+Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
+There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of houses
+with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the same
+elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
+could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St. John's
+Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to see that
+great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most discriminating
+observer would not have been able to detect any difference between the
+articles exposed for sale, and the articles exhibited in Fulton Market,
+New York.
+
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers' shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.
+
+It is true, that I often thought of London's being only seven or eight
+hours' travel by railroad from where I was; and that there, surely, must
+be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
+bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
+walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
+a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
+church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
+edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
+
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them in
+another.
+
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
+simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
+he pleases; and that even St. Peter's in Rome is open to him, as to a
+cardinal; that St. Paul's in London is not shut against him; and that
+the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to him,
+and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the better to
+allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this consideration of the
+hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most Christian and charming
+thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and Vatican libraries, for
+Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes farther home than all the
+sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, and Archbishop Tillotson.
+
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
+land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of
+any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
+broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
+myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a
+little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what could
+he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to be
+sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or hearing
+of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always some
+confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I used
+to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting
+on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in
+the churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of
+some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of
+the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation
+between myself and the clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know
+that I was a foreigner of distinction.
+
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached--just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
+roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
+winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
+my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
+long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
+and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking how
+I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen, with
+high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their cosy and
+comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for me except
+at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the immortal
+plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies. But to
+finish off with that abominable "swipes" almost spoiled all the rest:
+not that I myself patronized "swipes" but my shipmates did; and every
+cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in imagination, and
+even then the flavor was bad.
+
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The servant
+girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose dinners
+were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were collectively
+known by the names of their ships.
+
+"Where are the Arethusas?--Here's their beef been smoking this
+half-hour."--"Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the Splendids."--"Run,
+Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the Highlanders."--"You Peggy,
+where's the Siddons' pickle-pat?"--"I say, Judy, are you never coming
+with that pudding for the Lord Nelsons?"
+
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
+came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
+end of the Highlanders' table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared himself
+on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs, so as to
+include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby, the
+boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at the
+head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.
+
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
+of Jackson's address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
+recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
+disgust, and dined elsewhere.
+
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
+rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George's-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth's equestrian statue.
+
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
+but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
+dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and decorum
+prevailed.
+
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much toil,
+or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.
+
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to his
+hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic gestures.
+I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware that this
+youth was a Chartist.
+
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.
+
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the town,
+and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey's pillars, in the shape
+of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had previously
+seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be? Certainly, I had
+never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish arch! surely I
+remembered that very well. It was not till several months after reaching
+home in America, that my perplexity upon this matter was cleared away.
+In glancing over an old number of the Penny Magazine, there I saw a
+picture of the place to the life; and remembered having seen the same
+print years previous. It was a representation of the spot where the
+Manchester railroad enters the outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in a
+previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days after,
+which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by
+the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable legs
+crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out my
+guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the
+building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the
+opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.
+
+I'm a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be
+treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.
+
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from
+the London Times, which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the
+large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog
+with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine
+apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the
+spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up stepped a
+terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster on his
+back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down some
+papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders, and
+then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons, wheeled
+me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in
+vain; the door was closed upon me.
+
+These Englishmen have no manners, that's plain, thought I; and I trudged
+on down the street in a reverie.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+
+
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green
+hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with
+me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away
+without having a good, long look at the open fields.
+
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.
+
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last--there it
+was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that
+seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I
+breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles
+once respired by Rosamond the Fair.
+
+On I trudged along the London road--smooth as an entry floor--and every
+white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road
+became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field,
+would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little
+dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed
+over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful announcement,
+nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post--
+
+    "MAN-TRAPS AND SPRING-GUNS!"
+
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were
+not surely cannibals, that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale, and
+lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+
+"A man-trap!" It must be so. The announcement could bear but one
+meaning--that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.
+
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?
+
+And who put it there?
+
+The proprietor, probably.
+
+And what right had he to do so?
+
+Why, he owned the soil.
+
+And where are his title-deeds?
+
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a
+mighty traveler, indeed:--stopped on your travels by a man-trap! Do you
+think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was so
+entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much wiser
+than when you set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not having
+seen more sights, will be man-traps--mantraps, my masters! that
+frightened you!
+
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet,
+right down to the earth's axis, and, perhaps, straight through to the
+antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and enter the
+forbidden Eden.
+
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that at
+last I thought best to pace off.
+
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice
+little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just
+such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was
+viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the bees
+were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.
+
+Any man-traps here? thought I--any spring-guns?
+
+No.
+
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No
+Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They
+gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and
+conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at
+first I almost imagined they might.
+
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.
+
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics,
+drinking ale at a table.
+
+"Good day," said I.
+
+"Good day; from Liverpool?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"For London?"
+
+"No; not this time. I merely come to see the country."
+
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.
+
+"Take a seat," said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife's apron
+on, I thought.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of
+which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a
+good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the banks
+of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty millions of
+people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my knowledge.
+
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively
+conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:--fine old ale; yes,
+English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?--Hurra! what say you?
+let's have a peep at St. Paul's? Don't you want to see the queen? Have
+you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and the
+Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets--who's to pay the bill?--You can't beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father's son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign land;
+you must not turn pauper.
+
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul's or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+
+Well, well, up heart, you'll see it one of these days.
+
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames--think of that!--here I am--ay, treading in the wheel-tracks of
+coaches that are bound for the metropolis!--It was too bad; too bitterly
+bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on; till at last
+I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with broad
+branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a hen
+gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I threw
+myself and there lay my head, like a last year's nut. People passed by,
+on foot and in carriages, and little thought that the sad youth under
+the tree was the great-nephew of a late senator in the American
+Congress.
+
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me from
+the field, crying out--"What are you doing there, you young rascal?--run
+away from the work'us, have ye? Tramp, or I'll set Blucher on ye!"
+
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.
+
+"Come, are you going to start?" he cried.
+
+"Presently," said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got a
+few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me
+as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own
+premises, and said--"Stranger! if you ever visit America, just call at
+our house, and you'll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don't fail."
+
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the
+cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to hapless
+young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway, sat
+an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A hale
+matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal by his
+side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were leaning out of
+the window close by.
+
+Ah! Wellingborough, don't you wish you could step in?
+
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when--is it
+possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "you look as if you had walked far; come, take a
+bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear" (how my heart jumped), "go fetch some
+from the dairy." And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and handed
+me--me, the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I could hardly drink
+down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England. But
+I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do away
+at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close scrutiny
+of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I declared
+myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a Sunday in the
+country.
+
+"And have you been to church to-day, young man?" said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+
+"Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know--a most
+excellent sermon--I am much the better for it."
+
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.
+
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.
+
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post like
+a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers in
+the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of them.
+But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young ladies, and
+vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the river Ohio,
+and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in harvest time, the
+laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand strong.
+
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don't give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you. At
+last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one
+side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins; and
+such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.
+
+And there they sat--the charmers, I mean--eating these buttered muffins in
+plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute they
+grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a fine
+thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my friends
+would stare! a lady from England!
+
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the
+one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in
+the direction where I sat. She certainly did look at my jacket; and I am
+constrained to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen in
+love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of the
+question; for what a looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off;
+but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and
+again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.
+
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I
+live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks, I
+passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll, was
+soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+
+
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I
+had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of
+a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He
+was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair,
+and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
+
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of
+a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from
+something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a
+voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to
+enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman--a kind of
+pleasure so long debarred me--I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket,
+and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing would
+afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in imparting
+any information concerning America that he needed.
+
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and
+at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to
+accompany him on a walk.
+
+We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.
+
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt
+and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus
+fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
+
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless
+of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession
+or business of any kind to engage his attention.
+
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him
+to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of
+her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
+
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty
+your glass and your purse as you list.
+
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie
+to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and
+dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
+
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a
+"guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of
+the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case,
+inapplicable.
+
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw
+up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London, and again
+his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to
+return home to his aunt, and amend--though she had often written him the
+kindest of letters to that effect--Harry resolved to precipitate himself
+upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this
+object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for
+Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the docks,
+to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered his brain,
+born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck browsers and
+tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor. There was a
+dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine coats,
+which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for
+all past conventionalities.
+
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some
+of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold
+Anchor in Union-street.
+
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all
+anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire
+to which he warmly responded.
+
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application
+to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our
+crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just
+upon the eve of our departure.
+
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to
+which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from
+the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have
+little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding
+them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the
+ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their
+sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they
+well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured,
+through the crimps of the port.
+
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the
+vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga
+was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to
+conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even
+indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the cheapness
+of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus,
+instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who
+would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the
+rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the
+end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving
+a handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the harness-cask.
+
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine
+morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his
+virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
+
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain's
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression,
+that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first
+accosted him in the cabin.
+
+Alas, Harry! thought I,--as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,--that "gallant, gay deceiver" shall not altogether
+cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be
+the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going to
+America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a
+manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would
+be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a shore, where he
+must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide
+him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship;
+and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength
+of his wages.
+
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my
+young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration
+at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive
+my congratulations.
+
+"Harry," said I, "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga--that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the
+country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he
+gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his
+character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and
+sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than
+his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking
+wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows."
+
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of
+the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told
+him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could
+furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort
+of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any
+mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
+
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the
+precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;--whether he had a
+giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether,
+with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he
+felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
+
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and
+confident air; saying that in his "guinea-pig" days, he had often climbed
+the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he
+made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the
+Highlander's rigging.
+
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant
+sight of his most unseamanlike person--more suited to the Queen's
+drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to
+himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and
+indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for
+the most part, will "gang their ain gate;" and the most we can do is, to
+hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best
+cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough
+money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
+
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and
+as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.
+
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London life; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me
+the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the
+sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.
+
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic
+narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds
+of reminiscences not his own.
+
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon;
+and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of
+chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.
+
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I
+cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I
+had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my
+pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more,
+than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously
+hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many days had passed.
+But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed it to my friend's
+good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes prompted him to out
+with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable. Besides, would this
+fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic acquaintances, walking
+down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of my
+shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that
+Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee
+credulity.
+
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed,
+he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of
+Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment;
+reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who
+might stare at so singular a couple.
+
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel,
+he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the
+square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat,
+was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the
+hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an
+ivory-headed riding-whip.
+
+"Who was he, Harry?" said I.
+
+"My old chum, Lord Lovely," said Harry, with a careless air, "and Heaven
+only knows what brings Lovely from London."
+
+"A lord?" said I starting; "then I must look at him again;" for lords
+are very scarce in Liverpool.
+
+Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and
+slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
+
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.
+
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought something
+of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done
+for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought
+best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to
+the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing
+himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it--a coronet--fell into a
+sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by
+a regal marabou feather, inside.
+
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it
+would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world,
+just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a
+drive into the country.
+
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might
+decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to his
+visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most Noble
+Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he might
+consider Ickworth his home.
+
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of
+the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry
+has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy
+address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his having
+consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous
+earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the
+slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has, he
+spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon to
+pluck; so that is out of the question;--perish such a thought, concerning
+my own bosom friend!
+
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this,
+I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high
+life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease
+in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in
+its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom
+of some immaculate friend.
+
+
+
+
+XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+
+
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry,
+who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter
+his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang
+down the hatchway into the between-decks, where, in perfect solitude, I
+was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for
+want of any thing better.
+
+"Hey for London, Wellingborough!" he cried. "Off tomorrow! first
+train--be there the same night--come! I have money to rig you all out--drop
+that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here! Come; up
+you jump!"
+
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+
+London? it could not be!--and Harry--how kind of him! he was then indeed
+what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden
+departure.
+
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had
+hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose
+to conceal.
+
+"But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?" said I; "they will not let me
+go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't care
+very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses."
+
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all
+the time.
+
+"Tut! my Yankee bantam," said Harry; "look here!" and he showed me a
+handful of gold.
+
+"But they are yours, and not mine, Harry," said I.
+
+"Yours and mine, my sweet fellow," exclaimed Harry. "Come, sink the
+ship, and let's go!"
+
+"But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a
+constable after me, won't they?"
+
+"What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait."
+
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I did take French leave of him. So, without further thought of
+the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship's bell
+struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the
+rest of the day.
+
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
+
+Arrived at the Golden Anchor, where Harry put up, he at once led me to
+his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what
+clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size--if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.
+
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me,
+arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that
+very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense,
+when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked,
+and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown
+ugly thoughts.
+
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and
+charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for
+it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we
+turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of
+the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to
+finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and
+presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+
+"It's me" said the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus
+metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice,
+which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going
+to turn gentleman forger.
+
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted
+this mode of disguising himself.
+
+"And why afraid of your friends?" asked I, in astonishment, "and we are
+not in London yet."
+
+"Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by."
+
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came
+to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are
+taken.
+
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
+
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+
+
+"No time to lose," said Harry, "come along."
+
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some
+street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the corners, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.
+
+"Stop," cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once--"stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house--No. 40 I told you--that's it--the high steps there, with the
+purple light!"
+
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and
+bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side,
+and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a
+little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
+
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and
+echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I
+started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
+
+The walls were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles--emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver,
+Sienna with porphyry--supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like
+a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East
+of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful
+Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites
+of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights,
+whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain
+spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every
+porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit
+garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica,
+lurked somewhere among the vines.
+
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned
+slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
+
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.
+
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with
+snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket--he looked like
+an almond tree in blossom--who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry
+over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the
+waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the guests.
+
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading
+some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud
+voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us,
+and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain
+where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
+
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential
+word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much
+surprised,--I thought, a little disconcerted,--and then disappeared with
+him.
+
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all
+this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my
+head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought
+that I was really in London. What would my brother have said? What would
+Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have
+thought?
+
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a
+little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it
+was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation
+of the London-like scene around me.
+
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden
+visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me;
+and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some
+gentleman as "My Lord," or "four Grace." But if there were really any
+lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my hearing.
+
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
+
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.
+So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping
+the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy;
+but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the
+time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I
+kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes, and
+observed that every now and then little parties were made up among the
+gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going to a
+private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word Rouge; but
+he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly pale. Another
+said something about Loo.
+
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+
+"Come along, Redburn," said he.
+
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in
+the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the
+night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang
+up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he
+only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble
+Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's antlers, over
+the landing.
+
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.
+
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.
+
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven,
+like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And
+oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited
+serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there,
+they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringes of
+bullion and silk.
+
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with
+bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
+
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in
+the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii--in that
+part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as
+Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of
+the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze
+medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such
+pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the
+left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in
+Corinth.
+
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance
+of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It
+was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked
+expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His
+marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
+
+"Sit down, Wellingborough," said Harry; "don't be frightened, we are at
+home.--Ring the bell, will you? But stop;"--and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
+
+"He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough," said he; "who stays in this one
+place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you
+don't breathe any secrets in his ear."
+
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.
+
+"Cigars," said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the
+middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example,
+and make myself happy.
+
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before,
+while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander,
+I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, "And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?"
+
+"Upon my soul," he cried, "you have hit it:--you must have been here
+before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name."
+
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been
+quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his
+general carriage was firm.
+
+"Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?" said he.
+
+"I am afraid, Harry," said I, "that when you left me just now, you must
+have been drinking something stronger than wine."
+
+"Hear him now," said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,--"a parson 'pon honor!--But remark you,
+Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably
+longer time than before:--I may not be back again to-night."
+
+"What?" said I.
+
+"Be still," he cried, "hear me, I know the old duke here, and--"
+
+"Who? not the Duke of Wellington," said I, wondering whether Harry was
+really going to include him too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+
+"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below;
+they call him the Duke:--he keeps the house. I say, I know him well, and
+he knows me; and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we have
+arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and sleep
+here tonight, and--and--" continued he, speaking low--"you must guard this
+letter--" slipping a sealed one into my hand--"and, if I am not back by
+morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the letter
+there;--here, take this paper--it's all set down here in black and
+white--where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that's
+done--mind, this is all in case I don't return--then you may do what you
+please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here's
+enough to pay all your expenses."
+
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.
+
+"What's the matter, Redburn?" he cried, with a wild sort of laugh--"you
+are not afraid of me, are you?--No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you
+would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter."
+
+"What in heaven's name do you mean?" at last I exclaimed, "you don't
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?" and I
+snatched him by the hand.
+
+"Pooh, pooh," he cried, "let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do as I
+say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!--no, no," he added,
+vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more--"no, I won't: I have
+nothing more to tell you--not a word. Will you swear?"
+
+"But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!"
+
+"Not a syllable! Will you swear?--you will not? then here, give me that
+purse:--there--there--take that--and that--and that;--that will pay your
+fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend," and he
+wheeled round his back.
+
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled
+me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered
+old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me
+as his friend--young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to
+the comforts of his lordship, while he--Harry--was gone.
+
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression,
+that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry
+then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one
+word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room, saying, "Leave not
+this room tonight; and remember the letter, and Bury!"
+
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose,
+and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard
+the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory
+rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the
+room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have given the
+world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in
+Prince's Dock.
+
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the house,
+my limbs seemed manacled.
+
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a
+confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
+
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul--in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to
+do this thing?--why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he
+want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour
+he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.
+
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;--would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
+I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
+search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
+sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
+Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
+over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
+the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and
+here I am--yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.
+
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
+around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
+never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
+squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
+marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
+myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
+still.
+
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
+upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
+night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of
+starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was; but
+remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and
+that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
+
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.
+
+"The letter and paper," he cried.
+
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+
+"There! there! there! thus I tear you," he cried, wrenching the letter
+to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. "I am off for America; the game is up."
+
+"For God's sake explain," said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. "Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?"
+
+"Ha, ha," he deliriously laughed. "Gambling? red and white, you
+mean?--cards?--dice?--the bones?--Ha, ha!--Gambling? gambling?" he ground
+out between his teeth--"what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables
+they are!"
+
+"Wellingborough," he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
+blazing into mine--"Wellingborough"--and fumbling in his breast-pocket, he
+drew forth a dirk--"Here, Wellingborough, take it--take it, I say--are you
+stupid?--there, there"--and he pushed it into my hands. "Keep it away from
+me--keep it out of my sight--I don't want it near me, while I feel as I
+do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don't bury
+them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang
+myself"--and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it
+down from the wall.
+
+"In God's name, what ails you?" I cried.
+
+"Nothing, oh nothing," said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
+calmness--"nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the serenest of
+men."
+
+"But give me that dirk," he suddenly cried--"let me have it, I say. Oh! I
+don't mean to murder myself--I'm past that now--give it me"--and snatching
+it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a terrific stab,
+nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
+
+"There now," he cried, "there's something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me--that's my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning"--and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
+
+"And this, then," said I, "is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I
+did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will
+not regret not seeing the town."
+
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, "Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly."
+
+"And why?" said I, in alarm, "what more would you have me swear?"
+
+"Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!" he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips--"never to breathe it! swear!"
+
+"I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not
+desire it," said I, "but there's no need of swearing."
+
+"Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn," he added, imploringly.
+
+"Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as
+soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive."
+
+"And what am I?" cried Harry; "but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean to
+offend; if you knew all--but no, no!--never mind, never mind!" And he ran
+to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+
+"Brandy," whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+
+"Are you not going to sleep, then?" said I, more and more alarmed at his
+wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such
+a mood.
+
+"No sleep for me! sleep if you can--I mean to sit up with a decanter!--let
+me see"--looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel--"it's only two hours
+to morning."
+
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.
+
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the
+lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and
+then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the
+table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his
+glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits
+seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
+
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his
+shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+
+"Look! it is broad day," said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of
+the window.
+
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall
+of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets
+to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of
+the last thirty-six hours.
+
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our
+journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at
+the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the
+Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the
+mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was
+almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket,
+he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was
+shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing
+once more in our sailor habiliments.
+
+"Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?" said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+
+"Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course--what else?"
+he replied.
+
+"And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?" asked I.
+
+"That's as it may turn out," said Harry; "but I have now more than ever
+resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like
+me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf, you
+know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's see what
+they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel better
+already. Never say die, is my motto."
+
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay
+of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days' time.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours,
+and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to
+any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had
+absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or
+nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know
+nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the
+discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly
+believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The
+reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although
+the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was
+not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as
+cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward
+passage.
+
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, "Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good."
+
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the
+proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+
+"But turn to, sir, turn to," added the mate; "here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay--jump!"
+
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.
+
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had
+been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the
+between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for
+the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were
+already littering the decks.
+
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than
+upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of
+casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along
+the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing
+access to four rows of bunks,--three tiers, one above another,--against
+the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in
+the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse
+planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else;
+especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light coming down
+except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which were covered
+with little houses called "booby-hatches." Upon the main-hatches, which
+were well calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the
+"passengers-galley" was solidly lashed down.
+
+This galley was a large open stove, or iron range--made expressly for
+emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the
+emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+
+After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the
+outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out
+with the tide in the morning.
+
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and
+God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the cheers
+of the surrounding ships.
+
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by
+the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit,
+now came a one-eyed crimp leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had
+been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated
+before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in
+port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a
+bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled
+out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely
+helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the
+quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his
+closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered
+on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who
+put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself
+carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him
+till the ship was away from the land.
+
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
+Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
+were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
+policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
+
+A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
+the river past the fort.
+
+The scene was most striking.
+
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
+days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
+for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
+merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in
+the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and
+from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo,
+cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.
+
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their
+voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing
+America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days
+would be an uncommonly long voyage.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
+
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet, all
+this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents
+from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants
+themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by
+one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into
+the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable.
+The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the
+emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the
+uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two "booby-hatches" came
+the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible
+wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and
+the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of
+the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.
+
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
+who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to
+run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly
+inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and even
+then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady, such
+ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as unendurable, and
+put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy annihilation; all of
+which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to preserve their
+valuable lives.
+
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching
+seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley on deck?
+How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a first
+voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just as
+hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter, and
+seventeen servants.
+
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head down
+the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
+
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
+some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
+prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the
+quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
+Consequently--even in fine weather--when they come up from below, they are
+crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and
+spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for
+unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
+
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and
+to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of
+the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the
+main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between
+those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid
+twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent
+in having this regulation maintained.
+
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
+humanity.
+
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is
+to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this
+circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation
+at these things.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+
+
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be
+marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which
+had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been
+brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their
+duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man
+yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had
+been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
+
+His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the
+sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand
+that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him;
+when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the
+quarterdeck.
+
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing
+be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously
+forbade this proceeding.
+
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the bowsprit-bitts--two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the
+men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to
+the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side
+planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to
+extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch,
+to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he
+exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the
+shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.
+
+"Blast that rat!" cried the Greenlander.
+
+"He's blasted already," said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. "It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead;
+and here he is"--and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm,
+exclaiming, "Dead as a timber-head!"
+
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he
+held to the man's face.
+
+"No, he's not dead," he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment
+at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped,
+when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
+forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
+cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
+over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
+silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
+like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
+
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
+every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
+curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
+death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
+
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.
+
+"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+
+"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed
+Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."
+
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
+rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+
+"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must
+go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
+say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
+partly out of the bunk.
+
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
+sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
+did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
+all serve to soothe me.
+
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill
+he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on
+board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in
+a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such
+things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned
+in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed
+familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of such things
+having happened to others.
+
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case
+like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I
+almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the
+Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal
+condemnation.
+
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the
+bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk
+was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict
+orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the
+emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
+
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX. CARLO
+
+
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a
+rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued
+velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not
+above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full
+morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that
+his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's
+tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual
+radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility,
+deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of
+life.
+
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes
+of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of
+poetry, gushing from every rent.
+
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire;
+and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his
+hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of
+Liverpool, playing the sunny airs of southern climes, among the northern
+fog and drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over
+the Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
+
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+
+"Carlo," said Harry, "how did you succeed in England?"
+
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing
+back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he
+looked up, and said in his broken English--that seemed like mixing the
+potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:--said he, "Ah! I succeed
+very well!--for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the
+sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the
+ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know
+from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop before a
+house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will soonest toss
+me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to
+the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and the poor the
+merry."
+
+"But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men," said
+Harry, "who would much rather have your room than your music?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," said Carlo, playing with his foot, "sometimes I do."
+
+"And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?"
+
+"No," continued the boy, "I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my
+only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off,
+not I; would I, poor organ?"--looking down the hatchway where it was.
+"No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for
+when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they
+themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are cracked,
+and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls."
+
+"No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps," said Harry, with a laugh.
+
+"Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords."
+
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
+vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
+and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
+gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
+went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
+
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
+be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars--never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a
+beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
+
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all
+the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on a
+moon-lit sward of violets.
+
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
+
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.
+
+But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.
+
+Behold the organ!
+
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
+melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
+we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
+almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
+buried.
+
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order;
+in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!--what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!--what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!--But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.
+
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air--a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here's
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and
+while I list to the organs twain--one yours, one mine--let me gaze
+fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;--'tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching--all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes,
+the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded
+damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm
+around me.
+
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband--soft, dulcet, dropping sounds,
+like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as
+if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts,
+called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
+
+Again-what blasted heath is this?--what goblin sounds of Macbeth's
+witches?--Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg's, demons dire.
+
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard--some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep
+dipped in silver gauzes.
+
+All this could Carlo do--make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me;
+and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and
+bowers of song.
+
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
+
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same
+wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure
+greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+
+His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's
+heaven, it turns on golden hinges.
+
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded
+columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out
+come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of
+martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass
+on, and disappear.
+
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors,
+among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some
+emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back
+the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
+
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.
+
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.
+
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy,
+with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous
+box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!
+
+
+
+
+L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+
+
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
+sailor.
+
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
+even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried
+you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with
+your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
+glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it,
+that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.
+
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
+you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
+to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
+fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
+like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
+embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the
+world.
+
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
+same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
+show like a zebra, banding with elks.
+
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
+Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the
+soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds
+through Caffrarian woods.
+
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him
+before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
+knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors
+are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time,
+abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold
+and unsympathizing civility.
+
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
+the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
+every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
+money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
+him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
+
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity
+with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other
+extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
+brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap,
+to stand his morning watch.
+
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
+crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
+spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
+before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest
+acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
+it would seem, from enacting this folly.
+
+"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to
+Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
+in a trice."
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is
+not mine a morning gown?"
+
+But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+
+"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a
+mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"
+
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
+want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
+pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
+
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.
+
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by
+the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of
+silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they
+thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by
+abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
+Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test
+the color of his calves.
+
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
+easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company,
+the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible
+necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the
+constables.
+
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar.
+What else can bring them to sea?
+
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was
+put down for a very equivocal character.
+
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
+one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to
+mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
+mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
+or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
+tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
+if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
+to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga
+never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
+the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of
+his officers and crew.
+
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
+any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
+coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
+that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
+of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is,
+pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
+aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that
+when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be
+inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so
+absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round
+the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to
+mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However,
+after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting
+loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry
+for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
+would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from
+the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
+was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
+would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.
+
+"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what
+it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt
+you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you
+had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you
+only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find
+yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."
+
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his
+nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had
+drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
+altogether too many Havannas.
+
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
+morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
+short signal halyards.
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.
+
+"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.
+
+"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+
+"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once
+across his back, but lightly.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and
+then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him
+lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head,
+I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.
+
+"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up
+till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing
+the rope's end.
+
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there
+no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he
+made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice.
+I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
+little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for
+I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being
+lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top.
+Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and
+clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the
+tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.
+
+"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and
+help him; you understand?"
+
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
+bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives;
+and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my
+unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the
+wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.
+
+I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
+even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
+
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.
+
+At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the
+captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
+himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New
+York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a
+blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on
+board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within
+so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
+thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his
+pleasure.
+
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but
+go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else
+but that.
+
+This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
+reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a
+miserable life indeed.
+
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
+finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead,
+and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a
+sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would
+be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked
+without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of
+this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these
+evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional
+nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare
+to the merciless crew.
+
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself
+up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps
+his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to
+explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
+passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common
+tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that
+only He who made us can expound them.
+
+
+
+
+LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds, till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the
+last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and
+all the rest was broad ocean.
+
+Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
+At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
+America itself was at hand.
+
+"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. "Is that it?"
+
+"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.
+
+"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"
+
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when
+they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own
+native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a
+steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
+
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
+adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a
+place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see
+how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together,
+looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York
+city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles
+distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
+
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"
+
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.
+
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
+would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
+and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and
+play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who
+blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music by
+furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward,
+when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from the
+cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the
+gentlemen and ladies.
+
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes,
+by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's,
+for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or
+thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the
+other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling
+to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely
+unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest,
+were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the
+gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could to my
+little Italian's organ.
+
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any
+tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at
+one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or
+such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some
+ladies, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to
+Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+
+"Yes, ladies," said the captain, bowing, "by your leave, I think Carlo's
+organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig running after
+its dam."
+
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were
+all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.
+
+"Carlo"--said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the
+quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place
+during my watch on deck:--"Carlo"--said I, "what do the gentlemen and
+ladies give you for playing?"
+
+"Look!"--and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield--three English pennies.
+
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the
+natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers,
+regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not
+feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
+
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her
+own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not
+because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.
+
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked
+as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a
+short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf,
+but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable about him
+but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not remember
+it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the time, as if
+its owner was laboring under the mumps.
+
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the
+rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee
+of the spanker; or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the
+emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the
+upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help them
+to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to see
+Niagara Falls.
+
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four
+heavy files of the London Times, and other papers; and he spent all his
+hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg
+crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all.
+That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied.
+He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then
+were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
+
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are
+like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+
+
+
+
+LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+
+
+I have made some mention of the "galley," or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the
+steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty
+large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough, considering the
+number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire was only to be
+kindled at certain hours.
+
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in
+all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the
+captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well go
+to law with the Czar of Russia.
+
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of
+the spray over the uncovered "galley." Whenever I had the morning watch,
+from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from
+below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of
+rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the
+fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and children;
+each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a great tumult
+ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the more
+quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.
+
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed
+to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a
+great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his
+appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose
+coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in
+its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to
+him; and with that, he turned aside.
+
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed,
+made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no
+sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy
+snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about the
+fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary
+hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy,
+who by this time, however, had decamped.
+
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but
+scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the
+most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to
+which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by
+imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they
+themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their
+social superiors hold them subject.
+
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.
+
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called mush; by the Dutch is known as supaan; by
+sailors burgoo; by the New Englanders hasty-pudding; in which
+hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a
+sort of epic.
+
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.
+
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than
+the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages,
+Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
+
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would sometimes
+take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him, like an
+Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion, and eating
+his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk bottle, and
+smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made time jog
+along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife
+in some imaginary section of the ship, called the second cabin, which
+was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was
+young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in love
+with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
+
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do,
+from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their
+double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he
+would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial
+commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady was
+not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks
+would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun.
+The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a
+dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the
+mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided
+them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.
+
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him--
+
+"Billy, my dear;" and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+
+"Billy, my love!"
+
+The bow went faster and faster.
+
+"Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;" and she
+bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.
+
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour
+or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed,
+which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass
+from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+
+
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of
+Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:--"It happened, that in each
+family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity
+in point of age or of strength."
+
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.
+
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like
+as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms
+seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to
+form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all
+six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the
+O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the O'Regans. The
+former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their
+mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the
+O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to
+all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
+
+Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her
+spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made
+her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from
+the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and
+the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in shampooing them, though it was haphazard sort of work
+enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on
+a stray limb.
+
+"Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you, Teddy,
+you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your legs up
+with Pat's."
+
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's locker--or
+rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows--with a large old quarto
+Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and
+reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted
+us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O'Brien
+purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for
+the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
+
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted
+her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.
+
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion
+was curiously manifested.
+
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her,
+began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of
+the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The widow
+gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then ducking in
+the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and springing from
+the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs, biting and striking
+at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no sooner perceived,
+than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the amazed seaman
+found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the
+three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+
+"There now, you rascal," cried the mate, "throw overboard another Bible,
+and I'll send you after it without a bowline."
+
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel.
+That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by
+the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in
+them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in
+public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning
+their nurses.
+
+"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye
+run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+
+"Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?"
+
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken
+up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which
+resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
+
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me
+at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of
+the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?
+
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the
+particular benefit of twins?
+
+
+
+
+LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+
+
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their
+tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the
+end.
+
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid
+for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater
+portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender
+the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of the
+Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks out,
+on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.
+
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at
+sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called
+"High-low-Jack-and-the-game," which name, indeed, has a Jackish and
+nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco,
+which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they
+play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into "chaws."
+
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if
+they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to be
+boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the forecastle by
+those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on deck, and make
+a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there was a great
+deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of nigging and
+cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were exchanged.
+
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but
+very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky;
+and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly
+torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the four suits might
+have seceded from their respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe,
+under the name of "Tar-spots."
+
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum
+constituting an ordinary "chaw," was made to last a whole day; and at
+night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same "chaw" was
+placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to do duty in a
+pipe.
+
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With
+touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings--the time of
+smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable "chawing," they
+beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
+
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea
+in his head--"Boys, let's search under the bunks!" Bless you, Blunt! what
+a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark places
+explored; and two sticks of nail-rod tobacco, and several old "chaws,"
+thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage, were their cheering
+reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon this
+occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally
+adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is
+desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to
+all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted
+this nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater
+would be forever rendered nugatory--"Expect not to understand any man
+till you have divided with him an inheritance."
+
+The nail-rods they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there
+were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the
+presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to
+the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with
+his knife, crying out, "Whose is this?" Whereupon a respondent,
+previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner
+of the forecastle, "Blunt's;" and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like
+manner, till all were served.
+
+I put it to you, lawyers--shade of Blackstone, I invoke you--if a more
+impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage "chaws" were soon gone, and then,
+after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped, and
+relapsed into gloom.
+
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however--but not altogether new
+among seamen--to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut
+up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes
+were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and
+had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient,
+cheese-like flavor.
+
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part,
+round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum,
+upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such
+times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever
+taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it
+slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic
+"heart;" for so this central piece is denominated.
+
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+
+Nor is this delectable morsel of old junk wanting in many interesting,
+mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have
+been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of
+seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it
+may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What
+outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the water, and what
+un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when forming part of a
+lofty stay or a shroud?
+
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little "cut" it was,
+that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting
+hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to
+see whether it had any "tenderloin."
+
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at
+all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an
+antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed,
+though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an
+astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with which the
+flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors seemed to
+like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They converted
+one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when solicited by a
+shipmate for a "chaw," would produce a small coil of rope.
+
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.
+
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine
+weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until
+very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
+
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace,
+when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper
+one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the
+mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
+
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the
+nail-rods they found.
+
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or
+fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left
+to the philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER
+
+
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of
+a circumstance--which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before--that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too
+unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here,
+with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine
+weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the
+remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
+
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a
+midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been the
+face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and blasted by
+lightning.
+
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was
+only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his
+excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in
+his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
+
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
+
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment
+of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before
+him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if
+he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse
+between his teeth.
+
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world--the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting
+his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond
+without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is
+no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a
+democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by
+side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though Milton's
+Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only because he is
+not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine original. We
+gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised fancies
+concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure. But
+in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up
+and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of
+wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.
+
+
+
+
+LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION
+
+
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps
+on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine
+before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those
+melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew
+on Hermon.
+
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.
+
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like
+his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the
+words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and
+pansied margins.
+
+"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his
+watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I
+stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and
+there I'll hum you an air."
+
+It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."
+
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be
+singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
+
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
+sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous
+quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from
+his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his
+feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
+even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry
+possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could
+not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the
+being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they
+did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
+accordion in their ears.
+
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in
+velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.
+
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
+more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
+with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
+all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
+intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
+cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if
+he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England;
+and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.
+
+"I have forgotten England," he said, "and never more mean to think of
+it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?"
+
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I
+was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in
+the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with
+one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave
+kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never
+actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can
+not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no
+true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust
+that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
+
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by
+talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I
+certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even
+as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward
+him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country;
+I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting,
+that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects
+and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.
+
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--"Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have," and then he went on to mention, that in some
+places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly
+respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in
+lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats--it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their
+livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery
+shillings.
+
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and
+gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not
+sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and
+when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a
+gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing
+you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting
+reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices,
+enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the
+conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well
+recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make
+the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+
+"Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?" said Harry,
+"or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?" he anxiously
+added.
+
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
+
+I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were,
+a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the
+civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have
+resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in
+wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney,
+and had shut up his Christendom in London.
+
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not
+play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such
+a business.
+
+Said I, "My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man
+has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think
+myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling."
+
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea
+of singing himself into a livelihood.
+
+"No, I won't sing for my mutton," said he--"what would Lady Georgiana
+say?"
+
+"If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry," returned I,
+who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+
+"But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you."
+
+"I do write a hand," he gladly rejoined--"there, look at the
+implement!--do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or
+cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?"
+
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small;
+and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the
+nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.
+
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of
+that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble
+birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son
+of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers
+in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration,
+would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
+
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or
+that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot,
+when even a fish has no foot at all!
+
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh,
+democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It
+is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+
+But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white
+as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had
+somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
+
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly,
+that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses
+to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?
+with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord
+Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she
+vowed she was mine?--Out of sight, recreant and apostate!--deep
+down--disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that
+upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few
+friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
+
+
+
+
+LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+
+
+"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
+children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where
+the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which,
+indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+
+"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
+over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.--"Pigs, is it?--and the day is close by, ye
+spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"
+
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their
+outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.
+
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
+to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
+the ship's stores, or starve.
+
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
+cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
+
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
+hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
+consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of
+the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
+plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the
+public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and
+carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not
+venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
+cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
+they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
+cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
+the name of the Church.
+
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
+Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
+emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
+rigging and flogged.
+
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
+such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants
+into an insurrection.
+
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
+the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith
+coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
+protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
+
+"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours,
+if you can."
+
+Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of
+food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
+time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain
+have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
+voyage.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
+THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+
+
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
+not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
+seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
+the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
+great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
+America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
+prevalence of westerly winds.
+
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
+by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
+visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
+a week.
+
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
+
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
+galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
+steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
+lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
+emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
+the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
+ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
+to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
+when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
+two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
+also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
+the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
+ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
+windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+
+During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
+noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
+marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
+close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
+
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
+known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
+
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
+out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
+to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
+disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
+being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess
+that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
+increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
+over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
+fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
+most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
+
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
+deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and
+tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
+beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
+continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of
+these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities,
+that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
+
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.
+
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
+that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
+captain's order.
+
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
+like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
+meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath
+with a gasp.
+
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which
+the fear of contagion had left open.
+
+"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."
+
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.
+
+"Haul it down!" roared the mate.
+
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.
+
+About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
+and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
+bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed
+nothing more frightful.
+
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
+By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
+rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
+rites, were dropped into the ocean.
+
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
+but the captain did not again go down to them.
+
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
+it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
+to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered
+decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their
+den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was
+out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the
+defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the
+emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly
+painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
+their own salvation.
+
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
+clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
+they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
+quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
+
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
+an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
+very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
+and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard
+against contagion.
+
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds
+and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
+prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest
+had been so often heard.
+
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
+that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
+
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the
+third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor,
+and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward
+supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
+brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers.
+All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed
+elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of
+another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
+swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair
+of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at
+least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
+this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in
+rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
+
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
+rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
+and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
+one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
+father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
+death, both mothers and babes survived.
+
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
+the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
+the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
+fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
+and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
+Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
+white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
+boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
+
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
+down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft;
+and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing
+the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and
+regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of
+late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of
+them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage,
+with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck,
+I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning
+out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
+three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
+convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied
+under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
+
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the
+fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the
+fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we
+made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for
+New York.
+
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at
+least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or
+children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and
+bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no
+indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality,
+that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and
+bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must
+toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down
+the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
+suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
+few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
+land?
+
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
+nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
+land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
+jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.
+
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative
+on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among
+strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
+
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
+in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon
+the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
+
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any
+one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of
+sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have
+perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would
+you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the
+scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites
+much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his
+behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life
+and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates
+died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in
+theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed,
+without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical
+skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the
+spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly
+discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
+Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
+last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
+
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
+against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who
+had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.
+In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
+the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions;
+supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest
+favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant
+steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
+bulk-head.
+
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.
+
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
+orders upon his arrival in New York.
+
+"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"
+
+"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man
+to be a parson, and pray."
+
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
+the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
+There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
+die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
+seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
+passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
+more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life and
+death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
+three-worded sentence!
+
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
+of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
+the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank.
+And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
+of the Highlander's calamity.
+
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes
+of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances
+of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate
+unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention
+at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
+light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
+
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.
+
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes
+of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive
+it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have
+God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with
+them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is
+no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we
+waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come
+hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.
+
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
+
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
+lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain
+of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and
+give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during
+a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to
+place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of
+shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet
+weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and
+let them have an occasional run fore and aft?--There is no law concerning
+these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see
+it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!
+
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them,
+go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet
+barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to
+its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief
+outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is
+striving to make us.
+
+
+
+
+LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck,
+where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping
+the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" and in the shore-bloom that came to us--even from that
+desert of sand-hillocks--methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance
+of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at
+home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from
+afar.
+
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.
+
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last
+the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into
+all three top-sails.
+
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they
+had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several,
+Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four
+weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
+
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off
+duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering
+port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he
+expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon
+an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on
+deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
+
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were
+like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark
+tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering
+up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place
+at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard--which in reefing is
+accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of
+this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work
+in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would
+yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded
+dominion over the men.
+
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing
+and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his
+reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson,
+whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that
+they are the most profane.
+
+"Haul out to windward!" coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he
+threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped
+to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood
+from his lungs.
+
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong
+from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the
+sea.
+
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.
+
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the
+one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the
+waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an
+order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead
+of that, the next sound that greeted us was, "Bear a hand, and reef
+away, men!" from the mate.
+
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea--and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs--our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
+
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too
+many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching
+and cracking in the sun.
+
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet
+in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be
+sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in
+case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the
+souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of
+survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst
+of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at least of his
+servants escaped to report it.
+
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up
+his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage
+under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their
+secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing
+so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death
+was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits,
+unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to
+their now drawing near to their port.
+
+
+
+
+LX. HOME AT LAST
+
+
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading
+calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly
+towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all
+around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.
+
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air,
+the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue
+sea seemed to flow under them.
+
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient
+cabin-passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered
+around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down
+into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own;
+and turning to Harry, said, "This America's skies must be down in the
+sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also
+behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I
+go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool."
+
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore--the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless
+pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the
+throng.
+
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger
+of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces,
+and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw of wind.
+
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands
+among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a
+realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
+
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied
+round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands
+was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.--A command that was received by
+the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured,
+that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long
+detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore reluctantly
+complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following them, went old
+pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the sea was strewn
+with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the waves--couches for
+all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things of this sort,
+tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New York,
+drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten
+Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated
+upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces,
+and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water.
+And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced them
+to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then
+fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that by
+evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that the
+Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus,
+some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall not get
+a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
+
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the
+forts.
+
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a
+glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with
+aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses
+brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander
+was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
+
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and
+like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
+
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag,
+denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of
+the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world,
+taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag.
+
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were
+now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that they
+thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
+
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced
+the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail
+boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black
+rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately
+old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we
+caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
+
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what
+home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems
+to pour through you with all his titles, and in your enthusiasm, you
+swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+
+"And that" said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a shark,
+showed tiers of teeth, "that, ladies, is a line-of-battle-ship, the
+North Carolina."
+
+"Oh, dear!"--and "Oh my!"--ejaculated the ladies, and--"Lord, save us,"
+responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
+
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor,
+fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of
+which was now worth a broad manor in England.
+
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were
+all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning. But
+nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like "Hail Columbia!" his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.
+
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and
+gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
+
+At sunrise, we warped into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a
+maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a
+rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd
+of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to
+embrace them.
+
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and
+the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.
+
+
+
+
+LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+
+
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted
+old ship, but the mate and the rats.
+
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond
+all doubt--like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the
+night, and no starb-o-leens ahoy! would annoy us again.
+
+"All night in! think of that, Harry, my friend!"
+
+"Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think I
+may now sleep as long as I please."
+
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+
+"I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers," cried
+Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds.
+"No! they will not come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look at my hand
+once, Wellingborough!"
+
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a
+rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+
+"Never mind, Harry," said I--"You know the ladies of the east steep the
+tips of their fingers in some golden dye."
+
+"And by Plutus," cried Harry--"I'd steep mine up to the armpits in gold;
+since you talk about that. But never mind, I'll swear I'm just from
+Persia, my boy."
+
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once,
+I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by
+one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat
+cakes.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what will you have?"--said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.
+
+"Gentlemen!" whispered Harry to me--"gentlemen!--hear him!--I say now,
+Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By
+heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:--Coffee and hot rolls," he added
+aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, "and fellow--come back--bring us a
+venison-steak."
+
+"Haven't got it, gentlemen."
+
+"Ham and eggs," suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.
+
+But the butter!
+
+"Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?"
+
+"Don't say a word,"--said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast "I'm
+going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so
+long as I live."
+
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold,
+bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
+
+"Now," said Harry, "lead on; and let's see something of these United
+States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the Great
+Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here, take my
+arm;--lead on."
+
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded
+me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the
+Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
+
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady's
+butcher's bill was not very large.
+
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned
+up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened
+during my absence.
+
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other,
+gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled
+my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+
+Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and
+strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a
+creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets
+seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found
+him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his pocket.
+
+"Where am I going to dine, this day week?"--he slowly said. "What's to be
+done, Wellingborough?"
+
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing
+a little cheering myself; even though I had got home again. But no more
+about that.
+
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and
+in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best
+for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:--Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry
+full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a
+small quota to the general entertainment.
+
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to
+retire for life on the profits of my first voyage; but nevertheless, I
+thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable
+things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as
+the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off
+the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board, with the rest.
+We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found myself, after an
+interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
+
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the
+Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes--beautiful sight!--paid them their wages.
+
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars
+coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in
+restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and
+who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy
+dollars as his due.
+
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was
+worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American "mitts." Only
+seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that
+stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only L5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.
+
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the
+old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing
+all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they
+would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:--the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper--I think it was the Herald--threw his leg over
+one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all
+parts of the world.
+
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
+
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+
+"Well, where do you come from? Who are you, pray? and what do you want?
+Steward, show these young gentlemen out."
+
+"I want my money," said Harry.
+
+"My wages are due," said I.
+
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us,
+letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+
+"Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry, enraged at his impudence--"I tell you what
+it is, Captain Riga; this won't do--where's the rhino?"
+
+"Captain Riga," added I, "do you not remember, that about four months
+ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this
+very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I
+have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank you for
+my pay."
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember," said the captain. "Mr. Jones! Ha! ha! I remember
+Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--you, too, are the son
+of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not your great-uncle
+a barber?"
+
+"No!" thundered I.
+
+"Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen--be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see," turning over his accounts--"Hum, hum!--yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
+dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?"
+
+"So it seems, sir," said I, with staring eyes.
+
+"And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the
+yards, Monsieur Redburn."
+
+Owe him! thought I--what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my
+resentment; and presently he said, "By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and
+as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers,
+seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me
+in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank you for the
+money;" and he extended his open palm across the desk.
+
+"Shall I pitch into him?" whispered Harry.
+
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of
+my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that
+he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were
+in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I could not
+help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit,
+for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
+
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be
+munificent. Peace to his dinners.
+
+"Mr. Bolton, I believe," said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. "Mr. Bolton, you also shipped for three dollars per month: and
+you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have
+been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half,
+Mr. Bolton; and here it is;" handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+
+"And this," said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, "this
+is the reward of my long and faithful services!"
+
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+"There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse,
+and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir."
+
+"Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again," said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.
+
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of
+his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried Pshaw! and that was the last of it.
+
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck,
+engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf,
+loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined
+for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw
+very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it
+turned out.
+
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage
+against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses--such as
+indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished,
+without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way, and
+without speaking to the sailors on the subject--by this, and kindred
+actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole
+ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name
+unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
+
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.
+
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon
+the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat--but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.
+
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the "Irish cockney," was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+gentlemen alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side
+next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about,
+presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute
+to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened
+to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared
+the ship.
+
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only
+lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
+
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so
+clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the
+wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated
+"The Flashes." And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among
+his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their
+looks, that his customers were "flush," and would spend their money
+freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+
+It was a touching scene.
+
+"Well, maties," said one of them, at last--"I spose we shan't see each
+other again:--come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and drink to
+the last voyage!"
+
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked
+his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as
+much as to say--"Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your
+liquor;--help yourselves, your honors."
+
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them
+all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared
+in couples, through the several doorways; for "The Flashes" was on a
+corner.
+
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+"Good-by, God bless you," is heard for every "How d'ye do, welcome, my
+boy"--then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most
+hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves,
+they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to
+and fro.
+
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood
+on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+
+"They are gone," said I.
+
+"Thank heaven!" said Harry.
+
+
+
+
+LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat
+on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub--oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?
+
+"I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry," said I, "he's
+a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know."
+
+"No doubt of it," said Harry, looking hopeless.
+
+"And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon."
+
+"And I am sorry enough myself," said Harry, looking very sincere.
+
+"But I will be soon back again, I doubt not," said I.
+
+"Perhaps so," said Harry, shaking his head. "How far is it off?"
+
+"Only a hundred and eighty miles," said I.
+
+"A hundred and eighty miles!" said Harry, drawing the words out like an
+endless ribbon. "Why, I couldn't walk that in a month."
+
+"Now, my dear friend," said I, "take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well."
+
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad,
+that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both
+gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he
+stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on
+the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play
+of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we
+parted. I never saw Harry again.
+
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:--I pass over this; and will conclude my first
+voyage by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks;
+during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter,
+now spread before me.
+
+"Dear Redburn--Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After
+you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified,
+are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
+get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
+melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
+those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars,
+but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times
+after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had
+permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her
+closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know,
+but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared
+he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in
+South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made
+inquiries among them; but without success. And this, I am heartily
+grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his
+melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a
+whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You
+must come down yourself, and help me seek him out."
+
+This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to
+the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered to
+think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him
+all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must
+indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter
+experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
+
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
+whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's crew
+that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
+
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
+Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
+to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that
+the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally
+bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him why he had
+abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of ships.
+
+"We had hardly been out three months," said he, "when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next day
+lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered
+the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a
+whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard
+time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son, and when you
+could coax him to it, he sang like a bird."
+
+"What was his name?" said I, trembling with expectation; "what kind of
+eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?"
+
+"Harry Bolton was not your brother?" cried the stranger, starting.
+
+Harry Bolton!
+
+It was even he!
+
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, My
+First Voyage--which here I end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 8118.txt or 8118.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/1/8118/
+
+Produced by Project Gutenberg volunteers from the HTML
+version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/8118.zip b/old/8118.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9fe1c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8118.zip
diff --git a/old/8redb10.txt b/old/8redb10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..efb4b20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8redb10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12620 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Redburn. His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8118]
+[This file was first posted on June 17, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+The text file version of this e-book was prepared by Project Gutenberg
+volunteers from the HTML version prepared by Blackmask Online
+(http://www.blackmask.com).
+
+
+
+REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE
+
+by
+
+HERMAN MELVILLE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND
+         BRED IN HIM
+     II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+    III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+     IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+      V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS
+         UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+     VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN,
+         AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+    VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+   VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES
+         SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+     IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH
+         THEM
+      X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE
+         BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+     XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+    XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+   XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS
+         MIND
+    XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+     XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+    XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+   XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+  XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+         DREAM BOOK
+    XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+     XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD
+         OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+    XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+   XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+  XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+   XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY
+    XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+   XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+  XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+ XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+   XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+         SAILORS
+    XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH
+         OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
+   XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH
+         THE TOWN
+  XXXII. THE DOCKS
+ XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+  XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+   XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+ XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+  XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+     XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+    XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+   XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+  XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+         ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+   XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+         CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+    XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+   XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+  XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+ XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+   XLIX. CARLO
+      L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+     LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+    LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+   LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+    LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+    LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD
+         CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
+   LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+  LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE
+         AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+    LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+     LX. HOME AT LAST
+    LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+   LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+
+
+Being the Sailor Boy
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+In the Merchant Navy
+
+
+
+
+I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN
+HIM
+
+
+"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will
+save the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts,
+stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets."
+
+Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.
+
+"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money, and
+you want an outfit, and I Have none to give, you may as well take my
+fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can get.--Nay,
+take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any more."
+
+I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
+York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
+
+For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:
+
+"FOR BREMEN.
+
+"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed her
+cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."
+
+To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like this,
+suggested volumes of thought.
+
+A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
+with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
+
+Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
+different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-
+white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river before our
+house on the bank.
+
+Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting
+ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling
+me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which
+my river experience was familiar.
+
+"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date the
+fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
+an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
+so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
+prospective announcements.
+
+"For freight or passage apply on board!"
+
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking
+passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
+foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
+who talked French.
+
+"Coenties Slip."
+
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
+Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
+with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and
+chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much
+abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and
+out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
+
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
+reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
+residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
+
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
+large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
+remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
+woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their
+crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
+sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
+
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
+Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered
+sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me
+of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like
+twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the
+ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my
+thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old
+lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked
+streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially
+I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and
+Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
+Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
+school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned
+over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them
+to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots
+looked so manly.
+
+As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
+into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
+fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up and
+down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads to
+look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a man
+myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as
+the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
+
+"See what big eyes he has," whispered my aunt, "they got so big, because
+when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once
+caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it."
+
+Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I am
+sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was out, I
+wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home. But she
+said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never saw this
+wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and several
+times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown still
+larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
+
+In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
+foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes. We
+had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
+from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
+grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
+could be doing with themselves now.
+
+Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.
+
+Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.
+
+The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
+castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
+
+Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
+than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
+used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
+them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
+
+They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
+
+And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
+and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a
+great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats
+sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
+
+Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
+brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
+with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
+doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had been
+printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine library
+edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded backs; and
+many a time I gazed at the word "London" on the title-page. And there
+was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I
+would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight
+along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to
+every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk
+French, as he sometimes did to a servant we had.
+
+That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
+incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me, that
+he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely believed;
+for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been born in a
+foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in America.
+
+As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
+bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
+other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
+entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
+hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
+no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
+my subsequent rovings.
+
+But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days of
+the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
+
+It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one of
+my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
+tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
+admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the wonder and
+delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many of
+whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see the
+ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which they
+were accustomed to give it.
+
+In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks; and
+often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else was
+inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark indoors,
+that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was very little,
+I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the hull, and break
+the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon something
+wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always been in
+want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a sort of
+insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all, in order
+to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of the kind
+to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and after that,
+the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond my reach, and
+until I should recover my reason.
+
+I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
+it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd's
+ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the Highlands,
+full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were trying to
+dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one had ever
+thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost a hundred
+years.
+
+Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
+ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
+till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
+people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
+little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
+like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
+the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little chaps,
+and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for all
+that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
+oath.
+
+Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
+over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
+was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder; the
+cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
+steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate of
+glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;
+while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
+quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
+head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
+
+The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was
+painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
+dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
+
+And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
+whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
+and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till
+I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in
+the world.
+
+A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
+
+So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her
+glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not
+have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat,
+lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea
+under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get
+on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my
+sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I
+left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.
+
+
+
+II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
+
+
+It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with
+me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I
+was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that
+had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time;
+all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early
+age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.
+
+Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing
+patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take
+none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as
+December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is
+no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth
+of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter enough
+even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must be
+uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let me go on
+with my story.
+
+"Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can," murmured I, as
+she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my safe
+arrival in New York.
+
+"And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters, and
+then I am off. I'll be back in four months--it will be autumn then, and
+we'll go into the woods after nuts, an I'll tell you all about Europe.
+Good-by! good-by!"
+
+So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage advice
+above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning me
+again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I would;
+for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself, when he
+sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.
+
+We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving out,--he
+was in ill health then,--and with a mute grasp of the hand, and a loud
+thump at the heart, we parted.
+
+It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and
+the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with
+comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.
+
+I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I
+thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your
+hand!
+
+Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel
+all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen;
+and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with
+him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never again can such
+blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave such a scar
+that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a hard and cruel
+thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be
+reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become
+bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before
+and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and
+not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
+
+At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.
+
+They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain's office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day, owing
+to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to pay
+for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a dollar
+did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat was off,
+and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing to any
+body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.
+
+The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged
+on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If I
+had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them of
+my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain's clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on my
+leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his object
+in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and silent,
+and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have spoken and
+told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my dollar, and
+then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He did not wait a
+great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff voice, very unlike
+his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar party, demanded my
+ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded the money; and upon
+my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry voice that attracted
+all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the storm. The devil in me
+then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my frame, till it tingled
+at my finger ends; and I muttered out my resolution to stay where I was,
+in such a manner, that the ticket man faltered back. "There's a dollar
+for you," I added, offering it.
+
+"I want two," said he.
+
+"Take that or nothing," I answered; "it is all I have."
+
+I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that
+such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the
+buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon me.
+
+I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more. I
+pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat man,
+with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on his,
+gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him, and he
+looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming, he
+pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead. I
+then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.
+
+Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my range,
+for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several persons
+starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I was at that
+time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my demoniac feelings,
+of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I ought to have been,
+indeed; and much more than that.
+
+I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and bundle,
+marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm, till I was
+wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.
+
+Such is boyhood.
+
+
+
+
+III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
+
+
+From the boat's bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother's directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John's Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.
+
+It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a drink
+of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were playing
+dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They winked, and
+asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy day, but I
+only gulped down my water and stalked off.
+
+Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother's friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.
+
+"What do you want?" said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.
+
+"I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor."
+
+Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and seeing
+who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me to his
+fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had expected me
+that day.
+
+The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, an returning to the table, found that the interval
+had been we improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler was spread and
+I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil that had been
+tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till at last I
+entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.
+
+Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went to
+bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could hardly
+believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal's.
+
+Next day, my brother's friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get
+me a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very handsome
+one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an elegant looking
+mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort of sideboard
+some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was only Britannia
+ware highly polished.
+
+As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.
+
+"Good morning, sir," said my friend.
+
+"Good morning, good morning, sir," said the captain. "Steward, chairs
+for the gentlemen."
+
+"Oh! never mind, sir," said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his extreme
+civility. "I merely called to see whether you want a fine young lad to
+go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a sailor; and
+his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one voyage, and see
+how he likes it."
+
+"Ah! indeed!" said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+"He's a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?" added he, affectionately patting my head. "It's a hard We, though;
+a hard life."
+
+But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious cabin,
+and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only trying to
+frighten me, and I answered, "Well, sir, I am ready to try it."
+
+"I hope he's a country lad, sir," said the captain to my friend, "these
+city boys are sometimes hard cases."
+
+"Oh! yes, he's from the country," was the reply, "and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator."
+
+"But his great-uncle don't want to go to sea too?" said the captain,
+looking funny.
+
+"Oh! no, oh, no!--Ha! ha!"
+
+"Ha! ha!" echoed the captain.
+
+A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.
+
+"Well, my lad," said the captain, "I suppose you know we haven't any
+pastures and cows on board; you can't get any milk at sea, you know."
+
+"Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if I
+haven't."
+
+"Yes," cried my friend, "his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business."
+
+"Embassador extraordinary?" said the captain, looking funny again.
+
+"Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant."
+
+"Ah! indeed;" said the captain, looking grave and bland again, "then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?"
+
+"Certainly," said my friend, "and he's only going to sea for the humor
+of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he will go
+to sea as a sailor."
+
+The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about twenty-five)
+was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which out of the
+kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose of creating
+a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.
+
+Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand tour
+with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the handsome
+captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that he himself
+would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay for the privilege.
+
+"Ah!" said my friend, "that reminds me of business. Pray, captain, how
+much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?"
+
+"Well," said the captain, looking grave and profound, "we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that's your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!--Upon my soul, a fine sounding name."
+
+"Why, captain," said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, "that won't
+pay for his clothing."
+
+"But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that," replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.
+
+"Oh! yes, I forgot that," said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish. "His
+friends will of course see to that."
+
+"Of course," said the captain smiling.
+
+"Of course," repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.
+
+"You are quite a sportsman I see," said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.
+
+Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand opportunity
+to befriend me.
+
+"Yes, he's quite a sportsman," said he, "he's got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It's cheap."
+
+"Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations," said the captain,
+"so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England."
+
+"Yes, perhaps that would be better, after all," said my friend,
+pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides of the
+matter in hand. "Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy three
+dollars a month, you say?"
+
+"Only three dollars a month," said the captain.
+
+"And I believe," said my friend, "that you generally give something in
+advance, do you not?"
+
+"Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices," said the
+captain, with a bow, "but in this case, as the boy has rich relations,
+there will be no need of that, you know."
+
+And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that it
+would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
+
+The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning; and
+as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said, "Well,
+Redburn, my boy, you won't get home-sick before you sail, because that
+will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea."
+
+And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three times,
+and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward did with
+a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at my
+shooting-jacket. And so we left.
+
+
+
+
+IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
+
+
+Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles, and
+there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found what I
+was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a fellow in
+a great flapping sou'wester cap say to another old tar in a shaggy
+monkey-jacket, "Twig his coat, d'ye see the buttons, that chap ain't
+going to sea in a merchantman, he's going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty--look here--how d'ye sell them big buttons by the pound?"
+
+"Give us one for a saucer, will ye?" said another.
+
+"Let the youngster alone," said a third. "Come here, my little boy, has
+your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?"
+
+They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of
+the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they
+can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried
+to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my
+name and beat a retreat.
+
+On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that day
+I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my fowling-piece
+for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up Chatham-street
+with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily face, and a
+hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to me from a
+strange-looking shop, with three gilded balk hanging over it.
+
+With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged t me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it to
+him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told him
+that was just what I wanted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will not
+try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, "I thought it was a
+better article, it's very old."
+
+"Not," said I, starting in surprise, "it's not been used more than three
+times; what will you give for it?"
+
+"We don't buy any thing here," said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, "this is a place where people pawn things." Pawn being a
+word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he
+replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their
+fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
+
+What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how very
+obliging.
+
+"And pray," said I, "how much will you let me have for my gun, by way of
+a pawn?"
+
+"Well, I suppose it's worth six dollars, and seeing you're a boy, I'll
+let you have three dollars upon it"
+
+"No," exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, "it's worth five times
+that, I'll go somewhere else."
+
+"Good morning, then," said he, "I hope you'll do better," and he bowed
+me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.
+
+I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging over
+a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of picket-fence,
+running all along from end to end, and three little holes, with three
+little old men standing inside of them, like prisoners looking out of a
+jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of things, piled up and
+labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and swords, and canes, and
+chests, and planes, and books, and writing-desks, and every thing else.
+And in a glass case were lots of watches, and seals, chains, and rings,
+and breastpins, and all kinds of trinkets. At one of the little holes,
+earnestly talking with one of the hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a
+faded silk gown and shawl, holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I
+drew near, she spoke lower in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and
+looked cross and rude; and then some more words were exchanged over a
+miniature, and some money was passed through the hole, and the woman and
+child shrank out of the door.
+
+I won't sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the next
+hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young man
+in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust through
+to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that came
+along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety of
+fish.
+
+At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to be
+beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, "one
+dollar."
+
+"What about one dollar?" said I.
+
+"That's all I'll give," he replied.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" and he turned to the next person. This was a
+young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if it
+was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.
+
+But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, "None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don't deal in them things here."
+
+Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see who
+had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of his
+pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the hole.
+
+"Where did you get this ring?" said the pawnbroker.
+
+"I want to pawn it," whispered the other, blushing all over again.
+
+"What's your name?" said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.
+
+"How much will you give?" whispered the other in reply, leaning over,
+and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.
+
+At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter took a
+little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the ticket;
+all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question which
+embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain number
+in Broadway.
+
+"That's the City Hotel: you don't live there," said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.
+
+"Oh! well," stammered the other blushing scarlet, "I thought this was
+only a sort of form to go through; I don't like to tell where I do live,
+for I ain't in the habit of going to pawnbrokers."
+
+"You stole that ring, you know you did," roared out the hook-nosed man,
+incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man's character for life. "I'm a good mind to call a.
+constable; we don't take stolen goods here, I tell you."
+
+All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man; who
+looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a night-cap,
+with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at the
+pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.
+
+I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more from
+them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a great
+many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular occasion for
+mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and rich, to treat
+people so cavalierly.
+
+My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back, the
+curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.
+
+"Ought to have taken it when you could get it," he replied. "I won't
+give but two dollars and a half for it now."
+
+In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the money
+and departed.
+
+
+
+
+V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS
+BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
+
+
+The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep my
+promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.
+
+The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning in
+buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat, which
+I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife, and two
+or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny left, so I
+walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into the water.
+The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost desperate
+again, and didn't care what became of me. But if the penny had been a
+dollar, I would have kept it.
+
+I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones', and they welcomed me very kindly,
+and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner, so that I
+had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad, and
+thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt so
+bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward, when I
+expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very keen,
+and I said to myself, "Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can, for this
+may be the last supper you will have."
+
+After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and hung a
+towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the keyhole, and
+then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the glass, to see what
+sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As soon as I got into the
+shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about the face, which I found
+was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool upon my skin. After that, I
+took a pair of scissors and went to cutting my hair, which was very
+long. I thought every little would help, in making me a light hand to
+run aloft.
+
+Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the house
+with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate again.
+
+Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to sea
+that day.
+
+This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return to
+Mr. Jones' again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward. So
+I concluded to go on board ship for the present.
+
+When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.
+
+"What do you want, Pillgarlic?" said he.
+
+"I've shipped to sail in this ship," I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.
+
+"What for? a tailor?" said he, looking at my shooting jacket.
+
+I answered that I was going as a "boy;" for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.
+
+"Well," said he, "have you got your traps aboard?"
+
+I told him I didn't know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn't
+brought any "trap."
+
+At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.
+
+This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn't be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.
+
+"Where's your clothes?" said he.
+
+"Here in my bundle," said I, holding it up.
+
+"Well if that's all you've got," he cried, "you'd better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that's the
+place you'll live in aboard here."
+
+And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the bow of
+the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked him for
+a light.
+
+"Strike your eyes together and make one," said he, "we don't have any
+lights here." So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which smelt
+so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After waiting
+patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last perceived
+I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes stuck round the
+sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which I at once
+supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that method of
+appropriating their "Trunks," as I afterward found these boxes were
+called. And so it turned out.
+
+After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put my
+bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.
+
+This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty that
+the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go ashore, and
+walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the night in the
+forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary, and went into
+a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on, and not looking
+very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better place, for fear of
+being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel very hungry; and
+seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think what a fool I had
+been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts were but a penny
+apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and round. I never saw
+doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a negro came in, and
+ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would fill up a little by
+drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere that this was a good
+plan to follow in a case like the present. I did not feel thirsty, but
+only hungry; so had much ado to get down the water; for it tasted warm;
+and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the negro had been drinking some
+spirits out of it just before.
+
+I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some more
+water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop twice, till
+night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it had been
+raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could not help
+thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in that damp
+and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to lie on but
+the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such thoughts, I
+gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough outside and
+in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I had just been
+eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.
+
+The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going forward I
+unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and as soon as
+he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked such a
+curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I knew
+not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told me he
+was an English boy, from Lancashire.
+
+It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her last
+voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to work
+very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to' work his passage back.
+
+I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing; but
+found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with. I
+asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he hadn't
+traveled any in America and didn't know any thing about the rivers here.
+And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he showed no
+surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times more
+stupid than before.
+
+At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best to
+get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud, for
+me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the place,
+my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt damp and
+clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening to the
+Lancashire boy's snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to go on
+deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would never come.
+
+As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left the
+ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But this
+made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was dizzy;
+and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I dropt on a
+heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best to rally
+myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and walk off.
+Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my friend's
+house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it was, only
+it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk in such a
+state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.
+
+
+
+
+VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND
+SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
+
+
+By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar. The
+pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the rigging,
+and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and went
+to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the captain
+came up the side, and began to order about both of them.
+
+These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the ship.
+
+Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father's, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, "Do you think we
+take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking at
+sea; don't let the 'old man' see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can."
+
+I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had plenty of
+tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about him as a
+tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and left me
+feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had acted thus,
+for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to the chief
+mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him, would have
+knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.
+
+As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great
+hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with
+you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you,
+with that shooting-jacket!"
+
+Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.
+
+"A sailor!" he cried, "a barber's clerk, you mean; you going out in the
+ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn't been
+shipping any more greenhorns like you--he'll make a shipwreck of it if he
+has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few dollars in seamen's
+wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of farmers and
+clodhoppers and baby-boys. What's your name, Pillgarlic?"
+
+"Redburn," said I.
+
+"A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it; haven't
+you got any other?"
+
+"Wellingborough," said I.
+
+"Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn't they call you Jack,
+or Jill, or something short and handy. But I'll baptize you over again.
+D'ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is Buttons. And now do you go,
+Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has not been
+cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d'ye hear;
+there's them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about it,
+now."
+
+Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?
+
+But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey orders,
+and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel, or spade,
+or something else to work with.
+
+"We don't dig gardens here," was the reply; "dig it out with your
+teeth!"
+
+After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the pen,
+which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the "jolly-boat,"
+was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them almost close
+together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck. I managed to
+crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins against the
+seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along to the stern,
+where the pig-pen was.
+
+While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out to
+his comrades, "Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call this?
+Hallo! inside there! what are you 'bout there? trying to stow yourself
+away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of that, I say."
+But just then the mate came along and ordered this drunken rascal
+ashore.
+
+The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I found
+it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as it
+looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as well
+as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a dry
+spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed with
+an oath, "Didn't I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else? Do
+what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!"
+
+Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was
+my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me
+why he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this, he
+flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his order
+like a clap of thunder.
+
+This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave reasons
+for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they command it,
+so that the motto is, "Obey orders, though you break owners."
+
+I now began to feel very faint and sick again, and longed for the ship
+to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon be having
+something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on board, and as
+for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they were
+"riggers," that is, men living ashore, who worked by the day in getting
+ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost, for yielding to
+the kind blandishment of one of these riggers, I had swapped away my
+jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his own, thinking to secure
+a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I watched my chance, and while
+people's backs were turned, I seized a carrot from several bunches lying
+on deck, and clapping it under the skirts of my shooting-jacket, went
+forward to eat it; for I had often eaten raw carrots, which taste
+something like chestnuts. This carrot refreshed me a good deal, though
+at the expense of a little pain in my stomach. Hardly had I disposed of
+it, when I heard the chief mate's voice crying out for "Buttons." I ran
+after him, and received an order to go aloft and "slush down the
+main-top mast."
+
+This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring
+about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the mate had
+turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I followed after
+him, and asked what I must do.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?" he shouted.
+
+"You did," said I, "but I don't know what that means."
+
+"Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!" he exclaimed to himself. "A
+fine time I'll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you, youngster.
+Look up to that long pole there--d'ye see it? that piece of a tree there,
+you timber-head--well--take this bucket here, and go up the rigging--that
+rope-ladder there--do you understand?--and dab this slush all over the
+mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls on deck. Be off now,
+Buttons."
+
+The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was to
+ascend a ship's mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should have
+felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and faint,
+the bare thought appalled me.
+
+But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I could
+not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of food; so
+rallying again, I took up the bucket.
+
+It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of it
+was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several times
+about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and slipping
+off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the "top," the
+clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about between my
+legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the "top," I came
+to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that overhanging
+impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much
+straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the "top;" and then,
+trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road
+was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was obliged
+to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more. I only
+recollect my safe return to the deck.
+
+In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of cabin
+passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage passengers,
+besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.
+
+At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor,
+and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board
+but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in
+Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in
+the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt
+in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats and
+swaggered on deck, "it's your turn now, but it will be mine before long.
+Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I'll do the yawing after the
+anchor's up."
+
+Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted on
+board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and dumped
+him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made their
+appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of their
+drink.
+
+At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to dinner
+fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for now my
+long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited with eating
+and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and potatoes which
+the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and though this left the
+whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found that I could eat little
+or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint, but not hungry.
+
+
+
+
+VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
+
+
+Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and all
+hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could not
+help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they suffered
+from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in which they
+had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors breathe
+nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all alive and
+hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.
+
+The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south point
+of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor's Island, and
+pointed right out for the Narrows.
+
+My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but then,
+there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.
+
+And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be forced
+to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the Atlantic
+Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability he ever
+would.
+
+With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my heavy-
+heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the first day
+of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must elapse
+before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might happen to
+me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and thought how
+often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure enough that some
+luckless day or other, I would certainly fall overboard and be drowned.
+And then, I thought of lying down at the bottom of the sea, stark alone,
+with the great waves rolling over me, and no one in the wide world
+knowing that I was there. And I thought how much better and sweeter it
+must be, to be buried under the pleasant hedge that bounded the sunny
+south side of our village grave-yard, where every Sunday I had used to
+walk after church in the afternoon; and I almost wished I was there now;
+yes, dead and buried in that churchyard. All the time my eyes were
+filled with tears, and I kept holding my breath, to choke down the sobs,
+for indeed I could not help feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in
+the world would have felt just as I did then.
+
+As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so many
+beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the beautiful
+fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing if instead
+of sailing out of the bay, we were only coming into it; if we had
+crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and my heart
+leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really entering
+that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far distant, that it
+seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would I see New York
+again.
+
+And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
+sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking about
+the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and how
+that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when the
+ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to Franklin-square
+where they lived; and how that they would have a good dinner ready, and
+plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I say this land of
+talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider, as I did, that
+before any thing like that could happen, we must cross the great
+Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back again, many
+thousand miles of foaming ocean.
+
+At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this much
+I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to the
+Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used words
+that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
+
+And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind to
+me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
+
+Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.
+
+At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like this
+of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not a
+soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great Atlantic
+Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down to the
+water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly believe,
+as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or any place
+like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed
+too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
+really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
+farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away
+beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of
+steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land
+behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy;
+and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who
+could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many
+times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never
+dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a
+marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
+by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
+credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever
+sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water
+line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was
+too wonderful to believe.
+
+Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
+quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
+all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
+Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with
+white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and
+who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain
+Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
+Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle,
+because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white
+hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an impression upon me,
+that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw him during this one
+visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the White Sea some years
+after.
+
+But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water was
+a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this grove, in
+a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the fort, dark as
+night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults, twisting and
+turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of green grass and
+sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in the middle of the
+castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing, or ruminating
+under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf frisking about, and
+trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy
+ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides
+of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long
+beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on
+the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a
+ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and
+though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as
+ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh,
+and have as great a memory as he must have had. Yes, the fort was a
+beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to build a little cottage
+in the middle of it, and live there all my life. It was noon-day when I
+was there, in the month of June, and there was little wind to stir the
+trees, and every thing looked as if it was waiting for something, and
+the sky overhead was blue as my mother's eye, and I was so glad and
+happy then. But I must not think of those delightful days, before my
+father became a bankrupt, and died, and we removed from the city; for
+when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost
+strangles me.
+
+Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that beautiful
+fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my situation now, with
+what it was when with my father and uncle I went there so long ago. Then
+I never thought of working for my living, and never knew that there were
+hard hearts in the world; and knew so little of money, that when I
+bought a stick of candy, and laid down a sixpence, I thought the
+confectioner returned five cents, only that I might have money to buy
+something else, and not because the pennies were my change, and
+therefore mine by good rights. How different my idea of money now!
+
+Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and had
+vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in the
+city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she used
+to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was the
+ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some boys
+who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.
+
+About sunset we got fairly "outside," and well may it so be called; for
+I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and the
+sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat left
+us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat, who
+to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of the
+captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart talking
+with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave him some
+newspapers.
+
+And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed the
+little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell to
+me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got into
+the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the schooner
+made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and waving
+their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of America.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME
+OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
+
+
+It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered on
+the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.
+
+What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we were
+going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by selecting a
+stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the second mate's turn
+came to choose, and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it
+was not me;--no; and I noticed, as they went on choosing, one after the
+other in regular rotation, that both of the mates never so much as
+looked at me, but kept going round among the rest, peering into their
+faces, for it was dusk, and telling them not to hide themselves away so
+in their jackets. But the sailors, especially the stout good-looking
+ones, seemed to make a point of lounging as much out of the way as
+possible, and slouching their hats over their eyes; and although it may
+only be a fancy of mine, I certainly thought that they affected a sort
+of lordly indifference as to whose watch they were going to be in; and
+did not think it worth while to look any way anxious about the matter.
+And the very men who, a few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity
+and promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at the
+word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if
+they were quite sure, that by this time the officers must know who the
+best men were, and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to
+put the officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were
+worth having, they were worth seeking.
+
+At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate's next
+turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case, since
+I was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to the next column,
+like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.
+
+"Well, Buttons," said the chief mate, "I thought I'd got rid of you. And
+as it is, Mr. Rigs," he added, speaking to the second mate, "I guess you
+had better take him into your watch;--there, I'll let you have him, and
+then you'll be one stronger than me."
+
+"No, I thank you," said Mr. Rigs.
+
+"You had better," said the chief mate--"see, he's not a bad looking
+chap--he's a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself, you
+know, Rigs."
+
+"No, I thank you," said the second mate again. "Take him yourself--he's
+yours by good rights--I don't want him." And so they put me in the chief
+mate's division, that is the larboard watch.
+
+While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood, just
+like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing that
+had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what I had
+come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.
+
+As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors by
+name:-"You, Bill?" and Bill answered, "Sir?" just as if the second mate
+was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man in such
+a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had been
+quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him Mr. Rigs
+during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this Mr. Rigs was a great
+merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very
+long in finding out, that at sea all officers are Misters, and would
+take it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them so.
+And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be called sir when
+addressed--Yes, sir; No, sir; Ay, ay, sir; and they are as particular
+about being sirred as so many knights and baronets; though their titles
+are not hereditary, as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in
+England. But so far as the second mate is concerned, his tides are the
+only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish We
+indeed. He is not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the
+chief mate occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the
+cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine,
+and sup off the leavings of the cabin table, and even the steward, who
+is accountable to nobody but the captain, sometimes treats him
+cavalierly; and he has to run aloft when topsails are reefed; and put
+his hand a good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the
+boatswain's locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
+seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing
+many other things, which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather
+die and give up his title than stand.
+
+Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could not
+eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked to
+have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.
+
+When supper was over, for they never talk about going to tea aboard of a
+ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and we were told
+it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is, from eight
+o'clock till midnight.
+
+I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
+matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the
+head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of
+the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses very
+civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and spend the
+night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said something about my
+mother not being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
+that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare to take such
+a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of blasphemy, and it seemed
+like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets of my soul, for at
+that time the name of mother was the center of all my heart's finest
+feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my
+being.
+
+But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would have
+only made the matter worse.
+
+Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
+the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
+his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
+hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
+and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
+his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in his
+broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook,
+which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
+men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came along.
+He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking
+fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a new silk
+handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones
+of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear white
+duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and a tarpaulin hat
+bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon streaming behind,
+and getting entangled every now and then in the rigging; and he had gold
+anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one of his fingers, which was
+very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other work on board ship.
+I thought he might better have left his jewelry at home.
+
+It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
+Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
+from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
+how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
+he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
+about, and go to bed again, and get up again--there was no telling how
+many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his country,
+he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland baby was
+sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said to be a day
+old.
+
+I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
+that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
+which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
+wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
+only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book meant
+to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean; but
+this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till I saw this
+Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland, only made
+me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from Greenland to
+be in my company? Why was he not at home among the icebergs, and how
+could he stand a warm summer's sun, and not be melted away? Besides,
+instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and he
+did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge muff; things,
+which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all Greenlanders.
+
+But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for the
+night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn doctor and
+cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back with a brown
+jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the
+brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it, for it
+smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be full of Jamaica
+spirits.
+
+"Now, Buttons," said he, "one little dose of this will be better for you
+than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat seven or
+eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast."
+
+But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some scruples
+about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am not
+ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which
+my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept
+the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him. There was
+three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he brought in his
+accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove on the
+river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.
+
+When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked him
+as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over the
+side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits would
+now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that when I
+signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert a little
+clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness. And I
+would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in future; and
+then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking their
+pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with me. And a hard
+thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken; especially as
+the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth
+so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had
+become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could
+really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the
+Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off
+with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long,
+for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed
+overboard. I wonder where they are now?
+
+But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the spirits
+I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could have had
+a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well, and perhaps
+much better. But that was not to be had at that time of night, or,
+indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called coffee, which was
+given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious tasting
+drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as it did like
+lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally as cold as lemonade, and
+I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and dropt ice into his coffee.
+But what was more curious still, was the different quality and taste of
+it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a
+decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very salty, as if
+some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and then again it
+would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his
+cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it
+would have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some
+old stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made
+of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always remained a
+mystery; for when at work at his vocation, our old cook used to keep
+himself close shut-up in his caboose, a little cook-house, and never
+told any of his secrets.
+
+Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was for
+all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don't believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico's in New York. It was well for him that
+he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing
+his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at one of
+his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him. What
+induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out; but I
+suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some real
+estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have; and
+though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding
+another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in
+the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that
+respect as before.
+
+It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I did;
+and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for breaking
+my bond, which I would not have done except in case of necessity. But
+the evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion whatever, was
+witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened the way to
+subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet carried no
+apology with them.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
+
+
+The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather cloudy,
+it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain enough to
+count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it was not
+very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth as a
+sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held so
+steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes, and
+scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
+
+The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a lighted
+long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but few words
+to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of thinking to
+attend to, which hi truth is the case with most seamen the first night
+out of port, especially when they have thrown away their money in
+foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For when
+ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in their
+way, as the sailors they command.
+
+While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
+mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
+It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a little
+higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began pulling
+upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no words to it,
+only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark night, and
+far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and made me feel as
+I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin of mine, with
+black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the piano. I almost
+looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit afraid. But I soon
+got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without
+it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling,
+whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the
+mate would always say, "Come, men, can't any of you sing? Sing now, and
+raise the dead." And then some one of them would begin, and if every
+man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull
+as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure
+the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing
+in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it
+from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates.
+Some sea-captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can
+sing out at a rope.
+
+During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
+and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
+about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and
+I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost was a
+volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most struck me
+was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each other, and
+would fall into long and violent disputes about who was keeping the Foul
+Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether the King of
+Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the bar-maid of a
+particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes; with many other
+mooted points of that sort.
+
+At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
+chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
+to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle ashore;
+and also by way of tapering off, as I mentioned a little while ago. But
+I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them,
+instead of spirits and cigars.
+
+Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box with a blow of his
+fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter at
+a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the Temperance
+Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did afterward upon
+the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I declined; with a good
+deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that the cigars were real
+genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he said, and had them made
+there under his own eye. According to his account, he was very
+particular about his cigars and other things, and never made any
+importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself
+direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he
+wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats,
+to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his
+cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he
+would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his halter; the wit of
+which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is
+the best; though that is not wit which needs explaining.
+
+By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
+united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
+biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck before
+the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness, and
+finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
+themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing on
+earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
+pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and another
+ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived their
+true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a parcel of
+wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction to
+associate with them.
+
+Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but more
+with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind
+dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made
+outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for
+the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if
+they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a
+church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called them strayed lambs
+from the fold, and compared them to poor lost children, babes in the
+wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
+
+And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors' Magazine,
+with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
+seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their
+latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good sailors
+among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on deck apart
+from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them: so I did not
+disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at discovering that
+he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.
+
+I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men went
+into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take a
+"swig at the halyards," as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them "to taper off" handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then. Yet
+this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to them,
+then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they turned
+about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
+
+I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.
+
+When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
+his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him more
+and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was grateful that
+I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel
+wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing to confess to
+myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors, so much as my
+education, which I had received from others, that had made me the
+upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to be. And it was
+now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction
+in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had previously
+associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that there was
+little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself with my
+neighbors.
+
+Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
+upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
+him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
+was far from being vain and conceited.
+
+Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
+quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
+some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
+forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
+astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his--tit for tat,--I inquired
+of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and
+whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to
+the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams;
+and in asking these questions I was particular to address him in a civil
+and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I did not
+deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all things
+together, and not going into particulars. But to my great surprise and
+mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed aloud in my face,
+and called me a "Jimmy Dux," though that was not my real name, and he
+must have known it; and also the "son of a farmer," though as I have
+previously related, my father was a great merchant and French importer
+in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh and joke about
+me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not
+felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much Eke a
+fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling foolish, which is
+very lucky for people in a passion.
+
+
+
+
+X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
+MISERABLE AND FORLORN
+
+
+While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
+horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
+came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
+hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
+I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
+
+But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
+and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
+the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
+uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
+forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
+about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
+ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
+loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
+but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the
+sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into his
+bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
+suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
+the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place,
+and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a
+fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
+
+This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and
+almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the
+sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I
+been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the Hudson
+River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which
+had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best friends, that is
+to say, my mother and sisters.
+
+Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
+more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it worse,
+was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they
+took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked Me I had entered
+upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea, and they were
+used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the suicide came
+rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as frightened as I
+did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened still
+plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
+could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by
+them. However, they lay in then-bunks smoking, and kept talking on some
+time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin
+my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into
+the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far
+off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of
+sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.
+
+This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
+and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
+I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.
+And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,
+but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked
+me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread
+out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and
+asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a
+gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like
+nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And
+one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal
+more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,
+for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the
+death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he
+would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with
+an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
+then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they
+could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that
+the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
+night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I
+loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
+heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable
+wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a
+boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked
+within me, but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared
+them to do their worst.
+
+At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
+
+
+
+
+XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
+
+
+The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as
+the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and
+when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The
+men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and
+some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell off like little
+boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was broad day, and an
+order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub was dragged into the
+waist, and then one of the men went over into the chains, and slipped in
+behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and leaning over, began to swing
+a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and in that way with much
+expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to fill the tub in a very
+short time. Then the water began to splash about all over the decks, and
+I began to think I should surely get my feet wet, and catch my death of
+cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told him I thought I would just
+step below, till this miserable wetting was over; for I did not have any
+water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had died of consumption. But he
+only roared out for me to get a broom and go to scrubbing, or he would
+prove a worse consumption to me than ever got hold of my poor aunt. So I
+scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back was almost broke, for the
+brooms had uncommon short handles, and we were told to scrub hard.
+
+At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets of
+water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He must
+have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to
+point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him with full
+buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck,
+with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of a
+scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.
+
+I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in the
+world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse than
+my mother's house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.
+
+At eight o'clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And now
+some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any friend to
+tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself, as I should
+have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and for my own
+part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no table to sit
+down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to provide every
+thing themselves. But so it was.
+
+The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the cook-house
+with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of course, having
+no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a sort of little tub
+called a "kid," was passed down into the forecastle, filled with
+something they called "burgoo." This was like mush, made of Indian corn,
+meal, and water. With the "kid," a. little tin cannikin was passed down
+with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke of before, put the kid
+between his knees, and began to pour in the molasses, just like an old
+landlord mixing punch for a party. He scooped out a little hole in the
+middle of the mush, to hold the molasses; so it looked for all the world
+like a little black pool in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.
+
+Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the other,
+with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and after
+stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed down
+their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted very
+good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I wasn't
+sure.
+
+I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little
+burgoo toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready open
+to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was about,
+knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned my
+manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn't that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?
+
+All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.
+
+As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable to
+eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon, for
+he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.
+
+But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But my side was scraped clean, so I got no
+burgoo that morning.
+
+But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found to
+be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard biscuit,
+very sociably, over each other's heads, which was very convenient
+indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first four or five
+days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much about it, only
+it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to bring a fine comb
+and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward over the bulwarks
+every evening.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
+
+
+While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the burgoo, called upon them in a loud voice to cease their
+clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall
+have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so, I will
+here try to describe him a little.
+
+Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor. He
+was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have
+on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in
+the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was stuck over
+with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out shoe-brush. His nose
+had broken down in the middle, and he squinted with one eye, and did not
+look very straight out of the other. He dressed a good deal like a
+Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig; wearing a pair of
+great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and three red
+woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject to the rheumatism,
+and was not in good health, he said; and he had a large white wool hat,
+with a broad rolling brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a
+good deal to say about highlanders, and rowdies, whom he denounced as
+only good for the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a
+highlander himself.
+
+His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was a
+great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict him,
+or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful was,
+that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have no
+doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now, I
+could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with him;
+such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and withal
+was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have run
+from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that
+I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it
+must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
+
+It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no beard,
+and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might have
+seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own account,
+he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he first went
+as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according
+to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation
+and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in
+Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish
+used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel
+and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and
+weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks;
+how he had been in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an English
+cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull, which raked
+through and through a whole file of slaves, that were chained.
+
+He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
+man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
+got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
+would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their
+money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of
+Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to make him
+point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
+
+His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.
+
+But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
+the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
+Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
+out of the world by wasps and hornets.
+
+Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
+he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
+to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes
+fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable, broken-down
+condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in consequence of
+his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with such malevolence
+as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my mother so thought
+me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my
+low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and,
+spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being
+consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was
+more fit for a hospital than a ship.
+
+As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will not
+put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even now,
+I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.
+
+I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at his
+eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the ship's
+helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was called
+for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for easy
+duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming
+them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health,
+he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be
+jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion
+under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids
+will sometimes show.
+
+And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing like
+sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire
+to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this
+Jackson was a notorious old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all
+things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and
+in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have passed
+unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never presumed to call him to
+account in any way; or to let him so much as think, what they thought of
+his conduct. But I often heard them call him many hard names behind his
+back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been tenderly
+inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood in mortal
+fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him like so many spaniels; and
+used to rub his back, after he was undressed and lying in his bunk; and
+used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to warm some cold coffee for
+him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco, and mend
+his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and tend, and nurse him
+every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling on them, and found
+fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most for
+him, and cringed the most before him, were the very ones he most abused;
+while two or three who held more aloof, he treated with a little
+consideration.
+
+It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship's company
+submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
+know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
+in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
+would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
+that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
+from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
+crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
+butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being abused
+and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially, because of his
+great strength and fine person, and particularly because of his red
+cheeks.
+
+But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an able-seaman,
+was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man in the eyes of a
+ship's company; I mean, when he ships for an able-seaman, but is not
+able to do the duty of one. For sailors are of three classes--
+able-seaman, ordinary-seaman, and boys; and they receive different
+wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship's company of twelve
+men will only have five or six able seamen, who if they prove to
+understand their duty every way (and that is no small matter either, as
+I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to, and thought much of
+by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets,
+and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
+
+But you must not think from this, that persons called boys aboard
+merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
+called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a boy means a
+green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
+enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work is
+put upon him.
+
+But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson's
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's age
+just like a horse's--by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened his
+mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the light
+came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while he
+looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a baboon
+peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just as if I
+had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to cut his
+throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the lather on, to
+be shaved. For I watched Jackson's eye and saw it snapping, and a sort
+of going in and out, very quick, as if it were something like a forked
+tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were longing to kill the man; but
+at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his examination,
+said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for the ends of his
+teeth were the evenest and most worn down; which, he said, arose from
+eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this was the reason he could tell a
+sailor's age like a horse's.
+
+At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
+say--come, boys, let's laugh; and they did laugh; and declared it was a
+rare joke.
+
+This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting out,
+whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign to them
+that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good jokes from
+others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell
+the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that is, when his
+back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a grave face;
+when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or otherwise,
+they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking perplexed enough;
+till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and
+idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had purposely
+put on his grave face, to see whether they would not look grave, too;
+even when he was telling something that ought to split their sides. And
+with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and laughed them all to
+scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue
+together at the corners with a fine white foam.
+
+He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and every
+body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had done him
+some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his heart.
+Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened at
+him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling him
+Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some terrible thing at
+last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up; for the captain
+would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward again.
+
+But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly all
+hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink off
+during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more submit
+to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good their
+oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old way; so
+that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of
+Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up a
+little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson; yet
+in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.
+
+As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to greenhorns and landsmen, who
+know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think, that an able seaman
+is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little boy. And the
+able seamen in the Highlander had such grand notions about their
+seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen received diplomas,
+like those given at colleges; and were made a sort A.M.S, or Masters of
+Arts.
+
+But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew
+that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed
+endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson's
+evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many
+of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me
+before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the
+ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began to feel a hatred
+growing up in me against the whole crew--so much so, that I prayed
+against it, that it might not master my heart completely, and so make a
+fiend of me, something like Jackson.
+
+
+
+
+XII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+
+The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
+over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
+
+It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
+hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
+I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in
+during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
+could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
+blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
+forbidding.
+
+There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out
+on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over
+at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost
+happy for a time.
+
+I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
+least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
+could now look around me, and make observations.
+
+And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
+at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight
+of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round
+us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen
+but water-water--water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
+smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till
+now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
+boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
+squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
+I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
+lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
+great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
+
+As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my
+little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It
+had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little
+wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless Little kid in a pasture;
+and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be
+patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them,
+that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them,
+scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
+like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most
+strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the
+sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and
+swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very
+well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
+It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes
+off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
+
+I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear
+myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the
+deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist
+aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these
+stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out
+beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like
+the wings of a great bird.
+
+For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the
+name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt
+very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I
+was; every thing was so strange and new.
+
+While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
+
+However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
+with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
+managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a
+fool as at first.
+
+People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
+imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
+barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, arid dress in
+strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own
+names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing
+by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber.
+This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to draw some
+water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I thought I had
+committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
+said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that they were
+always called buckets. And once I was talking about sticking a little
+wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew out again, and
+said there were no pegs at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with
+every thing else.
+
+But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
+names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
+to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked
+what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
+entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of
+these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy,
+like the names of young royal princes, such as the starboard-main-top-
+gallant-bow-line, or the larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.
+
+I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes
+of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in
+the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists
+give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something
+like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews
+the small running ropes, that manage all the motions.
+
+I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
+which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
+very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
+breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they
+use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people
+seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names,
+seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be
+surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the
+world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
+
+At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
+as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the
+breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the
+foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber
+seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with Me and joy; and I
+felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be glad to
+bound along so round the world.
+
+Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to
+all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on
+with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at
+the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as
+if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling
+along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
+
+Yes I yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
+briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
+very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe,
+let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an
+eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
+
+But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we
+were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
+chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
+
+Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
+to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I
+were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a
+speedy end to this abominable voyage!
+
+
+
+
+XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
+
+
+What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.
+
+I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good humor,
+and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to appreciate the
+difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I was thrown.
+Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special manner take me
+under his protection, and prove a kind friend and benefactor to me; as I
+had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to their crew; and so they
+are; but such fathers as Solomon's precepts tend to make--severe and
+chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of duty overcomes the sense of
+love, and who every day, in some sort, play the part of Brutus, who
+ordered his son away to execution, as I have read in our old family
+Plutarch.
+
+Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.
+
+And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother's friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.
+
+And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.
+
+When two or three days had passed without the captain's speaking to me
+in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not expect
+it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that might
+have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it more
+proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he might be
+offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender feelings.
+So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second dog-watch, when
+there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call and see him.
+
+After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get off
+some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of my
+red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck ones,
+and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my shooting-jacket,
+I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made quite a genteel
+figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not have looked so
+well in a drawing-room.
+
+When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to make of
+it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I told them
+no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was going to pay
+my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed and shouted, as
+if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so very simple in
+going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some of them tried to
+dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson, who sat looking
+on, cried out, with a hideous grin, "Let him go, let him go, men--he's a
+nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and raisins for him."
+And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits of coughing seized
+him, and he almost choked.
+
+As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my hands,
+and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that morning the
+mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the rigging I
+thought it would never do to present myself before a gentleman that way;
+so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen mittens, which my
+mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was putting them on,
+Jackson asked me whether he shouldn't call a carriage; and another bade
+me not forget to present his best respects to the skipper. I left them
+all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the cook-house, when the
+old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my cane.
+
+But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward the
+cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I touched my
+hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I thought his
+eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the collar, and with a
+voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by playing such tricks
+aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to let go of me, or I
+would complain to my friend the captain, whom I intended to visit that
+evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl round, that I thought the
+Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved me forward, roaring out I
+know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all standing round the
+windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.
+
+Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson asked
+me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went, I
+would not take a friend along and introduce him.
+
+The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that night,
+I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to call on
+the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the fact,
+that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance of sea
+usages.
+
+And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the cabin
+during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our return
+to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a little
+pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm, where a
+watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half hours by,
+with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was. And it used
+to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through the pane of
+glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the proceedings in the
+cabin; especially when the steward was setting the table for dinner, or
+the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine on a little mahogany
+stand, or playing the game called solitaire, at cards, of an evening;
+for at times he was all alone with his dignity; though, as will ere long
+be shown, he generally had one pleasant companion, whose society he did
+not dislike.
+
+The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to be
+making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly made
+his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He looked
+very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his dinner, I
+thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.
+
+I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but as
+he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very pleasant
+day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into such a rage;
+I thought he was going to knock me down; but after standing speechless
+awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his head and threw it at me.
+I don't know what impelled me, but I ran to the lee-scuppers where it
+fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a bow; when the mate came
+running up, and thrust me forward again; and after he had got me as far
+as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I was crazy or not; for if I
+was, he would put me in irons right off, and have done with it.
+
+But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well that I
+had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both by him
+and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and told me if
+I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again presumed so
+much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into the rigging,
+and keep me there until I learned better manners. "You are very green,"
+said he, "but I'll ripen you." Indeed this chief mate seemed to have the
+keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some sort, seemed too
+dignified personally to protect his own dignity.
+
+I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.
+
+But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days after,
+a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his
+nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop,
+began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft
+all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the street.
+
+Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and his
+boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but a
+shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their gloss,
+and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a sort of
+miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might have been
+owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of dye while at
+sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while ashore, a gentleman
+on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have treated another
+gentleman as he did me.
+
+Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
+
+
+And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old clothes, I may as
+well speak of mine.
+
+It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had greatly
+rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be warm and
+pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be like a summer
+excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a
+change of scene and society.
+
+So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a
+belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers', whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
+
+But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
+"long togs," as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the life
+I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my pantaloons
+were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction, particularly
+about the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with low
+waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was often placed
+in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the rigging, sometimes in
+plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen exposed in the most
+inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
+
+And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
+
+I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
+very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.
+
+Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
+in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try them
+on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
+spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
+a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
+he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
+for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing and
+blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with
+him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
+intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
+have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with a
+row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was a
+great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
+precisely in that way.
+
+And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
+deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
+"ftoig" them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
+of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
+very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
+genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
+from my cousin's, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
+
+When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.
+
+Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home. They
+had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had had a
+pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I
+walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see me, and
+I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at them
+during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they
+were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more
+for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which
+were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came
+near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such
+a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was
+obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were
+quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees, and the edges were
+mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call them my "gaff-
+topsail-boots." And sometimes they used to call me "Boots," and
+sometimes "Buttons," on account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and
+shooting-jacket.
+
+At last, I took their advice, and "razeed" them, as they phrased it.
+That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
+soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
+feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
+made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
+wore straps on the ice.
+
+As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved a
+real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a rain
+storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on
+deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and
+lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
+
+But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
+
+I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
+kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of
+them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
+obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like an
+Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a crucifix.
+
+I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
+that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like going
+to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and knife,
+fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a
+steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron
+pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave me
+a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much disposed to
+rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was drinking; and
+it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were deprived of
+all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a labor to me. And I
+was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup, three times a week,
+which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
+
+I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
+and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
+calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
+In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked
+like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of
+my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would
+have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in
+my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation
+and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a galling mockery,
+when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell all inquiring
+friends, that Wellingborough had gone "abroad" just as if I was visiting
+Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to
+the captain.
+
+Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.
+
+And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
+view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
+and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
+sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
+as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
+saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
+look-cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain in a green
+jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
+
+And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
+these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
+the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
+and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
+of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
+
+Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
+in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
+harder.
+
+Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in an
+elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass trumpet to
+his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, "Where from?"
+
+To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
+
+Hamburg!
+
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.
+
+I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains during
+their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective "poops"
+toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying their
+behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and
+drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting each
+other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great Atlantic
+Ocean was a puddle.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
+
+
+I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle
+watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.
+
+The order was given to loose the main-skysail, which is the fifth and
+highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the
+forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I
+have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail;
+called moon-sails, and skyscrapers, and cloud-rakers. But I shall not
+believe in them till I see them; a skysail seems high enough in all
+conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems
+preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush
+the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a
+flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these
+cloud-defying cloud-rakers.
+
+Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch sailor
+came up to me, and said, "Buttons, my boy, it's high time you be doing
+something; and it's boy's business, Buttons, to loose de royals, and not
+old men's business, like me. Now, d'ye see dat leelle fellow way up
+dare? dare, just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up, now, Buttons, I
+zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons."
+
+All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that it
+was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing boy's business, as
+they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into the rigging. Up I
+went, not dating to look down, but keeping my eyes glued, as it were, to
+the shrouds, as I ascended.
+
+It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the Jacob's
+Ladder; and they may well call it so, for it took me almost into the
+clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself hanging on the
+skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and curling my feet
+round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands.
+
+For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far out
+upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my lofty
+perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all round, by
+beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds;
+and every second, expected to find myself falling--falling--falling, as I
+have felt when the nightmare has been on me.
+
+I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow plank in
+the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard, over which
+I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying round the
+truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it almost
+frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at such a
+lofty and solitary height.
+
+Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship's motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.
+
+But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though I
+could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the gaskets, or lines tying up the sail; and when all was ready,
+sung out as I had been told, to "hoist away!" And hoist they did, and me
+too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to get off, they
+were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like magic; there I was,
+going up higher and higher; the yard rising under me, as if it were
+alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at the time, I was in a
+good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I could not see well enough
+to feel afraid--at least on that account; though I felt frightened enough
+in a promiscuous way. I only held on hard, and made good the saying of
+old sailors, that the last person to fall overboard from the rigging is
+a landsman, because he grips the ropes so fiercely; whereas old tars are
+less careful, and sometimes pay the penalty.
+
+After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something like
+a compliment from Max the Dutchman.
+
+This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any rate,
+he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he deserves
+some mention.
+
+Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his wardrobe,
+and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and entertained some
+straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties of boys at sea.
+His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and as he wore a red
+shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking man I ever saw.
+
+Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very inflammable;
+and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words and
+imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.
+
+Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and often
+discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters when we
+got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the American
+Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American ships, Max
+prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a Yankee, and if
+he could, would have been very glad to have passed himself off for a
+born native.
+
+But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting discredit
+upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my wardrobe, by
+loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like many other
+well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also betrayed some
+anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when the ship's
+company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my awkwardness
+in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety on that head.
+
+He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task about
+my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had a
+finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
+
+
+It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at the
+foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were dripping
+with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were standing on
+the roof of a house in a shower.
+
+It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
+of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
+he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.
+
+I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
+imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend,
+Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane,
+between churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about
+myself.
+
+But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
+Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
+to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to
+think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
+school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
+cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
+name of the doctor.
+
+And doctors, cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
+for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
+serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
+green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jakp do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off a
+powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by a
+surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly I medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
+when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
+in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.
+
+Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and
+used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat over
+his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled and
+covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little leather
+strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the water in
+which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
+found this book was the Bible.
+
+I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his smoky
+studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than five
+feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove, the
+pipe of which stuck out of the roof.
+
+Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read; and
+big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till they
+hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it was no
+wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious passage in
+the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read, he called
+me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over, demanding
+an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could explain;
+not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left him poring
+over it still.
+
+He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are to
+be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered that a
+committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides their
+natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and broad-brimmed black
+hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored gentlemen called upon him,
+and remained conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more than an
+hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the sliding
+doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and
+preaching; and after that a psalm was sting and a benediction given;
+when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great
+perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there
+being only one seat besides the stove.
+
+But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of cold,
+wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and make his
+fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then dashing into
+his stove.
+
+So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did rip
+a little, for it would have tried old Job's temper, to be set to work
+making a fire in the water.
+
+Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket before
+the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into the door
+for a knocker; and wrote his name, "Mr. Thompson," over it, with a bit
+of red chalk.
+
+The men said he lived round the corner of Forecastle-square, opposite
+the Liberty Pole; because his cook-house was right behind the foremast,
+and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.
+
+Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard. When
+a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he "takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street."
+
+Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward's, who, being a handsome,
+dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway, went by the
+name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he wore when Mr.
+Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never wore that turban
+at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of frizzled hair, just like
+the large, round brush, used for washing windows, called a Pope's Head.
+
+He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests, and
+buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black, which,
+with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a serious
+young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.
+
+He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with something
+he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and looked more
+like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of his ring, and
+was always calling your attention to something, and pointing at it with
+his ornamented finger.
+
+He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the "Three Spaniards,"
+and "Charlotte Temple," and carried a lock of frizzled hair in his vest
+pocket, which he frequently volunteered to show to people, with his
+handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening, about sunset, these two,
+the cook and steward, used to sit on the little shelf in the cook-house,
+leaning up against each other like the Siamese twins, to keep from
+falling off, for the shelf was very short; and there they would stay
+till after dark, smoking their pipes, and gossiping about the events
+that had happened during the day in the cabin. And sometimes Mr.
+Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a chapter for the
+edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad profligate and gay
+deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful indiscretion. He would read
+over to him the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; and hold Joseph up
+to him as a young man of excellent principles, whom he ought to imitate,
+and not be guilty of his indiscretion any more. And Lavender would look
+serious, and say that he knew it was all true-he was a wicked youth, he
+knew it--he had broken a good many hearts, and many eyes were weeping for
+him even then, both in New York, and Liverpool, and London, and Havre.
+But how could he help it? He hadn't made his handsome face, and fine
+head of hair, and graceful figure. It was not he, but the others, that
+were to blame; for his bewitching person turned all heads and subdued
+all hearts, wherever he went. And then he would look very serious and
+penitent, and go up to the little glass, and pass his hands through his
+hair, and see how his whiskers were coming on.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS
+DREAM BOOK
+
+
+On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I thought
+I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.
+
+My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's-
+eye, or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck
+to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found
+myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not
+suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the
+deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a
+coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay there till I dressed
+myself and went up to remove it--a kind of interruption to my studies
+which annoyed me very much, when diligently occupied in reading.
+
+However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole, where
+we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest time I
+had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my back,
+during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.
+
+I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share they
+had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with Delirium Tremens in great gilt
+letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on the subject
+of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in the sailor
+book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in New York.
+
+But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap great
+profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr. Jones,
+who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top shelf, where
+it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that although I was
+going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good education; and
+that there was hardly any situation in life, however humble and
+depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in it to store
+his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And he added, that
+though it did look rather unfavorable for my future prospects, to be
+going to sea as a common sailor so early in life; yet, it would no doubt
+turn out for my benefit in the end; and, at any rate, if I would only
+take good care of myself, would give me a sound constitution, if nothing
+more; and that was not to be undervalued, for how many very rich men
+would give all their bonds and mortgages for my boyish robustness.
+
+He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined; and
+though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused the
+book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and unforeseen
+attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to retrieve the
+poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do in the world.
+
+Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked at
+the back: "Smith's Wealth of Nations." This not satisfying me, I glanced
+at the title page, and found it was an "Enquiry into the Nature and
+Causes" of the alleged wealth of nations. But happening to look further
+down, I caught sight of "Aberdeen," where the book was printed; and
+thinking that any thing from Scotland, a foreign country, must prove
+some way or other pleasing to me, I thanked Mr. Jones very kindly, and
+promised to peruse the volume carefully.
+
+So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page number
+one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and
+body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the philosopher's
+stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to
+silver and gold.
+
+Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me, as
+I commenced the first chapter, entitled "Of the causes of improvement in
+the productive power of labor." Dry as crackers and cheese, to be sure;
+and the chapter itself was not much better. But this was only getting
+initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret would be opened to me. So
+I read on and on, about "wages and profits of labor," without getting
+any profits myself for my pains in perusing it.
+
+Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I drank
+some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up for lost
+work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at home,
+lettered on the back, "The History of Rome" was quite as full of matter,
+and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether Mr. Jones had
+ever read the volume himself; and could not help remembering, that he
+had to get on a chair when he reached it down from its dusty shelf; that
+certainly looked suspicious.
+
+The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect:
+"Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods, 1798." So it
+must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones' father; and I wondered
+whether he had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had ever read
+it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say, never read
+their own books; writing them, being enough in all conscience.
+
+At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so
+sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use it
+for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I sometimes
+waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book could not have
+been the cause of that.
+
+And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor, and
+his Dream Book.
+
+Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the world,
+used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an Irish Cockney. By which I
+understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated in London,
+somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of brogue that I
+could hear.
+
+He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west cap
+flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked
+like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a
+walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle
+between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible
+story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a
+sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for
+a spell against the scurvy.
+
+He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.
+
+And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a fortune-
+teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house was
+much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.
+
+This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some
+cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state
+made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.
+
+The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down in
+a fray.
+
+So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer, and
+all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and calling him
+an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one night to an
+apothecary's, stated his case, and wanted to know what could be done for
+him.
+
+The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he called
+"Trafalgar Oil for restoring the hair," price one dollar; and told him
+that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have the desired
+effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called "Balm of Paradise, or the
+Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen." These high-sounding naval names
+delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there must be virtue in them.
+
+I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving, representing a
+young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his night-dress in
+the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying the Elixir to
+his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent stood a large
+bottle, conspicuously labeled, "Balm of Paradise." It seemed from the
+text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten with his hair-oil,
+and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that he had got out of
+bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet, seized the precious
+bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed again, getting up in the
+morning without knowing any thing about it. Which, indeed, was a most
+mysterious occurrence; and it was still more mysterious, how the
+engraver came to know an event, of which the actor himself was ignorant,
+and where there were no bystanders.
+
+Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to
+it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned
+with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual
+change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him
+to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle
+that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He
+would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and
+if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very
+great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his hair with oil,
+operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet, and want of a
+brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild horse's mane,
+and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue. Besides his
+collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself with several
+boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor doctor in New York,
+who by placards stuck on the posts along the wharves, advertised to
+remain standing at the northeast corner of Catharine Market, every
+Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and twelve in the morning,
+to receive calls from patients, distribute medicines, and give advice
+gratis.
+
+Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say; but at
+breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something as they
+do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the boarding-
+houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along with the
+pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of toothpicks. But
+they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western country.
+
+Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of horse
+salts (Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never went to sea
+without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently, also, take
+this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a rain storm.
+But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will doctor themselves
+with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty. And in this
+connection, some really frightful stories might be told; but I forbear.
+
+For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be the
+death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent you
+from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on board
+this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently turned
+into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and smoking
+like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for then, I
+bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof to bodily
+ill.
+
+But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one corner of
+his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with a red
+cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.
+
+It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which Napoleon
+Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an emperor.
+Hence it was entitled the Bonaparte Dream Book; for the magic of it lay
+in the interpretation of dreams, and their application to the foreseeing
+of future events; so that all preparatory measures might be taken
+beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and satisfactory
+every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means of figures, in
+some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was facilitated by a
+set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something like the Logarithm
+Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator.
+
+Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this Bonaparte Dream Book of
+his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers, and in his
+own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning before taking
+his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out of his bunk
+before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his pamphlet, and a
+bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin scratching his oily
+head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down strokes on his
+chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.
+
+Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.
+
+But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from his
+bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a husky
+voice--"Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!"
+
+"What benches?" growled Max-"What's the matter?"
+
+"Benches! benches!" screamed Blunt, without heeding him, "cut down the
+forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment's coming!"
+
+But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.
+
+I did not know exactly what he had meant by his benches; till, shortly
+after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether mankind would
+stand or sit at the Last Day.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
+
+
+This Dream Book of Blunt's reminds me of a narrow escape we had, early
+one morning.
+
+It was the larboard watch's turn to remain below from midnight till four
+o'clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out again
+about three o'clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he was
+desirous of at once having interpreted.
+
+So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering on
+the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed him
+and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship's company flying on
+deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.
+
+When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out Luff! Luff! to some one in the dark water before the ship. In
+that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great black
+hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely; and so
+near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in the wind,
+the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of Luff! Luff! that
+our own mate, was raising.
+
+In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys jerked
+out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our jib-boom
+thumping against our bows.
+
+Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been injured;
+for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging mixed with
+ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar with another
+jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against emergencies.
+
+The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all on
+board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our vessel
+was terribly reprimanded by the mate.
+
+No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port, meet
+their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels coming
+together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the middle watch
+of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like fighting elks, sink
+down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in death.
+
+While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a good
+breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in about
+seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to behold.
+All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard anchor was
+gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while every one of the
+lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same direction; so that she now
+carried small and unsightly jury-yards.
+
+When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered,
+but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and
+gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now
+entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known
+at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was
+brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed from head to foot.
+
+It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.
+
+Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
+look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
+become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
+though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
+them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
+when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
+having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
+that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible
+that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
+the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
+upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
+But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
+the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things
+which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can
+only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when
+experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day;
+inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of
+adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too
+bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest
+ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been
+struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some
+lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
+fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
+suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into
+death.
+
+
+
+
+XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF
+OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
+
+
+What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and
+reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a
+spit?
+
+It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt
+in a mist, that no London in the Novem-berest November ever equaled. The
+chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday?
+So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail
+for fear of accidents; and not only that, but here am I, poor
+Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the top of the
+"Sampson-Post," a lofty tower of timber, so called; and tolling the
+ship's bell, as if for a funeral.
+
+This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from
+our track.
+
+Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.
+
+The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little cord
+attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through
+my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like
+the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the lamented
+Cock-Robin.
+
+A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at
+both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred
+up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and
+no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.
+
+The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times: a
+vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.
+
+Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my duty
+as a sexton. But presently some one cried out--"There she blows! whales!
+whales close alongside!"
+
+A whale! Think of it! whales close to me, Wellingborough;--would my own
+brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and
+rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long,
+black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
+
+Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought
+they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh!
+regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when
+they descended to feed!
+
+It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I
+lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the
+story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an
+elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
+
+Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.
+
+But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter's, they say, and then go
+and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to your
+high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale's belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.
+
+On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves sailing
+through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small craft; and
+when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor saying,
+intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being on the limits. It
+is like a fisherman's walk, say they, three steps and overboard.
+
+Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the ocean
+between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes run
+down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their lamps
+trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.
+
+As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of three
+hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some forty or
+fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous to
+sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at the
+bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called "arming" the lead.
+
+We "hove" our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel's heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the sailors
+carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of the
+jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it went,
+with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern, when the
+line ran out of the tub like light.
+
+When we came to haul it up, I was astonished at the force necessary to
+perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line, which was rove
+through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were hauling up a fat
+porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all eagerness to examine
+the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the bottom of the sea; but
+the sailors did not seem to be much interested by it, calling me a fool
+for wanting to preserve a few grains of the sand.
+
+I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which we
+found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact, of our being
+in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the drawing
+of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer. In the
+absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the temperature
+of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the ocean, and the
+temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than that of the Grand
+Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of temperature, for which
+there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen impute the fogs on the
+coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why there should always be
+such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that I do not know has ever
+been accounted for.
+
+It is curious to dip one's finger in a bucket full of the Gulf Stream,
+and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this current
+comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North
+Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles,
+as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth
+being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger than that
+of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of
+hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of Florida, running
+at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN
+
+
+The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed
+his duty very well.
+
+When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his
+intimate acquaintance with the monsters.
+
+"They ar'n't sperm whales," said Larry, "their spouts ar'n't bushy
+enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
+they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
+Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
+Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye, men,
+them's Crinkum-crankum whales."
+
+"And what are them?" said a sailor.
+
+"Why, them is whales that can't be cotched."
+
+Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very
+hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
+strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.
+
+This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
+reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
+merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to "blubber-
+boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan.
+But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well
+understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
+order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise
+have encountered.
+
+He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
+the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.
+
+"Why," said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, "in Madagasky
+there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the
+midships; they don't have no dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat
+pigs and dogs; they don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all
+the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
+make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine
+country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!"
+
+To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.
+
+"And what's the use of bein' snivelized!" said he to me one night during
+our watch on deck; "snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on
+'bout life, and snivel. You don't see any Methodist chaps feelin'
+dreadful about their souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky
+constables in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
+their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say."
+
+Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
+
+"Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?" coming
+close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. "No; you ar'n't a bit--but you're a good deal worse for it,
+Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this
+dog's life, if you hadn't been snivelized--that's the cause why, now.
+Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete; I
+might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too darned bad! Blast
+Ameriky, I say." And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole
+past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still
+lower down over the bridge of his nose.
+
+In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's man we had, who
+went by the name of "Gun-Deck," from his always talking of sailor life
+in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious
+mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
+braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly
+prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed
+down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always
+took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
+pretty toes to show his charming feet.
+
+He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida,
+and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through
+the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I remember his
+telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from
+them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
+plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.
+This plate proved his death; for, according to Gun-Deck, he himself shot
+it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a
+rat-killing war, he said.
+
+Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and Madagasky.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
+
+
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the
+like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain poured
+down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off
+the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our
+knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.
+
+This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly
+prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.
+
+The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.
+
+It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I could
+hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship. But
+while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me
+look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a
+handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her
+wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish
+kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.
+
+This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.
+
+The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue
+again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We
+bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain
+in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed
+alongside of it.
+
+It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that
+must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks were
+pretty much gone; and here and there the bare stanchions, or posts, were
+left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the
+deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was snapt off less
+than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered remnant
+looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods. Every
+time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned
+into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a
+rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.
+
+At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck,
+something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic
+of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a
+signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.
+
+Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark,
+green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise
+were motionless. I saw the captain's, glass directed toward them, and
+heard him say at last, "They must have been dead a long time." These
+were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for
+safety; but must have famished.
+
+Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain
+would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the
+schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so
+much as learning the schooner's name, though every one supposed her to
+be a New Brunswick lumberman.
+
+On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did
+not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.
+
+So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot
+for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.
+
+"Look there," said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing-"look
+there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons," turning round to
+me--"how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with
+them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?" And then he tried to laugh,
+but only coughed again. "Don't laugh at dem poor fellows," said Max,
+looking grave; "do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de
+Cape of Dood Hope."
+
+"Dood Hope, Dood Hope," shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking
+the Dutchman, "dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned
+and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights."
+
+"No, no," said Blunt, "all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft."
+
+"And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?" howled
+Jackson through a cough. "Don't talk of heaven to me--it's a lie--I know
+it--and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek,
+that there's any heaven for you? Will they let you in there, with that
+tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some shark gulps you
+down his hatchway one of these days, you'll find, that by dying, you'll
+only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney!
+Yes, you'll be bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like
+to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box
+on 'em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!" And so saying, he went
+off, holding his hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour
+was come.
+
+Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and
+mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the
+time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.
+
+Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his tawny
+skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and earth.
+He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable
+curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near
+him.
+
+But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his
+wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness,
+there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and
+touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this
+Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
+
+
+As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out.
+But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know
+that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in
+connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between
+the two ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader to
+Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she
+pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her
+voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination. Merchant
+vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come
+under the general head of transient ships; which implies that they are
+here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.
+
+But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
+aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is, that
+although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the
+best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years
+of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions--like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens
+--and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.
+
+Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many
+a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from
+Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of
+Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages
+at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the
+literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure
+and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across
+the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck, too, where
+these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of
+the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where
+reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria
+mundi! Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like a
+broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning
+business.
+
+So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
+accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
+five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
+on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.
+
+He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger--the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
+
+Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
+going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
+concerning the signs of the times.
+
+He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck
+with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he would rise,
+and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But
+looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room, where you
+could see him through the little window, in an irregular sitting
+position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth, and his
+head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound meditation, with
+his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen reading; never took
+a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine; never conversed; and
+never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.
+
+He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no
+need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe. Conjecture
+was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his business. The
+sailors, who are always curious with regard to such matters, and
+criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware
+at the time, completely exhausted themselves in suppositions, some of
+which are characteristically curious.
+
+One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to
+the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.
+
+But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes
+confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they were all
+sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character. But this is
+the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling
+of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have done.
+
+However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions,
+this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and
+collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him. Sometimes,
+of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a
+hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the
+skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
+Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of
+salts, by way of precaution against his spells.
+
+When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this
+cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called "making a spread
+eagle" of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted,
+that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship's company with
+money enough for a treat all round.
+
+Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the
+keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and he such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for levying
+contributions.
+
+One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way
+up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on
+with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully
+turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the
+nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must
+have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, "you will surely
+fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!"
+
+But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called to the sight,
+than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger,
+and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot. The
+stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently
+remonstrated; but in vain; for as his tearfulness of falling made him
+keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any
+effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome spread-eagle of, to
+the great satisfaction of the crew.
+
+It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his
+reservedness.
+
+"Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?"
+
+"Spread-eagle, sir," said the Greenlander, thinking that those few words
+would at once make the matter plain.
+
+"Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?"
+
+"Treats all round, sir," said the Greenlander, wondering at the other's
+obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.
+
+At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor,
+and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was
+suffered to descend.
+
+The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince's
+Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown. He had
+nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked
+stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.
+
+I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?--just the girl
+to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;
+her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her eyes were
+blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most
+devoted.
+
+To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain's charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.
+
+And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.
+
+Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of
+her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady's guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby
+they look.
+
+But for all this, the passage 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 passengers. 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 shirt
+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 passage down in its
+bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became
+shockingly obvious.
+
+I had almost forgotten another passenger 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 molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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 ship 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
+passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
+heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
+the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
+between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
+two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head
+for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the Atlantic. There are
+plenty of passengers 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 ship 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 tit-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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin
+and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing their
+best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers 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 ashore 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 Lancashire 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 ashore 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 passage 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire
+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 oakum. 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 ashore 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 ship 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 repetitions, 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
+ship 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 ship
+at sea, and a ship 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 rushing 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.
+
+By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
+before.
+
+He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright
+tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
+vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to
+it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm
+stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
+glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up
+and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on
+her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when
+he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
+and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say, did not fit
+him very well, for ever after he looked as if he limped. Then this
+figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one eye, and
+repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the painter came and made his
+toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of
+a beautiful pattern.
+
+I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and
+snug with a handsome pension in the "Sailors'-Snug-Harbor" on Staten
+Island.
+
+The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer
+was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art,
+upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage; for if
+the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he
+keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to its
+precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may be
+pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for John
+o' Groat's; all of which is worse than wasted time. Whereas, a true
+steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a
+bee-line from port to port.
+
+Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm,
+might make the ship "lurch to"--or "bring her by the lee." And what those
+things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when they found
+themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
+moon and stars.
+
+And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they
+are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence,
+is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the
+wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or
+looking out to windward.
+
+Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with
+one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind,
+might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving
+last wills and testaments.
+
+Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man who
+might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is the
+case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room
+occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass of
+cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested with the
+underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark, that of
+the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or inefficient;
+and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and crying out:
+"Luff, you rascal; she's falling off!" or, "Keep her steady, you
+scoundrel, you're boxing the compass!" then hurry down to your state-
+room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery and
+go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus'
+log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next
+gale of wind.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
+
+
+Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which
+I drew on a blank leaf of the "Wealth of Nations," and studied it every
+morning, like the multiplication table.
+
+I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; arid I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.
+
+Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm.
+It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned
+in it by night.
+
+It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one
+side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I
+been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed them
+so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds within;
+and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different air may
+be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste. Nor must I
+omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction, and a
+particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of cogs and
+wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something like a
+printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it
+much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers,
+by catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances. Then,
+sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the
+helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like
+Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.
+
+The harness-cask, also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe,
+in which a week's allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves
+being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of the
+quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat, where he
+would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking teeth.
+He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.
+
+Then the magnificent capstan! The pride and glory of the whole ship's
+company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty
+it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of
+distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a parlor center-
+table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with
+brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
+mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge, and the chief
+mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for
+memorandums.
+
+I might proceed and speak of the booby-hatch, used as a sort of settee
+by the officers, and the fife-rail round the mainmast, inclosing a
+little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue
+ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master's daughter, used to
+take his morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New
+York Bowling-Green.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
+
+
+As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration,
+though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority.
+For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing
+yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the
+darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
+topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an
+indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he
+is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of
+ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other
+matters familiar to an "able seaman."
+
+What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast, and
+sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have turned in a
+dead-eye, or in the approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the
+main-stay? What did I know of "passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton,"
+"strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse," and innumerable other
+intricacies?
+
+The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
+a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.
+
+In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
+sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
+where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
+of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
+that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
+sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
+but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
+destroy the great nursery for British seamen.
+
+A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a
+bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the
+shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns
+for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to
+tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's roses, and Turk's
+heads; he must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the
+halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing
+rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of
+a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend
+the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline and Spanish foxes; a
+blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must
+be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And this,
+perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
+things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason
+we never know anything.
+
+A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
+to his calling--fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
+palms, heavers, and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries
+with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.
+
+The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul
+ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means
+that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an artist in the
+rigging.
+
+Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
+mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that
+these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had
+only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
+and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which
+instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to.
+All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my
+backbone--comparatively small though it was at that time--by way of a
+lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
+Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set
+to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a
+religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other,
+never mind what, during their watch on deck.
+
+Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality
+attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they would
+drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers
+seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from
+the chief mate for my clumsiness.
+
+At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.
+
+However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.
+
+Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly, in
+the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.
+
+All but the "turning out" or rising from your berth when the watch was
+called at night--that I never fancied. It was a sort of acquaintance,
+which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a thankless,
+miserable business, truly.
+
+Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go below
+to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your wearied
+limbs, you are started up--it seems but the next instant after closing
+your lids--and hurried on deck again, into the same disagreeably dark
+and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended into the
+forecastle.
+
+The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at least
+the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other watch,
+just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my ear--
+"Watch below, Buttons; watch below"--which pleasantly reminded me of
+the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side, and take another
+nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in my bunk to
+the other sailor's one. I recommend the plan to all landsmen
+contemplating a voyage to sea.
+
+But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel could
+not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men on
+deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would call
+the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.
+
+As thus:--
+
+"Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my lively
+hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a hand, bear
+a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine
+shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
+cold!"
+
+Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers
+would reply with--"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a
+hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of
+which were full of fury.
+
+And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of the
+ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became the
+wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
+
+
+The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
+passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen days,
+employed us about thirty.
+
+At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
+in sight.
+
+Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard, but
+could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast. Was
+that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If that's the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
+have staid at home.
+
+Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
+say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed at
+it with increasing interest.
+
+Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
+Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
+thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my
+uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the
+gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I
+thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin and
+the Giant's Causeway.
+
+Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
+but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
+other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary man
+in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
+probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
+friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
+
+He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out--"Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my
+beautiful sailors?" And concluded by calling upon; us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed I the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, "pay out!
+pay out, my honeys; ah! but you're noble fellows!" Till at last the mate
+asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, "Haven't you enough
+rope yet?"
+
+"Sure and I have," replied the fisherman, "and it's time for Pat to cut
+and run!" and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a Kilkenny
+grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the wind, and
+bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.
+
+"And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
+you Irish blackguard!" cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
+boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
+
+Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.
+
+The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
+
+Could this be really Wales?-Wales?--and I thought of the Prince of Wales.
+
+And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?--And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker's Hill.
+
+But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
+like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
+
+With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made Holyhead
+and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind we had, was
+ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through the water,
+and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance,
+which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself in
+conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.
+
+The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so near
+our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.
+
+He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our New
+York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was a
+plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing
+through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner,
+that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or twelve
+other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats,
+who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering in
+Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though, together;
+cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound vessels;
+smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns; till at
+last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different ships,
+and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool
+taproom, and prepare for another yachting.
+
+Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he had
+been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for here
+was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon
+fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.
+
+After running till about midnight, we "hove-to" near the mouth of the
+Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first of the flood;
+and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its mouth, is
+quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed
+immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
+shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.
+
+As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image of
+Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while
+the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a
+mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.
+
+It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of the
+vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.
+
+Who was dead, and what could it be?
+
+I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous Bett-Buoy,
+which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast or slow,
+according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a
+moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like
+the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller of dirges
+for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no one can give ear
+to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far beneath it at the
+bottom of the deep.
+
+As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon, passing
+two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew near the
+town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.
+
+Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There
+they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good and
+substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends had
+in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.
+
+To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.
+
+But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, "Why, this 'ere is a
+considerable place--I'm dummed if it ain't quite a place.--Why, them 'ere
+houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afrilcy, all
+hollow; nothing like this in Madagasky, I tell you;--I'm dummed, boys if
+Liverpool ain't a city!"
+
+Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a "realizing sense." He was accordingly
+astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for
+the country which could boast so extensive a town. Instead of holding
+Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of Madagascar, as he had been
+accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to that lady with feeling and
+respect.
+
+As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to kindle
+no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They looked
+around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as you or I
+would, if, after a morning's absence round the corner, we found
+ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages
+to Liverpool.
+
+Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of them
+stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some thirty
+years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among
+the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately was
+forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of Sally.
+
+Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had often
+assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse of his;
+and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of seeing her.
+But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen, and
+their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round world over;
+and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between this very
+Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his, for what I
+thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my astonishment,
+therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming with a neat
+parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and ironed, and
+ready to put on at a moment's warning.
+
+They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife after
+long separations.
+
+At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved himself
+in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and going down
+into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having
+exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and
+this was precisely what the New York wife had done for Max, not thirty I
+days previous.
+
+So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.
+
+But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York wife,
+to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and equally
+devoted to the keeping in good order Max's wardrobe.
+
+And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as Meg
+had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max precisely as
+Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives
+never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much as a
+difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being between them; and
+Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many years, he had been
+going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between wife and wife with
+great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic welcome on
+either side of the ocean.
+
+Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every way
+immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the subject.
+But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very savagely; and
+after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded
+by asking me triumphantly, whether old King Sol, as he called the son of
+David, did not have a whole frigate-full of wives; and that being the
+case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have just as good a right to
+have two? "What was not wrong then, is right now," said Max; "so, mind
+your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
+
+
+In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up the
+anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming against
+other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and about
+dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in Prince's Dock. The hawsers
+and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to go ashore,
+select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord's
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six weeks,
+as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however--the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch--feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give them
+at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed, is
+but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the scurvy.
+A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with immeasurable
+disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if their captains
+treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.
+
+It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first time, I
+felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating into my
+eyes and lungs. As for stepping on it, that was out of the question, in
+the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have
+an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into
+the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal
+loam-but not till then.
+
+Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we stopped
+before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded
+bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn
+and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and lamb in
+the millennium.--A very judicious and tasty device, showing a delicate
+apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors in an
+English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the honor and
+dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon a footing
+of perfect equality.
+
+Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for a
+young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was holding
+up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was a sort of
+basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing
+by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a grin, he
+answered, "Why, youngster, don't you know what that means? It's a young
+jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy."
+
+Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down
+American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a
+buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and
+not the sailor, proved to be the head of the establishment.
+
+She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among the
+seamen went by the name of "Handsome Mary." But though, from the
+dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and
+conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no means
+an Amazon to her husband, if she did play a masculine part in other
+matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too much
+attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went
+about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
+fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating her.
+The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to give him a
+thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them not to do
+so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.
+
+But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable bar
+of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it stared
+upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.
+
+It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.
+
+Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then
+they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:
+
+   "No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
+    Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
+    In jolly good ale and old,--
+    I stuff my skin so full within,
+    Of jolly good ale and old."
+
+Or this,
+
+   "Four wines and brandies I detest,
+    Here's richer juice from barley press'd.
+    It is the quintessence of malt,
+    And they that drink it want no salt.
+    Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,
+    And water henceforth you'll forswear."
+
+Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and remonstrances
+with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a toper, Bob
+Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter of his
+paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule
+with thy spouse?
+
+The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs pour
+out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air in a
+vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher
+in it.
+
+But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank
+in a fog and a drizzle.
+
+Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small room
+on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with a
+courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among our
+crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my shipmates
+were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.
+
+I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little room,
+with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon a
+smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which was
+horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.
+
+A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from the
+ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an endless
+succession of vessels of all nations continually circumnavigating the
+apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map
+was hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
+nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
+bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.
+
+And this is England?
+
+But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not
+the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.
+
+Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance to
+see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen is
+not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St. James's.
+
+It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world as a
+sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go round the
+world, without going into it; and their reminiscences of travel are only
+a dim recollection of a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe,
+parallel with the Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle;
+hover about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and
+pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland to see
+Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending a car overland
+to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.
+
+From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying from
+room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, "Supper, supper ready."
+
+Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against
+the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting
+his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never heard.
+
+But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance of
+solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared thus?--the
+sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?
+
+First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles' shield,
+sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway
+was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese;
+and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over
+tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
+potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a stand
+adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper table.
+
+We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.
+
+Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of the
+girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice thing to
+take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was too late
+for tea; but she would get me a cup of "swipes" if I wanted it.
+
+Not knowing what "swipes" might be, I thought I would run the risk and
+try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour flavor,
+as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never patronized
+swipes again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it
+was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my shipmates,
+who pronounced it good.
+
+But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this stripes, as I
+learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard kind of
+beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I do not
+remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that swipes
+was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it as
+answering to the name itself; which is certainly significant of
+something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by the poor people
+about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree, accounts for their
+poverty.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF
+SAILORS
+
+
+The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but as I do not mean
+to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record the
+general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and will
+then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and
+impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after the lapse of
+so many years.
+
+But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during our
+stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the Arms Hotel, I believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.
+
+From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.
+
+Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad, roystering
+nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have delighted in. For
+company over the cabin-table, he would have four or five whiskered
+sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all
+the time. And once, the whole company were found under the table at four
+o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and tucked in by the two
+mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our woolly Doctor of Divinity,
+the black cook, that they should have been ashamed of themselves; but
+there is no shame in some sea-captains, who only blush after the third
+bottle.
+
+During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.
+
+And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.
+
+And now, to proceed with the crew.
+
+At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down; then
+we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at the
+rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other, never
+mind how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally knocked of at four o'clock
+in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And after
+four o'clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required to be
+on board again till next morning at daylight.
+
+As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were light
+enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some employment
+for us.
+
+We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore, relieving
+us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran on, as at sea.
+Sundays we had to ourselves.
+
+Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American ships in
+Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in leisure. They
+live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little wholesome
+exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to themselves.
+
+Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month's advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the
+time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to him;
+sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.
+
+Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most abounds
+in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which
+make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.
+
+Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of notorious
+Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in depravity are
+not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that is bottomless.
+
+And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to distant
+parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its charms and
+attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in the world. For
+in Liverpool they find their Paradise--not the well known street of that
+name--and one of them told me he would be content to lie in Prince's Dock
+till he hove up anchor for the world to come.
+
+Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever
+prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before
+the bane is removed.
+
+Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their being
+sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character,
+ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless
+and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are
+almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider
+that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
+of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a
+thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard even
+for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on crutches;
+consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better
+classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and
+improving society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind must very
+soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class, is not a very
+promising one.
+
+Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of those
+chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.
+
+Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels,
+and launched into the docks; though the "Boatswain's Mate" and other
+clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among
+them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains
+in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical
+boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of
+ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog
+while at sea:--notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the
+relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
+seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
+
+It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance, that
+unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one class
+makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because the
+sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the
+Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of
+Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and survived
+to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;--because the modern
+tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off some of his
+shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney queue:--therefore, in the
+estimation of some observers, he has begun to see the evils of his
+condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon a closer scrutiny, it
+will be seen that he has but drifted along with that great tide, which,
+perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of
+his own.
+
+There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and
+glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve
+in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift
+them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on
+something the insiders must roll.
+
+Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe;
+they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of
+fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate
+in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop
+here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the
+American Congress.
+
+And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun
+him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you
+throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?--No. You will do no such thing; but
+at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And
+the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more
+than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless
+to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the
+earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through
+romances.
+
+But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up
+from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems
+and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for
+with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as
+hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.
+
+But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those who
+toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and tenderly
+cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father of all,
+and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.
+
+
+
+
+XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD
+GUIDE-BOOKS
+
+
+Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a collection of old
+European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his travels, a
+great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many courses of
+studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
+embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages, some
+of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of foreigners. Among
+others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered pamphlet, the rouge
+here and there effaced upon its now thin and attenuated cheeks,
+entitled, "Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau
+Paris: Miroir Fidele" also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in
+marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, "Itineraire
+Instructif de Rome, ou Description Generale des Monumens Antiques et
+Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables de Peinteur, de
+Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Celebre Ville;" on the russet
+title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock, partly shaded by a
+scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock
+and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless
+foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
+twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground, with
+locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation; a large
+cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the wolf looks a good deal
+like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows; the work is published
+"Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife." There was also a velvet-bound old
+volume, in brass clasps, entitled, "The Conductor through Holland" with
+a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable "Picture of London"
+abounding in representations of St. Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and
+Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
+reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an
+elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the
+cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, "The Great Roads, both
+direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual
+Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
+describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those
+at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of the Mails' arrival
+and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which
+the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses and
+carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats situated near
+the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath, Brighton, and
+Margate." It is dedicated "To the Right Honorable the Earls of
+Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient,
+and Obsequious Servant, John Gary, 1798." Also a green pamphlet, with a
+motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms on the cover, looking
+like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete, entitled, "A Description of
+York, its Antiquities and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral;
+compiled with great pains from the most authentic records." Also a small
+scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
+frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
+King's College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
+geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, "The Cambridge Guide: its
+Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
+and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral." Also a pamphlet,
+with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
+higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
+accurate representation of the "North or Grand Front of Blenheim," and
+entitled, "A Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
+Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and
+Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General
+Description of the famous China Gallery, 6-c.; with an Essay on
+Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a
+New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park." And lastly, and to the purpose,
+there was a volume called "THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL."
+
+It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.
+
+But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from the
+life.
+
+As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear to
+my boyhood,--the very pages which, years and years ago, my father turned
+over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft, pleasing
+sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!
+
+Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
+Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
+myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles.
+I will, my beloved,--old family relic that you are;--till you drop leaf
+from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
+somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
+
+In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is bound in green
+morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
+tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
+red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that he
+who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
+
+But let us open the volume.
+
+What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
+writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
+falling air-castles? Ah, no!--these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
+
+Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, "Drawn at the age of three
+years," and under this autograph, "Executed at the age of eight."
+
+Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
+the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
+
+But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry captain
+of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine;
+this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
+fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
+
+Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father's
+hand-writing, the following:--
+
+"WALTER REDBURN.
+
+"Riddough's Royal Hotel, Liverpool, March 20th, 1808."
+
+Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father's, which he must have made at various times during
+his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
+midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous effacements, it
+is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I must here copy a few
+at random:--
+
+                                      �  s. d
+
+    Guide-Book                           3  6
+    Dinner at the Star and Garter          10
+    Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)  2  6  3
+    Gratuities                              4
+    Hack                                 4  6
+    Thompson's Seasons                      5
+    Library                                 1
+    Boat on the river                       6
+    Port wine and cigar                     4
+
+And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:
+
+    Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.
+    Call upon Mr. Morille same day.
+    Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.
+    Theatre Friday night--Richard III. and new farce.
+    Present letter at Miss L----'s on Tuesday.
+    Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.
+    Get my draft on London cashed.
+    Write home by the Princess.
+    Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.
+
+Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of the
+British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is "A
+Plan of the Town of Liverpool." But there seems little plan in the
+confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a
+peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.
+
+On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.
+
+Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in all
+directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked "Riddough's
+Hotel," the house my father stopped at.
+
+These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow
+the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and
+penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.
+
+By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a
+foreign land; but attended St. John's Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.
+
+Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head
+with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval
+sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto
+elastically stretched for a border--"Deus nobis haec otia fecit."
+
+The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation
+of a now extinct fowl, called the "Liver," said to have inhabited a
+"pool," which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground
+where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool
+derives its name.
+
+At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.
+
+Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following
+title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a
+facsimile:--
+
+                         The Picture
+                         of Liverpool:
+                     or, Stranger's Guide
+               and Gentleman's Pocket Companion
+                         FOR THE TOWN.
+                          Embellished
+                        With Engravings
+          By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.
+                           Liverpool:
+                   Printed in Swift's Court,
+      And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
+
+A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes "testimonies of respect which
+had lately appeared in various quarters--the British Critic, Review, and
+the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales"--and concludes
+by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition
+might "render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy
+also of the subject it is intended to illustrate."
+
+A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and place
+of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope Place, 1st Sept.
+1803.
+
+But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour of
+the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.
+
+But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable author
+must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.
+
+He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy him
+a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that
+his noblest epitaph.
+
+After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:--
+
+"Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain, Pours his full
+tribute to the circling main, A band of fishers chose their humble seat;
+Contented labor blessed the fair retreat, Inured to hardship, patient,
+bold, and rude, They braved the billows for precarious food: Their
+straggling huts were ranged along the shore, Their nets and little boats
+their only store."
+
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical quotations,
+and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and Falconer's
+Shipwreck.
+
+And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his "Survey of the Town" are nine thickly
+printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.
+
+By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the public
+of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces it by
+saying, that "the poem has now for several years been scarce, and is at
+present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no
+doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this
+noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest
+delicacy of feeling."
+
+Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that the
+author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic. But
+that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so uncharitable a
+reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.
+
+This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old stately
+style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings of
+Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when
+"his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like
+all Parnassus with:--
+
+"Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds, From northern climes to
+India's distant bounds--Where'er his shores the broad Atlantic waves;
+Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves; Where'er the honored flood
+extends his tide, That clasps Sicilia like a favored bride. Greenland
+for her its bulky whale resigns, And temperate Gallia rears her generous
+vines: 'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow, And the ripe fruitage
+bends the laboring bough; In every clime her prosperous fleets are
+known, She makes the wealth of every clime her own."
+
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:--
+
+   "And here R*s*o*, with genius all his own, New tracks explores,
+    and all before unknown?"
+
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the wannest appreciation
+of the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation
+which gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce.
+He is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with classical
+admiration.
+
+The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of
+William the Conqueror.
+
+Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding his
+numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man of
+Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that the
+soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.
+
+But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves "her majesty's poor decayed town
+of Liverpool."
+
+As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, "On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants," and then skim over page after page
+throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense grandeur
+of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in population,
+opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must look back
+upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable
+superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
+of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the corner-
+stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in great part
+of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however imposing,
+we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the grander domes
+of posterity.
+
+And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now
+growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs,
+centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then
+obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
+going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house,
+and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a
+Hellenic antiquity.
+
+As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified style
+of this "Picture of Liverpool," so different from the brief, pert, and
+unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the present day, I shall
+now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches; especially as it is
+entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
+information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous town, to
+which I made my first voyage. And I think that with regard to a matter,
+concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote
+my old friend verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
+information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it off as
+original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book its due.
+
+But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down the pages into a
+soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye, shed over the type all the
+pleasant associations which the original carries to me!
+
+No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will not quote thee, old Morocco,
+before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities
+would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for
+me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from
+a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE
+TOWN
+
+
+When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
+that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
+probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.
+
+Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.
+
+On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
+I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town,
+as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the
+columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored
+over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was
+determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a
+mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most
+students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with
+the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.
+
+In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.
+
+In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there
+depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the
+map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I could
+march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the most
+distant dock upon a pressing emergency.
+
+Dear delusion!
+
+It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty
+years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove
+but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his
+son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any discrepancy,
+never entered my mind.
+
+While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, you, at least, are all right.
+
+But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the crew
+went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.
+
+The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's Dock's walls;
+and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to compare notes,
+when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and my shipmates were
+standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my
+infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding, that
+it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while to visit it for the
+purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the evening.
+
+This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a castle?
+and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn out; yet not
+a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not, for one small
+discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so faithfully served
+my own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern went by the
+name of "The Old Fort Tavern;" and when I was told that many of the old
+stones were yet in the walls, I almost completely exonerated my
+guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of misleading me.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now, thought I,
+my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and down lane,
+even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.
+
+I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions "with
+Eastern scrupulosity," and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier, to
+one of the sailor.
+
+My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded them
+not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.
+
+My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may have
+been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a drunken
+sailor passing, exclaimed, "Eyes right! quick step there!"
+
+Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting; and
+one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out upon
+me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches and
+newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued
+forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the
+street, and commanded me to halt! I obeyed; when scanning my appearance
+pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that tarpaulin hat, not
+being able to account for the phenomenon of its roofing the head of a
+broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship, which lay at no great
+distance; when remarking from my voice that I was a Yankee, this
+faithful functionary permitted me to pass.
+
+It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks are
+extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy
+"shakings," and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
+out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the walls. And
+often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's clothes, even if he
+be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost imperceptible pockets.
+
+But where was I going?
+
+I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit Riddough's
+Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years before: and
+then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the town,
+according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.
+
+At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.
+
+Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.
+
+How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue coat,
+buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son of his
+would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was
+not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as
+thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My own
+father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so much as
+dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me; for if it
+had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never cast a
+thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father's having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.
+
+But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed on
+my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then, going
+under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants' Exchange.
+
+There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced my
+father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very arch at
+my back, into the paved square where I stood.
+
+So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so narrow
+the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running on, and
+overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son's search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.
+
+But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and turned
+to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was correct to
+a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle. This,
+however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.
+
+The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated upon
+a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring in the
+arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other on a
+cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral's brow; while
+Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating his
+bony hand under the hero's robe, and groping after his heart. A very
+striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look at
+Death without a shudder.
+
+At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked figures
+in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various attitudes of
+humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown over his
+knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope of ever
+feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and no doubt
+looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted at the
+time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures of
+captives are emblematic of Nelson's principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.
+
+And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to the
+historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town was
+once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution. And I
+remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting our
+house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father's
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem ("the Wrongs of Africa"), several pamphlets; and in his place in
+Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming from a
+member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes, and had no
+small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that ensued.
+
+How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the fact,
+that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the little
+arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to find
+Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory's wreath still hovering over his
+swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the four bronze
+captives still lamented their captivity.
+
+Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday I
+have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to let
+him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so called
+from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and turning
+down into Lord.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for the
+hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined, when
+it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house at
+which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to hear
+my questions and give me an answer.
+
+"Riddough's Hotel?" said he, "upon my word, I think I have heard of such
+a place; let me see--yes, yes--that was the hotel where my father broke
+his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can't be
+inquiring for Riddough's Hotel! What do you want to find there?"
+
+"Oh! nothing," I replied, "I am much obliged for your information"--and
+away I walked.
+
+Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book; and
+all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly half
+a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the town,
+than the map of Pompeii.
+
+It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on which
+I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book with
+the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family associations;
+the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest style of art;
+this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing that had guided
+the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on a shop step, and
+gave loose to meditation.
+
+Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough's Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling up,
+they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may behold,
+when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come after
+his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father's guidebook is no
+guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a modern one
+to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you. Guide-books,
+Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all literature; and
+nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones
+tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts
+of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace,
+amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a
+clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and the old ones are used for
+waste paper. But there is one Holy Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will
+never lead you astray, if you but follow it aright; and some noble
+monuments that remain, though the pyramids crumble.
+
+But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.
+
+No.--Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now and
+then, concerning a Riddough's Hotel, or some other forgotten thing of
+the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves more
+than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning "The Old Dock,"
+which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the place without
+delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right direction, at
+last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of sculptured
+brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from incontrovertible
+tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After admiring it awhile, I
+took out my guide-book again; and what was my amazement at discovering
+that, according to its authority, I was entirely mistaken with regard to
+this Custom-house; for precisely where I stood, "The Old Dock" must be
+standing, and reading on concerning it, I met with this very apposite
+passage:--"The first idea that strikes the stranger in coming to this
+dock, is the singularity of so great a number of ships afloat in the
+very heart of the town, without discovering any connection with the
+sea."
+
+Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good deal
+of "singularity" about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that it
+was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem to
+have no connection with the sea! However, the same author went on to
+say, that the "astonished stranger must suspend his wonder for awhile,
+and turn to the left." But, right or left, no place answering to the
+description was to be seen.
+
+This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted for,
+even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether he
+was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the "Old
+Dock." The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then seeing I was
+apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he whipped his
+well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his silver-laced
+coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the following facts.
+
+It seems that in this place originally stood the "pool," from which the
+town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound round the
+greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made into the
+"Old Dock," for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years ago, it had
+been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house before me.
+
+I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern traveler
+standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of Gomorrah
+seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into substantial stone
+and mortar.
+
+Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book into
+your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it is
+several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, "The
+Wars of the Lord" quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up,
+Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your
+nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin:
+and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire your landmarks.
+
+No!--And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I'll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of tie venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!
+
+For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was on
+the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire side,
+covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house of the
+noble Derby's was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!
+
+But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from the
+water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.
+
+Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit--a gull--a sham--a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the
+State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs--point out the vouchers.
+Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall? Show me
+Stonehenge!
+
+But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous shooting-jacket
+of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.
+
+True, true--that's it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am only a
+common-carrier across the Atlantic.
+
+After a weary day's walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer of tea, in
+which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. THE DOCKS
+
+
+For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock; and
+during that time, besides making observations upon things immediately
+around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring docks, for I
+never tired of admiring them.
+
+Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure, I
+could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.
+
+Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers
+of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely inclosed,
+and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind the great
+American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron, Michigan, and
+Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures, seemed equal to
+what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.
+
+Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the "Wet
+Dock," so called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected
+with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London
+was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In
+magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the
+present day surpass all others in the world.
+
+The first dock built by the town was the "Old Dock," alluded to in my
+Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710, since which
+period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry, now flanking
+the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
+
+For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after dock,
+like a chain of immense fortresses:--Prince's, George's, Salt-House,
+Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and many more.
+
+In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by their
+valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which Liverpool
+held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon its more
+modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might be proud
+of:--Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.
+
+But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble names
+upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank and file
+of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes, in
+connection with the commerce they defended.
+
+And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life and
+commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his Me. It is well enough that
+over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some vast
+marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having lived
+and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the
+marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build such
+a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his fame,
+and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built in the
+closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops himself could
+have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.
+
+Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the King's and
+Queens. At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal streets
+in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in
+the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to
+the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of
+freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where
+King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being
+immortalized by the village of L--. A country antiquary once told me,
+that a committee of two barbers were deputed to write and inform the
+distracted old gentleman of the fact.
+
+As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty much
+answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of Prince's
+Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the Atlantic.
+
+This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the largest
+of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact, that it is
+mostly frequented by the American ship-, ping. Here lie the noble New
+York packets, which at home are found at the foot of Wall-street; and
+here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and traders.
+
+This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the river,
+the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and solidified
+again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river, Prince's
+Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a massive
+wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar walls, one
+of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus inclosed forms
+an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise about fifteen or
+twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor when I took it in,
+I will not be certain.
+
+The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays surrounding
+it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the interior from the
+streets is had through several gateways; so that, upon their being
+closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From the river, the
+entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships is only to be
+had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of the river; that
+is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the dock is always at
+that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river, the keels of the
+ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than twenty feet above
+those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course, produces a striking
+effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense ships floating high
+aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.
+
+Prince's Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the entrance of
+a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all the older
+occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by tin signs
+worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and forecastles of
+the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers in all
+directions:--"Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and sheer
+alongside the Neptune!"--"Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and sheer
+alongside the Trident!"--"Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and drop
+astern of the Undaunted!" And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.
+
+Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the open
+river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin forms a
+sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie waiting their
+turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this basin is obvious;
+for it would be impossible to "dock" a ship under full headway from a
+voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent waves, she first glides into
+the ante-chamber between the pier-heads and from thence into the docks.
+
+Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the King's
+Dock, comprehending but a comparatively small area, was completed at an
+expense of some �20,000.
+
+Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed the
+seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the ships
+which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King William's war,
+in 1688, entered the King's Dock on the first day of its being opened in
+1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a dark little brig,
+called the Port-a-Ferry. And probably, as her timbers must have been
+frequently renewed in the course of a hundred years, the name alone
+could have been all that was left of her at the time. A paved area, very
+wide, is included within the walls; and along the edge of the quays are
+ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary shelter for the goods
+unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the bustle and activity
+displayed along these quays during the day; bales, crates, boxes, and
+cases are being tumbled about by thousands of laborers; trucks are
+corning and going; dock-masters are shouting; sailors of all nations are
+singing out at their ropes; and all this commotion is greatly increased
+by the resoundings from the lofty walls that hem in the din.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
+
+
+Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled
+town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago,
+an epitome of the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even
+those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in itself, each ship is an
+island, a floating colony of the tribe to which it belongs.
+
+Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the
+collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and New
+Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak; Norway
+her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and
+Cam-peachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under the beneficent
+sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries embrace; and
+yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.
+
+A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious
+and liberal plan of the Astor House. Here ships are lodged at a moderate
+charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure. Here
+they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all
+weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can hardly credit a
+story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the
+very middle of the docks have lost their top-gallant-masts. Whatever the
+toils and hardships encountered on the voyage, whether they come from
+Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here their sufferings are ended, and
+they take their ease in their watery inn.
+
+I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince's
+Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects
+in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn,
+battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o--spruce, gay, and
+brilliant, in readiness for sea.
+
+Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid, thrifty-
+looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French hermaphrodite,
+its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck elastic from
+much dancing.
+
+On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart's or Delmonico's
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its
+live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending
+their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.
+
+I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-
+boat, but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which
+looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard. These
+little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for ships
+bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of those
+lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the carcass
+of a black buffalo.
+
+When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;
+and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying
+through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man
+at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.
+
+It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of
+these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an
+admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of
+himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was
+none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might
+only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a
+triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories of
+Alexander.
+
+These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charming-est, most
+delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair,
+as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple like
+this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of
+cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling
+forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.
+
+Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher,
+and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house
+all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had
+an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the evening; and he
+invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together
+like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.
+
+"He, he," he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask of
+beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet--"You see, Jack, I
+keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself. Just before
+going to bed, it ain't bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh! Jack?--here
+now, smack your lips over that, my boy--have a pipe?--but stop, let's to
+supper first."
+
+So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping
+in it awhile, and addressing it with--"What cheer here, what cheer?" at
+last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of butter.
+And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the pitcher of
+beer in the center. "Why that's but a two legged table," said I, "let's
+make it four."
+
+So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.
+
+He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my
+soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.
+
+"Now Jack," said he, when supper was over, "now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?--Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.
+
+"He, he, my boy," then said he--"I don't never have any bugs here, I tell
+ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed."
+
+"And where may you sleep?" said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
+a bed.
+
+"Sleep?" says he, "why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?"
+
+"Very funny," says I.
+
+"Have some more ale?" says he; "plenty more." "No more, thank you," says
+I; "I guess I'll go;" for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I
+began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote me
+for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.
+
+"Now, don't go," said he; "don't go, my boy; don't go out into the damp;
+take an old Christian's advice," laying his hand on my shoulder; "it
+won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and get
+broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping off for
+a nice little nap."
+
+But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large
+New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing
+comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.
+
+Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
+forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
+ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.
+
+They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing
+the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom
+of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as
+they hie to the land of the stranger.
+
+And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
+valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
+
+There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has
+been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the
+prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations,
+all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of
+American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be he
+Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at
+an American, calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger of the
+judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew
+nationality--whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it,
+by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves. No: our blood is
+as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all
+pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we
+may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without
+father or mother.
+
+For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
+and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
+paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
+Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world's
+as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
+our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are
+forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see
+the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in
+Eden.
+
+The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
+Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
+struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's Paradise. Not a
+Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in
+the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest
+must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning,
+shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of
+Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall
+speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots;
+and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions
+round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto
+them cloven tongues as of fire.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
+
+
+Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more
+than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name
+bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
+years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
+they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
+wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, "the King of the Oaks."
+The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.
+She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
+who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a
+higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,
+this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace,
+a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled
+by his bare feet.
+
+In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating
+the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice
+had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the
+tackle-rope, elastic as cats.
+
+One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed
+it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my
+motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately
+let me pass.
+
+I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of kayar,
+or cocoa-nut fiber.
+
+The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+"kids" full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite
+another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I
+found that several of them could also speak very good English. They were
+a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent
+seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.
+
+They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.
+
+I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
+of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
+never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
+the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about
+the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.
+
+The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.
+
+As if to symbolize this state of things, the "fancy piece" astern
+comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
+while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head--a
+dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking
+tail.
+
+After her cargo was discharged, which was done "to the sound of flutes
+and soft recorders"--something as work is done in the navy to the music
+of the boatswain's pipe--the Lascars were set to "stripping the ship"
+that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.
+
+At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped
+about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing
+much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.
+
+Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see
+this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of
+the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the
+regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his
+vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from
+it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied "Joggerry," which is a
+species of weed, used in place of tobacco.
+
+Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
+most smokers, I sat down by Dattabdool-mans, as he called himself, and
+we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when
+we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it
+is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you
+never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon--wholly
+strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an
+insight into things quaint, curious, .and marvelous, drop your books of
+travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.
+Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of
+mariners from all parts of the globe.
+
+But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I
+and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
+account of the teakwood and kayar rope, concerning which things I was
+curious, and sought information.
+
+The "sagoon" as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its
+greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
+quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another
+kind of wood, the "sissor," which supplies most of the "shin-logs," or
+"knees," and crooked timbers in the country ships. The sagoon grows to
+an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet
+through, before a single bough is put forth. Its leaves are very large;
+and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants'
+ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of
+staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier than water;
+it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its chief
+merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
+insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil
+called "poonja."
+
+To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
+the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
+the European artisans.
+
+The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the kayar, of which it
+is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
+well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend's
+account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.
+
+In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
+cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
+ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
+hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
+this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar
+is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of
+the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with
+mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the
+sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The
+fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well
+adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of
+a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and
+buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
+
+But the elasticity of the kayar ill fits it for the shrouds and
+standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar
+told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.
+
+After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her kayar shrouds with hempen
+ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
+
+
+Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat
+among modish beavers.
+
+The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
+northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
+this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
+these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.
+
+They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and
+spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished
+streak, usually banding round an American ship.
+
+Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
+well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
+and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
+on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
+leeway at a sad rate.
+
+Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly would I
+gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
+still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.
+
+Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
+appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
+about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.
+
+She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned
+by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an
+antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors,
+eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a
+tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's head; and
+by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear;
+and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions
+it had heard.
+
+The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap
+and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.
+
+The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled
+about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of
+swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.
+
+This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
+a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
+the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
+steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to
+see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
+Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the muezzin or
+cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
+strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
+account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
+round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
+old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
+found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of
+the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I
+ever experienced.
+
+The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
+one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
+Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
+of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
+them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
+them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
+can procure an audience.
+
+Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.
+
+And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the
+ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.
+And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing
+a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys
+in the neighborhood.
+
+Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
+clergy is like their divine Master's;--not to bring the righteous, but
+sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
+comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
+year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
+hearts of vice: then indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
+with; and a victory gained over him, would entitle them to a conqueror's
+wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is
+destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as from
+every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child
+Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so
+should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street
+corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
+
+
+The floating chapel recalls to mind the "Old Church," well known to the
+seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands very
+near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town's
+people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
+preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.
+
+Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship
+on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was
+a chapel-of-ease; though from the straight backed pews, there could have
+been but little comfort taken in it.
+
+In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it; something
+like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.
+"Wettingborough! Wettingborough! you must not forget to go to church,
+Wettingborough! Don't forget, Wettingborough! Wettingborough! don't
+forget."
+
+Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.
+
+What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the
+death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:--
+
+    "HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER."
+
+For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the
+Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in
+the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another "sumptuous stall" was erected
+for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.
+
+In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris,
+where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their
+friends, or till buried at the public charge.
+
+From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.
+
+I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
+falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount
+if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and
+women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I
+observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from
+their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.
+
+There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
+merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get
+their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
+these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
+going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
+starvelings.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY
+
+
+The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
+the docks are many very painful sights.
+
+In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
+
+Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
+come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
+stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
+twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
+run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
+endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
+which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
+crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
+crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
+of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
+shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
+At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
+they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
+wail.
+
+I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
+but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
+its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
+motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
+her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
+crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
+die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
+stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
+them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
+soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
+the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
+seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
+Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
+beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
+queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
+with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
+
+At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.
+
+I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
+had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.
+"Yes," she replied, "to the church-yard." I said she was alive, and not
+dead.
+
+"Then she'll never die," was the rejoinder. "She's been down there these
+three days, with nothing to eat;--that I know myself."
+
+"She desarves it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
+shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that
+Betsy Jennings desarves it--was she ever married? tell me that."
+
+Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
+soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the
+girls.
+
+"It's none of my business, Jack," said he. "I don't belong to that
+street."
+
+"Who does then?"
+
+"I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
+so."
+
+"There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town."
+
+I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
+not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
+in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding
+away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
+
+Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
+time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
+irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a
+loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a
+sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the
+vault.
+
+"Well," said he, "what of it?"
+
+"Can't we get them out?" said I, "haven't you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?"
+
+"You're crazy, boy," said he; "do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?"
+
+I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
+seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without
+looking after the whole neighborhood.
+
+Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
+Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called Brandy-Nan; and
+begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to
+take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
+miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the
+room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had
+gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting
+it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I
+dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at it
+convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the
+other's arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a weak
+uncertain grasp like an infant's. She placed it to her mouth; but
+letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like "water." The
+woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen
+her.
+
+Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
+tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
+refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to the
+ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried to
+one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen running near
+the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house; and taking off
+a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day, filled it with
+water.
+
+With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw
+her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little
+babe--the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was
+dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
+balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
+
+The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who
+they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering
+something that could not be understood.
+
+The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.
+
+I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
+repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
+prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they
+must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I
+hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred to me
+as I stood there; but it was this-I felt an almost irresistible impulse
+to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting an end to their
+horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I think, had I not
+been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law,
+which would let them perish of themselves without giving them one cup of
+water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in convicting him
+who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
+existence.
+
+The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
+met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side,
+and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed.
+The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the
+morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped that morning
+remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that came from the
+vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
+before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that the
+persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have them
+removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it was
+not his street.
+
+When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom
+I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock
+Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not the right
+place to lodge my information.
+
+I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
+but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
+women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
+
+I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but
+my prayer was answered--they were dead, departed, and at peace.
+
+But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
+shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
+do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
+that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
+as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to
+follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like
+people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the
+dead?
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
+
+
+I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.
+
+The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
+of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.
+
+As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
+yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
+inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
+as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
+dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
+appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
+large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
+unlades at the quays.
+
+Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
+and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
+findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
+and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
+to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
+rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.
+
+In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
+and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
+voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
+in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
+how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
+heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.
+
+Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
+streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
+army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.
+
+At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
+crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
+is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
+outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
+the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
+long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
+misery could be furnished by any town in the world.
+
+Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.
+
+Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
+girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
+men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
+young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
+babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
+
+But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
+art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
+
+I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:--
+
+   "I have had no food for three days;
+    My wife and children are dying."
+
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
+an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
+
+In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
+
+But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
+Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
+you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
+even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
+never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
+his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
+that the beggars treated the town's people differently.
+
+I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
+three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
+made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
+had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
+infest the dock walls as they did.
+
+As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
+an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
+occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
+He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
+dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.
+
+The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
+him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
+long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
+battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
+one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
+Victory.
+
+Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
+claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
+demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
+disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.
+
+As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
+as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
+utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
+prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
+into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
+woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
+garden.
+
+Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
+
+
+The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
+a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
+encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
+kept.
+
+In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-
+organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with
+the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.
+
+There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
+streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
+other parts of the town.
+
+Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
+and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
+receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
+words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
+head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
+lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
+effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
+did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
+this, drawn out in an endless groan--
+
+"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
+sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
+the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
+hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
+him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.
+
+But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
+falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.
+
+I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
+He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
+pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
+monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
+robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
+quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
+subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
+sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
+business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
+go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
+and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
+been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
+murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
+morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
+tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
+copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
+seamen.
+
+This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
+which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
+the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
+pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
+infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
+enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
+almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
+of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
+their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
+their arches like vermin.
+
+
+
+
+XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
+
+
+As I wish to group together what fell under my observation concerning
+the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try to throw into
+this chapter various minor things that I recall.
+
+The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the dock
+walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite different
+announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are principally
+notices of the approaching departure of "superior, fast-sailing,
+coppered and copper-fastened ships," for the United States, Canada, New
+South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the
+advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen
+where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with
+ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who
+prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving
+notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended
+Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby workhouse-looking knaves, whose
+business consists in haunting the dock walls about meal times, and
+silently thrusting mysterious little billets--duodecimo editions of the
+larger advertisements--into the astonished hands of the tars.
+
+They do this, with such a mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air;
+such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you
+are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.
+
+Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic inducements
+to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to accept a round
+bounty, and embark in her Majesty's navy.
+
+In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men for
+the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular ships,
+going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be announced
+as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor, and noble
+father to his crew, Lord George Flagstaff.
+
+Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning enlistments
+in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more rapture upon the
+charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the authors of these
+placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the distant climes, for
+which the regiments wanting recruits are about to sail. Bright lawns,
+vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here make up the landscape;
+and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel, are informed, that here
+is a chance for them to see the world at their leisure, and be paid for
+enjoying themselves into the bargain. The regiments for India are
+promised plantations among valleys of palms; while to those destined for
+New Holland, a novel sphere of life and activity is opened; and the
+companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia are lured by tales of summer
+suns, that ripen grapes in December. No word of war is breathed; hushed
+is the clang of arms in these announcements; and the sanguine recruit is
+almost tempted to expect that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be
+the weapons he will wield.
+
+Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Brace at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin's Bay
+and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the army
+as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow must
+groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and his
+Mary.
+
+These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in Liverpool.
+Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from all parts of
+Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies, there are many
+young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find themselves next to
+penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to carry them over the
+sea, without providing for future contingencies. How easily and
+naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter upon the military
+life, which promises them a free passage to the most distant and
+flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing; besides holding
+out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the fullness of
+time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home at all, and
+embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a piece of
+adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts the army
+recruit to enlist.
+
+I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.
+
+Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust their
+little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are another
+set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; 'who make
+strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some
+state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the
+commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a
+pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they saunter
+off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and family.
+
+The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I fancied
+him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm with my
+shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned round
+and paused.
+
+He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and hat;
+and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a card
+with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a dark
+angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a cunning
+foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But though I did
+not look round, I felt him following me still; so once more I stopped.
+The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an air, that I began to
+fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that perhaps a plot had been
+laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was some Monteagle bent upon
+accomplishing my flight. I was determined to see what he was. With all
+my eyes about me, I followed him into the arch of a warehouse; when he
+gazed round furtively, and silently showing me a ring, whispered, "You
+may have it for a shilling; it's pure gold-I found it in the
+gutter-hush! don't speak! give me the money, and it's yours."
+
+"My friend," said I, "I don't trade in these articles; I don't want your
+ring."
+
+"Don't you? Then take, that," he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.
+
+After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the next
+time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud voice,
+pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded; rapidly
+turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered boot-heels.
+I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so given to
+running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of work to the
+shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.
+
+Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of Sheffield
+razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock gates by the
+police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and board the
+vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting their wares.
+Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and the gilding
+on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it on the spot
+for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On the following
+Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of tormented and
+tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to dress them. In old
+times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that suggested the
+propriety of a barber's practicing surgery in connection with the
+chin-harrowing vocation. Another class of knaves, who practice upon the
+sailors in Liverpool, are the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little rookeries
+among the narrow lanes adjoining the dock. I was astonished at die
+multitude of gilded balls in these streets, emblematic of their calling.
+They were generally next neighbors to the gilded grapes over the
+spirit-vaults; and no doubt, mutually to facilitate business operations,
+some of these establishments have connecting doors inside, so as to play
+their customers into each other's hands. I often saw sailors in a state
+of intoxication rushing from a spirit-vault into a pawnbroker's;
+stripping off their boots, hats, jackets, and neckerchiefs, and
+sometimes even their pantaloons on the spot, and offering to pawn them
+for a song. Of course such applications were never refused. But though
+on shore, at Liverpool, poor Jack finds more sharks than at sea, he
+himself is by no means exempt from practices, that do not savor of a
+rigid morality; at least according to law. In tobacco smuggling he is an
+adept: and when cool and collected, often manages to evade the Customs
+completely, and land goodly packages of the weed, which owing to the
+immense duties upon it in England, commands a very high price.
+
+As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.
+
+"Is that all?" asked the officers.
+
+"All," said the men.
+
+"We will see," returned the others.
+
+And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.
+
+"Very good," said the men.
+
+But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.
+
+When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in his
+pocket; that he had a right to; and as many more were hidden about his
+person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates
+at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance of
+detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by.
+And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers
+passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard,
+as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting under a
+ship's bows.
+
+Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we came
+from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate; for in
+Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the docks
+they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners' mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little moral
+precepts printed in red on the back.
+
+Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not the
+least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with
+such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by
+a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting
+their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay
+stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are
+guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a
+whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine
+truck-horses look--so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often
+I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though
+I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language,
+I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable information
+touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their dignified
+lives.
+
+There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a
+horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure
+he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries
+in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
+They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a horse but a
+species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who happens to
+live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or abused, like
+the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there is a touch of
+divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should
+forever exempt him from indignities. As for those majestic, magisterial
+truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on
+the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.
+
+It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw. The
+truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this the
+lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a large
+warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will tranquilly
+walk away with the whole.
+
+The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their animals.
+Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns,--not of the same cut and
+color though,--which reach below their knees; and from the racket they
+make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you would think
+they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I never could get
+any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved, sober-sided set,
+who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of their animals;
+now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right or the left, in
+order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so much of their
+lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to have mended
+their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting to them
+something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also given to them
+a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human society.
+
+There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others is
+the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been suspended
+in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to converse
+pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and truckmen. One day
+a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay, with its back to the
+water. It was noon, when an interval of silence falls upon the docks;
+and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the horse, and having a mind
+for a chat, cried out to him, "Back! back! back!"
+
+Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the water.
+
+Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince's, is one of the most interesting
+to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike the American
+boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow Seas) plying to
+all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast quantities of
+produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the decks turned
+into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with these
+inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand, seemingly
+penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July when the
+Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily coming
+over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.
+
+One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the
+street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from
+Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the country;
+and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the corporation,
+took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.
+
+"Sing Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney," cried one fellow, tossing
+his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at the head of the
+rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.
+
+When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.
+
+
+
+
+XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND THITHER
+
+
+I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily for
+so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.
+
+These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who, thereby,
+was enabled after my day's work aboard the Highlander, to ramble about
+the town for several hours. After I had visited all the noted places I
+could discover, of those marked down upon my father's map, I began to
+extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a committee of one,
+to investigate all accessible parts of the town; though so many years
+have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my report.
+
+This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the world, I
+have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in wandering about,
+up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys, and speculating
+upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I used to pace along
+endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the names on the doors,
+admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and invoking a passing
+blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps. I was stared at
+myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and take on such
+occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced quite a sensation
+in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father of a family went
+home to his children with a curious story, about a wandering phenomenon
+they had encountered, traversing the side-walks that day. In the words
+of the old song, "I cared for nobody, no not I, and nobody cared for
+me." I stared my fill with impunity, and took all stares myself in good
+part.
+
+Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with a
+wonderful relish.
+
+While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.
+
+Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour, in
+those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the street,
+and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it in New
+York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes; and
+especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing along
+frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who clung
+to his arms and legs; and, in God's name, conjured him not to desert
+them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and drowning
+himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In these
+haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged me
+unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost endless
+vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these miserable
+streets.
+
+And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It was
+the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the "free states" of
+America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute. But
+in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and with
+the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even Englishmen;
+as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords. This conveyed a
+strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded me that I was
+not in my own land. For there, such a being as a native beggar is almost
+unknown; and to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against
+pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
+
+Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which negro-
+sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his head
+like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in respect to
+him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our black
+steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to escape
+with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to them, and
+the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black cooks and
+stewards of American ships are very much attached to the place and like
+to make voyages to it.
+
+Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in some
+degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring of
+most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible escape;
+at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated as he is
+in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all, it was but
+recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so that, in some
+things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the
+principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.
+
+During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject to a
+continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly unforeseen
+by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and beggary,
+Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as New York.
+There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same rows of houses
+with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs; and the same
+elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.
+
+I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no one
+could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St. John's
+Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to see that
+great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most discriminating
+observer would not have been able to detect any difference between the
+articles exposed for sale, and the articles exhibited in Fulton Market,
+New York.
+
+I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers' shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.
+
+It is true, that I often thought of London's being only seven or eight
+hours' travel by railroad from where I was; and that there, surely, must
+be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London anon.
+
+Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I rose
+bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head. First
+walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to breakfast. Then
+a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the people going to
+church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the goodliest
+edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.
+
+For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them in
+another.
+
+It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon and
+simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church wherever
+he pleases; and that even St. Peter's in Rome is open to him, as to a
+cardinal; that St. Paul's in London is not shut against him; and that
+the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad aisles to him,
+and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews, the better to
+allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this consideration of the
+hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most Christian and charming
+thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and Vatican libraries, for
+Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes farther home than all the
+sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, and Archbishop Tillotson.
+
+Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in the
+land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and costliness of
+any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses and fine
+broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to present
+myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He would stare a
+little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the end, what could
+he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious of pews, to be
+sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain sight or hearing
+of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was always some
+confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the way; and I used
+to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting
+on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in
+the churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of
+some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of
+the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation
+between myself and the clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know
+that I was a foreigner of distinction.
+
+It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached--just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
+
+How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
+thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
+roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
+winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
+my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
+long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
+and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking how
+I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen, with
+high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their cosy and
+comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for me except
+at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+
+Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up .were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the immortal
+plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies. But to
+finish off with that abominable "swipes" almost spoiled all the rest:
+not that I myself patronized "swipes" but my shipmates did; and every
+cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in imagination, and
+even then the flavor was bad.
+
+On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The servant
+girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose dinners
+were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were collectively
+known by the names of their ships.
+
+"Where are the Arethusas?--Here's their beef been smoking this
+half-hour."--"Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the Splendids."--"Run,
+Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the Highlanders."--"You Peggy,
+where's the Siddons' pickle-pat?"--"I say, Judy, are you never coming
+with that pudding for the Lord Nelsons?"
+
+On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
+came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
+end of the Highlanders' table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
+
+He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared himself
+on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs, so as to
+include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby, the
+boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at the
+head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.
+
+Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
+philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
+of Jackson's address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
+snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
+recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
+disgust, and dined elsewhere.
+
+Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
+rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George's-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth's equestrian statue.
+
+The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
+but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
+dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and decorum
+prevailed.
+
+Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in a
+snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much toil,
+or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.
+
+In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which he
+frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to his
+hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic gestures.
+I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware that this
+youth was a Chartist.
+
+Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.
+
+I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder son,
+supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.
+
+That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the town,
+and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey's pillars, in the shape
+of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had previously
+seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be? Certainly, I had
+never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish arch! surely I
+remembered that very well. It was not till several months after reaching
+home in America, that my perplexity upon this matter was cleared away.
+In glancing over an old number of the Penny Magazine, there I saw a
+picture of the place to the life; and remembered having seen the same
+print years previous. It was a representation of the spot where the
+Manchester railroad enters the outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
+
+
+My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related in a
+previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days after,
+which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.
+
+I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck by
+the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable legs
+crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.
+
+Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped out my
+guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough, the
+building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on the
+opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.
+
+I'm a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not object;
+especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to be
+treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.
+
+But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with many
+agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye from
+the London Times, which words I saw boldly printed on the back of the
+large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a strange dog
+with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into this fine
+apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely, till the
+spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up stepped a
+terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster on his
+back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down some
+papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders, and
+then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons, wheeled
+me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk, without so
+much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after him, but in
+vain; the door was closed upon me.
+
+These Englishmen have no manners, that's plain, thought I; and I trudged
+on down the street in a reverie.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE
+ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
+
+
+Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and green
+hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been with
+me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go away
+without having a good, long look at the open fields.
+
+On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.
+
+Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last--there it
+was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air, that
+seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought, as I
+breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very particles
+once respired by Rosamond the Fair.
+
+On I trudged along the London road--smooth as an entry floor--and every
+white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive in the
+landscape.
+
+But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long road
+became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady field,
+would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming little
+dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I crossed
+over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful announcement,
+nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post--
+
+    "man-traps and spring-guns!"
+
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They were
+not surely cannibals, that dwelt down in that beautiful little dale, and
+lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in Canada!
+
+"A man-trap!" It must be so. The announcement could bear but one
+meaning--that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.
+
+Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?
+
+And who put it there?
+
+The proprietor, probably.
+
+And what right had he to do so?
+
+Why, he owned the soil.
+
+And where are his title-deeds?
+
+In his strong-box, I suppose.
+
+Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.
+
+You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you are a
+mighty traveler, indeed:--stopped on your travels by a man-trap! Do you
+think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you think Ledyard was so
+entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go home not very much wiser
+than when you set out; and the only excuse you can give, for not having
+seen more sights, will be man-traps--mantraps, my masters! that
+frightened you!
+
+And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this planet,
+right down to the earth's axis, and, perhaps, straight through to the
+antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and enter the
+forbidden Eden.
+
+But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things, that at
+last I thought best to pace off.
+
+Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a nice
+little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church; just
+such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch was
+viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the bees
+were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.
+
+Any man-traps here? thought I--any spring-guns?
+
+No.
+
+So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat. No
+Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more. They
+gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon, and
+conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as at
+first I almost imagined they might.
+
+Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.
+
+My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of rustics,
+drinking ale at a table.
+
+"Good day," said I.
+
+"Good day; from Liverpool?"
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"For London?"
+
+"No; not this time. I merely come to see the country."
+
+At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.
+
+"Take a seat," said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife's apron
+on, I thought.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course of
+which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics a
+good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the banks
+of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty millions of
+people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my knowledge.
+
+At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the lively
+conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:--fine old ale; yes,
+English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.
+
+Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?--Hurra! what say you?
+let's have a peep at St. Paul's I Don't you want to see the queen? Have
+you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and the
+Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!
+
+But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets--who's to pay the bill?--You can't beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father's son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign land;
+you must not turn pauper.
+
+Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul's or Westminster
+Abbey for me; that was flat.
+
+Well, well, up heart, you'll see it one of these days.
+
+But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames--think of that!--here I am--ay, treading in the wheel-tracks of
+coaches that are bound for the metropolis!--It was too bad; too bitterly
+bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and walked on; till at last
+I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a fine old tree with broad
+branching arms, that stretched themselves over the road, like a hen
+gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the green grass I threw
+myself and there lay my head, like a last year's nut. People passed by,
+on foot and in carriages, and little thought that the sad youth under
+the tree was the great-nephew of a late senator in the American
+Congress.
+
+Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me from
+the field, crying out--"What are you doing there, you young rascal?--run
+away from the work'us, have ye? Tramp, or I'll set Blucher on ye!"
+
+And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.
+
+"Come, are you going to start?" he cried.
+
+"Presently," said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got a
+few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to me
+as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his own
+premises, and said--"Stranger! if you ever Visit America, just call at
+our house, and you'll always find there a dinner and a bed. Don't fail."
+
+I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning the
+cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to hapless
+young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.
+
+On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.
+
+So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway, sat
+an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A hale
+matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal by his
+side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were leaning out of
+the window close by.
+
+Ah! Wellingborough, don't you wish you could step in?
+
+With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go, when--is it
+possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "you look as if you had walked far; come, take a
+bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear" (how my heart jumped), "go fetch some
+from the dairy." And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and handed
+me--me, the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I could hardly drink
+down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.
+
+As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!
+
+She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England. But
+I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do away
+at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close scrutiny
+of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I declared
+myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a Sunday in the
+country.
+
+"And have you been to church to-day, young man?" said the old lady,
+looking daggers.
+
+"Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know--a most
+excellent sermon--I am much the better for it."
+
+I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.
+
+I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.
+
+Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post like
+a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers in
+the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of them.
+But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young ladies, and
+vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the river Ohio,
+and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in harvest time, the
+laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand strong.
+
+Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don't give the old lady time to
+think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward you. At
+last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.
+
+It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on one
+side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins; and
+such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.
+
+And there they sat--the charmers, I mean--eating these buttered muffins in
+plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every minute they
+grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking what a fine
+thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife! how my friends
+would stare! a lady from England!
+
+I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda, the
+one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather benevolently in
+the direction where I sat. She certainly did look at my jacket; and I am
+constrained to think at my face. Could it be possible she had fallen in
+love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh, misery! that was out of the
+question; for what a looking suitor was Wellingborough?
+
+At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.
+
+Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be off;
+but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered again and
+again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.
+
+I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I
+live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.
+
+As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks, I
+passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll, was
+soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE
+CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
+
+
+It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when I
+had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance of
+a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton. He
+was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair,
+and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.
+
+But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways of
+a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly youth?
+
+Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.
+
+At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
+He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and from
+something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated a
+voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness to
+enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman--a kind of
+pleasure so long debarred me--I smoothed down the skirts of my jacket,
+and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing would
+afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in imparting
+any information concerning America that he needed.
+
+He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face, and
+at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged me to
+accompany him on a walk.
+
+We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before we
+parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.
+
+According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his aunt
+and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry thus
+fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.
+
+Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew restless
+of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no profession
+or business of any kind to engage his attention.
+
+In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure him
+to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow of
+her stately and storied old Saxon tower.
+
+By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and empty
+your glass and your purse as you list.
+
+In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs hie
+to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling sportsmen and
+dandies, he lost his last sovereign.
+
+What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a
+"guinea-pig," a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies of
+the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case,
+inapplicable.
+
+He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then threw
+up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London, and again
+his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals, scorning to
+return home to his aunt, and amend--though she had often written him the
+kindest of letters to that effect--Harry resolved to precipitate himself
+upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh fortune. With this
+object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the first train for
+Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook himself to the docks,
+to examine the American shipping, when a new crotchet entered his brain,
+born of his old sea reminiscences. It was to assume duck browsers and
+tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic as a sailor. There was a
+dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment; and scorn of fine coats,
+which exactly harmonized with his reckless contempt, at the time, for
+all past conventionalities.
+
+Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold some
+of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the Gold
+Anchor in Union-street.
+
+After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was all
+anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a desire
+to which he warmly responded.
+
+Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an application
+to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks, three of our
+crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied till just
+upon the eve of our departure.
+
+And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges to
+which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected, from
+the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they have
+little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of boarding
+them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested in the
+ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let their
+sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money; for they
+well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be procured,
+through the crimps of the port.
+
+Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in the
+vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain Riga
+was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he strove to
+conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and even
+indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a "boy," at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the cheapness
+of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and thus,
+instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who
+would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the
+rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the
+end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving
+a. handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the harness-cask.
+
+With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one fine
+morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing his
+virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.
+
+No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the captain's
+face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry expression,
+that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones, I had first
+accosted him in the cabin.
+
+Alas, Harry! thought I,--as I stood upon the forecastle looking astern
+where they stood,--that "gallant, gay deceiver" shall not altogether
+cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that should be
+the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your society across
+the Atlantic.
+
+At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going to
+America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was acting a
+manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a sailor, would
+be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a shore, where he
+must battle out his fortune with Fate.
+
+He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not provide
+him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the ship;
+and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the strength
+of his wages.
+
+However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at all, my
+young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of admiration
+at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward to receive
+my congratulations.
+
+"Harry," said I, "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga--that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the
+country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he
+gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his
+character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and
+sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a little better than
+his boots, and would no more think of addressing you than of invoking
+wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows."
+
+And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly of
+the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I told
+him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and could
+furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to a sort
+of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to any
+mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.
+
+And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting the
+precise degree in which he was a practical sailor;--whether he had a
+giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body; whether,
+with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a tempest, he
+felt he could look right to windward and beard it.
+
+To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand and
+confident air; saying that in his "guinea-pig" days, he had often climbed
+the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and amateur way; so he
+made no doubt that he would very soon prove an expert tumbler in the
+Highlander's rigging.
+
+His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the constant
+sight of his most unseamanlike person--more suited to the Queen's
+drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in my mind.
+But after all, every one in this world has his own fate intrusted to
+himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give sage advice, and
+indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends; yet our friends, for
+the most part, will "gang their ain gate;" and the most we can do is, to
+hope for the best. Still, I suggested to Harry, whether he had not best
+cross the sea as a steerage passenger, since he could procure enough
+money for that; but no, he was bent upon going as a sailor.
+
+I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions; and
+as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.
+
+Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London Me; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me
+the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the
+sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.
+
+Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his aristocratic
+narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes spending funds
+of reminiscences not his own.
+
+As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back upon;
+and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game of
+chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.
+
+In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest desire I
+cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly tempted I
+had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny in my
+pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him more,
+than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but mysteriously
+hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many days had passed.
+But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed it to my friend's
+good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes prompted him to out
+with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable. Besides, would this
+fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic acquaintances, walking
+down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the sleeve of my
+shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began to think, that
+Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose upon my Yankee
+credulity.
+
+Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where, indeed,
+he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the shores of
+Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect abandonment;
+reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring one whit who
+might stare at so singular a couple.
+
+But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable hotel,
+he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped, till the
+square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden retreat,
+was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright on the
+hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with an
+ivory-headed riding-whip.
+
+"Who was he, Harry?" said I.
+
+"My old chum, Lord Lovely," said Harry, with a careless air, "and Heaven
+only knows what brings Lovely from London."
+
+"A lord?" said I starting; "then I must look at him again;" for lords
+are very scarce in Liverpool.
+
+Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner; and
+slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.
+
+It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.
+
+However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought something
+of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best to be done
+for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I thought
+best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely stepped to
+the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and throwing
+himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it--a coronet--fell into a
+sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted by
+a regal marabou feather, inside.
+
+I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought it
+would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the world,
+just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take us a
+drive into the country.
+
+But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress might
+decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to his
+visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most Noble
+Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he might
+consider Ickworth his home.
+
+Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's having
+been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed some
+suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller of
+the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that Harry
+has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty easy
+address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his having
+consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the anonymous
+earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate the
+slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has, he
+spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon to
+pluck; so that is out of the question;--perish such a thought, concerning
+my own bosom friend!
+
+But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all this,
+I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high
+life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease
+in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in
+its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom
+of some immaculate friend.
+
+
+
+
+XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
+
+
+It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that Harry,
+who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might possibly alter
+his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the ship, and sprang
+down the hatchway into the between-decks, where, in perfect solitude, I
+was engaged picking oakum; at which business the mate had set me, for
+want of any thing better.
+
+"Hey for London, Wellingborough!" he cried. "Off tomorrow! first
+train--be there the same night--come! I have money to rig you all out--drop
+that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells here! Come; up
+you jump!"
+
+I trembled with amazement and delight.
+
+London? it could not be!--and Harry--how kind of him! he was then indeed
+what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances of the
+case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this sudden
+departure.
+
+In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and had
+hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he chose
+to conceal.
+
+"But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?" said I; "they will not let me
+go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't care
+very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses."
+
+This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping all
+the time.
+
+"Tut! my Yankee bantam," said Harry; "look here!" and he showed me a
+handful of gold.
+
+"But they are yours, and not mine, Harry," said I.
+
+"Yours and mine, my sweet fellow," exclaimed Harry. "Come, sink the
+ship, and let's go!"
+
+"But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a
+constable after me, won't they?"
+
+"What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly? Ha!
+ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait."
+
+True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I did take French leave of him. So, without further thought of
+the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the ship's bell
+struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be free for the
+rest of the day.
+
+The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.
+
+Arrived at the Golden Anchor, where Harry put up, he at once led me to
+his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest, to see what
+clothing he might have, that would fit me.
+
+Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size--if any
+thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.
+
+My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before me,
+arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose that
+very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary expense,
+when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only winked,
+and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove to drown
+ugly thoughts.
+
+Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest, and
+charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or sent for
+it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.
+
+Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers, we
+turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the shadow of
+the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and went to
+finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one side; and
+presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.
+
+"It's me" said the stranger; and who was me but Harry, who had thus
+metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a faltering voice,
+which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that he was not going
+to turn gentleman forger.
+
+He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against being
+recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had adopted
+this mode of disguising himself.
+
+"And why afraid of your friends?" asked I, in astonishment, "and we are
+not in London yet."
+
+"Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by."
+
+I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we came
+to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars are
+taken.
+
+We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.
+
+London at last, and in the West-End!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
+
+
+"No time to lose," said Harry, "come along."
+
+He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in some
+street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.
+
+As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the comers, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.
+
+"Stop," cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once--"stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house--No. 40 I told you--that's it--the high steps there, with the
+purple light!"
+
+The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache, and
+bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one side,
+and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself feeling not a
+little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any courtly society.
+
+It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.
+
+The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles; and
+echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath. I
+started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.
+
+The walk were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles--emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver,
+Sienna with porphyry--supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like
+a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East
+of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful
+Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured stalactites
+of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights,
+whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain
+spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as if every
+porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was the moon-lit
+garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica,
+lurked somewhere among the vines.
+
+At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of turbaned
+slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.
+
+To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.
+
+At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man, with
+snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket--he looked like
+an almond tree in blossom--who seemed to be standing, a polite sentry
+over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly ordered about the
+waiters; and with a silent salute, received the silver of the guests.
+
+Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present seemed
+exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large group was
+gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was reading
+some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a very loud
+voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.
+
+We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.
+
+The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before us,
+and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to remain
+where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.
+
+I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a confidential
+word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked very much
+surprised,--I thought, a Little disconcerted,--and then disappeared with
+him.
+
+While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me, and
+striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to all
+this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth, my
+head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the thought
+that I was really in London. What would my brother have said? What would
+Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance Society, have
+thought?
+
+But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in a
+little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for it
+was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid animation
+of the London-like scene around me.
+
+And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish golden
+visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might introduce me;
+and every instant I expected to hear the waiters addressing some
+gentleman as "My Lord," or "four Grace." But if there were really any
+lords present, the waiters omitted their titles, at least in my hearing.
+
+Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and the
+Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.
+
+While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a little
+impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer about me.
+So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of helping
+the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince Esterhazy;
+but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment, and for the
+time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But spite of this, I
+kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight through my blushes, and
+observed that every now and then little parties were made up among the
+gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the house, as if going to a
+private apartment. And I overheard one of them drop the word Rouge; but
+he could not have used rouge, for his face was exceedingly pale. Another
+said something about Loo.
+
+At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.
+
+"Come along, Redburn," said he.
+
+So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley House, in
+the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired for the
+night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early, I sprang
+up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise, when he
+only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by three marble
+Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's antlers, over
+the landing.
+
+We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.
+
+As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.
+
+Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was interwoven,
+like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and tourney. And
+oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were wrought into plaited
+serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from which, here and there,
+they flashed out sudden splendors of green scales and gold.
+
+In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringers of
+bullion and silk.
+
+The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated with
+bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.
+
+They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in
+the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii--in that
+part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as
+Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of
+the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze
+medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such
+pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the
+left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in
+Corinth.
+
+In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the semblance
+of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to behold. It
+was that of a bald-headed old man, with a mysteriously-wicked
+expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger over his lips. His
+'marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.
+
+"Sit down, Wellingborough," said Harry; "don't be frightened, we are at
+home.--Ring the bell, will you? But stop;"--and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.
+
+"He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough," said he; "who stays in this one
+place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind you
+don't breathe any secrets in his ear."
+
+In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.
+
+"Cigars," said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into the
+middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his example,
+and make myself happy.
+
+Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of before,
+while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the Highlander,
+I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my friend.
+
+But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, "And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?"
+
+"Upon my soul," he cried, "you have hit it:--you must have been here
+before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name."
+
+Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had been
+quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes, his
+general carriage was firm.
+
+"Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?" said he.
+
+"I am afraid, Harry," said I, "that when you left me just now, you must
+have been drinking something stronger than wine."
+
+"Hear him now," said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,--"a parson 'pon honor!--But remark you,
+Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a considerably
+longer time than before:--I may not be back again to-night."
+
+"What?" said I.
+
+"Be still," he cried, "hear me, I know the old duke here, and-"
+
+"Who? not the Duke of Wellington," said I, wondering whether Harry was
+really going to include him too, in his long list of confidential
+friends and acquaintances.
+
+"Pooh!" cried Harry, "I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw below;
+they call him the Duke:--he keeps the house. I say, I know him well, and
+he knows me; and he knows what brings me here, also. Well; we have
+arranged every thing about you; you are to stay in this room, and sleep
+here tonight, and--and--" continued he, speaking low--"you must guard this
+letter--" slipping a sealed one into my hand-"and, if I am not back by
+morning, you must post right on to Bury, and leave the letter
+there;--here, take this paper--it's all set down here in black and
+white--where you are to go, and what you are to do. And after that's
+done--mind, this is all in case I don't return--then you may do what you
+please: stay here in London awhile, or go back to Liverpool. And here's
+enough to pay all your expenses."
+
+All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.
+
+"What's the matter, Redburn?" he cried, with a wild sort of laugh--"you
+are not afraid of me, are you?--No, no! I believe in you, my boy, or you
+would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that letter."
+
+"What in heaven's name do you mean?" at last I exclaimed, "you don't
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?" and I
+snatched him by the hand.
+
+"Pooh, pooh," he cried, "let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do as I
+say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!-no, no," he added,
+vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more--"no, I won't: I have
+nothing more to tell you--not a word. Will you swear?"
+
+"But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!"
+
+"Not a syllable! Will you swear?--you will not? then here, give me that
+purse:--there--there--take that--and that--and that;--that will pay your
+fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my friend," and he
+wheeled round his back.
+
+I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly impelled
+me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.
+
+Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the white-whiskered
+old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and then introduced me
+as his friend--young Lord Stormont; and bade the almond tree look well to
+the comforts of his lordship, while he--Harry--was gone.
+
+The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar expression,
+that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he withdrew. Harry
+then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a chance to say one
+word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room, saying, "Leave not
+this room tonight; and remember the letter, and Bury!"
+
+I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls and
+mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then rose,
+and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but only heard
+the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a hushed ivory
+rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped back into the
+room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have given the
+world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my old bunk in
+Prince's Dock.
+
+I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the house,
+my limbs seemed manacled.
+
+While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open; a
+confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.
+
+And all the while, Harry ran through my soul--in and out, at every door,
+that burst open to his vehement rush.
+
+At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London, to
+do this thing?--why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did he
+want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the hour
+he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.
+
+But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;-would he ever come
+back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a shudder,
+I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart forth,
+search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and I had
+sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his return.
+Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and counted
+over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.
+
+Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription of
+the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and
+here I am--yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.
+
+But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan magnificence
+around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling, which I had
+never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest and most
+squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the mirrors and
+marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to
+myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent
+still.
+
+It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw myself
+upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a sort of
+night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the point of
+starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I was; but
+remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the town, and
+that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.
+
+At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.
+
+"The letter and paper," he cried.
+
+I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.
+
+"There! there! there! thus I tear you," he cried, wrenching the letter
+to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. "I am off for America; the game is up."
+
+"For God's sake explain," said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. "Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?"
+
+"Ha, ha," he deliriously laughed. "Gambling? red and white, you mean?--
+cards?--dice?--the bones?--Ha, ha!--Gambling? gambling?" he ground out
+between his teeth--"what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they
+are!"
+
+"Wellingborough," he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his eyes
+blazing into mine--"Wellingborough"--and fumbling in his breast-pocket, he
+drew forth a dirk--"Here, Wellingborough, take it--take it, I say--are you
+stupid?-there, there"--and he pushed it into my hands. "Keep it away from
+me--keep it out of my sight--I don't want it near me, while I feel as I
+do. They serve suicides scurvily here, Wellingborough; they don't bury
+them decently. See that bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang
+myself'--and seizing it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it
+down from the wall.
+
+"In God's name, what ails you?" I cried.
+
+"Nothing, oh nothing," said Harry, now assuming a treacherous, tropical
+calmness--"nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the serenest of
+men."
+
+"But give me that dirk," he suddenly cried--"let me have it, I say. Oh! I
+don't mean to murder myself--I'm past that now--give it me"--and snatching
+it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a terrific stab,
+nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.
+
+"There now," he cried, "there's something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me--that's my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning"--and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.
+
+"And this, then," said I, "is your showing me London, is it, Harry? I
+did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I will
+not regret not seeing the town."
+
+He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, "Red-burn! you must
+swear another oath, and instantly."
+
+"And why?" said I, in alarm, "what more would you have me swear?"
+
+"Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!" he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips--"never to breathe it! swear!"
+
+"I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do not
+desire it," said I, "but there's no need of swearing."
+
+"Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn," he added, imploringly.
+
+"Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget ourselves as
+soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most miserable dog alive."
+
+"And what am I?" cried Harry; "but pardon me, Redburn, I did not mean to
+offend; if you knew all--but no, no!--never mind, never mind!" And he ran
+to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.
+
+"Brandy," whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.
+
+"Are you not going to sleep, then?" said I, more and more alarmed at his
+wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in such
+a mood.
+
+"No sleep for me! sleep if you can--I mean to sit up with a decanter!--let
+me see"--looking at the ormolu clock on the mantel--"it's only two hours
+to morning."
+
+The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.
+
+Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on the
+lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now and
+then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at the
+table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured into his
+glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the spirits
+seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively calm.
+
+At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by his
+shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.
+
+"Look! it is broad day," said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings of
+the window.
+
+We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted hall
+of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old streets
+to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the events of
+the last thirty-six hours.
+
+So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid our
+journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.
+
+I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared at
+the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in the
+Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk; the
+mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then, was
+almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been drugged.
+
+As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his pocket,
+he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the landlady, was
+shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our clothes, appearing
+once more in our sailor habiliments.
+
+"Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?" said I, with a heavy
+heart.
+
+"Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course--what else?'
+he replied.
+
+"And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?" asked I.
+
+"That's as it may turn out," said Harry; "but I have now more than ever
+resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow like
+me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the wharf, you
+know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's see what
+they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I feel better
+already. Never say die, is my motto."
+
+We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the quay
+of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning been
+advertised to sail in two days' time.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.
+
+Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight hours,
+and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being called to
+any severe account for it from the officers; for several of our men had
+absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their return, little or
+nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the mate seemed to know
+nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in Liverpool, the
+discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I could hardly
+believe they were the same officers who were so dictatorial at sea. The
+reason of this was, that we had nothing important to do; and although
+the captain might now legally refuse to receive me on board, yet I was
+not afraid of that, as I was as stout a lad for my years, and worked as
+cheap, as any one he could engage to take my place on the homeward
+passage.
+
+Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, "Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good."
+
+Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of the
+proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.
+
+"But turn to, sir, turn to," added the mate; "here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay--jump!"
+
+The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.
+
+We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo had
+been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the
+between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for
+the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were
+already littering the decks.
+
+To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed than
+upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual number of
+casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed amid-ships, all along
+the between-decks, forming a sort of aisle on each side, furnishing
+access to four rows of bunks,--three tiers, one above another,--against
+the ship's sides; two tiers being placed over the tierces of water in
+the middle. These bunks were rapidly knocked together with coarse
+planks. They looked more like dog-kennels than any thing else;
+especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no light coming down
+except through the fore and after hatchways, both of which were covered
+with little houses called "booby-hatches." Upon the main-hatches, which
+were well calked and covered over with heavy tarpaulins, the
+"passengers-gattey" was solidly lashed down.
+
+This galley was a large open stove, or iron range--made expressly for
+emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and where alone the
+emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.
+
+After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into the
+outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go out
+with the tide in the morning.
+
+In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and
+God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the cheers
+of the surrounding ships.
+
+At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except by
+the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that bowsprit,
+now came a one-eyed crimp leading a drunken tar by the collar, who had
+been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has been stated
+before, that two or three of our men had left us for good, while in
+port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely lodged in a
+bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable cab, pulled
+out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved completely
+helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more toward the
+quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down over his
+closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion, was lowered
+on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by the crew, who
+put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp himself
+carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to disturb him
+till the ship was away from the land.
+
+This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
+Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
+were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
+policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.
+
+A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
+the river past the fort.
+
+The scene was most striking.
+
+Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
+days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
+for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
+merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in
+the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and
+from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo,
+cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.
+
+The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the poor
+emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of their
+voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon seeing
+America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty days
+would be an uncommonly long voyage.
+
+Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.
+
+This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet, all
+this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled agents
+from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the emigrants
+themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.
+
+No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and, one by
+one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather changed into
+the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and nights imaginable.
+The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and the hearts of the
+emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to escape the
+uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two "booby-hatches" came
+the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and weeping. That irresistible
+wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the stoutest of their number, and
+the women and children were embracing and sobbing in all the agonies of
+the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.
+
+Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
+who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards to
+run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and tenderly
+inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and even
+then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady, such
+ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as unendurable, and
+put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy annihilation; all of
+which, however, only arises from their intense anxiety to preserve their
+valuable lives.
+
+How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the drenching
+seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley on deck?
+How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a first
+voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just as
+hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter, and
+seventeen servants.
+
+Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head down
+the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened cesspool.
+
+But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
+some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
+prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of the
+quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
+Consequently--even in fine weather--when they come up from below, they are
+crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats, casks, and
+spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the officers, for
+unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
+
+The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and
+to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of
+the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the
+main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between
+those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid
+twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent
+in having this regulation maintained.
+
+Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
+deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
+purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could
+precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
+humanity.
+
+But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it is
+to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt, this
+circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless indignation
+at these things.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
+
+
+It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should be
+marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide, which
+had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.
+
+Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had been
+brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at their
+duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the third man
+yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his limbs had
+been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.
+
+His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for Miguel
+Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But the
+sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to understand
+that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could not obey him;
+when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired to the
+quarterdeck.
+
+This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing
+be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously
+forbade this proceeding.
+
+So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the bowsprit-bitts--two stout
+timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some of the
+men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was attributed to
+the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in the side
+planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked out, to
+extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard watch,
+to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man waked, he
+exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be heightened by the
+shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.
+
+"Blast that rat!" cried the Greenlander.
+
+"He's blasted already," said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. "It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead;
+and here he is"--and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm,
+exclaiming, "Dead as a timber-head!"
+
+Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which he
+held to the man's face.
+
+"No, he's not dead," he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a moment
+at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words escaped,
+when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
+forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
+cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.
+
+The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
+over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
+silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
+like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.
+
+The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
+every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
+curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
+death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.
+
+One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.
+
+"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.
+
+"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed
+Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."
+
+Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
+rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.
+
+"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must
+go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
+say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
+partly out of the bunk.
+
+A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
+sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.
+
+This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
+did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
+all serve to soothe me.
+
+But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill
+he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on
+board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in
+a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such
+things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned
+in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed
+familiar with such things; or at least with the stories of such things
+having happened to others.
+
+For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a case
+like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over me, I
+almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of the
+Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his eternal
+condemnation.
+
+Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in the
+bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the bunk
+was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and strict
+orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken place to the
+emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.
+
+After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX. CARLO
+
+
+There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a rich-
+cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded, olive-hued
+velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee. He was not
+above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness of his full
+morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and various, that
+his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye like Harry's
+tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft and spiritual
+radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of humility,
+deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all the ills of
+life.
+
+The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.
+
+From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the eyes
+of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are, full of
+poetry, gushing from every rent.
+
+Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no sire;
+and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.
+
+Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his hand-
+organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of Liverpool,
+playing the sunny airs of southern chines, among the northern fog and
+drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his passage over the
+Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes in America.
+
+From the first, Harry took to the boy.
+
+"Carlo," said Harry, "how did you succeed in England?"
+
+He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and throwing
+back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a child, he
+looked up, and said in his broken English--that seemed like mixing the
+potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:--said he, "Ah! I succeed
+very well!--for I have tunes for the young and the old, the gay and the
+sad. I have marches for military young men, and love-airs for the
+ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw a crowd, but I know
+from their faces what airs will best please them; I never stop before a
+house, but I judge from its portico for what tune they will soonest toss
+me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the merry, and merry airs to
+the sad; and most always the rich best fancy the sad, and the poor the
+merry."
+
+"But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men," said
+Harry, "who would much rather have your room than your music?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," said Carlo, playing with his foot, "sometimes I do."
+
+"And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?"
+
+"No," continued the boy, "I love my organ as I do myself, for it is my
+only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers me;
+and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving off,
+not I; would I, poor organ?"--looking down the hatchway where it was.
+"No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve; for
+when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but they
+themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are cracked,
+and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into their souls."
+
+"No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps," said Harry, with a laugh.
+
+"Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords."
+
+Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
+vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
+and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
+gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
+went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
+
+Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
+be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars--never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a
+beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
+
+And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all
+the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on a
+moon-lit sward of violets.
+
+But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
+
+Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.
+
+But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.
+
+Behold the organ!
+
+Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
+melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
+we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
+almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
+buried.
+
+A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic order;
+in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
+
+What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!--what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!--what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!--But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.
+
+Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air--a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
+
+Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken, here's
+that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning eyes; and
+while I list to the organs twain--one yours, one mine--let me gaze
+fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;--'tis good as gazing down into the
+great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins there.
+
+Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching--all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am Xerxes,
+the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like gilded
+damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps swarm
+around me.
+
+But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband--soft, dulcet, dropping sounds,
+like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging, martial air, as
+if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and swordhilts,
+called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!
+
+Again-what blasted heath is this?--what goblin sounds of Macbeth's
+witches?--Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg's, demons dire.
+
+Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds are
+heard-some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand, vast,
+rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens, deep
+dipped in silver gauzes.
+
+All this could Carlo do--make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces take me;
+and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of sound, and
+bowers of song.
+
+And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.
+
+But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the same
+wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every figure
+greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a dusting.
+
+His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's
+heaven, it turns on golden binges.
+
+What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and gilded
+columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.
+
+The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and out
+come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop of
+martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute, pass
+on, and disappear.
+
+Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish.
+
+And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the side-doors,
+among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness; some
+emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling back
+the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.
+
+On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.
+
+Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.
+
+And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian boy,
+with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy wondrous
+box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!
+
+
+
+
+L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
+
+
+As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
+sailor.
+
+Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
+even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried
+you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with
+your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.
+
+But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
+glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it,
+that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.
+
+But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
+you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
+to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?
+
+But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
+fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
+like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
+embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the
+world.
+
+But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
+same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
+show like a zebra, banding with elks.
+
+And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
+Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the
+soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds
+through Caffrarian woods.
+
+How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!
+
+Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him
+before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
+knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors
+are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time,
+abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold
+and unsympathizing civility.
+
+As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
+the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
+every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
+money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
+him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.
+
+But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity
+with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other
+extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
+brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap,
+to stand his morning watch.
+
+As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
+crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
+spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
+before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest
+acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
+it would seem, from enacting this folly.
+
+"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to
+Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
+in a trice."
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is
+not mine a morning gown?"
+
+But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.
+
+"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a
+mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"
+
+Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
+want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
+pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.
+
+The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.
+
+It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by
+the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of
+silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they
+thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by
+abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
+Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test
+the color of his calves.
+
+It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
+easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company,
+the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible
+necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the
+constables.
+
+These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar.
+What else can bring them to sea?
+
+Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was
+put down for a very equivocal character.
+
+Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
+one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to
+mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
+mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
+or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
+tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
+if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
+to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga
+never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
+the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of
+his officers and crew.
+
+But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
+any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
+coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
+that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
+of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is,
+pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
+aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that
+when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be
+inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so
+absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round
+the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to
+mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However,
+after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting
+loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry
+for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
+would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from
+the opportunity of signalizing his activity.
+
+At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
+was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
+would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.
+
+"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what
+it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt
+you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you
+had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you
+only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find
+yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."
+
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his
+nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had
+drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
+altogether too many Havannas.
+
+At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
+morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
+short signal halyards.
+
+"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.
+
+"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.
+
+"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
+
+"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once
+across his back, but lightly.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and
+then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him
+lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head,
+I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.
+
+"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up
+till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing
+the rope's end.
+
+Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there
+no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he
+made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice.
+I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
+little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for
+I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being
+lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top.
+Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and
+clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the
+tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.
+
+"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and
+help him; you understand?"
+
+Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
+bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives;
+and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my
+unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the
+wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.
+
+I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
+even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.
+
+He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.
+
+At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the
+captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
+stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make
+the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
+himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New
+York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a
+blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on
+board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within
+so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
+thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his
+pleasure.
+
+Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but
+go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else
+but that.
+
+This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
+reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a
+miserable life indeed.
+
+Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
+finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead,
+and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a
+sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would
+be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked
+without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of
+this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these
+evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional
+nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare
+to the merciless crew.
+
+But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself
+up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps
+his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to
+explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
+passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common
+tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that
+only He who made us can expound them.
+
+
+
+
+LI. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds', till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the
+last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and
+all the rest was broad ocean.
+
+Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
+At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
+America itself was at hand.
+
+"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. "Is that it?"
+
+"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.
+
+"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"
+
+Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when
+they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own
+native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a
+steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
+
+They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
+adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a
+place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see
+how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together,
+looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York
+city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles
+distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
+
+The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"
+
+At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.
+
+Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
+would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
+and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ, and
+play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers, who
+blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his music by
+furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come forward,
+when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a message from the
+cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and entertain the
+gentlemen and ladies.
+
+There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and sometimes,
+by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's,
+for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or
+thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the
+other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling
+to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely
+unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest,
+were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the
+gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could to my
+little Italian's organ.
+
+It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play any
+tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs at
+one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.
+
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that such or
+such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart; and some
+ladles, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays to
+Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.
+
+"Yes, ladies," said the captain, bowing, "by your leave, I think Carlo's
+organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig running after
+its dam."
+
+Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people were
+all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.
+
+"Carlo"--said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the quarter-
+deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place during my
+watch on deck:--"Carlo"--said I, "what do the gentlemen and ladies give
+you for playing?"
+
+"Look!"--and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield--three English pennies.
+
+Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that the
+natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and steerage-passengers,
+regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at least, of my not
+feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.
+
+Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have her
+own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt. Not
+because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.
+
+One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.
+
+Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a comical
+Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he looked
+as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief; a
+short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the calf,
+but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable about him
+but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not remember
+it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the time, as if
+its owner was laboring under the mumps.
+
+Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among the
+rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the lee
+of the spanker; or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat quizzing the
+emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the windows of the
+upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the steward to help them
+to brandy and water, and talked about going on to Washington, to see
+Niagara Falls.
+
+There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or four
+heavy files of the London Times, and other papers; and he spent all his
+hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck, with one leg
+crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never read at all.
+That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what he studied.
+He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now and then
+were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.
+
+As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies are
+like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.
+
+
+
+
+LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN
+
+
+I have made some mention of the "galley," or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.
+
+During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in the
+steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a pretty
+large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough, considering the
+number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire was only to be
+kindled at certain hours.
+
+For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law; and in
+all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of the
+captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well go
+to law with the Czar of Russia.
+
+At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving of
+the spray over the uncovered "galley." Whenever I had the morning watch,
+from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling up from
+below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after bits of
+rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner would the
+fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and children;
+each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a great tumult
+ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the more
+quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.
+
+Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he managed
+to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon after a
+great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves, made his
+appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked whose
+coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his own in
+its place; saying something about that individual place belonging to
+him; and with that, he turned aside.
+
+Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot removed,
+made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the Irishman no
+sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists doubled. The boy
+snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its contents all about the
+fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to dance involuntary
+hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving chase to the boy,
+who by this time, however, had decamped.
+
+Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass, but
+scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their cooking.
+
+This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of the
+most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very hardships to
+which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by
+imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they
+themselves drive the strongest rivet into the chain, by which their
+social superiors hold them subject.
+
+It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.
+
+The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called mush; by the Dutch is known as supaan; by
+sailors burgoo; by the New Englanders hasty-pudding; in which
+hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow found the materials for a
+sort of epic.
+
+Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.
+
+There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world than
+the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna sausages,
+Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.
+
+There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would sometimes
+take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him, like an
+Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion, and eating
+his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk bottle, and
+smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer made time jog
+along with him at a tolerably easy pace.
+
+But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and wife
+in some imaginary section of the ship, called the second cabin, which
+was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.
+
+This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who was
+young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in love
+with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and happy.
+
+She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to do,
+from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through their
+double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past telling; he
+would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his matrimonial
+commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But the lady was
+not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime, the bucks
+would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying the fun.
+The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up, and make a
+dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as far as the
+mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that divided
+them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come no
+further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.
+
+While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him--
+
+"Billy, my dear;" and lay her soft hand on his shoulder.
+
+But Billy, he only fiddled harder.
+
+"Billy, my love!"
+
+The bow went faster and faster.
+
+"Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;" and she
+bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.
+
+Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an hour
+or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.
+
+But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be renewed,
+which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an opera-glass
+from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
+
+
+With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the manner of
+Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:--"It happened, that in each
+family were three twin brothers, between whom there was little disparity
+in point of age or of strength."
+
+Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.
+
+They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as like
+as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the forms
+seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they seemed to
+form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal likeness, all
+six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each other; yet, the
+O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the O'Regans. The
+former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve around their
+mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit; whereas, the
+O'Regans were "broths of boys," full of mischief and fun, and given to
+all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.
+
+Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving her
+spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and made
+her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up from
+the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes, and
+the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in shampooing them, though it was haphazard sort of work
+enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to fasten on
+a stray limb.
+
+"Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you, Teddy,
+you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your legs up
+with Pat's."
+
+The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's locker--or
+rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows--with a large old quarto
+Bible, black with age, laid before her between the knight-heads, and
+reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.
+
+The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that haunted
+us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs. O'Brien
+purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul wind for
+the next ensuing twenty-four hours.
+
+At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman accosted
+her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.
+
+Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth of
+affection between the two families of twins, which upon this occasion
+was curiously manifested.
+
+Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow silently
+occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round her,
+began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme bows of
+the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The widow
+gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then ducking in
+the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and springing from
+the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs, biting and striking
+at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no sooner perceived,
+than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and the amazed seaman
+found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.
+
+And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out "enough!" and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the
+three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.
+
+"There now, you rascal," cried the mate, "throw overboard another Bible,
+and I'll send you after it without a bowline."
+
+This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the vessel.
+That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by
+the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in
+them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in
+public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning
+their nurses.
+
+"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye
+run in wonder along the even file of white heads.
+
+"Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?"
+
+Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken
+up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which
+resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
+
+I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me
+at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of
+the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?
+
+Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the
+particular benefit of twins?
+
+
+
+
+LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
+
+
+It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of their
+tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in the
+end.
+
+True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices paid
+for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the greater
+portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to surrender
+the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of the
+Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks out,
+on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.
+
+Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below at
+sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called "High-low-
+Jack-and-the-game," which name, indeed, has a Jackish and nautical
+flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco, which,
+like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they play.
+Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into "chaws."
+
+So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially if
+they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to be
+boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the forecastle by
+those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on deck, and make
+a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there was a great
+deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of nigging and
+cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were exchanged.
+
+But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see but
+very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight sky;
+and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become exceedingly
+torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the four suits might
+have seceded from their respective clans, and formed into a fifth tribe,
+under the name of "Tar-spots."
+
+Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it became
+necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The modicum
+constituting an ordinary "chaw," was made to last a whole day; and at
+night, permission being had from the cook, this self-same "chaw" was
+placed in the oven of the stove, and there dried; so as to do duty in a
+pipe.
+
+In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe. With
+touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings--the time of
+smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable "chawing," they
+beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable puffs.
+
+One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an idea
+in his head--"Boys, let's search under the bunks!" Bless you, Blunt! what
+a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out; the dark places
+explored; and two sticks of nail-rod tobacco, and several old "chaws,"
+thrown aside by sailors on some previous voyage, were their cheering
+reward. They were impartially divided by Jackson, who, upon this
+occasion, acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all.
+
+Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one generally
+adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of impartiality is
+desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest consideration to
+all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance; for if they adopted
+this nautical method, that universally slanderous aphorism of Lavater
+would be forever rendered nugatory--"Expert not to understand any man
+till you have divided with him an inheritance."
+
+The nail-rods they cut as evenly as possible into as many parts as there
+were men to be supplied; and this operation having been performed in the
+presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before him, his face to
+the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the bits of weed with
+his knife, crying out, "Whose is this?" Whereupon a respondent,
+previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the opposite corner
+of the forecastle, "Blunt's;" and to Blunt it went; and so on, in like
+manner, till all were served.
+
+I put it to you, lawyers--shade of Blackstone, I invoke you--if a more
+impartial procedure could be imagined than this?
+
+But the nail-rods and last-voyage "chaws" were soon gone, and then,
+after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again drooped, and
+relapsed into gloom.
+
+They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however--but not altogether new
+among seamen--to allay the severity of the depression under which they
+languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart; and, cut
+up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed. Old ropes
+were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the hold, and
+had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer their ancient,
+cheese-like flavor.
+
+In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central part,
+round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking oakum,
+upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used at such
+times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have ever
+taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in untwisting it
+slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and aromatic
+"heart;" for so this central piece is denominated.
+
+It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.
+
+Nor is this delectable morsel of old junk wanting in many interesting,
+mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what gales it may have
+been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How many stout masts of
+seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the tempest? How deep it
+may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of strange harbors? What
+outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the water, and what
+un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when forming part of a
+lofty stay or a shroud?
+
+Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little "cut" it was,
+that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And getting
+hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it lovingly, to
+see whether it had any "tenderloin."
+
+For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was at
+all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of an
+antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies. Indeed,
+though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had rather an
+astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with which the
+flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors seemed to
+like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They converted
+one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when solicited by a
+shipmate for a "chaw," would produce a small coil of rope.
+
+Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.
+
+I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the genuine
+weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out, until
+very shortly previous to our arrival in port.
+
+In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious solace,
+when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper
+one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the
+mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.
+
+He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the
+nail-rods they found.
+
+The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over twelve or
+fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left
+to the philosophers.
+
+
+
+
+LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER
+
+
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me of
+a circumstance--which, perhaps, should have been mentioned before--that
+after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced himself too
+unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk. And here,
+with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning himself in fine
+weather, he remained on his back, or seated cross-legged, during the
+remainder of the homeward-bound passage.
+
+Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with a
+midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been the
+face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and blasted by
+lightning.
+
+Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among
+themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was
+only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his
+excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its fangs in
+his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.
+
+His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.
+
+The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his treatment
+of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death now before
+him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into madness; and as if
+he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined to die with a curse
+between his teeth.
+
+I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world--the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well meriting
+his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless vagabond
+without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For there is
+no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a
+democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side by
+side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though Milton's
+Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only because he is
+not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine original. We
+gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised fancies
+concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure. But
+in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up
+and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of
+wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.
+
+
+
+
+LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
+COMMUNION
+
+
+A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps
+on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine
+before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those
+melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew
+on Hermon.
+
+And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.
+
+His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like
+his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the
+words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and
+pansied margins.
+
+"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his
+watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I
+stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and
+there I'll hum you an air."
+
+It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."
+
+Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be
+singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.
+
+But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
+sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous
+quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
+
+But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from
+his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his
+feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
+even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry
+possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could
+not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the
+being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they
+did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
+accordion in their ears.
+
+So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in
+velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.
+
+Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
+more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
+with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
+all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
+intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
+cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
+
+But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if
+he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.
+
+He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England;
+and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.
+
+"I have forgotten England," he said, "and never more mean to think of
+it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?"
+
+It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I
+was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in
+the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with
+one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave
+kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never
+actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can
+not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no
+true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust
+that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.
+
+So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by
+talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I
+certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even
+as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward
+him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country;
+I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting,
+that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects
+and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.
+
+Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--"Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have," and then he went on to mention, that in some
+places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly
+respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in
+lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats--it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their
+livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery
+shillings.
+
+They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and
+gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not
+sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and
+when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a
+gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing
+you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting
+reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices,
+enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the
+conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well
+recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make
+the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.
+
+"Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?" said Harry,
+"or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?" he anxiously
+added.
+
+Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.
+
+I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were,
+a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the
+civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have
+resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in
+wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney,
+and had shut up his Christendom in London.
+
+Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not
+play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such
+a business.
+
+Said I, "My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man
+has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think
+myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling."
+
+So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea
+of singing himself into a livelihood.
+
+"No, I won't sing for my mutton," said he--"what would Lady Georgiana
+say?"
+
+"If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry," returned I,
+who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom
+friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right
+honorable friends and relations.
+
+"But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your
+other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you."
+
+"I do write a hand," he gladly rejoined--"there, look at the
+implement!--do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or
+cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?"
+
+Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was small;
+and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the
+nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.
+
+His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of
+that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble
+birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son
+of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers
+in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration,
+would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.
+
+Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or
+that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot,
+when even a fish has no foot at all!
+
+Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh,
+democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base. It
+is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.
+
+But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white
+as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had
+somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.
+
+Often he ruefully eyed it.
+
+Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it seemly,
+that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses
+to their coaches? Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?
+with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord
+Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she
+vowed she was mine?--Out of sight, recreant and apostate!--deep
+down--disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!
+
+After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that
+upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few
+friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.
+
+
+
+
+LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
+
+
+"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
+just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
+children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where
+the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which,
+indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.
+
+"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
+over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
+appetite by chewing sulphur.--"Pigs, is it?--and the day is close by, ye
+spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"
+
+This malicious prophecy proved true.
+
+As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their
+outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.
+
+Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
+to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
+the ship's stores, or starve.
+
+This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
+cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.
+
+But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
+hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
+consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of
+the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
+plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the
+public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and
+carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not
+venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
+cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
+they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
+cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
+beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
+the name of the Church.
+
+At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
+Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
+emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
+rigging and flogged.
+
+Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
+such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants
+into an insurrection.
+
+A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and
+into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
+the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
+orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith
+coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
+protruded through the holes in the bottom.
+
+It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.
+
+"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours,
+if you can."
+
+Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of
+food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
+time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain
+have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
+voyage.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
+THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
+
+
+Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
+not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
+seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
+the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
+great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
+America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
+prevalence of westerly winds.
+
+We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
+by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
+visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
+a week.
+
+During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
+
+During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
+galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
+steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
+lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
+emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
+the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
+ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
+to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
+when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
+two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
+also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
+the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
+ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
+windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
+
+During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
+steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
+noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
+marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
+
+Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
+close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
+
+The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
+known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
+
+Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
+out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
+to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
+disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
+being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess
+that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
+increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
+over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
+fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
+most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
+
+Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
+deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and
+tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
+beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
+continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of
+these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities,
+that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.
+
+The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.
+
+It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
+that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
+captain's order.
+
+The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
+like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
+meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath
+with a gasp.
+
+At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which
+the fear of contagion had left open.
+
+"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."
+
+But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.
+
+"Haul it down!" roared the mate.
+
+But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.
+
+About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
+and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
+bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed
+nothing more frightful.
+
+Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
+By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
+rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
+rites, were dropped into the ocean.
+
+At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
+devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
+but the captain did not again go down to them.
+
+It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
+it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
+to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered
+decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their
+den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was
+out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the
+defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the
+emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly
+painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
+their own salvation.
+
+The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
+themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
+captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
+clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
+they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
+quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
+
+On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
+an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
+very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
+and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard
+against contagion.
+
+Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds
+and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
+prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest
+had been so often heard.
+
+Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
+that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
+
+On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the
+third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor,
+and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward
+supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
+brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers.
+All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed
+elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of
+another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
+swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair
+of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at
+least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
+
+And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
+this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in
+rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
+
+On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
+
+But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
+rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
+and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
+one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
+father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
+death, both mothers and babes survived.
+
+At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
+the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
+
+In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
+the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
+fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
+and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
+Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
+white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
+boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
+
+By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
+down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft;
+and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
+
+The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing
+the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and
+regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of
+late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of
+them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage,
+with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck,
+I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning
+out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
+three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
+convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied
+under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.
+
+But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the
+fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the
+fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we
+made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for
+New York.
+
+Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at
+least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or
+children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and
+bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no
+indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality,
+that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and
+bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must
+toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down
+the hammer to lift up the coffin.
+
+How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
+suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
+few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
+land?
+
+As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
+nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
+land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
+jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.
+
+The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative
+on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among
+strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
+
+But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
+in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon
+the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
+
+And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
+grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any
+one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of
+sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have
+perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would
+you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the
+scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites
+much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his
+behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life
+and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates
+died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in
+theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed,
+without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical
+skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the
+spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly
+discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
+Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
+last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.
+
+The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
+against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who
+had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.
+In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
+the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions;
+supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest
+favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant
+steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
+bulk-head.
+
+But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.
+
+One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
+orders upon his arrival in New York.
+
+"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"
+
+"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man
+to be a parson, and pray."
+
+However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
+the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
+There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
+die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
+seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
+passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
+more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of Me and
+death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
+three-worded sentence!
+
+You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
+of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
+the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank.
+And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
+of the Highlander's calamity.
+
+Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes
+of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances
+of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate
+unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention
+at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
+light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
+
+In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.
+
+Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes
+of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive
+it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have
+God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with
+them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is
+no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we
+waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come
+hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.
+
+Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
+
+But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
+lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain
+of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and
+give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during
+a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to
+place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of
+shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet
+weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and
+let them have an occasional run fore and aft?--There is no law concerning
+these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see
+it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!
+
+We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them,
+go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet
+barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to
+its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief
+outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is
+striving to make us.
+
+
+
+
+LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
+
+
+"Off Cape Cod!" said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck,
+where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping
+the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the
+dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.
+
+"Off Cape Cod!"
+
+and in the shore-bloom that came to us--even from that desert of
+sand-hillocks--methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance of the
+rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at
+home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from
+afar.
+
+The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.
+
+In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last
+the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into
+all three top-sails.
+
+While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they
+had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several,
+Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four
+weeks or more, took hold of a rope.
+
+Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off
+duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering
+port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he
+expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
+
+At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon
+an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on
+deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.
+
+His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were
+like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark
+tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
+
+Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering
+up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place
+at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard--which in reefing is
+accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the characteristics of
+this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work
+in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would
+yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded
+dominion over the men.
+
+Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing
+and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his
+reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson,
+whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
+
+His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that
+they are the most profane.
+
+"Haul out to windward!" coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he
+threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
+But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped
+to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood
+from his lungs.
+
+As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong
+from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the
+sea.
+
+It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.
+
+Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the
+one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the
+waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an
+order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead
+of that, the next sound that greeted us was, "Bear a hand, and reef
+away, men!" from the mate.
+
+Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea--and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs--our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.
+
+And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too
+many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.
+
+Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a thole-pin in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching
+and cracking in the sun.
+
+Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet
+in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To be
+sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in
+case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the
+souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of
+survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst
+of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at least of his
+servants escaped to report it.
+
+In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up
+his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage
+under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their
+secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing
+so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death
+was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits,
+unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to
+their now drawing near to their port.
+
+
+
+
+LX. HOME AT LAST
+
+
+Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.
+
+After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound, pervading
+calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in godly
+towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.
+
+The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all
+around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.
+
+Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and mid-air,
+the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion, the blue
+sea seemed to flow under them.
+
+The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient cabin-
+passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants clustered
+around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.
+
+But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed down
+into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his own;
+and turning to Harry, said, "This America's skies must be down in the
+sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we also
+behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere, wherever I
+go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool."
+
+Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from the
+shore--the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and was
+beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of bottomless
+pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly caught by the
+throng.
+
+The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger
+of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces,
+and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw of wind.
+
+When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly stands
+among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys a
+realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.
+
+The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied
+round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands
+was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.--A command that was received by
+the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured,
+that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long
+detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore reluctantly
+complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following them, went old
+pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the sea was strewn
+with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the waves--couches for
+all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless things of this sort,
+tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the harbor of New York,
+drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on the shores of Staten
+Island; along whose eastern beach I have often walked, and speculated
+upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and dilapidated baskets at my feet.
+
+A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their forces,
+and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and water.
+And to this they were incited by the same warning which had induced them
+to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place was then
+fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so that by
+evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance, that the
+Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous voyage. Thus,
+some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens shall not get
+a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at sea.
+
+That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of the
+forts.
+
+An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with a
+glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced with
+aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like horses
+brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the Highlander
+was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.
+
+No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads, and
+like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.
+
+On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag,
+denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of
+the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world,
+taint the air with the streamings of their f ever-flag.
+
+But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side were
+now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that they
+thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.
+
+Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires pierced
+the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners, and sail
+boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and black
+rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the stately
+old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of swans, we
+caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.
+
+Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know what
+home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he seems
+to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm, you
+swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.
+
+Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.
+
+"And that" said he, pointing out a vast black hull which, like a shark,
+showed tiers of teeth, "that, ladies, is a line-of-battle-ship, the
+North Carolina."
+
+"Oh, dear!"--and "Oh my!"--ejaculated the ladies, and--"Lord, save us,"
+responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.
+
+Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old anchor,
+fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one handful of
+which was now worth a broad manor in England.
+
+The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers were
+all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning. But
+nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like "Hail Columbia!" his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.
+
+Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck, and
+gazing at the thousand lights of the city.
+
+At sunrise, we warped into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and
+knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of
+her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a
+maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a
+rush and a shout, they bounded ashore, followed by the tumultuous crowd
+of emigrants, whose friends, day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to
+embrace them.
+
+But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and
+the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.
+
+
+
+
+LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
+
+
+There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the deserted
+old ship, but the mate and the rats.
+
+At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.
+
+We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed beyond
+all doubt--like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches of the
+night, and no starb-o-leens ahoy! would annoy us again.
+
+"All night in! think of that, Harry, my friend!"
+
+"Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think I
+may now sleep as long as I please."
+
+We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore, first
+stripping to the waist, for a toilet.
+
+"I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers," cried
+Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong suds.
+"No! they will not come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look at my hand
+once, Wellingborough!"
+
+It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of a
+rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.
+
+"Never mind, Harry," said I--"You know the ladies of the east steep the
+tips of their fingers in some golden dye."
+
+"And by Plutus," cried Harry--"I'd steep mine up to the armpits in gold;
+since you talk about that. But never mind, I'll swear I'm just from
+Persia, my boy."
+
+We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at once,
+I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street, kept by
+one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital buckwheat
+cakes.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what will you have?"--said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.
+
+"Gentlemen!" whispered Harry to me--"gentlemen!--hear him!--I say now,
+Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander. By
+heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:--Coffee and hot rolls," he added
+aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, "and fellow--come back--bring us a
+venison-steak."
+
+"Haven't got it, gentlemen."
+
+"Ham and eggs," suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.
+
+But the butter!
+
+"Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?"
+
+"Don't say a word,"--said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast "I'm
+going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of butter, so
+long as I live."
+
+We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of gold,
+bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.
+
+"Now," said Harry, "lead on; and let's see something of these United
+States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the Great
+Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here, take my
+arm;--lead on."
+
+Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It reminded
+me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the sign of the
+Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.
+
+He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the landlady's
+butcher's bill was not very large.
+
+Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I turned
+up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had happened
+during my absence.
+
+With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the other,
+gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport compelled
+my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to inform him.
+
+Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened; during
+which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange streets, and
+strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his countenance. He was a
+creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to himself, the strange streets
+seemed now to have reminded him of his friendless condition; and I found
+him with a very sad eye; and his right hand groping in his pocket.
+
+"Where am I going to dine, this day week?"--he slowly said. "What's to be
+done, Wellingborough?"
+
+And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he looked
+downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though needing
+a little cheering myself; even though I had got home again. But no more
+about that.
+
+Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.
+
+I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend; and
+in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his best
+for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.
+
+That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets, three
+abreast:--Goodwell spending his money freely at the oyster-saloons; Harry
+full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and myself contributing a
+small quota to the general entertainment.
+
+Next morning, we proceeded to business.
+
+Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as to
+retire for life on the profits of my first voyage; but nevertheless, I
+thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For dollars are valuable
+things; and should not be overlooked, when they are owing. Therefore, as
+the second morning after our arrival, had been set apart for paying off
+the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on ship-board, with the rest.
+We were told to enter the cabin; and once again I found myself, after an
+interval of four months, and more, surrounded by its mahogany and maple.
+
+Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as the
+Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes--beautiful sight!--paid them their wages.
+
+Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty dollars
+coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved profitable in
+restraining him from the expensive excesses of most seafaring men, and
+who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly round sum of seventy
+dollars as his due.
+
+Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time, was
+worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American "mitts." Only
+seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me, that
+stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only �5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.
+
+With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make, the
+old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.
+
+The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and seeing
+all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case they
+would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:--the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.
+
+We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper--I think it was the Herald--threw his leg over
+one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence from all
+parts of the world.
+
+I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at this
+incomprehensible captain.
+
+At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the disturbance.
+
+The Paymaster-general looked up.
+
+"Well, where do you come from? Who are you, pray? and what do you want?
+Steward, show these young gentlemen out."
+
+"I want my money," said Harry.
+
+"My wages are due," said I.
+
+The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at us,
+letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.
+
+"Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down in
+the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Captain Riga!" cried Harry, enraged at his impudence--"I tell you what
+it is, Captain Riga; this won't do--where's the rhino?"
+
+"Captain Riga," added I, "do you not remember, that about four months
+ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in this
+very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship, and
+receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain Riga, I
+have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank you for
+my pay."
+
+"Ah, yes, I remember," said the captain. "Mr. Jones! Ha! ha! I remember
+Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop--you, too, are the son
+of a wealthy French importer; and--let me think--was not your great-uncle
+a barber?"
+
+"No!" thundered I.
+
+"Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward, chairs
+for the young gentlemen--be seated, young gentlemen. And now, let me
+see," turning over his accounts--"Hum, hum!--yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool--that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard--that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you four
+dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?"
+
+"So it seems, sir," said I, with staring eyes.
+
+"And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square the
+yards, Monsieur Redburn."
+
+Owe him! thought I--what do I owe him but a grudge, but I concealed my
+resentment; and presently he said, "By running away from the ship in
+Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve dollars; and
+as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and scrapers,
+seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore indebted to me
+in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank you for the
+money;" and he extended his open palm across the desk.
+
+"Shall I pitch into him?" whispered Harry.
+
+I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the state of
+my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it was that
+he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry and I were
+in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I could not
+help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin his suit,
+for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.
+
+Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to be
+munificent. Peace to his dinners.
+
+"Mr. Bolton, I believe," said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. "Mr. Bolton, you also shipped for three dollars per month: and
+you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to dock we have
+been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one dollar and a half,
+Mr. Bolton; and here it is;" handing him six two-shilling pieces.
+
+"And this," said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, "this
+is the reward of my long and faithful services!"
+
+Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+"There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse,
+and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir."
+
+"Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again," said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.
+
+Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness in
+disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him of
+his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried Pshaw! and that was the last of it.
+
+Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the forecastle-deck,
+engaged in some earnest discussion; while several carts on the wharf,
+loaded with their chests, were just in the act of driving off, destined
+for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of our shipmates, I saw
+very plainly that they must have some mischief under weigh; and so it
+turned out.
+
+Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular outrage
+against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses--such as
+indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be diminished,
+without betraying any appearance of having any inclination that way, and
+without speaking to the sailors on the subject--by this, and kindred
+actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of the whole
+ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a name
+unmentionably expressive of their contempt.
+
+The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.
+
+It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company, upon
+the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat--but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.
+
+At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the "Irish cockney," was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.
+
+In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the
+gentlemen alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the side
+next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled about,
+presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite salute
+to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who happened
+to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound, cleared
+the ship.
+
+True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga only
+lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his cabin.
+
+Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were so
+clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along the
+wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically denominated
+"The Flashes." And here they all came to anchor before the bar; and the
+landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself behind it, among
+his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well knew, from their
+looks, that his customers were "flush," and would spend their money
+freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen, recently paid off.
+
+It was a touching scene.
+
+"Well, maties," said one of them, at last--"I spose we shan't see each
+other again:--come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and drink to
+the last voyage!"
+
+Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar, uncorked
+his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the sailors, as
+much as to say--"Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me to allowance your
+liquor;--help yourselves, your honors."
+
+And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed them
+all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then disappeared
+in couples, through the several doorways; for "The Flashes" was on a
+corner.
+
+If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a
+"Good-by, God bless you," is heard for every "How d'ye do, welcome, my
+boy"--then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most
+hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves,
+they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to
+and fro.
+
+As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I stood
+on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.
+
+"They are gone," said I.
+
+"Thank heaven!" said Harry.
+
+
+
+
+LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
+
+
+That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we sat
+on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.
+
+It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub--oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?
+
+"I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry," said I, "he's
+a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I know."
+
+"No doubt of it," said Harry, looking hopeless.
+
+"And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so soon."
+
+"And I am sorry enough myself," said Harry, looking very sincere.
+
+"But I will be soon back again, I doubt not," said I.
+
+"Perhaps so," said Harry, shaking his head. "How far is it off?"
+
+"Only a hundred and eighty miles," said I.
+
+"A hundred and eighty miles!" said Harry, drawing the words out like an
+endless ribbon. "Why, I couldn't walk that in a month."
+
+"Now, my dear friend," said I, "take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well."
+
+But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so bad,
+that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we both
+gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.
+
+He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward; he
+stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then, standing on
+the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost counteracted the play
+of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk at the arm-pits, we
+parted. I never saw Harry again.
+
+I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:--I pass over this; and will conclude my first
+voyage by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.
+
+Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several weeks;
+during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.
+
+I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following letter,
+now spread before me.
+
+"Dear Redburn--Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where. After
+you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out together;
+and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't know how dull
+are the times here, and what multitudes of young men, well qualified,
+are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
+get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
+melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
+those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars,
+but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times
+after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had
+permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her
+closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know,
+but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared
+he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to the offices in
+South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made
+inquiries among them; but without success. And this, I am heartily
+grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not believe that his
+melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing himself away in a
+whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere in the city. You
+must come down yourself, and help me seek him out."
+
+This! letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield to
+the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered to
+think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
+
+I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought him
+all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
+
+To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry must
+indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his bitter
+experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
+
+At last I was forced to give him up.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
+whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's crew
+that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
+
+Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
+Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
+to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and that
+the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of originally
+bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him why he had
+abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of ships.
+
+"We had hardly been out three months," said he, "when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next day
+lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never entered
+the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the ship, and a
+whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he had a hard
+time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son, and when you
+could coax him to it, he sang like a bird."
+
+"What was his name?" said I, trembling with expectation; "what kind of
+eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?"
+
+"Harry Bolton was not your brother?" cried the stranger, starting.
+
+Harry Bolton!
+
+It was even he!
+
+But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, My
+First Voyage--which here I end.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+This file should be named 8redb10.txt or 8redb10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8redb11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8redb10a.txt
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext05
+
+Or /etext04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92,
+91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+ PROJECT GUTENBERG LITERARY ARCHIVE FOUNDATION
+ 809 North 1500 West
+ Salt Lake City, UT 84116
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/8redb10.zip b/old/8redb10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..734780b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8redb10.zip
diff --git a/old/8redb10h.htm b/old/8redb10h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4f1251
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8redb10h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,10970 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville</TITLE>
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Herman Melville">
+<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Mystery, Suspense, History, Gothic, Literature, Books, Arts">
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+body {font-size:14; font-family:arial, garamond, helvetica, times; text-align:justify}
+p {font-size:14; font-family:arial, garamond, helvetica, times; text-align:justify}
+pre.poem {font-size:12; font-style: italic; font-family:arial, courier; text-align:center}
+pre.chart {font-size:10; font-weight: bold; font-family:courier; text-align:center}
+</STYLE>
+
+</HEAD>
+<BODY bgcolor="white" alink="blue" vlink="blue" link="blue">
+<H1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville</H1>
+
+<PRE>
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Redburn. His First Voyage
+
+Author: Herman Melville
+
+Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8118]
+[This file was first posted on June 17, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+HTML version prepared by Blackmask Online <a href="http://www.blackmask.com">http://www.blackmask.com</a> and
+re-formatted by Project Gutenberg Volunteers
+
+
+
+</PRE>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Redburn. His First Voyage, by Herman Melville</h1>
+
+
+<HR>
+<CENTER>
+<h1>Redburn. His First Voyage</h1>
+<h3>Herman Melville</h3>
+</center>
+
+<UL>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_2">I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA
+WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_3">II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_4">III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_5">IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_6">V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL
+RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_7">VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING
+OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_8">VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_9">VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS
+SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_10">IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN
+CONVERSES WITH THEM</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_11">X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE
+HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_12">XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO
+BREAKFAST</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_13">XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS
+SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_14">XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT;
+BUT CHANGES HIS MIND</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_15">XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE
+CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_16">XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_17">XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE
+MAIN-SKYSAIL</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_18">XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_19">XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND
+TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM BOOK</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_20">XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_21">XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER,
+AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_22">XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_23">XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_24">XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A
+MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_25">XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE
+A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_26">XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_27">XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_28">XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST
+ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_29">XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE
+BALTIMORE CLIPPER</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_30">XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING
+THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_31">XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID
+OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_32">XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A
+PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_33">XXXII. THE DOCKS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_34">XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT
+SHIPS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_35">XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_36">XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING
+CHAPEL</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_37">XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE
+DEAD-HOUSE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_38">XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY </A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_39">XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_40">XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_41">XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND
+STEAMERS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_42">XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HTHER AND THITHER</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_43">XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN</A>
+</LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_44">XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE
+COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_45">XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO
+THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE READER</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_46">XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES
+HIM OFF TO LONDON</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_47">XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_48">XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_49">XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_50">XLIX. CARLO</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_51">L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_52">LI. THE EMIGRANTS</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_53">LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_54">LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_55">LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_56">LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND
+HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_57">LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_58">LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR
+AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_59">LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_60">LX. HOME AT LAST</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_61">LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR</A></LI>
+<LI><A HREF="#1_0_62">LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON</A>
+</LI>
+</UL>
+<BR>
+<PRE CLASS="POEM">
+Being the Sailor Boy
+Confessions and Reminiscences
+Of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman
+In the Merchant Navy</PRE>
+<P>&nbsp;</P>
+<P>&nbsp;</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_2">I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S
+TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM</A></H3>
+<P>&quot;Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
+shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing&#8212;take it, it will <I>
+save </I>the expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long
+skirts, stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets.&quot;</P>
+<P>Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
+brother to me, upon the <I>eve </I>of my departure for the seaport.</P>
+<P>&quot;And, Wellingborough,&quot; he added, &quot;since we are both short of money,
+and you want an outfit, and I <I>Have </I>none to <I>give, </I>you may
+as well take my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what
+you can get.&#8212;Nay, take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it
+in powder any more.&quot;</P>
+<P>I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from
+New York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
+small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
+I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
+myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
+within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.</P>
+<P>For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
+delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
+which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
+devoured such announcements as the following:</P>
+<BR>
+<center>
+<B>FOR BREMEN.</B>
+</center>
+<br>
+<I>
+The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed
+her cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
+<br>
+For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip.
+<br>
+</I>
+<P>To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like
+this, suggested volumes of thought.</P>
+<P>A <I>brig! </I>The very word summoned up the idea of a black,
+sea-worn craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.</P>
+
+<P><I>Coppered and copper-fastened!</I></P>
+
+<p>That fairly smelt of the salt water! How different such vessels
+must be from the wooden, one-masted, green-and-white-painted sloops,
+that glided up and down the river before our house on the bank.</p>
+
+<P><I>Nearly completed her cargo!</I></P>
+
+<p>How momentous the announcement; suggesting ideas, too, of musty
+bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for
+the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which my river experience
+was familiar.</p>
+
+<P><I>Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May-and</I></P>
+
+the newspaper bore date the fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days
+beforehand; think of that; what an important voyage it must be, that
+the time of sailing was fixed upon so long beforehand; the river sloops
+were not used to make such prospective announcements.
+
+<P><I>For freight or passage apply on board!</I></P>
+
+Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and
+taking passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
+foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
+who talked French.
+
+<P><I>Coenties Slip.</I></P>
+<p>
+Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
+Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
+with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors
+and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also,
+much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in
+and out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and
+Calcutta.</p>
+<P>
+All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain
+shadowy reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with
+which a residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.</P>
+<P>
+Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when
+a large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier.
+I remembered the <I>yo heave ho!</I> of the sailors, as they just
+showed their woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I
+thought of their crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and
+those very sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually
+in Europe.</P>
+<P>
+Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
+crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer
+in Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the
+well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell
+my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the
+masts bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about
+going up into the ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early
+life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but
+with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long,
+narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange
+houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look
+of rainy days and Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have
+rainy days and Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the
+boys went to school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt
+collars turned over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their
+papas allowed them to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much
+disliked, for boots looked so manly.</P>
+<P>As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently
+fell into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought
+how fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
+countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
+had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
+romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
+foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up
+and down the streets, and how grocers' boys would turn back their heads
+to look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a
+man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church,
+as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
+adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
+which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.</P>
+<P>&quot;See what big eyes he has,&quot; whispered my aunt, &quot;they got so big,
+because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at
+once caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it.&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
+uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I
+am sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was
+out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home.
+But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never
+saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and
+several times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown
+still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.</P>
+<P>In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell
+upon foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my
+tastes. We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been
+brought from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where
+the wood grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and
+what they could be doing with themselves now.</P>
+<P>Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
+father's, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
+dining-room.</P>
+<P>Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
+fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
+legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
+one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
+were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
+to think a piece of it might taste good.</P>
+<P>The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with
+high castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
+Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
+men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
+through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
+over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
+very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.</P>
+<P>Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints,
+more than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and
+sisters used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and
+spreading them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.</P>
+<P>They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
+masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
+with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
+and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
+pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
+cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.</P>
+<P>And others were pictures of natural history, representing
+rhinoceroses and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was
+a picture of a great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons,
+and three boats sailing after it as fast as they could fly.</P>
+<P>Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an
+old brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of
+basement, with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there
+were glass doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books,
+that had been printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a
+fine library edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded
+backs; and many a time I gazed at the word <I>&quot;London&quot; </I>on the
+title-page. And there was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I
+wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should
+ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book,
+which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I
+so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant we
+had.</P>
+<P>That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to
+my incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me,
+that he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely
+believed; for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been
+born in a foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in
+America.</P>
+<P>As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign
+associations, bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated,
+one day or other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father
+used to entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I
+would hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And
+I have no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with
+bringing about my subsequent rovings.</P>
+<P>But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
+dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
+the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
+and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
+had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
+Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days
+of the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
+Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.</P>
+<P>It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by
+one of my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed
+Dutch tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after
+being the admiration of my father's visitors in the capital, became the
+wonder and delight of all the people of the village where we now
+resided, many of whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose
+than to see the ship. And well did it repay the long and curious
+examinations which they were accustomed to give it.</P>
+<P>In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
+wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
+resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
+to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks;
+and often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else
+was inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark
+indoors, that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was
+very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the
+hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon
+something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always
+been in want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a
+sort of insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all,
+in order to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of
+the kind to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and
+after that, the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond
+my reach, and until I should recover my reason.</P>
+<P>I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine,
+unless it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain
+Kidd's ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the
+Highlands, full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were
+trying to dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one
+had ever thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost
+a hundred years.</P>
+<P>Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this
+famous ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in
+imagination, till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make
+mention of the people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as
+beautiful little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and
+shoes on, just like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of
+ruffle round the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble
+little chaps, and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides;
+but for all that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can
+take my oath.</P>
+<P>Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his
+arms over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a
+second was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his
+shoulder; the cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the
+fore-hatch; the steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the
+cabin with a plate of glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth,
+was barking at him; while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a
+glass cigar on the quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark,
+with one hand to his head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very
+glassy out of the eyes.</P>
+<P>The name of this curious ship was <I>La Reine, </I>or The Queen,
+which was painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a
+crowd of glass dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of
+semicircle.</P>
+<P>And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some
+of whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell
+you, and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every
+moment, till I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the
+slightest danger in the world.</P>
+<P>A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
+many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
+kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
+any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
+froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.</P>
+<P>So much for <I>La Reine. </I>We have her yet in the house, but many
+of her glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,&#8212;but I
+will not have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a
+cocked-hat, lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a
+calamitous sea under the bows&#8212;but I will not have him put on his legs
+again, till I get on my own; for between him and me there is a secret
+sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch
+the very day I left home to go to sea on this <I>my first voyage.</I></P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_3">II. REDBURN'S DEPARTURE FROM HOME</A></H3>
+<P>It was with a heavy heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted
+with me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and
+perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard
+times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly
+before my time; all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and
+at that early age, I was as unambitious as a man of sixty.</P>
+<P>Yes, I will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and
+sympathizing patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own
+home, and take none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold,
+bitter cold as December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then
+to me; there is no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I,
+with the warmth of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are
+bitter enough even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they
+must be uncongenial enough to the reader; so no more of that, and let
+me go on with my story.</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, I will write you, dear mother, as soon as I can,&quot; murmured I,
+as she charged me for the hundredth time, not fail to inform her of my
+safe arrival in New York.</P>
+<P>&quot;And now Mary, Martha, and Jane, kiss me all round, dear sisters,
+and then I am off. I'll be back in four months&#8212;it will be autumn then,
+and we'll go into the woods after nuts, an I'll tell you all about
+Europe. Good-by! good-by!&quot;</P>
+<P>So I broke loose from their arms, and not daring to look behind, ran
+away as fast as I could, till I got to the corner where my brother was
+waiting. He accompanied me part of the way to the place, where the
+steamboat was to leave for New York; instilling into me much sage
+advice above his age, for he was but eight years my senior, and warning
+me again and again to take care of myself; and I solemnly promised I
+would; for what cast-away will not promise to take of care himself,
+when he sees that unless he himself does, no one else will.</P>
+<P>We walked on in silence till I saw that his strength was giving
+out,&#8212;he was in ill health then,&#8212;and with a mute grasp of the hand,
+and a loud thump at the heart, we parted.</P>
+<P>It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring,
+and the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined
+with comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps,
+heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled
+down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.</P>
+<P>I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I
+walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was
+on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle
+of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and
+I thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in
+your hand!</P>
+<P>Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can
+feel all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has
+fallen; and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after
+ripeness, with him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never
+again can such blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave
+such a scar that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a
+hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs
+which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the
+gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a
+thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to
+sieges and battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first
+shock of the encounter.</P>
+<P>At last gaining the boat we pushed off, and away we steamed down the
+Hudson. There were few passengers on board, the day was so unpleasant;
+and they were mostly congregated in the after cabin round the stoves.
+After breakfast, some of them went to reading: others took a nap on the
+settees; and others sat in silent circles, speculating, no doubt, as to
+who each other might be.</P>
+<P>They were certainly a cheerless set, and to me they all looked
+stony-eyed and heartless. I could not help it, I almost hated them; and
+to avoid them, went on deck, but a storm of sleet drove me below. At
+last I bethought me, that I had not procured a ticket, and going to the
+captain's office to pay my passage and get one, was horror-struck to
+find, that the price of passage had been suddenly raised that day,
+owing to the other boats not running; so that I had not enough money to
+pay for my fare. I had supposed it would be but a dollar, and only a
+dollar did I have, whereas it was two. What was to be done? The boat
+was off, and there was no backing out; so I determined to say nothing
+to any body, and grimly wait until called upon for my fare.</P>
+<P>The long weary day wore on till afternoon; one incessant storm raged
+on deck; but after dinner the few passengers, waked up with their
+roast-beef and mutton, became a little more sociable. Not with me, for
+the scent and savor of poverty was upon me, and they all cast toward me
+their evil eyes and cold suspicious glances, as I sat apart, though
+among them. I felt that desperation and recklessness of poverty which
+only a pauper knows. There was a mighty patch upon one leg of my
+trowsers, neatly sewed on, for it had been executed by my mother, but
+still very obvious and incontrovertible to the eye. This patch I had
+hitherto studiously endeavored to hide with the ample skirts of my
+shooting-jacket; but now I stretched out my leg boldly, and thrust the
+patch under their noses, and looked at them so, that they soon looked
+away, boy though I was. Perhaps the gun that I clenched frightened them
+into respect; or there might have been something ugly in my eye; or my
+teeth were white, and my jaws were set. For several hours, I sat gazing
+at a jovial party seated round a mahogany table, with some crackers and
+cheese, and wine and cigars. Their faces were flushed with the good
+dinner they had eaten; and mine felt pale and wan with a long fast. If
+I had presumed to offer to make one of their party; if I had told them
+of my circumstances, and solicited something to refresh me, I very well
+knew from the peculiar hollow ring of their laughter, they would have
+had the waiters put me out of the cabin, for a beggar, who had no
+business to be warming himself at their stove. And for that insult,
+though only a conceit, I sat and gazed at them, putting up no petitions
+for their prosperity. My whole soul was soured within me, and when at
+last the captain's clerk, a slender young man, dressed in the height of
+fashion, with a gold watch chain and broach, came round collecting the
+tickets, I buttoned up my coat to the throat, clutched my gun, put on
+my leather cap, and pulling it well down, stood up like a sentry before
+him. He held out his hand, deeming any remark superfluous, as his
+object in pausing before me must be obvious. But I stood motionless and
+silent, and in a moment he saw how it was with me. I ought to have
+spoken and told him the case, in plain, civil terms, and offered my
+dollar, and then waited the event. But I felt too wicked for that. He
+did not wait a great while, but spoke first himself; and in a gruff
+voice, very unlike his urbane accents when accosting the wine and cigar
+party, demanded my ticket. I replied that I had none. He then demanded
+the money; and upon my answering that I had not enough, in a loud angry
+voice that attracted all eyes, he ordered me out of the cabin into the
+storm. The devil in me then mounted up from my soul, and spread over my
+frame, till it tingled at my finger ends; and I muttered out my
+resolution to stay where I was, in such a manner, that the ticket man
+faltered back. &quot;There's a dollar for you,&quot; I added, offering it.</P>
+<P>&quot;I want two,&quot; said he.</P>
+<P>&quot;Take that or nothing,&quot; I answered; &quot;it is all I have.&quot;</P>
+<P>I thought he would strike me. But, accepting the money, he contented
+himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting
+expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted
+that such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume
+the buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon
+me.</P>
+<P>I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more.
+I pushed my seat right up before the most insolent gazer, a short fat
+man, with a plethora of cravat round his neck, and fixing my gaze on
+his, gave him more gazes than he sent. This somewhat embarrassed him,
+and he looked round for some one to take hold of me; but no one coming,
+he pretended to be very busy counting the gilded wooden beams overhead.
+I then turned to the next gazer, and clicking my gun-lock, deliberately
+presented the piece at him.</P>
+<P>Upon this, he overset his seat in his eagerness to get beyond my
+range, for I had him point blank, full in the left eye; and several
+persons starting to their feet, exclaimed that I must be crazy. So I
+was at that time; for otherwise I know not how to account for my
+demoniac feelings, of which I was afterward heartily ashamed, as I
+ought to have been, indeed; and much more than that.</P>
+<P>I then turned on my heel, and shouldering my fowling-piece and
+bundle, marched on deck, and walked there through the dreary storm,
+till I was wet through, and the boat touched the wharf at New York.</P>
+<P>Such is boyhood.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_4">III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN</A></H3>
+<P>From the boat's bow, I jumped ashore, before she was secured, and
+following my brother's directions, proceeded across the town toward St.
+John's Park, to the house of a college friend of his, for whom I had a
+letter.</P>
+<P>It was a long walk; and I stepped in at a sort of grocery to get a
+drink of water, where some six or eight rough looking fellows were
+playing dominoes upon the counter, seated upon cheese boxes. They
+winked, and asked what sort of sport I had had gunning on such a rainy
+day, but I only gulped down my water and stalked off.</P>
+<P>Dripping like a seal, I at last grounded arms at the doorway of my
+brother's friend, rang the bell and inquired for him.</P>
+<P>&quot;What do you want?&quot; said the servant, eying me as if I were a
+housebreaker.</P>
+<P>&quot;I want to see your lord and master; show me into the parlor.&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this my host himself happened to make his appearance, and
+seeing who I was, opened his hand and heart to me at once, and drew me
+to his fireside; he had received a letter from my brother, and had
+expected me that day.</P>
+<P>The family were at tea; the fragrant herb filled the room with its
+aroma; the brown toast was odoriferous; and everything pleasant and
+charming. After a temporary warming, I was shown to a room, where I
+changed my wet dress, an returning to the table, found that the
+interval had been we improved by my hostess; a meal for a traveler was
+spread and I laid into it sturdily. Every mouthful pushed the devil
+that had been tormenting me all day farther and farther out of me, till
+at last I entirely ejected him with three successive bowls of Bohea.</P>
+<P>Magic of kind words, and kind deeds, and good tea! That night I went
+to bed thinking the world pretty tolerable, after all; and I could
+hardly believe that I had really acted that morning as I had, for I was
+naturally of an easy and forbearing disposition; though when such a
+disposition is temporarily roused, it is perhaps worse than a
+cannibal's.</P>
+<P>Next day, my brother's friend, whom I choose to call Mr. Jones,
+accompanied me down to the docks among the shipping, in order to get me
+a place. After a good deal of searching we lighted upon a ship for
+Liverpool, and found the captain in the cabin; which was a very
+handsome one, lined with mahogany and maple; and the steward, an
+elegant looking mulatto in a gorgeous turban, was setting out on a sort
+of sideboard some dinner service which looked like silver, but it was
+only Britannia ware highly polished.</P>
+<P>As soon as I clapped my eye on the captain, I thought myself he was
+just the captain to suit me. He was a fine looking man, about forty,
+splendidly dressed, with very black whiskers, and very white teeth, and
+what I took to be a free, frank look out of a large hazel eye. I liked
+him amazingly. He was promenading up and down the cabin, humming some
+brisk air to himself when we entered.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good morning, sir,&quot; said my friend.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good morning, good morning, sir,&quot; said the captain. &quot;Steward,
+chairs for the gentlemen.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! never mind, sir,&quot; said Mr. Jones, rather taken aback by his
+extreme civility. &quot;I merely called to see whether you want a fine young
+lad to go to sea with you. Here he is; he has long wanted to be a
+sailor; and his friends have at last concluded to let him go for one
+voyage, and see how he likes it.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah! indeed!&quot; said the captain, blandly, and looking where I stood.
+&quot;He's a fine fellow; I like him. So you want to be a sailor, my boy, do
+you?&quot; added he, affectionately patting my head. &quot;It's a hard We,
+though; a hard life.&quot;</P>
+<P>But when I looked round at his comfortable, and almost luxurious
+cabin, and then at his handsome care-free face, I thought he was only
+trying to frighten me, and I answered, &quot;Well, sir, I am ready to try
+it.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I hope he's a country lad, sir,&quot; said the captain to my friend,
+&quot;these city boys are sometimes hard cases.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! yes, he's from the country,&quot; was the reply, &quot;and of a highly
+respectable family; his great-uncle died a Senator.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But his great-uncle don't want to go to sea too?&quot; said the captain,
+looking funny.</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! no, oh, no!&#8212; Ha! ha!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ha! ha!&quot; echoed the captain.</P>
+<P>A fine funny gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his
+levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole
+voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he
+bade me look out, that he did not crack my head.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, my lad,&quot; said the captain, &quot;I suppose you know we haven't any
+pastures and cows on board; you can't get any milk at sea, you know.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! I know all about that, sir; my father has crossed the ocean, if
+I haven't.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes,&quot; cried my friend, &quot;his father, a gentleman of one of the first
+families in America, crossed the Atlantic several times on important
+business.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Embassador extraordinary?&quot; said the captain, looking funny again.</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! no, he was a wealthy merchant.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah! indeed;&quot; said the captain, looking grave and bland again, &quot;then
+this fine lad is the son of a gentleman?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Certainly,&quot; said my friend, &quot;and he's only going to sea for the
+humor of it; they want to send him on his travels with a tutor, but he <I>
+will </I>go to sea as a sailor.&quot;</P>
+<P>The fact was, that my young friend (for he was only about
+twenty-five) was not a very wise man; and this was a huge fib, which
+out of the kindness of his heart, he told in my behalf, for the purpose
+of creating a profound respect for me in the eyes of my future lord.</P>
+<P>Upon being apprized, that I had willfully forborne taking the grand
+tour with a tutor, in order to put my hand in a tar-bucket, the
+handsome captain looked ten times more funny than ever; and said that <I>
+he </I>himself would be my tutor, and take me on my travels, and pay
+for the privilege.</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah!&quot; said my friend, &quot;that reminds me of business. Pray, captain,
+how much do you generally pay a handsome young fellow like this?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Well,&quot; said the captain, looking grave and profound, &quot;we are not so
+particular about beauty, and we never give more than three dollars to a
+green lad like Wellingborough here, that's your name, my boy?
+Wellingborough Redburn!&#8212;Upon my soul, a fine sounding name.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Why, captain,&quot; said Mr. Jones, quickly interrupting him, &quot;that
+won't pay for his clothing.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But you know his highly respectable and wealthy relations will
+doubtless see to all that,&quot; replied the captain, with his funny look
+again.</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! yes, I forgot that,&quot; said Mr. Jones, looking rather foolish.
+&quot;His friends will of course see to that.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Of course,&quot; said the captain smiling.</P>
+<P>&quot;Of course,&quot; repeated Mr. Jones, looking ruefully at the patch on my
+pantaloons, which just then I endeavored to hide with the skirt of my
+shooting-jacket.</P>
+<P>&quot;You are quite a sportsman I see,&quot; said the captain, eying the great
+buttons on my coat, upon each of which was a carved fox.</P>
+<P>Upon this my benevolent friend thought that here was a grand
+opportunity to befriend me.</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, he's quite a sportsman,&quot; said he, &quot;he's got a very valuable
+fowling-piece at home, perhaps you would like to purchase it, captain,
+to shoot gulls with at sea? It's cheap.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! no, he had better leave it with his relations,&quot; said the
+captain, &quot;so that he can go hunting again when he returns from England.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, perhaps that <I>would </I>be better, after all,&quot; said my
+friend, pretending to fall into a profound musing, involving all sides
+of the matter in hand. &quot;Well, then, captain, you can only give the boy
+three dollars a month, you say?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Only three dollars a month,&quot; said the captain.</P>
+<P>&quot;And I believe,&quot; said my friend, &quot;that you generally give something
+in advance, do you not?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, that is sometimes the custom at the shipping offices,&quot; said
+the captain, with a bow, &quot;but in this case, as the boy has rich
+relations, there will be no need of that, you know.&quot;</P>
+<P>And thus, by his ill-advised, but well-meaning hints concerning the
+respectability of my paternity, and the immense wealth of my relations,
+did this really honest-hearted but foolish friend of mine, prevent me
+from getting three dollars in advance, which I greatly needed. However,
+I said nothing, though I thought the more; and particularly, how that
+it would have been much better for me, to have gone on board alone,
+accosted the captain on my own account, and told him the plain truth.
+Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.</P>
+<P>The arrangement being concluded, we bade the captain good morning;
+and as we were about leaving the cabin, he smiled again, and said,
+&quot;Well, Redburn, my boy, you won't get home-sick before you sail,
+because that will make you very sea-sick when you get to sea.&quot;</P>
+<P>And with that he smiled very pleasantly, and bowed two or three
+times, and told the steward to open the cabin-door, which the steward
+did with a peculiar sort of grin on his face, and a slanting glance at
+my shooting-jacket. And so we left.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_5">IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS
+FOWLING-PIECE</A></H3>
+<P>Next day I went alone to the shipping office to sign the articles,
+and there I met a great crowd of sailors, who as soon as they found
+what I was after, began to tip the wink all round, and I overheard a
+fellow in a great flapping sou'wester cap say to another old tar in a
+shaggy monkey-jacket, &quot;Twig his coat, d'ye see the buttons, that chap
+ain't going to sea in a merchantman, he's going to shoot whales. I say,
+maty&#8212;look here&#8212;how d'ye sell them big buttons by the pound?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Give us one for a saucer, will ye?&quot; said another.</P>
+<P>&quot;Let the youngster alone,&quot; said a third. &quot;Come here, my little boy,
+has your ma put up some sweetmeats for ye to take to sea?&quot;</P>
+<P>They are all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the
+best of the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said;
+they can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I
+tried to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put
+down my name and beat a retreat.</P>
+<P>On the morrow, the ship was advertised to sail. So the rest of that
+day I spent in preparations. After in vain trying to sell my
+fowling-piece for a fair price to chance customers, I was walking up
+Chatham-street with it, when a curly-headed little man with a dark oily
+face, and a hooked nose, like the pictures of Judas Iscariot, called to
+me from a strange-looking shop, with three gilded balk hanging over it.</P>
+<P>With a peculiar accent, as if he had been over-eating himself with
+Indian-pudding or some other plushy compound, this curly-headed little
+man very civilly invited me into his shop; and making a polite bow, and
+bidding me many unnecessary good mornings, and remarking upon the fine
+weather, begged t me to let him look at my fowling-piece. I handed it
+to him in an instant, glad of the chance of disposing of it, and told
+him that was just what I wanted.</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah!&quot; said he, with his Indian-pudding accent again, which I will
+not try to mimic, and abating his look of eagerness, &quot;I thought it was
+a better article, it's very old.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Not,&quot; said I, starting in surprise, &quot;it's not been used more than
+three times; what will you give for it?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;We don't <I>buy </I>any thing here,&quot; said he, suddenly looking very
+indifferent, &quot;this is a place where people <I>pawn </I>things.&quot; <I>Pawn </I>
+being a word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when
+he replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with
+their fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the
+fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.</P>
+<P>What a benevolent little old man, this must be, thought I, and how
+very obliging.</P>
+<P>&quot;And pray,&quot; said I, &quot;how much will you let me have for my gun, by
+way of a pawn?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, I suppose it's worth six dollars, and seeing you're a boy,
+I'll let you have three dollars upon it&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No,&quot; exclaimed I, seizing the fowling-piece, &quot;it's worth five times
+that, I'll go somewhere else.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Good morning, then,&quot; said he, &quot;I hope you'll do better,&quot; and he
+bowed me out as if he expected to see me again pretty soon.</P>
+<P>I had not gone very far when I came across three more balls hanging
+over a shop. In I went, and saw a long counter, with a sort of
+picket-fence, running all along from end to end, and three little
+holes, with three little old men standing inside of them, like
+prisoners looking out of a jail. Back of the counter were all sorts of
+things, piled up and labeled. Hats, and caps, and coats, and guns, and
+swords, and canes, and chests, and planes, and books, and
+writing-desks, and every thing else. And in a glass case were lots of
+watches, and seals, chains, and rings, and breastpins, and all kinds of
+trinkets. At one of the little holes, earnestly talking with one of the
+hook-nosed men, was a thin woman in a faded silk gown and shawl,
+holding a pale little girl by the hand. As I drew near, she spoke lower
+in a whisper; and the man shook his head, and looked cross and rude;
+and then some more words were exchanged over a miniature, and some
+money was passed through the hole, and the woman and child shrank out
+of the door.</P>
+<P>I won't sell my gun to that man, thought I; and I passed on to the
+next hole; and while waiting there to be served, an elderly man in a
+high-waisted surtout, thrust a silver snuff-box through; and a young
+man in a calico shirt and a shiny coat with a velvet collar presented a
+silver watch; and a sheepish boy in a cloak took out a frying-pan; and
+another little boy had a Bible; and all these things were thrust
+through to the hook-nosed man, who seemed ready to hook any thing that
+came along; so I had no doubt he would gladly hook my gun, for the long
+picketed counter seemed like a great seine, that caught every variety
+of fish.</P>
+<P>At last I saw a chance, and crowded in for the hole; and in order to
+be beforehand with a big man who just then came in, I pushed my gun
+violently through the hole; upon which the hook-nosed man cried out,
+thinking I was going to shoot him. But at last he took the gun, turned
+it end for end, clicked the trigger three times, and then said, &quot;one
+dollar.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What about one dollar?&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;That's all I'll give,&quot; he replied.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, what do you want?&quot; and he turned to the next person. This was
+a young man in a seedy red cravat and a pimply face, that looked as if
+it was going to seed likewise, who, with a mysterious tapping of his
+vest-pocket and other hints, made a great show of having something
+confidential to communicate.</P>
+<P>But the hook-nosed man spoke out very loud, and said, &quot;None of that;
+take it out. Got a stolen watch? We don't deal in them things here.&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this the young man flushed all over, and looked round to see
+who had heard the pawnbroker; then he took something very small out of
+his pocket, and keeping it hidden under his palm, pushed it into the
+hole.</P>
+<P>&quot;Where did you get this ring?&quot; said the pawnbroker.</P>
+<P>&quot;I want to pawn it,&quot; whispered the other, blushing all over again.</P>
+<P>&quot;What's your name?&quot; said the pawnbroker, speaking very loud.</P>
+<P>&quot;How much will you give?&quot; whispered the other in reply, leaning
+over, and looking as if he wanted to hush up the pawnbroker.</P>
+<P>At last the sum was agreed upon, when the man behind the counter
+took a little ticket, and tying the ring to it began to write on the
+ticket; all at once he asked the young man where he lived, a question
+which embarrassed him very much; but at last he stammered out a certain
+number in Broadway.</P>
+<P>&quot;That's the City Hotel: you don't live there,&quot; said the man, cruelly
+glancing at the shabby coat before him.</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! well,&quot; stammered the other blushing scarlet, &quot;I thought this
+was only a sort of form to go through; I don't like to tell where I do
+live, for I ain't in the habit of going to pawnbrokers.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;You stole that ring, you know you did,&quot; roared out the hook-nosed
+man, incensed at this slur upon his calling, and now seemingly bent on
+damaging the young man's character for life. &quot;I'm a good mind to call <I>
+a. </I>constable; we don't take stolen goods here, I tell you.&quot;</P>
+<P>All eyes were now fixed suspiciously upon this martyrized young man;
+who looked ready to drop into the earth; and a poor woman in a
+night-cap, with some baby-clothes in her hand, looked fearfully at
+the pawnbroker, as if dreading to encounter such a terrible pattern of
+integrity. At last the young man sunk off with his money, and looking
+out of the window, I saw him go round the corner so sharply that he
+knocked his elbow against the wall.</P>
+<P>I waited a little longer, and saw several more served; and having
+remarked that the hook-nosed men invariably fixed their own price upon
+every thing, and if that was refused told the person to be off with
+himself; I concluded that it would be of no use to try and get more
+from them than they had offered; especially when I saw that they had a
+great many fowling-pieces hanging up, and did not have particular
+occasion for mine; and more than that, they must be very well off and
+rich, to treat people so cavalierly.</P>
+<P>My best plan then seemed to be to go right back to the curly-headed
+pawnbroker, and take up with my first offer. But when I went back,
+the curly-headed man was very busy about something else, and kept me
+waiting a long time; at last I got a chance and told him I would take
+the three dollars he had offered.</P>
+<P>&quot;Ought to have taken it when you could get it,&quot; he replied. &quot;I won't
+give but two dollars and a half for it now.&quot;</P>
+<P>In vain I expostulated; he was not to be moved, so I pocketed the
+money and departed.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_6">V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE,
+AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE
+WHARVES</A></H3>
+<P>The first thing I now did was to buy a little stationery, and keep
+my promise to my mother, by writing her; and I also wrote to my brother
+informing him of the voyage I purposed making, and indulging in some
+romantic and misanthropic views of life, such as many boys in my
+circumstances, are accustomed to do.</P>
+<P>The rest of the two dollars and a half I laid out that very morning
+in buying a red woolen shirt near Catharine Market, a tarpaulin hat,
+which I got at an out-door stand near Peck Slip, a belt and jackknife,
+and two or three trifles. After these purchases, I had only one penny
+left, so I walked out to the end of the pier, and threw the penny into
+the water. The reason why I did this, was because I somehow felt almost
+desperate again, and didn't care what became of me. But if the penny
+had been a dollar, I would have kept it.</P>
+<P>I went home to dinner at Mr. Jones', and they welcomed me very
+kindly, and Mrs. Jones kept my plate full all the time during dinner,
+so that I had no chance to empty it. She seemed to see that I felt bad,
+and thought plenty of pudding might help me. At any rate, I never felt
+so bad yet but I could eat a good dinner. And once, years afterward,
+when I expected to be killed every day, I remember my appetite was very
+keen, and I said to myself, &quot;Eat away, Wellingborough, while you can,
+for this may be the last supper you will have.&quot;</P>
+<P>After dinner I went into my room, locked the door carefully, and
+hung a towel over the knob, so that no one could peep through the
+keyhole, and then went to trying on my red woolen shirt before the
+glass, to see what sort of a looking sailor I was going to make. As
+soon as I got into the shirt I began to feel sort of warm and red about
+the face, which I found was owing to the reflection of the dyed wool
+upon my skin. After that, I took a pair of scissors and went to cutting
+my hair, which was very long. I thought every little would help, in
+making me a light hand to run aloft.</P>
+<P>Next morning I bade my kind host and hostess good-by, and left the
+house with my bundle, feeling somewhat misanthropical and desperate
+again.</P>
+<P>Before I reached the ship, it began to rain hard; and as soon as I
+arrived at the wharf, it was plain that there would be no getting to
+sea that day.</P>
+<P>This was a great disappointment to me, for I did not want to return
+to Mr. Jones' again after bidding them good-by; it would be so awkward.
+So I concluded to go on board ship for the present.</P>
+<P>When I reached the deck, I saw no one but a large man in a large
+dripping pea-jacket, who was calking down the main-hatches.</P>
+<P>&quot;What do you want, Pillgarlic?&quot; said he.</P>
+<P>&quot;I've shipped to sail in this ship,&quot; I replied, assuming a little
+dignity, to chastise his familiarity.</P>
+<P>&quot;What for? a tailor?&quot; said he, looking at my shooting jacket.</P>
+<P>I answered that I was going as a &quot;boy;&quot; for so I was technically put
+down on the articles.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well,&quot; said he, &quot;have you got your traps aboard?&quot;</P>
+<P>I told him I didn't know there were any rats in the ship, and hadn't
+brought any &quot;trap.&quot;</P>
+<P>At this he laughed out with a great guffaw, and said there must be
+hay-seed in my hair.</P>
+<P>This made me mad; but thinking he must be one of the sailors who was
+going in the ship, I thought it wouldn't be wise to make an enemy of
+him, so only asked him where the men slept in the vessel, for I wanted
+to put my clothes away.</P>
+<P>
+<I>&quot;Where's</I> your clothes?&quot; said he.</p>
+<P>&quot;Here in my bundle,&quot; said I, holding it up.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well if that's all you've got,&quot; he cried, &quot;you'd better chuck it
+overboard. But go forward, go forward to the forecastle; that's the
+place you'll live in aboard here.&quot;</P>
+<P>And with that he directed me to a sort of hole in the deck in the
+bow of the ship; but looking down, and seeing how dark it was, I asked
+him for a light.</P>
+<P>&quot;Strike your eyes together and make one,&quot; said he, &quot;we don't have
+any lights here.&quot; So I groped my way down into the forecastle, which
+smelt so bad of old ropes and tar, that it almost made me sick. After
+waiting patiently, I began to see a little; and looking round, at last
+perceived I was in a smoky looking place, with twelve wooden boxes
+stuck round the sides. In some of these boxes were large chests, which
+I at once supposed to belong to the sailors, who must have taken that
+method of appropriating their &quot;Trunks,&quot; as I afterward found these boxes
+were called. And so it turned out.</P>
+<P>After examining them for a while, I selected an empty one, and put
+my bundle right in the middle of it, so that there might be no mistake
+about my claim to the place, particularly as the bundle was so small.</P>
+<P>This done, I was glad to get on deck; and learning to a certainty
+that the ship would not sail till the next day, I resolved to go
+ashore, and walk about till dark, and then return and sleep out the
+night in the forecastle. So I walked about all over, till I was weary,
+and went into a mean liquor shop to rest; for having my tarpaulin on,
+and not looking very gentlemanly, I was afraid to go into any better
+place, for fear of being driven out. Here I sat till I began to feel
+very hungry; and seeing some doughnuts on the counter, I began to think
+what a fool I had been, to throw away my last penny; for the doughnuts
+were but a penny apiece, and they looked very plump, and fat, and
+round. I never saw doughnuts look so enticing before; especially when a
+negro came in, and ate one before my eyes. At last I thought I would
+fill up a little by drinking a glass of water; having read somewhere
+that this was a good plan to follow in a case like the present. I did
+not feel thirsty, but only hungry; so had much ado to get down the
+water; for it tasted warm; and the tumbler had an ugly flavor; the
+negro had been drinking some spirits out of it just before.</P>
+<P>I marched off again, every once in a while stopping to take in some
+more water, and being very careful not to step into the same shop
+twice, till night came on, and I found myself soaked through, for it
+had been raining more or less all day. As I went to the ship, I could
+not help thinking how lonesome it would be, to spend the whole night in
+that damp and dark forecastle, without light or fire, and nothing to
+lie on but the bare boards of my bunk. However, to drown all such
+thoughts, I gulped down another glass of water, though I was wet enough
+outside and in by this time; and trying to put on a bold look, as if I
+had just been eating a hearty meal, I stepped aboard the ship.</P>
+<P>The man in the big pea-jacket was not to be seen; but on going
+forward I unexpectedly found a young lad there, about my own age; and
+as soon as he opened his mouth I knew he was not an American. He talked
+such a curious language though, half English and half gibberish, that I
+knew not what to make of him; and was a little astonished, when he told
+me he was an English boy, from Lancashire.</P>
+<P>It seemed, he had come over from Liverpool in this very ship on her
+last voyage, as a steerage passenger; but finding that he would have to
+work very hard to get along in America, and getting home-sick into the
+bargain, he had arranged with the captain to' work his passage back.</P>
+<P>I was glad to have some company, and tried to get him conversing;
+but found he was the most stupid and ignorant boy I had ever met with.
+I asked him something about the river Thames; when he said that he
+hadn't traveled any in America and didn't know any thing about the
+rivers here. And when I told him the river Thames was in England, he
+showed no surprise or shame at his ignorance, but only looked ten times
+more stupid than before.</P>
+<P>At last we went below into the forecastle, and both getting into the
+same bunk, stretched ourselves out on the planks, and I tried my best
+to get asleep. But though my companion soon began to snore very loud,
+for me, I could not forget myself, owing to the horrid smell of the
+place, my being so wet, cold, and hungry, and besides all that, I felt
+damp and clammy about the heart. I lay turning over and over, listening
+to the Lancashire boy's snoring, till at last I felt so, that I had to
+go on deck; and there I walked till morning, which I thought would
+never come.</P>
+<P>As soon as I thought the groceries on the wharf would be open I left
+the ship and went to make my breakfast of another glass of water. But
+this made me very qualmish; and soon I felt sick as death; my head was
+dizzy; and I went staggering along the walk, almost blind. At last I
+dropt on a heap of chain-cable, and shutting my eyes hard, did my best
+to rally myself, in which I succeeded, at last, enough to get up and
+walk off. Then I thought that I had done wrong in not returning to my
+friend's house the day before; and would have walked there now, as it
+was, only it was at least three miles up town; too far for me to walk
+in such a state, and I had no sixpence to ride in an omnibus.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_7">VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS
+OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST</A></H3>
+<P>By the time I got back to the ship, every thing was in an uproar.
+The pea-jacket man was there, ordering about a good many men in the
+rigging, and people were bringing off chickens, and pigs, and beef, and
+vegetables from the shore. Soon after, another man, in a striped calico
+shirt, a short blue jacket and beaver hat, made his appearance, and
+went to ordering about the man in the big pea-jacket; and at last the
+captain came up the side, and began to order about both of them.</P>
+<P>These two men turned out to be the first and second mates of the
+ship.</P>
+<P>Thinking to make friends with the second mate, I took out an old
+tortoise-shell snuff-box of my father's, in which I had put a piece of
+Cavendish tobacco, to look sailor-like, and offered the box to him very
+politely. He stared at me a moment, and then exclaimed, &quot;Do you think
+we take snuff aboard here, youngster? no, no, no time for snuff-taking
+at sea; don't let the 'old man' see that snuff-box; take my advice and
+pitch it overboard as quick as you can.&quot;</P>
+<P>I told him it was not snuff, but tobacco; when he said, he had
+plenty of tobacco of his own, and never carried any such nonsense about
+him as a tobacco-box. With that, he went off about his business, and
+left me feeling foolish enough. But I had reason to be glad he had
+acted thus, for if he had not, I think I should have offered my box to
+the chief mate, who in that case, from what I afterward learned of him,
+would have knocked me down, or done something else equally uncivil.</P>
+<P>As I was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a
+great hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out,
+&quot;Ashore with you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail
+away, I tell you, with that shooting-jacket!&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this I retreated, saying that I was going out in the ship as a
+sailor.</P>
+<P>&quot;A sailor!&quot; he cried, &quot;a barber's clerk, you mean; <I>you </I>going
+out in the ship? what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man
+hasn't been shipping any more greenhorns like you&#8212;he'll make a
+shipwreck of it if he has. But this is the way nowadays; to save a few
+dollars in seamen's wages, they think nothing of shipping a parcel of
+farmers and clodhoppers and baby-boys. What's your name, Pillgarlic?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Redburn,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;A pretty handle to a man, that; scorch you to take hold of it;
+haven't you got any other?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Wellingborough,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Worse yet. Who had the baptizing of ye? Why didn't they call you
+Jack, or Jill, or something short and handy. But I'll baptize you over
+again. D'ye hear, sir, henceforth your name is <I>Buttons. </I>And now
+do you go, Buttons, and clean out that pig-pen in the long-boat; it has
+not been cleaned out since last voyage. And bear a hand about it, d'ye
+hear; there's them pigs there waiting to be put in; come, be off about
+it, now.&quot;</P>
+<P>Was this then the beginning of my sea-career? set to cleaning out a
+pig-pen, the very first thing?</P>
+<P>But I thought it best to say nothing; I had bound myself to obey
+orders, and it was too late to retreat. So I only asked for a shovel,
+or spade, or something else to work with.</P>
+<P>&quot;We don't dig gardens here,&quot; was the reply; &quot;dig it out with your
+teeth!&quot;</P>
+<P>After looking round, I found a stick and went to scraping out the
+pen, which was awkward work enough, for another boat called the
+&quot;jolly-boat,&quot; was capsized right over the longboat, which brought them
+almost close together. These two boats were in the middle of the deck.
+I managed to crawl inside of the long-boat; and after barking my shins
+against the seats, and bumping my head a good many times, I got along
+to the stern, where the pig-pen was.</P>
+<P>While I was hard at work a drunken sailor peeped in, and cried out
+to his comrades, &quot;Look here, my lads, what sort of a pig do you call
+this? Hallo! inside there! what are you 'bout there? trying to stow
+yourself away to steal a passage to Liverpool? Out of that! out of
+that, I say.&quot; But just then the mate came along and ordered this
+drunken rascal ashore.</P>
+<P>The pig-pen being cleaned out, I was set to work picking up some
+shavings, which lay about the deck; for there had been carpenters at
+work on board. The mate ordered me to throw these shavings into the
+long-boat at a particular place between two of the seats. But as I
+found it hard work to push the shavings through in that place, and as
+it looked wet there, I thought it would be better for the shavings as
+well as myself, to thrust them where there was a larger opening and a
+dry spot. While I was thus employed, the mate observing me, exclaimed
+with an oath, &quot;Didn't I tell you to put those shavings somewhere else?
+Do what I tell you, now, Buttons, or mind your eye!&quot;</P>
+<P>Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found
+was my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the
+shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me <I>
+why </I>he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. Upon this,
+he flew into a terrible rage, and without explanation reiterated his
+order like a clap of thunder.</P>
+<P>This was my first lesson in the discipline of the sea, and I never
+forgot it. From that time I learned that sea-officers never gave
+reasons for any thing they order to be done. It is enough that they
+command it, so that the motto is, <I>&quot;Obey orders, though you break
+owners.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>I now began to feel very faint and sick <I>again, </I>and longed for
+the ship to be leaving the dock; for then I made no doubt we would soon
+be having something to eat. But as yet, I saw none of the sailors on
+board, and as for the men at work in the rigging, I found out that they
+were <I>&quot;riggers,&quot; </I>that is, men living ashore, who worked by the
+day in getting ships ready for sea; and this I found out to my cost,
+for yielding to the kind blandishment of one of these <I>riggers, I </I>
+had swapped away my jackknife with him for a much poorer one of his
+own, thinking to secure a sailor friend for the voyage. At last I
+watched my chance, and while people's backs were turned, I seized a
+carrot from several bunches lying on deck, and clapping it under the
+skirts of my shooting-jacket, went forward to eat it; for I had often
+eaten raw carrots, which taste something like chestnuts. This carrot
+refreshed me a good deal, though at the expense of a little pain in my
+stomach. Hardly had I disposed of it, when I heard the chief mate's
+voice crying out for &quot;Buttons.&quot; I ran after him, and received an order
+to go aloft and &quot;slush down the main-top mast.&quot;</P>
+<P>This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood
+staring about me, wondering what it was that was to be done. But the
+mate had turned on his heel, and made no explanations. At length I
+followed after him, and asked what I must do.</P>
+<P>&quot;Didn't I tell you to slush down the main-top mast?&quot; he shouted.</P>
+<P>&quot;You did,&quot; said I, &quot;but I don't know what that means.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Green as grass! a regular cabbage-head!&quot; he exclaimed to himself.
+&quot;A fine time I'll have with such a greenhorn aboard. Look you,
+youngster. Look up to that long pole there&#8212;d'ye see it? that piece of
+a tree there, you timber-head&#8212;well&#8212;take this bucket here, and go up
+the rigging&#8212;that rope-ladder there&#8212;do you understand?&#8212;and dab this
+slush all over the mast, and look out for your head if one drop falls
+on deck. Be off now, Buttons.&quot;</P>
+<P>The eventful hour had arrived; for the first time in my life I was
+to ascend a ship's mast. Had I been well and hearty, perhaps I should
+have felt a little shaky at the thought; but as I was then, weak and
+faint, the bare thought appalled me.</P>
+<P>But there was no hanging back; it would look like cowardice, and I
+could not bring myself to confess that I was suffering for want of
+food; so rallying again, I took up the bucket.</P>
+<P>It was a heavy bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held
+perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick
+lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt
+beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was
+no easy job to carry this heavy bucket up with me. The rope handle of
+it was so slippery with grease, that although I twisted it several
+times about my wrist, it would be still twirling round and round, and
+slipping off. Spite of this, however, I managed to mount as far as the
+&quot;top,&quot; the clumsy bucket half the time straddling and swinging about
+between my legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the
+&quot;top,&quot; I came to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that
+overhanging impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last,
+with much straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the &quot;top;&quot; and
+then, trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the
+road was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down
+toward the deck, my head spun round so from weakness, that I was
+obliged to shut my eyes to recover myself. I do not remember much more.
+I only recollect my safe return to the deck.</P>
+<P>In a short time the bustle of the ship increased; the trunks of
+cabin passengers arrived, and the chests and boxes of the steerage
+passengers, besides baskets of wine and fruit for the captain.</P>
+<P>At last we cast loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to
+anchor, and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was
+on board but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one,
+in Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back
+in the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they
+felt in keeping the whole ship waiting for their lordships.</P>
+<P>&quot;Ay, ay,&quot; muttered the chief mate, as they rolled out of then-boats
+and swaggered on deck, &quot;it's your turn now, but it will be mine before
+long. Yaw about while you may, my hearties, I'll do the yawing after
+the anchor's up.&quot;</P>
+<P>Several of the sailors were very drunk, and one of them was lifted
+on board insensible by his landlord, who carried him down below and
+dumped him into a bunk. And two other sailors, as soon as they made
+their appearance, immediately went below to sleep off the fumes of
+their drink.</P>
+<P>At last, all the crew being on board, word was passed to go to
+dinner fore and aft, an order that made my heart jump with delight, for
+now my long fast would be broken. But though the sailors, surfeited
+with eating and drinking ashore, did not then touch the salt beef and
+potatoes which the black cook handed down into the forecastle; and
+though this left the whole allowance to me; to my surprise, I found
+that I could eat little or nothing; for now I only felt deadly faint,
+but not hungry.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_8">VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY
+BAD</A></H3>
+<P>Every thing at last being in readiness, the pilot came on board, and
+all hands were called to up anchor. While I worked at my bar, I could
+not help observing how haggard the men looked, and how much they
+suffered from this violent exercise, after the terrific dissipation in
+which they had been indulging ashore. But I soon learnt that sailors
+breathe nothing about such things, but strive their best to appear all
+alive and hearty, though it comes very hard for many of them.</P>
+<P>The anchor being secured, a steam tug-boat with a strong name, the
+Hercules, took hold of us; and away we went past the long line of
+shipping, and wharves, and warehouses; and rounded the green south
+point of the island where the Battery is, and passed Governor's Island,
+and pointed right out for the Narrows.</P>
+<P>My heart was like lead, and I felt bad enough, Heaven knows; but
+then, there was plenty of work to be done, which kept my thoughts from
+becoming too much for me.</P>
+<P>And I tried to think all the time, that I was going to England, and
+that, before many months, I should have actually been there and home
+again, telling my adventures to my brothers and sisters; and with what
+delight they would listen, and how they would look up to me then, and
+reverence my sayings; and how that even my elder brother would be
+forced to treat me with great consideration, as having crossed the
+Atlantic Ocean, which he had never done, and there was no probability
+he ever would.</P>
+<P>With such thoughts as these I endeavored to shake off my
+heavy-heartedness; but it would not do at all; for this was only the
+first day of the voyage, and many weeks, nay, several whole months must
+elapse before the voyage was ended; and who could tell what might
+happen to me; for when I looked up at the high, giddy masts, and
+thought how often I must be going up and down them, I thought sure
+enough that some luckless day or other, I would certainly fall
+overboard and be drowned. And then, I thought of lying down at the
+bottom of the sea, stark alone, with the great waves rolling over me,
+and no one in the wide world knowing that I was there. And I thought
+how much better and sweeter it must be, to be buried under the pleasant
+hedge that bounded the sunny south side of our village grave-yard,
+where every Sunday I had used to walk after church in the afternoon;
+and I almost wished I was there now; yes, dead and buried in that
+churchyard. All the time my eyes were filled with tears, and I kept
+holding my breath, to choke down the sobs, for indeed I could not help
+feeling as I did, and no doubt any boy in the world would have felt
+just as I did then.</P>
+<P>As the steamer carried us further and further down the bay, and we
+passed ships lying at anchor, with men gazing at us and waving their
+hats; and small boats with ladies in them waving their handkerchiefs;
+and passed the green shore of Staten Island, and caught sight of so
+many beautiful cottages all overrun with vines, and planted on the
+beautiful fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing
+if instead of sailing <I>out of </I>the bay, we were only coming <I>
+into </I>it; if we had crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and
+come back; and my heart leaped up in me like something alive when I
+thought of really entering that bay at the end of the voyage. But that
+was so far distant, that it seemed it could never be. No, never, never
+more would I see New York again.</P>
+<P>And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of
+the sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking
+about the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and
+how that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when
+the ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to
+Franklin-square where they lived; and how that they would have a good
+dinner ready, and plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I
+say this land of talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider,
+as I did, that before any thing like that could happen, we must cross
+the great Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back
+again, many thousand miles of foaming ocean.</P>
+<P>At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this
+much I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to
+the Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used
+words that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.</P>
+<P>And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
+long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
+besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind
+to me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.</P>
+<P>Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
+through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
+no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
+were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
+order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
+had to be put away.</P>
+<P>At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
+entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
+Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
+doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like
+this of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not
+a soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great
+Atlantic Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down
+to the water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly
+believe, as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or
+any place like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world.
+It seemed too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that
+there could really be cities and towns and villages and green fields
+and hedges and farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of
+sea, and away beyond the place where the sky came down to the water.
+And to think of steering right out among those waves, and leaving the
+bright land behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and
+foolhardy; and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by
+me, who could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered,
+how many times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I
+had never dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought
+him a marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who
+could not by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how
+could I credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered;
+had ever sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky
+and water line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and
+Marseilles. It was too wonderful to believe.</P>
+<P>Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land
+is quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or
+fort, all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built
+by Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
+never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
+place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
+remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain,
+with white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in
+Russia, and who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff,
+when Captain Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in
+Asia to St. Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this
+of my uncle, because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen,
+and his white hair and fine handsome florid face made so strong an
+impression upon me, that I have never forgotten him, though I only saw
+him during this one visit of his to New York, for he was lost in the
+White Sea some years after.</P>
+<P>But I meant to speak about the fort. It was a beautiful place, as I
+remembered it, and very wonderful and romantic, too, as it appeared to
+me, when I went there with my uncle. On the side away from the water
+was a green grove of trees, very thick and shady; and through this
+grove, in a sort of twilight you came to an arch in the wall of the
+fort, dark as night; and going in, you groped about in long vaults,
+twisting and turning on every side, till at last you caught a peep of
+green grass and sunlight, and all at once came out in an open space in
+the middle of the castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing,
+or ruminating under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf
+frisking about, and trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering
+among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting
+out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black
+goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet
+lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he
+were watching for a ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see
+him even now, and though I have changed since then, the black goat
+looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be
+as old as Methusaleh, and have as great a memory as he must have had.
+Yes, the fort was a beautiful, quiet, charming spot. I should like to
+build a little cottage in the middle of it, and live there all my life.
+It was noon-day when I was there, in the month of June, and there was
+little wind to stir the trees, and every thing looked as if it was
+waiting for something, and the sky overhead was blue as my mother's
+eye, and I was so glad and happy then. But I must not think of those
+delightful days, before my father became a bankrupt, and died, and we
+removed from the city; for when I think of those days, something rises
+up in my throat and almost strangles me.</P>
+<P>Now, as we sailed through the Narrows, I caught sight of that
+beautiful fort on the cliff, and could not help contrasting my
+situation now, with what it was when with my father and uncle I went
+there so long ago. Then I never thought of working for my living, and
+never knew that there were hard hearts in the world; and knew so little
+of money, that when I bought a stick of candy, and laid down a
+sixpence, I thought the confectioner returned five cents, only that I
+might have money to buy something else, and not because the pennies
+were my change, and therefore mine by good rights. How different my
+idea of money now!</P>
+<P>Then I was a schoolboy, and thought of going to college in time; and
+had vague thoughts of becoming a great orator like Patrick Henry, whose
+speeches I used to speak on the stage; but now, I was a poor friendless
+boy, far away from my home, and voluntarily in the way of becoming a
+miserable sailor for life. And what made it more bitter to me, was to
+think of how well off were my cousins, who were happy and rich, and
+lived at home with my uncles and aunts, with no thought of going to sea
+for a living. I tried to think that it was all a dream, that I was not
+where I was, not on board of a ship, but that I was at home again in
+the city, with my father alive, and my mother bright and happy as she
+used to be. But it would not do. I was indeed where I was, and here was
+the ship, and there was the fort. So, after casting a last look at some
+boys who were standing on the parapet, gazing off to sea, I turned away
+heavily, and resolved not to look at the land any more.</P>
+<P>About sunset we got fairly &quot;outside,&quot; and well may it so be called;
+for I felt thrust out of the world. Then the breeze began to blow, and
+the sails were loosed, and hoisted; and after a while, the steamboat
+left us, and for the first time I felt the ship roll, a strange feeling
+enough, as if it were a great barrel in the water. Shortly after, I
+observed a swift little schooner running across our bows, and
+re-crossing again and again; and while I was wondering what she could
+be, she suddenly lowered her sails, and two men took hold of a little
+boat on her deck, and launched it overboard as if it had been a chip.
+Then I noticed that our pilot, a red-faced man in a rough blue coat,
+who to my astonishment had all this time been giving orders instead of
+the captain, began to button up his coat to the throat, like a prudent
+person about leaving a house at night in a lonely square, to go home;
+and he left the giving orders to the chief mate, and stood apart
+talking with the captain, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave
+him some newspapers.</P>
+<P>And in a few minutes, when we had stopped our headway, and allowed
+the little boat to come alongside, he shook hands with the captain and
+officers and bade them good-by, without saying a syllable of farewell
+to me and the sailors; and so he went laughing over the side, and got
+into the boat, and they pulled him off to the schooner, and then the
+schooner made sail and glided under our stern, her men standing up and
+waving their hats, and cheering; and that was the last we saw of
+America.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_9">VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD
+WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES</A></H3>
+<P>It was now getting dark, when all at once the sailors were ordered
+on the quarter-deck, and of course I went along with them.</P>
+<P>What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out. It seemed we
+were going to be divided into watches. The chief mate began by
+selecting a stout good-looking sailor for his watch; and then the
+second mate's turn came to choose, and he also chose a stout
+good-looking sailor. But it was not me;&#8212; no; and <I>I </I>noticed, as
+they went on choosing, one after the other in regular rotation, that
+both of the mates never so much as looked at me, but kept going round
+among the rest, peering into their faces, for it was dusk, and telling
+them not to hide themselves away so in their jackets. But the sailors,
+especially the stout good-looking ones, seemed to make a point of
+lounging as much out of the way as possible, and slouching their hats
+over their eyes; and although it may only be a fancy of mine, <I>I </I>
+certainly thought that they affected a sort of lordly indifference as
+to whose watch they were going to be in; and did not think it worth
+while to look any way anxious about the matter. And the very men who, a
+few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity and promptitude in
+jumping into the rigging and running aloft at the word of command, now
+lounged against the bulwarks and most lazily; as if they were quite
+sure, that by this time the officers must know who the best men were,
+and they valued themselves well enough to be willing to put the
+officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they were worth
+having, they were worth seeking.</P>
+<P>At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the chief mate's
+next turn to choose; though there could be little choosing in my case,
+since <I>I </I>was a thirteener, and must, whether or no, go over to
+the next column, like the odd figure you carry along when you do a sum
+in addition.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, Buttons,&quot; said the chief mate, &quot;I thought I'd got rid of you.
+And as it is, Mr. Rigs,&quot; he added, speaking to the second mate, &quot;I
+guess you had better take him into your watch;&#8212;there, I'll let you
+have him, and then you'll be one stronger than me.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No, I thank you,&quot; said Mr. Rigs.</P>
+<P>&quot;You had better,&quot; said the chief mate&#8212;&quot;see, he's not a bad looking
+chap&#8212;he's a little green, to be sure, but you were so once yourself,
+you know, Rigs.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No, I thank you,&quot; said the second mate again. &quot;Take him
+yourself&#8212;he's yours by good rights&#8212;I don't want him.&quot; And so they put
+me in the chief mate's division, that is the larboard watch.</P>
+<P>While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough; there I stood,
+just like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers are bargaining. Nothing
+that had yet happened so forcibly reminded me of where I was, and what
+I had come to. I was very glad when they sent us forward again.</P>
+<P>As we were going forward, the second mate called one of the sailors
+by name:-&quot;You, Bill?&quot; and Bill answered, &quot;Sir?&quot; just as if the second
+mate was a born gentleman. It surprised me not a little, to see a man
+in such a shabby, shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I
+had been quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call him <I>
+Mr. </I>Rigs during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if this <I>Mr.
+Rigs </I>was a great merchant living in a marble house in Lafayette
+Place. But I was not very long in finding out, that at sea all officers
+are <I>Misters, </I>and would take it for an insult if any seaman
+presumed to omit calling them so. And it is also one of their rights
+and privileges to be called <I>sir </I>when addressed&#8212;Yes, <I>sir; No,
+sir; Ay, ay, sir; </I>and they are as particular about being sirred as
+so many knights and baronets; though their titles are not hereditary,
+as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas in England. But so
+far as the second mate is concerned, his tides are the only dignities
+he enjoys; for, upon the whole, he leads a puppyish We indeed. He is
+not deemed company at any time for the captain, though the chief mate
+occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the cabin; and
+besides this, the second mate has to breakfast, lunch, dine, and sup
+off the leavings of the cabin table, and even the steward, who is
+accountable to nobody but the captain, sometimes treats him cavalierly;
+and he has to run aloft when topsails are reefed; and put his hand a
+good way down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the boatswain's
+locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and seizing-stuff for the
+sailors when at work in the rigging; besides doing many other things,
+which a true-born baronet of any spirit would rather die and give up
+his title than stand.</P>
+<P>Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper; but I could
+not eat any thing except a little biscuit, though I should have liked
+to have some good tea; but as I had no pot to get it in, and was rather
+nervous about asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I
+was obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the black cook
+and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross and ugly then, that the
+sight of him almost frightened the idea out of me.</P>
+<P>When supper was over, for they never talk about going to <I>tea </I>
+aboard of a ship, the watch to which I belonged was called on deck; and
+we were told it was for us to stand the first night watch, that is,
+from eight o'clock till midnight.</P>
+<P>I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as
+if matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about
+the head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
+dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one
+of the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses
+very civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and
+spend the night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said
+something about my mother not being aware of my being out; which
+enraged me not a little, that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly,
+should dare to take such a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort
+of blasphemy, and it seemed like dragging out the best and most
+cherished secrets of my soul, for at that time the name of mother was
+the center of all my heart's finest feelings, which ere that, I had
+learned to keep secret, deep down in my being.</P>
+<P>But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would
+have only made the matter worse.</P>
+<P>Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin
+where the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide
+apart in his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly
+flaxen hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though
+active; and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way
+between his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in
+his broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
+acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the
+Hook, which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the
+hook-nosed men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that
+came along. He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a
+good-looking fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a
+new silk handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the
+vertebral bones of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers
+were of clear white duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and
+a tarpaulin hat bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon
+streaming behind, and getting entangled every now and then in the
+rigging; and he had gold anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one
+of his fingers, which was very much worn and bent from pulling ropes
+and other work on board ship. I thought he might better have left his
+jewelry at home.</P>
+<P>It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really
+from Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have
+come from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant
+country; how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was;
+and how he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again
+and run about, and go to bed again, and get up again&#8212;there was no
+telling how many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in
+his country, he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a
+Greenland baby was sometimes three months old, before it could properly
+be said to be a day old.</P>
+<P>I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages;
+but that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian
+Nights, which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about
+these wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read,
+but only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
+altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book
+meant to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain what I
+mean; but this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till
+I saw this Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland,
+only made me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from
+Greenland to be in my company? Why was he not at home among the
+icebergs, and how could he stand a warm summer's sun, and not be melted
+away? Besides, instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from
+his ears; and he did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge
+muff; things, which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all
+Greenlanders.</P>
+<P>But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting to retire for
+the night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill, volunteered to turn
+doctor and cure me; so going down into the forecastle, he came back
+with a brown jug, like a molasses jug, and a little tin cannikin, and
+as soon as the brown jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was
+in it, for it smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be
+full of Jamaica spirits.</P>
+<P>&quot;Now, Buttons,&quot; said he, &quot;one little dose of this will be better for
+you than a whole night's sleep; there, take that now, and then eat
+seven or eight biscuits, and you'll feel as strong as the mainmast.&quot;</P>
+<P>But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had some
+scruples about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain truth, for I am
+not ashamed of it, I was a member of a society in the village where my
+mother lived, called the Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of
+which my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer,
+and kept the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him.
+There was three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he
+brought in his accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove
+on the river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the
+Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy,
+whom I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.</P>
+<P>When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine, I thanked
+him as well as I could; for just then I was leaning with my mouth over
+the side, feeling ready to die; but I managed to tell him I was under a
+solemn obligation never to drink spirits upon any consideration
+whatever; though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits
+would now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel sorry, that
+when I signed the pledge of abstinence, I had not taken care to insert
+a little clause, allowing me to drink spirits in case of sea-sickness.
+And I would advise temperance people to attend to this matter in
+future; and then if they come to go to sea, there will be no need of
+breaking their pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case with
+me. And a hard thing it was, too, thus to break a vow before unbroken;
+especially as the Jamaica tasted any thing but agreeable, and indeed
+burnt my mouth so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after.
+Even when I had become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the
+sailors could really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it,
+besides the Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, <I>
+to taper off with, </I>as they called it. But this tapering off did not
+last very long, for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the
+jugs were tossed overboard. I wonder where they are now?</P>
+<P>But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste, the
+spirits I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose, if I could
+have had a cup of nice hot coffee, it would have done quite as well,
+and perhaps much better. But that was not to be had at that time of
+night, or, indeed, at any other time; for the thing they called <I>
+coffee, </I>which was given to us every morning at breakfast, was the
+most curious tasting drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like
+coffee, as it did like lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally
+as cold as lemonade, and I used to think the cook had an icehouse, and
+dropt ice into his coffee. But what was more curious still, was the
+different quality and taste of it on different mornings. Sometimes it
+tasted fishy, as if it was a decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it
+would taste very salty, as if some <I>old horse, </I>or sea-beef, had
+been boiled in it; and then again it would taste a sort of cheesy, as
+if the captain had sent his cheese-parings forward to make our coffee
+of; and yet another time it would have such a very bad flavor, that I
+was almost ready to think some old stocking-heels had been boiled in
+it. What under heaven it was made of, that it had so many different bad
+flavors, always remained a mystery; for when at work at his vocation,
+our old cook used to keep himself close shut-up in his caboose, a
+little cook-house, and never told any of his secrets.</P>
+<P>Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter show, he was
+for all that, and perhaps for that identical reason, a very suspicious
+looking sort of a cook, that I don't believe would ever succeed in
+getting the cooking at Delmonico's in New York. It was well for him
+that he was a black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from
+seeing his dirty face! I never saw him wash but once, and that was at
+one of his own soup pots one dark night when he thought no one saw him.
+What induced him to be washing his face then, I never could find out;
+but I suppose he must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some
+real estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding the
+disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a strange
+curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have;
+and though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and
+adding another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any
+change in the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in
+that respect as before.</P>
+<P>It may well be believed, then, that now when I was seasick, a cup of
+such coffee as our old cook made would have done me no good, if indeed
+it would not have come near making an end of me. And bad as it was, and
+since it was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before, I
+think I was excusable in taking something else in place of it, as I
+did; and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome of them, if my
+fellow-members of the Temperance Society should reproach me for
+breaking my bond, which I would not have done except in case of
+necessity. But the evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion
+whatever, was witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously opened
+the way to subsequent breaches of it, which though very slight, yet
+carried no apology with them.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_10">IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE
+SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM</A></H3>
+<P>The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
+pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather
+cloudy, it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain
+enough to count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it
+was not very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth
+as a sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held
+so steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes,
+and scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.</P>
+<P>The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a
+lighted long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but
+few words to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of
+thinking to attend to, which hi truth is the case with most seamen the
+first night out of port, especially when they have thrown away their
+money in foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For
+when ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in
+their way, as the sailors they command.</P>
+<P>While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down,
+the mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey
+it. It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a
+little higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began
+pulling upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no
+words to it, only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark
+night, and far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and
+made me feel as I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin
+of mine, with black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the
+piano. I almost looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit
+afraid. But I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never
+touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike
+up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting
+forward very well, the mate would always say, <I>&quot;Come, men, can't any
+of you sing? Sing now, and raise the dead.&quot; </I>And then some one of
+them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much relieved as mine
+by the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a
+cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath
+expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing
+well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal
+of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before shipping a
+man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope.</P>
+<P>During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the
+windlass and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and
+talked about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as
+you and I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them
+almost was a volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what
+most struck me was that like books of voyages they often contradicted
+each other, and would fall into long and violent disputes about who was
+keeping the Foul Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether
+the King of Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the
+bar-maid of a particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes;
+with many other mooted points of that sort.</P>
+<P>At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from
+his chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that
+kind, to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle
+ashore; and also by way of <I>tapering off, </I>as I mentioned a little
+while ago. But I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to
+sea with them, instead of spirits and cigars.</P>
+<P>Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box with a blow of
+his fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a
+waiter at a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
+Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
+Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the
+Temperance Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did
+afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I
+declined; with a good deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that
+the cigars were real genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he
+said, and had them made there under his own eye. According to his
+account, he was very particular about his cigars and other things, and
+never made any importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a
+voyage himself direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be
+had that he wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama
+for his hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to
+Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to
+say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his
+halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that
+the Russian hemp is the best; though that is not wit which needs
+explaining.</P>
+<P>By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting
+strength, united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite
+for our hard biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down
+the deck before the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my
+sickness, and finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at
+least among themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies,
+and nothing on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that
+they were a pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their
+swearing and another ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had
+misconceived their true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them
+such a parcel of wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe
+affliction to associate with them.</P>
+<P>Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but
+more with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and
+kind dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had
+made outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved
+wickedness for the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in
+Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had
+once heard in a church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called
+them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to poor lost
+children, babes in the wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.</P>
+<P>And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors'
+Magazine, with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about
+pious seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
+heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
+these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
+Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for
+their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good
+sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on
+deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them:
+so I did not disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at
+discovering that he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by
+his side.</P>
+<P>I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men
+went into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take
+a &quot;swig at the halyards,&quot; as they called it; and this swigging at the
+halyards it was, that enabled them &quot;to taper off&quot; handsomely, and no
+doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
+pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
+sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then.
+Yet this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to
+them, then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they
+turned about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.</P>
+<P>I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
+friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
+them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
+so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
+desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
+they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
+was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
+dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
+East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
+liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
+stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
+my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
+certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
+church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
+week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
+the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
+books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
+wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.</P>
+<P>When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so
+plainly his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied
+him more and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was
+grateful that I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it
+was, to feel wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing
+to confess to myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors,
+so much as my education, which I had received from others, that had
+made me the upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to
+be. And it was now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency
+and satisfaction in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had
+previously associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that
+there was little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself
+with my neighbors.</P>
+<P>Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit
+uneasily upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by
+giving him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor
+thing; for I was far from being vain and conceited.</P>
+<P>Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on
+the quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was
+heard, some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung
+on the forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the
+man astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his&#8212;tit for tat,&#8212;I
+inquired of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant;
+and whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down
+to the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
+little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant
+dreams; and in asking these questions I was particular to address him
+in a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I
+did not deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all
+things together, and not going into particulars. But to my great
+surprise and mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed
+aloud in my face, and called me a &quot;Jimmy Dux,&quot; though that was not my
+real name, and he must have known it; and also the &quot;son of a farmer,&quot;
+though as I have previously related, my father was a great merchant and
+French importer in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh
+and joke about me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me,
+and if I had not felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt
+very much Eke a fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling
+foolish, which is very lucky for people in a passion.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_11">X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE
+SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN</A></H3>
+<P>While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by
+a horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some
+one came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in
+his hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so
+that I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.</P>
+<P>But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the
+sight, and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped
+over the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a
+great uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate
+ran forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his
+orders about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and
+hauling the ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water.
+Then they loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more
+than an hour, but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he
+was one of the sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and
+tumbled into his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now.
+He must have suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium
+tremens, as the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange
+silent place, and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck,
+and so, in a fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.</P>
+<P>This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn
+and almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world,
+and the sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been
+mine, had I been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home
+on the Hudson River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at
+the folly which had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best
+friends, that is to say, my mother and sisters.</P>
+<P>Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home
+any more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
+expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
+suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
+myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
+lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it
+worse, was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened.
+And they took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked Me I
+had entered upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea,
+and they were used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the
+suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as
+frightened as I did; and besides that, and what makes their being
+frightened still plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any
+presence of mind, they could have prevented his plunging overboard,
+since he brushed right by them. However, they lay in then-bunks
+smoking, and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising me
+as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as not to hold the
+wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and
+never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running
+brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest
+puddle of rainwater.</P>
+<P>This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so
+true and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
+insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
+made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
+a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
+hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew
+that I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of
+it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in
+me, but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
+their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
+suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
+desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
+better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They
+asked me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the
+bread out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's
+place; and asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since
+I was a gentleman with white hands; and if I ever <I>should </I>be,
+they would like nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir
+up a mutiny. And one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall
+have a good deal more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear
+of him ever after, for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way,
+he would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the
+rigging near <I>him, </I>he would make nothing of pitching me
+overboard; and that he swore too, with an oath. At first, all this
+nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and then I could not believe
+that they meant what they said, or that they could be so cruel and
+black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that the men who could thus
+talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first night of his voyage
+to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I loathed, detested,
+and hated them with all that was left of my bursting heart and soul,
+and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable wretch that ever
+breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a boy is to be such
+a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked within me, but
+all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared them to do their
+worst.</P>
+<P>At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
+seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
+there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,
+and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_12">XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND
+THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST</A></H3>
+<P>The next thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck
+as the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning,
+and when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the
+east. The men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without
+speaking, and some of them nodded and nodded, till at last they fell
+off like little boys in church during a drowsy sermon. At last it was
+broad day, and an order was given to wash down the decks. A great tub
+was dragged into the waist, and then one of the men went over into the
+chains, and slipped in behind a band fastened to the shrouds, and
+leaning over, began to swing a bucket into the sea by a long rope; and
+in that way with much expertness and sleight of hand, he managed to
+fill the tub in a very short time. Then the water began to splash about
+all over the decks, and I began to think I should surely get my feet
+wet, and catch my death of cold. So I went to the chief mate, and told
+him I thought I would just step below, till this miserable wetting was
+over; for I did not have any water-proof boots, and an aunt of mine had
+died of consumption. But he only roared out for me to get a broom and
+go to scrubbing, or he would prove a worse consumption to me than ever
+got hold of my poor aunt. So I scrubbed away fore and aft, till my back
+was almost broke, for the brooms had uncommon short handles, and we
+were told to scrub hard.</P>
+<P>At length the scrubbing being over, the mate began heaving buckets
+of water about, to wash every thing clean, by way of finishing off. He
+must have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines
+love to point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him
+with full buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over
+the deck, with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of
+a scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I
+could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without
+saying one word, and without wasting so much water. But he said there
+was plenty of water in the ocean, and to spare; which was true enough,
+but then I who had to trot after him with the buckets, had no more legs
+and arms than I wanted for my own use.</P>
+<P>I thought this washing down the decks was the most foolish thing in
+the world, and besides that it was the most uncomfortable. It was worse
+than my mother's house-cleanings at home, which I used to abominate so.</P>
+<P>At eight o'clock the bell was struck, and we went to breakfast. And
+now some of the worst of my troubles began. For not having had any
+friend to tell me what I would want at sea, I had not provided myself,
+as I should have done, with a good many things that a sailor needs; and
+for my own part, it had never entered my mind, that sailors had no
+table to sit down to, no cloth, or napkins, or tumblers, and had to
+provide every thing themselves. But so it was.</P>
+<P>The first thing they did was this. Every sailor went to the
+cook-house with his tin pot, and got it filled with coffee; but of
+course, having no pot, there was no coffee for me. And after that, a
+sort of little tub called a &quot;kid,&quot; was passed down into the forecastle,
+filled with something they called &quot;burgoo.&quot; This was like mush, made of
+Indian corn, meal, and water. With the <I>&quot;kid,&quot; a. </I>little tin
+cannikin was passed down with molasses. Then the Jackson that I spoke
+of before, put the kid between his knees, and began to pour in the
+molasses, just like an old landlord mixing punch for a party. He
+scooped out a little hole in the middle of the mush, to hold the
+molasses; so it looked for all the world like a little black pool in
+the Dismal Swamp of Virginia.</P>
+<P>Then they all formed a circle round the kid; and one after the
+other, with great regularity, dipped their spoons into the mush, and
+after stirring them round a little in the molasses-pool, they swallowed
+down their mouthfuls, and smacked their lips over it, as if it tasted
+very good; which I have no doubt it did; but not having any spoon, I
+wasn't sure.</P>
+<P>I sat some time watching these proceedings, and wondering how polite
+they were to each other; for, though there were a great many spoons to
+only one dish, they never got entangled. At last, seeing that the mush
+was getting thinner and thinner, and that it was getting low water, or
+rather low molasses in the little pool, I ran on deck, and after
+searching about, returned with a bit of stick; and thinking I had as
+good a right as any one else to the mush and molasses, I worked my way
+into the circle, intending to make one of the party. So I shoved in my
+stick, and after twirling it about, was just managing to carry a little <I>
+burgoo </I>toward my mouth, which had been for some time standing ready
+open to receive it, when one of the sailors perceiving what I was
+about, knocked the stick out of my hands, and asked me where I learned
+my manners; Was that the way gentlemen eat in my country? Did they eat
+their victuals with splinters of wood, and couldn't that wealthy
+gentleman my father afford to buy his gentlemanly son a spoon?</P>
+<P>All the rest joined in, and pronounced me an ill-bred, coarse, and
+unmannerly youngster, who, if permitted to go on with such behavior as
+that, would corrupt the whole crew, and make them no better than swine.</P>
+<P>As I felt conscious that a stick was indeed a thing very unsuitable
+to eat with, I did not say much to this, though it vexed me enough; but
+remembering that I had seen one of the steerage passengers with a pan
+and spoon in his hand eating his breakfast on the fore hatch, I now ran
+on deck again, and to my great joy succeeded in borrowing his spoon,
+for he had got through his meal, and down I came again, though at the
+eleventh hour, and offered myself once more as a candidate.</P>
+<P>But alas! there was little more of the Dismal Swamp left, and when I
+reached over to the opposite end of the kid, I received a rap on the
+knuckles from a spoon, and was told that I must help myself from my own
+side, for that was the rule. But <I>my </I>side was scraped clean, so I
+got no <I>burgoo </I>that morning.</P>
+<P>But I made it up by eating some salt beef and biscuit, which I found
+to be the invariable accompaniment of every meal; the sailors sitting
+cross-legged on their chests in a circle, and breaking the hard
+biscuit, very sociably, over each other's heads, which was very
+convenient indeed, but gave me the headache, at least for the first
+four or five days till I got used to it; and then I did not care much
+about it, only it kept my hair full of crumbs; and I had forgot to
+bring a fine comb and brush, so I used to shake my hair out to windward
+over the bulwarks every evening.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_13">XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE
+OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON</A></H3>
+<P>While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the men got into a
+dispute, about who had been sea-faring the longest; when Jackson, who
+had mixed the <I>burgoo, </I>called upon them in a loud voice to cease
+their clamor, for he would decide the matter for them. Of this sailor,
+I shall have something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so,
+I will here try to describe him a little.</P>
+<P>Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and just recovered
+from the yellow fever? Well, just such a looking man was this sailor.
+He was as yellow as gamboge, had no more whisker on his cheek, than I
+have on my elbows. His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald,
+except in the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was
+stuck over with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out
+shoe-brush. His nose had broken down in the middle, and he squinted
+with one eye, and did not look very straight out of the other. He
+dressed a good deal like a Bowery boy; for he despised the ordinary
+sailor-rig; wearing a pair of great over-all blue trowsers, fastened
+with suspenders, and three red woolen shirts, one over the other; for
+he was subject to the rheumatism, and was not in good health, he said;
+and he had a large white wool hat, with a broad rolling brim. He was a
+native of New York city, and had a good deal to say about <I>
+highlanders, </I>and <I>rowdies, </I>whom he denounced as only good for
+the gallows; but I thought he looked a good deal like a <I>highlander </I>
+himself.</P>
+<P>His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us, he was a near
+relation of General Jackson of New Orleans, and swore terribly, if any
+one ventured to question what he asserted on that head. In fact he was
+a great bully, and being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing
+every way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict
+him, or cross his path in any thing. And what made this more wonderful
+was, that he was the weakest man, bodily, of the whole crew; and I have
+no doubt that young and small as I was then, compared to what I am now,
+I could have thrown him down. But he had such an overawing way with
+him; such a deal of brass and impudence, such an unflinching face, and
+withal was such a hideous looking mortal, that Satan himself would have
+run from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by
+nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and
+understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal
+with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a
+knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye,
+that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights
+it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
+defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
+deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
+have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.</P>
+<P>It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no
+beard, and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might
+have seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own
+account, he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he
+first went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And
+according to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of
+dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had
+served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a
+diabolical relish used to tell of the <I>middle-passage, </I>where the
+slaves were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and
+dead were unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning,
+before washing down the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner,
+which being chased by an English cruiser off Cape Verde, received three
+shots in her hull, which raked through and through a whole file of
+slaves, that were chained.</P>
+<P>He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost
+a man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body,
+and got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague.
+He would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
+pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
+being poisoned at Canton with drugged <I>&quot;shampoo,&quot; </I>for the sake of
+their money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the
+straits of Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to
+make him point out where the most valuable goods were stored.</P>
+<P>His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
+poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
+career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
+men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
+long, without paying the death-penalty.</P>
+<P>But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things,
+and the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus
+of Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been
+stung out of the world by wasps and hornets.</P>
+<P>Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a
+man; he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes
+used to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I
+sometimes fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable,
+broken-down condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in
+consequence of his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with
+such malevolence as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my
+mother so thought me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea,
+and shook off my low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in
+my cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas <I>
+he </I>was being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up
+his vitals, and was more fit for a hospital than a ship.</P>
+<P>As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
+surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard to me, in the people
+I meet; especially if I have reason to think they dislike me; I will
+not put it down for a certainty that what I suspected concerning this
+Jackson relative to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only
+state my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and even
+now, I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it was so, how could I
+account to myself, for the shudder that would run through me, when I
+caught this man gazing at me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb
+at times, and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
+man in the moody madness.</P>
+<P>I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I was startled at
+his eye, which was even then fixed upon me. He was standing at the
+ship's helm, being the first man that got there, when a steersman was
+called for by the pilot; for this Jackson was always on the alert for
+easy duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for
+assuming them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in
+poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place
+was to be jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of
+spasmodic exertion under strong inducements, which every one knows the
+greatest invalids will sometimes show.</P>
+<P>And though the sailors were always very bitter against any thing
+like <I>sogering, </I>as they called it; that is, any thing that
+savored of a desire to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed
+that, though this Jackson was a notorious old <I>soger </I>the whole
+voyage (I mean, in all things not perilous to do, from which he was far
+from hanging back), and in truth was a great veteran that way, and one
+who must have passed unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never
+presumed to call him to account in any way; or to let him so much as
+think, what they thought of his conduct. But I often heard them call
+him many hard names behind his back; and sometimes, too, when, perhaps,
+they had just been tenderly inquiring after his health before his face.
+They all stood in mortal fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him
+like so many spaniels; and used to rub his back, after he was undressed
+and lying in his bunk; and used to run up on deck to the cook-house, to
+warm some cold coffee for him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him
+chews of tobacco, and mend his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch,
+and tend, and nurse him every way. And all the time, he would sit
+scowling on them, and found fault with what they did; and I noticed,
+that those who did the most for him, and cringed the most before him,
+were the very ones he most abused; while two or three who held more
+aloof, he treated with a little consideration.</P>
+<P>It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship's
+company submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson.
+I only know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a
+blue eye in his head, or had had a different face from what he did
+have, they would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished
+me, to see that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored
+young man from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence
+among the crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon,
+and made a butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually
+being abused and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially,
+because of his great strength and fine person, and particularly because
+of his red cheeks.</P>
+<P>But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an <I>
+able-seaman, </I>was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man
+in the eyes of a ship's company; I mean, when he ships for an <I>
+able-seaman, </I>but is not able to do the duty of one. For sailors are
+of three classes&#8212;<I>able-seaman, ordinary-seaman, </I>and <I>boys; </I>
+and they receive different wages according to their rank. Generally, a
+ship's company of twelve men will only have five or six able seamen,
+who if they prove to understand their duty every way (and that is no
+small matter either, as I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up
+to, and thought much of by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence
+their very pea-jackets, and lay up their sayings in their hearts.</P>
+<P>But you must not think from this, that persons called <I>boys </I>
+aboard merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself
+was called a <I>boy, </I>and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a <I>
+boy </I>means a green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never
+mind if he is old enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a <I>
+boy; </I>and boys' work is put upon him.</P>
+<P>But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson's
+putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
+after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
+been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
+bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's
+age just like a horse's&#8212;by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened
+his mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the
+light came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while
+he looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a
+baboon peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just
+as if I had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to
+cut his throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the
+lather on, to be shaved. For I watched Jackson's eye and saw it
+snapping, and a sort of going in and out, very quick, as if it were
+something like a forked tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were
+longing to kill the man; but at last he grew more composed, and after
+concluding his examination, said, that the first man was the oldest
+sailor, for the ends of his teeth were the evenest and most worn down;
+which, he said, arose from eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this
+was the reason he could tell a sailor's age like a horse's.</P>
+<P>At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as
+to <I>say&#8212;come, boys, let's laugh; </I>and they did laugh; and
+declared it was a rare joke.</P>
+<P>This was always the way with them. They made a point of shouting
+out, whenever Jackson said any thing with a grin; that being the sign
+to them that he himself thought it funny; though I heard many good
+jokes from others pass off without a smile; and once Jackson himself
+(for, to tell the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that
+is, when his back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but with a
+grave face; when, not knowing how he meant it, whether for a laugh or
+otherwise, they all sat still, waiting what to do, and looking
+perplexed enough; till at last Jackson roared out upon them for a
+parcel of fools and idiots; and told them to their beards, how it was;
+that he had purposely put on his grave face, to see whether they would
+not look grave, too; even when he was telling something that ought to
+split their sides. And with that, he flouted, and jeered at them, and
+laughed them all to scorn; and broke out in such a rage, that his lips
+began to glue together at the corners with a fine white foam.</P>
+<P>He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every thing and
+every body in the world; as if all the world was one person, and had
+done him some dreadful harm, that was rankling and festering in his
+heart. Sometimes I thought he was really crazy; and often felt so
+frightened at him, that I thought of going to the captain about it, and
+telling him Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some
+terrible thing at last. But upon second thoughts, I always gave it up;
+for the captain would only have called me a fool, and sent me forward
+again.</P>
+<P>But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in abasing
+themselves before this man. No: there were three or four who used to
+stand up sometimes against him; and when he was absent at the wheel,
+would plot against him among the other sailors, and tell them what a
+shame and ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should be
+such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And they begged and
+conjured them as men, to put up with it no longer, but the very next
+time, that Jackson presumed to play the dictator, that they should all
+withstand him, and let him know his place. Two or three times nearly
+all hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to slink
+off during such discussions; and swore that they would not any more
+submit to being ruled by Jackson. But when the time came to make good
+their oaths, they were mum again, and let every thing go on the old
+way; so that those who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt
+of Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last would stick up
+a little at first, and even mutter something about a fight to Jackson;
+yet in the end, finding themselves unbefriended by the rest, they would
+gradually become silent, and leave the field to the tyrant, who would
+then fly out worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
+at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a mouthful of
+heart in them. At such times, there were no bounds to his contempt; and
+indeed, all the time he seemed to have even more contempt than hatred,
+for every body and every thing.</P>
+<P>As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship, a boy is
+expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume to interfere,
+and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For merchant sailors have a great
+idea of their dignity, and superiority to <I>greenhorns </I>and <I>
+landsmen, </I>who know nothing about a ship; and they seem to think,
+that an <I>able seaman </I>is a great man; at least a much greater man
+than a little boy. And the able seamen in the Highlander had such grand
+notions about their seamanship, that I almost thought that able seamen
+received diplomas, like those given at colleges; and were made a sort <I>
+A.M.S, </I>or <I>Masters of Arts.</I></P>
+<P>But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well
+knew that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and
+indeed endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid
+Jackson's evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe,
+set many of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak
+out for me before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of
+Ishmael in the ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began
+to feel a hatred growing up in me against the whole crew&#8212;so much so,
+that I prayed against it, that it might not master my heart completely,
+and so make a fiend of me, something like Jackson.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_14">XII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA,
+BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND</A></H3>
+<P>The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and
+breakfast over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.</P>
+<P>It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same
+deep hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our
+jackets. I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I
+had been in during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and
+dim; and I could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so
+beautiful and blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled
+along so black and forbidding.</P>
+<P>There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
+little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
+musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
+still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
+only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go
+out on the bowsprit, and lay down between the <I>manropes </I>there,
+and look over at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should
+have been almost happy for a time.</P>
+<P>I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well;
+at least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so
+that I could now look around me, and make observations.</P>
+<P>And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and
+wonder at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was
+the sight of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land.
+All round us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was
+to be seen but water-water&#8212;water; not a single glimpse of green shore,
+not the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I
+realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how
+solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave
+no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell
+of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and
+placid, could be lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches
+of foam, and great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.</P>
+<P>As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to
+mind my little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the
+cradle. It had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every
+happy little wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless Little kid
+in a pasture; and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it
+wanted to be patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with
+hearts in them, that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we
+sailed in among them, scattering them under our broad bows in
+sun-flakes, and riding over them like a great elephant among lambs.
+But what seemed perhaps the most strange to me of all, was a certain
+wonderful rising and falling of the sea; I do not mean the waves
+themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and swelling and sinking all
+over the ocean. It was something I can not very well describe; but I
+know very well what it was, and how it affected me. It made me almost
+dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes off it, it seemed
+so passing strange and wonderful.</P>
+<P>I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
+out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to
+hear myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of
+the deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
+thoughts; for the men were now getting some <I>stun'-sails </I>ready to
+hoist aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and
+these stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away
+out beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water,
+like the wings of a great bird.</P>
+<P>For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing
+the name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I
+felt very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or
+what I was; every thing was so strange and new.</P>
+<P>While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
+sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
+the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
+could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
+me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
+call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
+each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
+who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.</P>
+<P>However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from
+dreaming with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at
+last I managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so
+much like a fool as at first.</P>
+<P>People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can
+not imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going
+into a barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, arid
+dress in strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have
+their own names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you
+call a thing by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and
+a landlubber. This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to
+draw some water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I
+thought I had committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great
+passion, and said they never had any <I>pails </I>at sea, and then I
+learned that they were always called <I>buckets. </I>And once I was
+talking about sticking a little wooden peg into a bucket to stop a
+leak, when he flew out again, and said there were no <I>pegs </I>at
+sea, only <I>plugs. </I>And just so it was with every thing else.</P>
+<P>But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally
+new names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible
+for me to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have
+remarked what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed
+mixed and entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very
+smallest of these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are
+very lengthy, like the names of young royal princes, such as the <I>
+starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line, </I>or the <I>
+larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.</I></P>
+<P>I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
+ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the
+classes of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names
+there are in the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons
+and anatomists give to the various parts of the human body; which,
+indeed, is something like a ship; its bones being the stiff
+standing-rigging, and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage
+all the motions.</P>
+<P>I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these
+names, which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at
+last the very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men
+will be breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of
+words they use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas.
+But people seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great
+many names, seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I
+should not be surprised, if there were a great many more names than
+things in the world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my
+story.</P>
+<P>At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as
+soon as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse,
+and the breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking
+off the foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and
+timber seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with Me and joy;
+and I felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be
+glad to bound along so round the world.</P>
+<P>Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that
+responded to all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went
+reeling on and on with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one
+delirious throb at the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting
+was at my heart, as if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and
+my blood ran tingling along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring
+freshets.</P>
+<P>Yes I yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life,
+this briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe
+the very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the
+globe, let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with
+an eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!</P>
+<P>But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle
+interval, we were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to
+clean out the chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the
+long-boat.</P>
+<P>Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and
+set to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as
+if I were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and
+make a speedy end to this abominable voyage!</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_15">XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A
+SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN</A></H3>
+<P>What reminded me most forcibly of my ignominious condition, was the
+widely altered manner of the captain toward me.</P>
+<P>I had thought him a fine, funny gentleman, full of mirth and good
+humor, and good will to seamen, and one who could not fail to
+appreciate the difference between me and the rude sailors among whom I
+was thrown. Indeed, I had made no doubt that he would in some special
+manner take me under his protection, and prove a kind friend and
+benefactor to me; as I had heard that some sea-captains are fathers to
+their crew; and so they are; but such fathers as Solomon's precepts
+tend to make&#8212;severe and chastising fathers, fathers whose sense of
+duty overcomes the sense of love, and who every day, in some sort, play
+the part of Brutus, who ordered his son away to execution, as I have
+read in our old family Plutarch.</P>
+<P>Yes, I thought that Captain Riga, for Riga was his name, would be
+attentive and considerate to me, and strive to cheer me up, and comfort
+me in my lonesomeness. I did not even deem it at all impossible that he
+would invite me down into the cabin of a pleasant night, to ask me
+questions concerning my parents, and prospects in life; besides
+obtaining from me some anecdotes touching my great-uncle, the
+illustrious senator; or give me a slate and pencil, and teach me
+problems in navigation; or perhaps engage me at a game of chess. I even
+thought he might invite me to dinner on a sunny Sunday, and help me
+plentifully to the nice cabin fare, as knowing how distasteful the salt
+beef and pork, and hard biscuit of the forecastle must at first be to a
+boy like me, who had always lived ashore, and at home.</P>
+<P>And I could not help regarding him with peculiar emotions, almost of
+tenderness and love, as the last visible link in the chain of
+associations which bound me to my home. For, while yet in port, I had
+seen him and Mr. Jones, my brother's friend, standing together and
+conversing; so that from the captain to my brother there was but one
+intermediate step; and my brother and mother and sisters were one.</P>
+<P>And this reminds me how often I used to pass by the places on deck,
+where I remembered Mr. Jones had stood when we first visited the ship
+lying at the wharf; and how I tried to convince myself that it was
+indeed true, that he had stood there, though now the ship was so far
+away on the wide Atlantic Ocean, and he perhaps was walking down
+Wall-street, or sitting reading the newspaper in his counting room,
+while poor I was so differently employed.</P>
+<P>When two or three days had passed without the captain's speaking to
+me in any way, or sending word into the forecastle that he wished me to
+drop into the cabin to pay my respects. I began to think whether I
+should not make the first advances, and whether indeed he did not
+expect it of me, since I was but a boy, and he a man; and perhaps that
+might have been the reason why he had not spoken to me yet, deeming it
+more proper and respectful for me to address him first. I thought he
+might be offended, too, especially if he were a proud man, with tender
+feelings. So one evening, a little before sundown, in the second
+dog-watch, when there was no more work to be done, I concluded to call
+and see him.</P>
+<P>After drawing a bucket of water, and having a good washing, to get
+off some of the chicken-coop stains, I went down into the forecastle to
+dress myself as neatly as I could. I put on a white shirt in place of
+my red one, and got into a pair of cloth trowsers instead of my duck
+ones, and put on my new pumps, and then carefully brushing my
+shooting-jacket, I put that on over all, so that upon the whole, I made
+quite a genteel figure, at least for a forecastle, though I would not
+have looked so well in a drawing-room.</P>
+<P>When the sailors saw me thus employed, they did not know what to
+make of it, and wanted to know whether I was dressing to go ashore; I
+told them no, for we were then out of sight of mind; but that I was
+going to pay my respects to the captain. Upon which they all laughed
+and shouted, as if I were a simpleton; though there seemed nothing so
+very simple in going to make an evening call upon a friend. When some
+of them tried to dissuade me, saying I was green and raw; but Jackson,
+who sat looking on, cried out, with a hideous grin, &quot;Let him go, let
+him go, men&#8212;he's a nice boy. Let him go; the captain has some nuts and
+raisins for him.&quot; And so he was going on, when one of his violent fits
+of coughing seized him, and he almost choked.</P>
+<P>As I was about leaving the forecastle, I happened to look at my
+hands, and seeing them stained all over of a deep yellow, for that
+morning the mate had set me to tarring some strips of canvas for the
+rigging I thought it would never do to present myself before a
+gentleman that way; so for want of lads, I slipped on a pair of woolen
+mittens, which my mother had knit for me to carry to sea. As I was
+putting them on, Jackson asked me whether he shouldn't call a carriage;
+and another bade me not forget to present his best respects to the
+skipper. I left them all tittering, and coming on deck was passing the
+cook-house, when the old cook called after me, saying I had forgot my
+cane.</P>
+<P>But I did not heed their impudence, and was walking straight toward
+the cabin-door on the quarter-deck, when the chief mate met me. I
+touched my hat, and was passing him, when, after staring at me till I
+thought his eyes would burst out, he all at once caught me by the
+collar, and with a voice of thunder, wanted to know what I meant by
+playing such tricks aboard a ship that he was mate of? I told him to
+let go of me, or I would complain to my friend the captain, whom I
+intended to visit that evening. Upon this he gave me such a whirl
+round, that I thought the Gulf Stream was in my head; and then shoved
+me forward, roaring out I know not what. Meanwhile the sailors were all
+standing round the windlass looking aft, mightily tickled.</P>
+<P>Seeing I could not effect my object that night, I thought it best to
+defer it for the present; and returning among the sailors, Jackson
+asked me how I had found the captain, and whether the next time I went,
+I would not take a friend along and introduce him.</P>
+<P>The upshot of this business was, that before I went to sleep that
+night, I felt well satisfied that it was not customary for sailors to
+call on the captain in the cabin; and I began to have an inkling of the
+fact, that I had acted like a fool; but it all arose from my ignorance
+of sea usages.</P>
+<P>And here I may as well state, that I never saw the inside of the
+cabin during the whole interval that elapsed from our sailing till our
+return to New York; though I often used to get a peep at it through a
+little pane of glass, set in the house on deck, just before the helm,
+where a watch was kept hanging for the helmsman to strike the half
+hours by, with his little bell in the binnacle, where the compass was.
+And it used to be the great amusement of the sailors to look in through
+the pane of glass, when they stood at the wheel, and watch the
+proceedings in the cabin; especially when the steward was setting the
+table for dinner, or the captain was lounging over a decanter of wine
+on a little mahogany stand, or playing the game called <I>solitaire, </I>
+at cards, of an evening; for at times he was all alone with his
+dignity; though, as will ere long be shown, he generally had one
+pleasant companion, whose society he did not dislike.</P>
+<P>The day following my attempt to drop in at the cabin, I happened to
+be making fast a rope on the quarter-deck, when the captain suddenly
+made his appearance, promenading up and down, and smoking a cigar. He
+looked very good-humored and amiable, and it being just after his
+dinner, I thought that this, to be sure, was just the chance I wanted.</P>
+<P>I waited a little while, thinking he would speak to me himself; but
+as he did not, I went up to him, and began by saying it was a very
+pleasant day, and hoped he was very well. I never saw a man fly into
+such a rage; I thought he was going to knock me down; but after
+standing speechless awhile, he all at once plucked his cap from his
+head and threw it at me. I don't know what impelled me, but I ran to
+the lee-scuppers where it fell, picked it up, and gave it to him with a
+bow; when the mate came running up, and thrust me forward again; and
+after he had got me as far as the windlass, he wanted to know whether I
+was crazy or not; for if I was, he would put me in irons right off, and
+have done with it.</P>
+<P>But I assured him I was in my right mind, and knew perfectly well
+that I had been treated in the most rude and un-gentlemanly manner both
+by him and Captain Riga. Upon this, he rapped out a great oath, and
+told me if I ever repeated what I had done that evening, or ever again
+presumed so much as to lift my hat to the captain, he would tie me into
+the rigging, and keep me there until I learned better manners. &quot;You are
+very green,&quot; said he, &quot;but I'll ripen you.&quot; Indeed this chief mate
+seemed to have the keeping of the dignity of the captain; who, in some
+sort, seemed too dignified personally to protect his own dignity.</P>
+<P>I thought this strange enough, to be reprimanded, and charged with
+rudeness for an act of common civility. However, seeing how matters
+stood, I resolved to let the captain alone for the future, particularly
+as he had shown himself so deficient in the ordinary breeding of a
+gentleman. And I could hardly credit it, that this was the same man who
+had been so very civil, and polite, and witty, when Mr. Jones and I
+called upon him in port.</P>
+<P>But this astonishment of mine was much increased, when some days
+after, a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in
+his nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the
+poop, began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men
+aloft all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in the street.</P>
+<P>Besides all this, too, I noticed that while we were at sea, he wore
+nothing but old shabby clothes, very different from the glossy suit I
+had seen him in at our first interview, and after that on the steps of
+the City Hotel, where he always boarded when in New York. Now, he wore
+nothing but old-fashioned snuff-colored coats, with high collars and
+short waists; and faded, short-legged pantaloons, very tight about the
+knees; and vests, that did not conceal his waistbands, owing to their
+being so short, just like a little boy's. And his hats were all caved
+in, and battered, as if they had been knocked about in a cellar; and
+his boots were sadly patched. Indeed, I began to think that he was but
+a shabby fellow after all; particularly as his whiskers lost their
+gloss, and he went days together without shaving; and his hair, by a
+sort of miracle, began to grow of a pepper and salt color, which might
+have been owing, though, to his discontinuing the use of some kind of
+dye while at sea. I put him down as a sort of impostor; and while
+ashore, a gentleman on false pretenses; for no gentleman would have
+treated another gentleman as he did me.</P>
+<P>Yes, Captain Riga, thought I, you are no gentleman, and you know it!</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_16">XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS
+WARDROBE</A></H3>
+<P>And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old clothes, I
+may as well speak of mine.</P>
+<P>It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had
+greatly rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be
+warm and pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be
+like a summer excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt
+water, and a change of scene and society.</P>
+<P>So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
+deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
+pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
+suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
+their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
+them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
+brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and
+a belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
+outfit, something like the Texan rangers', whose uniform, they say,
+consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.</P>
+<P>But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing,
+or <I>&quot;long togs,&quot; </I>as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted
+to the life I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my
+pantaloons were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction,
+particularly about the seat, owing to their not being cut
+sailor-fashion, with low waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So
+that I was often placed in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the
+rigging, sometimes in plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen
+exposed in the most inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.</P>
+<P>And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
+prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.</P>
+<P>I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat
+man, very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
+fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
+were very dirty with fly-marks.</P>
+<P>Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had
+them in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to
+try them on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large
+round spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help
+him but a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and
+besides that, he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with
+his business; for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would
+sit snuffing and blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to
+get disgusted with him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern,
+after which he intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it,
+and bade him have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to
+button up with a row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin
+of mine, who was a great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of
+pantaloons, made precisely in that way.</P>
+<P>And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a
+great deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other
+to &quot;ftoig&quot; them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by
+way of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier.
+Showing very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a
+very genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and
+copied from my cousin's, who was a young man of fortune and drove a
+tilbury.</P>
+<P>When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
+mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
+patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
+heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
+more, and put them out of temper.</P>
+<P>Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home.
+They had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had
+had <I>a </I>pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes
+out when I walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could
+see me, and I had something else to think of; and I used to keep
+looking at them during church; so that I lost a good deal of the
+sermon. In a word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this
+only unfitted them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They
+had very high heels, which were all the time tripping me in the
+rigging, and several times came near pitching me overboard; and the
+salt water made them shrink in such a manner, that they pinched me
+terribly about the instep; and I was obliged to gash them cruelly,
+which went to my very heart. The legs were quite long, coming a good
+way up toward my knees, and the edges were mounted with red morocco.
+The sailors used to call them my <I>&quot;gaff-topsail-boots.&quot; </I>And
+sometimes they used to call me &quot;Boots,&quot; and sometimes &quot;Buttons,&quot; on
+account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and shooting-jacket.</P>
+<P>At last, I took their advice, and <I>&quot;razeed&quot; </I>them, as they
+phrased it. That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to
+the bare soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made
+my feet feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the
+world, and made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at
+home, when I wore straps on the ice.</P>
+<P>As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore
+proved a real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and
+in a rain storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying
+down on deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and
+battered, and lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every
+way.</P>
+<P>But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
+moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
+rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
+nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
+unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
+the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
+the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
+the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
+it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
+my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
+mate asked me once if I had the cramp.</P>
+<P>I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a
+similar kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the
+thought of them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that
+I was obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
+pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like
+an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a
+crucifix.</P>
+<P>I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never
+dreaming, that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something
+like going to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon
+and knife, fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter
+with a steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon
+iron pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
+present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave
+me a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much
+disposed to rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was
+drinking; and it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts
+were deprived of all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a
+labor to me. And I was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup,
+three times a week, which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.</P>
+<P>I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my
+improvidence and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with
+every thing calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even
+tolerable. In time, my wretched &quot;long togs&quot; began to drop off my back,
+and I looked like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and
+the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at
+home would have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I
+hugged myself in my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that
+that degradation and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a
+galling mockery, when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell
+all inquiring friends, that Wellingborough had gone <I>&quot;abroad&quot; </I>
+just as if I was visiting Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor
+simple Mr. Jones had hinted to the captain.</P>
+<P>Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
+were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
+contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the sea.</P>
+<P>And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance,
+as a view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny
+afternoon, and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight,
+with all her sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under
+our stern; and as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore
+and aft; and I saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and
+the cook look-cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain in a
+green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.</P>
+<P>And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with
+all these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up
+into the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a
+city; and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the
+midst of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.</P>
+<P>Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white
+castle in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare
+all the harder.</P>
+<P>Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging
+in an elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass
+trumpet to his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation, <I>
+&quot;Where from?&quot;</I></P>
+<P>To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
+gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
+Hamburg, as her flag denoted.</P>
+<P>
+<I>Hamburg!</I></P>
+<p>
+Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
+beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
+of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
+quite a little speck in the distance.</p>
+<P>I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains
+during their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective
+&quot;poops&quot; toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying
+their behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments,
+and drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting
+each other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great
+Atlantic Ocean was a puddle.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_17">XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP
+TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL</A></H3>
+<P>I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at
+middle watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.</P>
+<P>The order was given to loose the <I>main-skysail, </I>which is the
+fifth and highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from
+the forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But
+I have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the
+skysail; called <I>moon-sails, </I>and <I>skyscrapers, </I>and <I>
+cloud-rakers. </I>But I shall not believe in them till I see them; a <I>
+skysail </I>seems high enough in all conscience; and the idea of any
+thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost
+like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put
+the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon
+take the conceit out of these cloud-defying <I>cloud-rakers.</I></P>
+<P>Now, when the order was passed to loose the skysail, an old Dutch
+sailor came up to me, and said, &quot;Buttons, my boy, it's high time you be
+doing something; and it's boy's business, Buttons, to loose de royals,
+and not old men's business, like me. Now, d'ye see dat leelle fellow
+way up dare? <I>dare, </I>just behind dem stars dare: well, tumble up,
+now, Buttons, I zay, and looze him; way you go, Buttons.&quot;</P>
+<P>All the rest joining in, and seeming unanimous in the opinion, that
+it was high time for me to be stirring myself, and doing <I>boy's
+business, </I>as they called it, I made no more ado, but jumped into
+the rigging. Up I went, not dating to look down, but keeping my eyes
+glued, as it were, to the shrouds, as I ascended.</P>
+<P>It was a long road up those stairs, and I began to pant and breathe
+hard, before I was half way. But I kept at it till I got to the <I>
+Jacob's Ladder; </I>and they may well call it so, for it took me almost
+into the clouds; and at last, to my own amazement, I found myself
+hanging on the skysail-yard, holding on might and main to the mast; and
+curling my feet round the rigging, as if they were another pair of
+hands.</P>
+<P>For a few moments I stood awe-stricken and mute. I could not see far
+out upon the ocean, owing to the darkness of the night; and from my
+lofty perch, the sea looked like a great, black gulf, hemmed in, all
+round, by beetling black cliffs. I seemed all alone; treading the
+midnight clouds; and every second, expected to find myself
+falling&#8212;falling&#8212;falling, as I have felt when the nightmare has been
+on me.</P>
+<P>I could but just perceive the ship below me, like a long narrow
+plank in the water; and it did not seem to belong at all to the yard,
+over which I was hanging. A gull, or some sort of sea-fowl, was flying
+round the truck over my head, within a few yards of my face; and it
+almost frightened me to hear it; it seemed so much like a spirit, at
+such a lofty and solitary height.</P>
+<P>Though there was a pretty smooth sea, and little wind; yet, at this
+extreme elevation, the ship's motion was very great; so that when the
+ship rolled one way, I felt something as a fly must feel, walking the
+ceiling; and when it rolled the other way, I felt as if I was hanging
+along a slanting pine-tree.</P>
+<P>But presently I heard a distant, hoarse noise from below; and though
+I could not make out any thing intelligible, I knew it was the mate
+hurrying me. So in a nervous, trembling desperation, I went to casting
+off the <I>gaskets, </I>or lines tying up the sail; and when all was
+ready, sung out as I had been told, to <I>&quot;hoist away!&quot; </I>And hoist
+they did, and me too along with the yard and sail; for I had no time to
+get off, they were so unexpectedly quick about it. It seemed like
+magic; there I was, going up higher and higher; the yard rising under
+me, as if it were alive, and no soul in sight. Without knowing it at
+the time, I was in a good deal of danger, but it was so dark that I
+could not see well enough to feel afraid&#8212;at least on that account;
+though I felt frightened enough in a promiscuous way. I only held on
+hard, and made good the saying of old sailors, that the last person to
+fall overboard from the rigging is a landsman, because he grips the
+ropes so fiercely; whereas old tars are less careful, and sometimes pay
+the penalty.</P>
+<P>After this feat, I got down rapidly on deck, and received something
+like a compliment from Max the Dutchman.</P>
+<P>This man was perhaps the best natured man among the crew; at any
+rate, he treated me better than the rest did; and for that reason he
+deserves some mention.</P>
+<P>Max was an old bachelor of a sailor, very precise about his
+wardrobe, and prided himself greatly upon his seamanship, and
+entertained some straight-laced, old-fashioned notions about the duties
+of boys at sea. His hair, whiskers, and cheeks were of a fiery red; and
+as he wore a red shirt, he was altogether the most combustible looking
+man I ever saw.</P>
+<P>Nor did his appearance belie him; for his temper was very
+inflammable; and at a word, he would explode in a shower of hard words
+and imprecations. It was Max that several times set on foot those
+conspiracies against Jackson, which I have spoken of before; but he
+ended by paying him a grumbling homage, full of resentful reservations.</P>
+<P>Max sometimes manifested some little interest in my welfare; and
+often discoursed concerning the sorry figure I would cut in my tatters
+when we got to Liverpool, and the discredit it would bring on the
+American Merchant Service; for like all European seamen in American
+ships, Max prided himself not a little upon his naturalization as a
+Yankee, and if he could, would have been very glad to have passed
+himself off for a born native.</P>
+<P>But notwithstanding his grief at the prospect of my reflecting
+discredit upon his adopted country, he never offered to better my
+wardrobe, by loaning me any thing from his own well-stored chest. Like
+many other well-wishers, he contented him with sympathy. Max also
+betrayed some anxiety to know whether I knew how to dance; lest, when
+the ship's company went ashore, I should disgrace them by exposing my
+awkwardness in some of the sailor saloons. But I relieved his anxiety
+on that head.</P>
+<P>He was a great scold, and fault-finder, and often took me to task
+about my short-comings; but herein, he was not alone; for every one had
+a finger, or a thumb, and sometimes both hands, in my unfortunate pie.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_18">XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD</A></H3>
+<P>It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
+foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
+and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
+thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at
+the foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were
+dripping with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were
+standing on the roof of a house in a shower.</P>
+<P>It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had
+twinges of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for
+Jackson, he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.</P>
+<P>I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried
+to imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family
+friend, Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted
+tasseled cane, between churches, as he used to; and whether he would
+inquire about myself.</P>
+<P>But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at
+all. Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no
+church to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I
+began to think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday,
+when school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.</P>
+<P>The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our
+black cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went
+by the name of <I>the doctor.</I></P>
+<P>And <I>doctors, </I>cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in
+the world; for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half
+so serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb
+and green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
+winter? Will a dose of calomel and jakp do you as much good? Will a
+bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off
+a powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by
+a surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
+matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly I medicines,
+they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
+days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
+when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
+in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
+breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
+they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
+their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.</P>
+<P>Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics,
+and used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat
+over his boiling pots, reading out of a book which was very much soiled
+and covered with grease spots: for he kept it stuck into a little
+leather strap, nailed to the keg where he kept the fat skimmed off the
+water in which the salt beef was cooked. I could hardly believe my eyes
+when I found this book was the Bible.</P>
+<P>I loved to peep in upon him, when he was thus absorbed; for his
+smoky studio or study was a strange-looking place enough; not more than
+five feet square, and about as many high; a mere box to hold the stove,
+the pipe of which stuck out of the roof.</P>
+<P>Within, it was hung round with pots and pans; and on one side was a
+little looking-glass, where he used to shave; and on a small shelf were
+his shaving tools, and a comb and brush. Fronting the stove, and very
+close to it, was a sort of narrow shelf, where he used to sit with his
+legs spread out very wide, to keep them from scorching; and there, with
+his book in one hand, and a pewter spoon in the other, he sat all that
+Sunday morning, stirring up his pots, and studying away at the same
+time; seldom taking his eye off the page. Reading must have been very
+hard work for him; for he muttered to himself quite loud as he read;
+and big drops of sweat would stand upon his brow, and roll off, till
+they hissed on the hot stove before him. But on the day I speak of, it
+was no wonder that he got perplexed, for he was reading a mysterious
+passage in the Book of Chronicles. Being aware that I knew how to read,
+he called me as I was passing his premises, and read the passage over,
+demanding an explanation. I told him it was a mystery that no one could
+explain; not even a parson. But this did not satisfy him, and I left
+him poring over it still.</P>
+<P>He must have been a member of one of those negro churches, which are
+to be found in New York. For when we lay at the wharf, I remembered
+that a committee of three reverend looking old darkies, who, besides
+their natural canonicals, wore quaker-cut black coats, and
+broad-brimmed black hats, and white neck-cloths; these colored
+gentlemen called upon him, and remained conversing with him at his
+cookhouse door for more than an hour; and before they went away they
+stepped inside, and the sliding doors were closed; and then we heard
+some one reading aloud and preaching; and after that a psalm was sting
+and a benediction given; when the door opened again, and the
+congregation came out in a great perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the
+chapel being so small, and there being only one seat besides the stove.</P>
+<P>But notwithstanding his religious studies and meditations, this old
+fellow used to use some bad language occasionally; particularly of
+cold, wet stormy mornings, when he had to get up before daylight and
+make his fire; with the sea breaking over the bows, and now and then
+dashing into his stove.</P>
+<P>So, under the circumstances, you could not blame him much, if he did
+rip a little, for it would have tried old Job's temper, to be set to
+work making a fire in the water.</P>
+<P>Without being at all neat about his premises, this old cook was very
+particular about them; he had a warm love and affection for his
+cook-house. In fair weather, he spread the skirt of an old jacket
+before the door, by way of a mat; and screwed a small ring-bolt into
+the door for a knocker; and wrote his name, &quot;Mr. Thompson,&quot; over it,
+with a bit of red chalk.</P>
+<P>The men said he lived round the corner of <I>Forecastle-square, </I>
+opposite the <I>Liberty Pole; </I>because his cook-house was right
+behind the foremast, and very near the quarters occupied by themselves.</P>
+<P>Sailors have a great fancy for naming things that way on shipboard.
+When a man is hung at sea, which is always done from one of the lower
+yard-arms, they say he <I>&quot;takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down
+Hemp-street.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Mr. Thompson was a great crony of the steward's, who, being a
+handsome, dandy mulatto, that had once been a barber in West-Broadway,
+went by the name of Lavender. I have mentioned the gorgeous turban he
+wore when Mr. Jones and I visited the captain in the cabin. He never
+wore that turban at sea, though; but sported an uncommon head of
+frizzled hair, just like the large, round brush, used for washing
+windows, called a <I>Pope's Head.</I></P>
+<P>He kept it well perfumed with Cologne water, of which he had a large
+supply, the relics of his West-Broadway stock in trade. His clothes,
+being mostly cast-off suits of the captain of a London liner, whom he
+had sailed with upon many previous voyages, were all in the height of
+the exploded fashions, and of every kind of color and cut. He had
+claret-colored suits, and snuff-colored suits, and red velvet vests,
+and buff and brimstone pantaloons, and several full suits of black,
+which, with his dark-colored face, made him look quite clerical; like a
+serious young colored gentleman of Barbados, about to take orders.</P>
+<P>He wore an uncommon large pursy ring on his forefinger, with
+something he called a real diamond in it; though it was very dim, and
+looked more like a glass eye than any thing else. He was very proud of
+his ring, and was always calling your attention to something, and
+pointing at it with his ornamented finger.</P>
+<P>He was a sentimental sort of a darky, and read the <I>&quot;Three
+Spaniards,&quot; </I>and <I>&quot;Charlotte Temple,&quot; </I>and carried a lock of
+frizzled hair in his vest pocket, which he frequently volunteered to
+show to people, with his handkerchief to his eyes. Every fine evening,
+about sunset, these two, the cook and steward, used to sit on the
+little shelf in the cook-house, leaning up against each other like the
+Siamese twins, to keep from falling off, for the shelf was very short;
+and there they would stay till after dark, smoking their pipes, and
+gossiping about the events that had happened during the day in the
+cabin. And sometimes Mr. Thompson would take down his Bible, and read a
+chapter for the edification of Lavender, whom he knew to be a sad
+profligate and gay deceiver ashore; addicted to every youthful
+indiscretion. He would read over to him the story of Joseph and
+Potiphar's wife; and hold Joseph up to him as a young man of excellent
+principles, whom he ought to imitate, and not be guilty of his
+indiscretion any more. And Lavender would look serious, and say that he
+knew it was all true-he was a wicked youth, he knew it&#8212;he had broken a
+good many hearts, and many eyes were weeping for him even then, both in
+New York, and Liverpool, and London, and Havre. But how could he help
+it? He hadn't made his handsome face, and fine head of hair, and
+graceful figure. It was not <I>he, </I>but the others, that were to
+blame; for his bewitching person turned all heads and subdued all
+hearts, wherever he went. And then he would look very serious and
+penitent, and go up to the little glass, and pass his hands through his
+hair, and see how his whiskers were coming on.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_19">XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS
+MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM BOOK</A></H3>
+<P>On the Sunday afternoon I spoke of, it was my watch below, and I
+thought I would spend it profitably, in improving my mind.</P>
+<P>My bunk was an upper one; and right over the head of it was a <I>
+bull's-eye, </I>or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into
+the deck to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I
+often found myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye
+had not suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in
+walking the deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still
+worse, sometimes a coil of rope would be thrown down on it, and stay
+there till I dressed myself and went up to remove it&#8212;a kind of
+interruption to my studies which annoyed me very much, when diligently
+occupied in reading.</P>
+<P>However, I was glad of any light at all, down in that gloomy hole,
+where we burrowed like rabbits in a warren; and it was the happiest
+time I had, when all my messmates were asleep, and I could lie on my
+back, during a forenoon watch below, and read in comparative quiet and
+seclusion.</P>
+<P>I had already read two books loaned to me by Max, to whose share
+they had fallen, in dividing the effects of the sailor who had jumped
+overboard. One was an account of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and
+the other was a large black volume, with <I>Delirium Tremens </I>in
+great gilt letters on the back. This proved to be a popular treatise on
+the subject of that disease; and I remembered seeing several copies in
+the sailor book-stalls about Fulton Market, and along South-street, in
+New York.</P>
+<P>But this Sunday I got out a book, from which I expected to reap
+great profit and sound instruction. It had been presented to me by Mr.
+Jones, who had quite a library, and took down this book from a top
+shelf, where it lay very dusty. When he gave it to me, he said, that
+although I was going to sea, I must not forget the importance of a good
+education; and that there was hardly any situation in life, however
+humble and depressed, or dark and gloomy, but one might find leisure in
+it to store his mind, and build himself up in the exact sciences. And
+he added, that though it <I>did </I>look rather unfavorable for my
+future prospects, to be going to sea as a common sailor so early in
+life; yet, it would no doubt turn out for my benefit in the end; and,
+at any rate, if I would only take good care of myself, would give me a
+sound constitution, if nothing more; and <I>that </I>was not to be
+undervalued, for how many very rich men would give all their bonds and
+mortgages for my boyish robustness.</P>
+<P>He added, that I need not expect any light, trivial work, that was
+merely entertaining, and nothing more; but here I would find
+entertainment and edification beautifully and harmoniously combined;
+and though, at first, I might possibly find it dull, yet, if I perused
+the book thoroughly, it would soon discover hidden charms and
+unforeseen attractions; besides teaching me, perhaps, the true way to
+retrieve the poverty of my family, and again make them all well-to-do
+in the world.</P>
+<P>Saying this, he handed it to me, and I blew the dust off, and looked
+at the back: <I>&quot;Smith's Wealth of Nations.&quot; </I>This not satisfying
+me, I glanced at the title page, and found it was an <I>&quot;Enquiry into
+the Nature and Causes&quot; </I>of the alleged wealth of nations. But
+happening to look further down, I caught sight of <I>&quot;Aberdeen,&quot; </I>
+where the book was printed; and thinking that any thing from Scotland,
+a foreign country, must prove some way or other pleasing to me, I
+thanked Mr. Jones very kindly, and promised to peruse the volume
+carefully.</P>
+<P>So, now, lying in my bunk, I began the book methodically, at page
+number one, resolved not to permit a few flying glimpses into it, taken
+previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist
+and body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the
+philosopher's stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even
+pitch and tar to silver and gold.</P>
+<P>Pleasant, though vague visions of future opulence floated before me,
+as I commenced the first chapter, entitled <I>&quot;Of the causes of
+improvement in the productive power of labor.&quot; </I>Dry as crackers and
+cheese, to be sure; and the chapter itself was not much better. But
+this was only getting initiated; and if I read on, the grand secret
+would be opened to me. So I read on and on, about <I>&quot;wages and profits
+of labor,&quot; </I>without getting any profits myself for my pains in
+perusing it.</P>
+<P>Dryer and dryer; the very leaves smelt of saw-dust; till at last I
+drank some water, and went at it again. But soon I had to give it up
+for lost work; and thought that the old backgammon board, we had at
+home, lettered on the back, <I>&quot;The History of Rome&quot; </I>was quite as
+full of matter, and a great deal more entertaining. I wondered whether
+Mr. Jones had ever read the volume himself; and could not help
+remembering, that he had to get on a chair when he reached it down from
+its dusty shelf; <I>that </I>certainly looked suspicious.</P>
+<P>The best reading was on the fly leaves; and, on turning them over, I
+lighted upon some half effaced pencil-marks to the following effect: <I>
+&quot;Jonathan Jones, from his particular friend Daniel Dods, </I>1798.&quot; So
+it must have originally belonged to Mr. Jones' father; and I wondered
+whether <I>he </I>had ever read it; or, indeed, whether any body had
+ever read it, even the author himself; but then authors, they say,
+never read their own books; writing them, being enough in all
+conscience.</P>
+<P>At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept
+so sound before; after that, I used to wrap my jacket round it, and use
+it for a pillow; for which purpose it answered very well; only I
+sometimes waked up feeling dull and stupid; but of course the book
+could not have been the cause of that.</P>
+<P>And now I am talking of books, I must tell of Jack Blunt the sailor,
+and his Dream Book.</P>
+<P>Jackson, who seemed to know every thing about all parts of the
+world, used to tell Jack in reproach, that he was an <I>Irish Cockney. </I>
+By which I understood, that he was an Irishman born, but had graduated
+in London, somewhere about Radcliffe Highway; but he had no sort of
+brogue that I could hear.</P>
+<P>He was a curious looking fellow, about twenty-five years old, as I
+should judge; but to look at his back, you would have taken him for a
+little old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and
+stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west
+cap flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he
+looked like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too,
+like a walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half
+indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a
+little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about
+susceptible mermaids who fell in love with handsome young oyster boys
+and gallant fishermen. And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man
+who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away
+his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the
+battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another
+incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be
+dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some
+eel soup, for a spell against the scurvy.</P>
+<P>He believed in all kinds of witch-work and magic; and had some wild
+Irish words he used to mutter over during a calm for a fair wind.</P>
+<P>And he frequently related his interviews in Liverpool with a
+fortune-teller, an old negro woman by the name of De Squak, whose house
+was much frequented by sailors; and how she had two black cats, with
+remarkably green eyes, and nightcaps on their heads, solemnly seated on
+a claw-footed table near the old goblin; when she felt his pulse, to
+tell what was going to befall him.</P>
+<P>This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from
+some cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition
+state made him look as if he wore a shako of badger skin.</P>
+<P>The phenomenon of gray hairs on a young head, had perplexed and
+confounded this Blunt to such a degree that he at last came to the
+conclusion it must be the result of the black art, wrought upon him by
+an enemy; and that enemy, he opined, was an old sailor landlord in
+Marseilles, whom he had once seriously offended, by knocking him down
+in a fray.</P>
+<P>So while in New York, finding his hair growing grayer and grayer,
+and all his friends, the ladies and others, laughing at him, and
+calling him an old man with one foot in the grave, he slipt out one
+night to an apothecary's, stated his case, and wanted to know what
+could be done for him.</P>
+<P>The apothecary immediately gave him a pint bottle of something he
+called <I>&quot;Trafalgar Oil </I>for restoring the hair,&quot; <I>price one
+dollar; </I>and told him that after he had used that bottle, and it did
+not have the desired effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called <I>&quot;Balm
+of Paradise, or the Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen.&quot; </I>These
+high-sounding naval names delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there
+must be virtue in them.</P>
+<P>I saw both bottles; and on one of them was an engraving,
+representing a young man, presumed to be gray-headed, standing in his
+night-dress in the middle of his chamber, and with closed eyes applying
+the Elixir to his head, with both hands; while on the bed adjacent
+stood a large bottle, conspicuously labeled, <I>&quot;Balm of Paradise.&quot; </I>
+It seemed from the text, that this gray-headed young man was so smitten
+with his hair-oil, and was so thoroughly persuaded of its virtues, that
+he had got out of bed, even in his sleep; groped into his closet,
+seized the precious bottle, applied its contents, and then to bed
+again, getting up in the morning without knowing any thing about it.
+Which, indeed, was a most mysterious occurrence; and it was still more
+mysterious, how the engraver came to know an event, of which the actor
+himself was ignorant, and where there were no bystanders.</P>
+<P>Three times in the twenty-four hours, Blunt, while at sea, regularly
+rubbed in his liniments; but though the first bottle was soon exhausted
+by his copious applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck
+to it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be
+crowned with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this
+gradual change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to
+expose him to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same
+principle that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising
+whiskers. He would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any
+change yet; and if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth,
+there was a very great change indeed; for the constant soaking of his
+hair with oil, operating in conjunction with the neglect of his toilet,
+and want of a brush and comb, had matted his locks together like a wild
+horse's mane, and imparted to it a blackish and extremely glossy hue.
+Besides his collection of hair-oils, Blunt had also provided himself
+with several boxes of pills, which he had purchased from a sailor
+doctor in New York, who by placards stuck on the posts along the
+wharves, advertised to remain standing at the northeast corner of
+Catharine Market, every Monday and Friday, between the hours of ten and
+twelve in the morning, to receive calls from patients, distribute
+medicines, and give advice gratis.</P>
+<P>Whether Blunt thought he had the dyspepsia or not, I can not say;
+but at breakfast, he always took three pills with his coffee; something
+as they do in Iowa, when the bilious fever prevails; where, at the
+boarding-houses, they put a vial of blue pills into the castor, along
+with the pepper and mustard, and next door to another vial of
+toothpicks. But they are very ill-bred and unpolished in the western
+country.</P>
+<P>Several times, too, Blunt treated himself to a flowing bumper of <I>
+horse salts </I>(Glauber salts); for like many other seamen, he never
+went to sea without a good supply of that luxury. He would frequently,
+also, take this medicine in a wet jacket, and then go on deck into a
+rain storm. But this is nothing to other sailors, who at sea will
+doctor themselves with calomel off Cape Horn, and still remain on duty.
+And in this connection, some really frightful stories might be told;
+but I forbear.</P>
+<P>For a landsman to take salts as this Blunt did, it would perhaps be
+the death of him; but at sea the salt air and the salt water prevent
+you from catching cold so readily as on land; and for my own part, on
+board this very ship, being so illy-provided with clothes, I frequently
+turned into my bunk soaking wet, and turned out again piping hot, and
+smoking like a roasted sirloin; and yet was never the worse for it; for
+then, I bore a charmed life of youth and health, and was dagger-proof
+to bodily ill.</P>
+<P>But it is time to tell of the Dream Book. Snugly hidden in one
+corner of his chest, Blunt had an extraordinary looking pamphlet, with
+a red cover, marked all over with astrological signs and ciphers, and
+purporting to be a full and complete treatise on the art of Divination;
+so that the most simple sailor could teach it to himself.</P>
+<P>It also purported to be the selfsame system, by aid of which
+Napoleon Bonaparte had risen in the world from being a corporal to an
+emperor. Hence it was entitled the <I>Bonaparte Dream Book; </I>for the
+magic of it lay in the interpretation of dreams, and their application
+to the foreseeing of future events; so that all preparatory measures
+might be taken beforehand; which would be exceedingly convenient, and
+satisfactory every way, if true. The problems were to be cast by means
+of figures, in some perplexed and difficult way, which, however, was
+facilitated by a set of tables in the end of the pamphlet, something
+like the Logarithm Tables at the end of Bowditch's Navigator.</P>
+<P>Now, Blunt revered, adored, and worshiped this <I>Bonaparte Dream
+Book </I>of his; and was fully persuaded that between those red covers,
+and in his own dreams, lay all the secrets of futurity. Every morning
+before taking his pills, and applying his hair-oils, he would steal out
+of his bunk before the rest of the watch were awake; take out his
+pamphlet, and a bit of chalk; and then straddling his chest, begin
+scratching his oily head to remember his fugitive dreams; marking down
+strokes on his chest-lid, as if he were casting up his daily accounts.</P>
+<P>Though often perplexed and lost in mazes concerning the cabalistic
+figures in the book, and the chapter of directions to beginners; for he
+could with difficulty read at all; yet, in the end, if not interrupted,
+he somehow managed to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to him. So
+that, as he generally wore a good-humored expression, no doubt he must
+have thought, that all his future affairs were working together for the
+best.</P>
+<P>But one night he started us all up in a fright, by springing from
+his bunk, his eyes ready to start out of his head, and crying, in a
+husky voice&#8212;&quot;Boys! boys! get the benches ready! Quick, quick!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What benches?&quot; growled Max-&quot;What's the matter?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Benches! benches!&quot; screamed Blunt, without heeding him, &quot;cut down
+the forests, bear a hand, boys; the Day of Judgment's coming!&quot;</P>
+<P>But the next moment, he got quietly into his bunk, and laid still,
+muttering to himself, he had only been rambling in his sleep.</P>
+<P>I did not know exactly what he had meant by his <I>benches; </I>
+till, shortly after, I overheard two of the sailors debating, whether
+mankind would stand or sit at the Last Day.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_20">XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE</A></H3>
+<P>This Dream Book of Blunt's reminds me of a narrow escape we had,
+early one morning.</P>
+<P>It was the larboard watch's turn to remain below from midnight till
+four o'clock; and having turned in and slept, Blunt suddenly turned out
+again about three o'clock, with a wonderful dream in his head; which he
+was desirous of at once having interpreted.</P>
+<P>So he goes to his chest, gets out his tools, and falls to ciphering
+on the lid. When, all at once, a terrible cry was heard, that routed
+him and all the rest of us up, and sent the whole ship's company flying
+on deck in the dark. We did not know what it was; but somehow, among
+sailors at sea, they seem to know when real danger of any land is at
+hand, even in their sleep.</P>
+<P>When we got on deck, we saw the mate standing on the bowsprit, and
+crying out <I>Luff! Luff! </I>to some one in the dark water before the
+ship. In that direction, we could just see a light, and then, the great
+black hull of a strange vessel, that was coming down on us obliquely;
+and so near, that we heard the flap of her topsails as they shook in
+the wind, the trampling of feet on the deck, and the same cry of <I>
+Luff! Luff! </I>that our own mate, was raising.</P>
+<P>In a minute more, I caught my breath, as I heard a snap and a crash,
+like the fall of a tree, and suddenly, one of our flying-jib guys
+jerked out the bolt near the cat-head; and presently, we heard our
+jib-boom thumping against our bows.</P>
+<P>Meantime, the strange ship, scraping by us thus, shot off into the
+darkness, and we saw her no more. But she, also, must have been
+injured; for when it grew light, we found pieces of strange rigging
+mixed with ours. We repaired the damage, and replaced the broken spar
+with another jib-boom we had; for all ships carry spare spars against
+emergencies.</P>
+<P>The cause of this accident, which came near being the death of all
+on board, was nothing but the drowsiness of the look-out men on the
+forecastles of both ships. The sailor who had the look-out on our
+vessel was terribly reprimanded by the mate.</P>
+<P>No doubt, many ships that are never heard of after leaving port,
+meet their fate in this way; and it may be, that sometimes two vessels
+coming together, jib-boom-and-jib-boom, with a sudden shock in the
+middle watch of the night, mutually destroy each other; and like
+fighting elks, sink down into the ocean, with their antlers locked in
+death.</P>
+<P>While I was at Liverpool, a fine ship that lay near us in the docks,
+having got her cargo on board, went to sea, bound for India, with a
+good breeze; and all her crew felt sure of a prosperous voyage. But in
+about seven days after, she came back, a most distressing object to
+behold. All her starboard side was torn and splintered; her starboard
+anchor was gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while
+every one of the lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same
+direction; so that she now carried small and unsightly <I>jury-yards.</I>
+</P>
+<P>When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus
+shattered, but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her
+gay and gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which
+she now entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I
+had known at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high
+spirits, and was brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed
+from head to foot.</P>
+<P>It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
+crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
+past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
+was.</P>
+<P>Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their
+night look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer
+themselves to become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful,
+after all; for though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea;
+and many of them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from
+them; yet, when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night,
+without having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to
+realize that any are near. Then, if they <I>are </I>near, it seems
+almost incredible that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes
+Greenland at one end of the world, and the Falkland Islands at the
+other, that any one vessel upon such a vast highway, should come into
+close contact with another. But the likelihood of great calamities
+occurring, seldom obtrudes upon the minds of ignorant men, such as
+sailors generally are; for the things which wise people know,
+anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become acquainted
+with, by meeting them face to face. And even when experience has taught
+them, the lesson only serves for that day; inasmuch as the foolish in
+prosperity are infidels to the possibility of adversity; they see the
+sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too bright ever to set. And
+even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest ships, while careering in
+pride of canvas over the sea, have been struck, as by lightning, and
+quenched out of sight; even so, do some lordly men, with all their
+plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the fair, rushing breeze of
+life, and with no thought of death and disaster, suddenly encounter a
+shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into death.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_21">XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A
+BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS</A></H3>
+<P>What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke
+and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as
+a spit?</P>
+<P>It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks,
+wrapt in a mist, that no London in the Novem-berest November ever
+equaled. The chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this
+midnight or midday? So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair
+wind, we shorten sail for fear of accidents; and not only that, but
+here am I, poor Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the
+top of the <I>&quot;Sampson-Post,&quot; </I>a lofty tower of timber, so called;
+and tolling the ship's bell, as if for a funeral.</P>
+<P>This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers
+from our track.</P>
+<P>Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.</P>
+<P>The bell is green with verdigris, and damp with dew; and the little
+cord attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides
+through my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black
+hat, like the <I>&quot;bull that could pull,&quot; </I>announcing the decease of
+the lamented Cock-Robin.</P>
+<P>A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an
+ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young
+porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men
+at both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly
+stirred up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their
+squeals; and no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.</P>
+<P>The most strange and unheard-of noises came out of the fog at times:
+a vast sound of sighing and sobbing. What could it be? This would be
+followed by a spout, and a gush, and a cascading commotion, as if some
+fountain had suddenly jetted out of the ocean.</P>
+<P>Seated on my Sampson-Post, I stared more and more, and suspended my
+duty as a sexton. But presently some one cried out&#8212;<I>&quot;There she
+blows! whales! whales close alongside!&quot;</I></P>
+<P>A whale! Think of it! whales close to <I>me, </I>Wellingborough;&#8212;
+would my own brother believe it? I dropt the clapper as if it were
+red-hot, and rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or
+five long, black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the
+water.</P>
+<P>Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I
+thought they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of
+flesh! regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated
+continents, when they descended to feed!</P>
+<P>It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering.
+I lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about
+the story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant
+tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought
+I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one,
+might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows
+an elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.</P>
+<P>Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.</P>
+<P>But it is always thus. If you read of St. Peter's, they say, and
+then go and visit it, ten to one, you account it a dwarf compared to
+your high-raised ideal. And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been
+disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the
+whale's belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty
+large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have
+been.</P>
+<P>On the next day, the fog lifted; and by noon, we found ourselves
+sailing through fleets of fishermen at anchor. They were very small
+craft; and when I beheld them, I perceived the force of that sailor
+saying, intended to illustrate restricted quarters, or being <I>on the
+limits. It is like a fisherman's walk, </I>say they, <I>three steps and
+overboard.</I></P>
+<P>Lying right in the track of the multitudinous ships crossing the
+ocean between England and America, these little vessels are sometimes
+run down, and obliterated from the face of the waters; the cry of the
+sailors ceasing with the last whirl of the whirlpool that closes over
+their craft. Their sad fate is frequently the result of their own
+remissness in keeping a good look-out by day, and not having their
+lamps trimmed, like the wise virgins, by night.</P>
+<P>As I shall not make mention of the Grand Banks on our homeward-bound
+passage, I may as well here relate, that on our return, we approached
+them in the night; and by way of making sure of our whereabouts, the
+deep-sea-lead was heaved. The line attached is generally upward of
+three hundred fathoms in length; and the lead itself, weighing some
+forty or fifty pounds, has a hole in the lower end, in which, previous
+to sounding, some tallow is thrust, that it may bring up the soil at
+the bottom, for the captain to inspect. This is called &quot;arming&quot; the
+lead.</P>
+<P>We &quot;hove&quot; our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very
+interesting, at least to me. In the first place, the vessel's heading
+was stopt; then, coiled away in a tub, like a whale-rope, the line was
+placed toward the after part of the quarter-deck; and one of the
+sailors carried the lead outside of the ship, away along to the end of
+the jib-boom, and at the word of command, far ahead and overboard it
+went, with a plunge; scraping by the side, till it came to the stern,
+when the line ran out of the tub like light.</P>
+<P>When we came to haul <I>it </I>up, I was astonished at the force
+necessary to perform the work. The whole watch pulled at the line,
+which was rove through a block in the mizzen-rigging, as if we were
+hauling up a fat porpoise. When the lead came in sight, I was all
+eagerness to examine the tallow, and get a peep at a specimen of the
+bottom of the sea; but the sailors did not seem to be much interested
+by it, calling me a fool for wanting to preserve a few grains of the
+sand.</P>
+<P>I had almost forgotten to make mention of the Gulf Stream, in which
+we found ourselves previous to crossing the Banks. The fact, of our
+being in it was proved by the captain in person, who superintended the
+drawing of a bucket of salt water, in which he dipped his thermometer.
+In the absence of the Gulf-weed, this is the general test; for the
+temperature of this current is eight degrees higher than that of the
+ocean, and the temperature of the ocean is twenty degrees higher than
+that of the Grand Banks. And it is to this remarkable difference of
+temperature, for which there can be no equilibrium, that many seamen
+impute the fogs on the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; but why
+there should always be such ugly weather in the Gulf, is something that
+I do not know has ever been accounted for.</P>
+<P>It is curious to dip one's finger in a bucket full of the Gulf
+Stream, and find it so warm; as if the Gulf of Mexico, from whence this
+current comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm
+the North Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two
+thousand miles, as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its
+mean breadth being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area
+larger than that of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort
+of Mississippi of hot water flowing through the ocean; off the coast of
+Florida, running at the rate of one mile and a half an hour.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_22">XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A
+MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN</A></H3>
+<P>The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
+bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
+silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
+had shipped as an <I>ordinary seaman, </I>and, for aught I could see,
+performed his duty very well.</P>
+<P>When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
+were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
+their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by
+his intimate acquaintance with the monsters.</P>
+<P>&quot;They ar'n't sperm whales,&quot; said Larry, &quot;their spouts ar'n't bushy
+enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
+they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
+Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
+Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
+ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye,
+men, them's Crinkum-crankum whales.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And what are them?&quot; said a sailor.</P>
+<P>&quot;Why, them is whales that can't be cotched.&quot;</P>
+<P>Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
+whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
+ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him
+very hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning
+all strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
+whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
+other class of seaman.</P>
+<P>This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was
+the reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew
+that merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to <I>
+&quot;blubber-boilers,&quot; </I>as they contemptuously style those who hunt the
+leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and
+so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump
+to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might
+otherwise have encountered.</P>
+<P>He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward
+over the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
+examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
+about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
+Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
+And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
+remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
+distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
+omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.</P>
+<P>&quot;Why,&quot; said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, &quot;in <I>
+Madagasky </I>there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing but a
+bowline round the midships; they don't have no dinners, but keeps a
+dinin' all day off fat pigs and dogs; they don't go to bed any where,
+but keeps a noddin' all the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some
+first rate arrack they make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of
+'baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!&quot;</P>
+<P>To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
+against civilization.</P>
+<P>&quot;And what's the use of bein' <I>snivelized!&quot; </I>said he to me one
+night during our watch on deck; &quot;snivelized chaps only learns the way
+to take on 'bout life, and snivel. You don't see any Methodist chaps
+feelin' dreadful about their souls; you don't see any darned beggars
+and pesky constables in <I>Madagasky, I </I>tell ye; and none o' them
+kings there gets their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I
+say.&quot;</P>
+<P>Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.</P>
+<P>&quot;Are <I>you </I>now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?&quot;
+coming close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very
+steadfastly. &quot;No; you ar'n't a bit&#8212;but you're a good deal <I>worse </I>
+for it, Buttons. I tell ye, ye wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin'
+this dog's life, if you hadn't been snivelized&#8212;that's the cause why,
+now. Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me
+complete; I might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too darned
+bad! Blast Ameriky, I say.&quot; And in bitter grief at the social blight
+upon his whole past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling
+his hat still lower down over the bridge of his nose.</P>
+<P>In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's man we had,
+who went by the name of <I>&quot;Gun-Deck,&quot; </I>from his always talking of
+sailor life in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a
+prodigious mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style,
+with a wide, braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he
+particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and
+when we washed down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might
+be, he always took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck,
+turning out his pretty toes to show his charming feet.</P>
+<P>He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in
+Florida, and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there,
+through the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks. I
+remember his telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a
+distance from them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by
+a pewter plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in
+the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to <I>Gun-Deck, </I>
+he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the
+wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing war, he said.</P>
+<P>
+<I>Gun-Deck</I> had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at
+Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and
+oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta,
+among the ladies there. And about all these things, he talked like a
+romantic man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved
+it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in. So he and Larry
+never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of
+savagery, of the Mediterranean and <I>Madagasky.</I></p>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_23">XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK</A>
+</H3>
+<P>
+We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us,
+the like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined. The rain
+poured down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly
+carry it off the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost
+up to our knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.</P>
+<P>This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we
+duly prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.</P>
+<P>The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses
+before the flaming rush of a burning prairie. But after bowing and
+cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and
+with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white
+waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.</P>
+<P>It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as I gazed. I
+could hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship.
+But while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade
+me look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get
+a handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady
+her wild motions. But I was now getting a little too wise for this
+foolish kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it
+over.</P>
+<P>This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.</P>
+<P>The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become
+blue again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the
+lee-beam. We bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and
+the captain in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly
+passed alongside of it.</P>
+<P>It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight,
+that must have been drifting about for several long weeks. The bulwarks
+were pretty much gone; and here and there the bare <I>stanchions, </I>
+or posts, were left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke
+clear over the deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was
+snapt off less than four feet from its base; and the shattered and
+splintered remnant looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in
+the woods. Every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open
+main-hatchway yawned into view; but was as quickly filled, and
+submerged again, with a rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into
+it with the lee-roll.</P>
+<P>At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the
+deck, something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the
+relic of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for
+a signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.</P>
+<P>Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three
+dark, green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but
+otherwise were motionless. I saw the captain's, glass directed toward
+them, and heard him say at last, &quot;They must have been dead a long
+time.&quot; These were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the
+taffrail for safety; but must have famished.</P>
+<P>Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the
+captain would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something
+about the schooner. But we did not stop at all; passing on our course,
+without so much as learning the schooner's name, though every one
+supposed her to be a New Brunswick lumberman.</P>
+<P>On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain
+did not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were
+indignant at what they called his barbarity. For me, I could not but
+feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea
+experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common,
+though not, of course, when human life can be saved.</P>
+<P>So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden
+spot for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.</P>
+<P>&quot;Look there,&quot; said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing-&quot;look
+there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons,&quot; turning round to
+me&#8212;&quot;how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail
+with them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?&quot; And then he tried to
+laugh, but only coughed again. &quot;Don't laugh at dem poor fellows,&quot; said
+Max, looking grave; &quot;do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off
+dan de Cape of Dood Hope.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Dood Hope, Dood Hope,&quot; shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin,
+mimicking the Dutchman, &quot;dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are
+drowned and d .... d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark
+nights.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No, no,&quot; said Blunt, &quot;all sailors are saved; they have plenty of
+squalls here below, but fair weather aloft.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?&quot;
+howled Jackson through a cough. &quot;Don't talk of heaven to me&#8212;it's a
+lie&#8212;I know it&#8212;and they are all fools that believe in it. Do you
+think, you Greek, that there's any heaven for <I>you? </I>Will they let <I>
+you </I>in there, with that tarry hand, and that oily head of hair?
+Avast! when some shark gulps you down his hatchway one of these days,
+you'll find, that by dying, you'll only go from one gale of wind to
+another; mind that, you Irish cockney! Yes, you'll be bolted down like
+one of your own pills: and I should like to see the whole ship
+swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box on 'em. That would
+be a dose of salts for ye!&quot; And so saying, he went off, holding his
+hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour was come.</P>
+<P>Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body
+and mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all
+the time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to
+kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave
+them burning like tapers before a corpse.</P>
+<P>Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about
+Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read
+a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during
+the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there
+was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth
+living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
+horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his
+tawny skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and
+earth. He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some
+inscrutable curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart
+that beat near him.</P>
+<P>But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and
+his wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his
+hideousness, there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably
+pitiable and touching; and though there were moments when I almost
+hated this Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_24">XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE
+CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY</A></H3>
+<P>As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried
+out. But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must
+know that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship,
+plying in connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals,
+between the two ports. No: she was only what is called a <I>regular
+trader </I>to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very
+much as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though
+in all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her
+destination. Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular
+traders, among sailors come under the general head of <I>transient
+ships; </I>which implies that they are here to-day, and somewhere else
+to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.</P>
+<P>But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner;
+for aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
+sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
+carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
+possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is,
+that although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in
+the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few
+years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
+constitutions&#8212; like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens
+&#8212;and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
+Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
+the whaling business.</P>
+<P>Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
+gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
+harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
+bird's-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
+brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and
+many a bright eye sparkled, <I>now </I>accommodates a bluff Quaker
+captain from Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship
+in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked
+chiefs and savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the
+honors to the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and
+gentlemen of leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip,
+politics, and nonsense across the table, in transatlantic trips. The
+broad quarter-deck, too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often
+choked up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses of
+unctuous blubber; and every where reeks with oil during the prosecution
+of the fishery. Sic <I>transit gloria mundi! </I>Thus departs the pride
+and glory of packet-ships! <I>It is </I>like a broken down importer of
+French silks embarking in the soap-boning business.</P>
+<P>So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very
+ample accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not
+more than five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At
+any rate, on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
+cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
+captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
+business-like manner with his baggage.</P>
+<P>He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger &#8212;the
+passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
+never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.</P>
+<P>Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New
+York, going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter
+Hall concerning the signs of the times.</P>
+<P>He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the
+quarter-deck with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest. Then he
+would rise, and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered
+a friend. But looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his
+state-room, where you could see him through the little window, in an
+irregular sitting position, with the back part of him inserted into his
+berth, and his head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound
+meditation, with his fore-finger aside of his nose. He never was seen
+reading; never took a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine;
+never conversed; and never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.</P>
+<P>He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing
+in no need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe.
+Conjecture was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his
+business. The sailors, who are always curious with regard to such
+matters, and criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are
+perhaps aware at the time, completely exhausted themselves in
+suppositions, some of which are characteristically curious.</P>
+<P>One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches
+to the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and
+bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;
+and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist,
+flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly
+forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
+beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing sailor was of
+opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless
+remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.</P>
+<P>But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and
+sometimes confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no! they
+were all sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character.
+But this is the way all the world over. Miserable man! could you have
+had an inkling of what they thought of you, I know not what you would
+have done.</P>
+<P>However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and
+suspicions, this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm,
+cool, and collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him.
+Sometimes, of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the
+ghost of a hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering
+round the skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle.
+Blunt, the Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra
+dose of salts, by way of precaution against his spells.</P>
+<P>When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell
+this cabin-passenger. There is an old custom, still in vogue among some
+merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of
+a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however
+moderate the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called <I>&quot;making a
+spread eagle&quot; </I>of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is
+exacted, that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship's
+company with money enough for a treat all round.</P>
+<P>Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on
+the keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon
+incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the
+captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are
+earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of
+this proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
+cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and <I>he </I>such a quiet,
+unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for
+levying contributions.</P>
+<P>One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half
+way up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger,
+holding on with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head
+fearfully turned round, gazing off to the horizon. He looked as if he
+had the nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of
+insanity, he must have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous
+position.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good heavens!&quot; said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, &quot;you will
+surely fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the
+gentleman!&quot;</P>
+<P>But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called to the
+sight, than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the
+passenger, and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and
+foot. The stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last
+violently remonstrated; but in vain; for as his tearfulness of falling
+made him keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from
+any effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome <I>spread-eagle </I>
+of, to the great satisfaction of the crew.</P>
+<P>It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger
+stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of
+his reservedness.</P>
+<P>&quot;Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Spread-eagle, sir,&quot; said the Greenlander, thinking that those few
+words would at once make the matter plain.</P>
+<P>&quot;Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Treats all round, sir,&quot; said the Greenlander, wondering at the
+other's obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing
+before.</P>
+<P>At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the
+sailor, and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate
+passenger was suffered to descend.</P>
+<P>The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at
+Prince's Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts
+unknown. He had nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his
+pockets looked stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.</P>
+<P>I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious,
+though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have
+previously hinted. What say you to a charming young girl?&#8212;just the
+girl to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking
+girl; her father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn; her
+eyes were blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her
+most devoted.</P>
+<P>To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the
+steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the
+Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the
+improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander,
+under the captain's charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
+the young lady was returning home from her tour.</P>
+<P>And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often
+promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of
+secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries,
+and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was
+audacious.</P>
+<P>Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
+ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity
+of her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no
+gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the
+case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by
+converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh,
+that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
+this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true
+gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared. Yet, perhaps, he might
+have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of
+proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the
+young lady's guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how
+shabby they look.</P>
+<P>But for all this, the passage 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 &quot;spandangalous;&quot;
+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.</P>
+<P>It now remains to speak of the steerage passengers. 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 shirt 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 passage
+down in its bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its
+back became shockingly obvious.</P>
+<P>I had almost forgotten another passenger 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.</P>
+<P>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.</P>
+<P>For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves, picking up a
+precarious livelihood by sucking molasses out of the casks discharged
+from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
+oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed 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.</P>
+<P>At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to catch sight
+of the Highlander, and immediately recognized her as the very ship
+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 passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted,
+the heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous
+to the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the <I>
+between-decks; </I>and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space
+between two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out
+his head for air. And once a steerage passenger 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 passage across the
+Atlantic. There are plenty of passengers of that kind continually
+plying between Liverpool and New York.</P>
+<P>As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board, which he took
+care should not happen till he thought the ship must be out of sight of
+land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough
+shaking, and threatening to toss <I>her</I> overboard as a tit-bit for <I>
+John Shark, </I>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 washing in the
+lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though
+thin and pale with the hardships 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 passenger 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 passenger contributing
+their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers
+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 ashore by himself; and I lost sight of him in the vast crowds
+thronging the docks of Liverpool.</P>
+<P>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.</P>
+<P>As for the Lancashire 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 ashore at last, without a good-by from any person but
+one.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_25">XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE
+RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY</A></H3>
+<P>But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there is little
+more to be said concerning the passage 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.</P>
+<P>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 Lancashire 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.</P>
+<P>At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in <I>&quot;parcelling,&quot;
+&quot;serving,&quot; </I>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 <I>spun-yarn. </I>This is spun with a winch; and many an hour
+the Lancashire 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 <I>&quot;junk,&quot; </I>the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then
+twisted into new combinations, something as most books are
+manufactured. This &quot;junk&quot; 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 oakum. 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 ashore in a gale.</P>
+<P>Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging, and at the cry
+of <I>&quot;tumble up there, my hearties, and take in sail,&quot; I </I>was among
+the first ground-and-lofty tumblers, that sprang aloft at the word.</P>
+<P>But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and I found
+myself hanging over the yard with eleven others, the ship 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 repetitions, 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 <I>
+&quot;granny-knot,&quot; </I>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 ship leans over, it makes more of a <I>stairs </I>
+of the rigging; whereas, in harbor, it is almost straight up and down.</P>
+<P>Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant sort of
+vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being aloft in a ship
+at sea, and a ship 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, <I>that </I>would be much more satisfactory, than an
+inglorious fall from the other.</P>
+<P>I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in
+a hard blow; which duty required two hands on the yard.</P>
+<P>There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing 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 <I>
+gasket, </I>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.</P>
+<P>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.</P>
+<P>By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make
+mention of before.</P>
+<P>He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander <I>&quot;in full fig,&quot; </I>
+with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and
+the most vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and
+stood up to it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and
+his right arm stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind
+it was glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and
+plunging up and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship
+went roaming on her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many
+sea-fights; and when he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there,
+amputated his left leg, and gave him another wooden one, which I am
+sorry to say, did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if
+he limped. Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and
+touched up one eye, and repaired a rent in his tartans. After that the
+painter came and made his toilet all over again; giving him a new suit
+throughout, with a plaid of a beautiful pattern.</P>
+<P>I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe
+and snug with a handsome pension in the &quot;Sailors'-Snug-Harbor&quot; on
+Staten Island.</P>
+<P>The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to
+steer was this. I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a
+great art, upon which much depends; especially the making a short
+passage; for if the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant
+of his duty, he keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of
+indecision as to its precise destination; so that on a voyage to
+Liverpool, it may be pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for
+Rotterdam, and now for John o' Groat's; all of which is worse than
+wasted time. Whereas, a true steersman keeps her to her work night and
+day; and tries to make a bee-line from port to port.</P>
+<P>Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the
+helm, might make the ship <I>&quot;lurch to&quot;&#8212;or &quot;bring her by the lee.&quot; </I>
+And what those things are, the cabin passengers would never find out,
+when they found themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by
+forever to the moon and stars.</P>
+<P>And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that
+they are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in
+reverence, is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see
+standing at the wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at
+the compass, or looking out to windward.</P>
+<P>Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and
+with one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of
+wind, might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in
+proving last wills and testaments. </P>
+<P>Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look much like a man
+who might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he? Yet such is
+the case. Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your
+state-room occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him.
+A glass of cordial will do it. And if you or your heirs are interested
+with the underwriters, then also have an eye on him. And if you remark,
+that of the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or
+inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and
+crying out: <I>&quot;Luff, you rascal; she's falling off!&quot; </I>or, <I>&quot;Keep
+her steady, you scoundrel, you're boxing the compass!&quot; </I>then hurry
+down to your state-room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out
+your stationery and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a
+bottle, like Columbus' log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you
+are drowned in the next gale of wind.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_26">XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE</A></H3>
+<P>Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I
+contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of
+which I drew on a blank leaf of the <I>&quot;Wealth of Nations,&quot; </I>and
+studied it every morning, like the multiplication table.</P>
+<P>I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; arid I
+wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;
+for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the
+precise direction it does. One would think, too, that, as since the
+beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
+west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing
+its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements
+to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.</P>
+<P>Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's compasses,
+deserves a word of mention. It was a little house, about the bigness of
+a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms
+within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the
+helm. It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that
+burned in it by night.</P>
+<P>It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on
+one side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer
+retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had
+I been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed
+them so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds
+within; and so made an aviary of it. It is surprising what a different
+air may be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste.
+Nor must I omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction,
+and a particular favorite of the captain. It was a complex system of
+cogs and wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked
+something like a printing-press, or power-loom. The sailors, however,
+did not like it much, owing to the casualties that happened to their
+imprudent fingers, by catching in among the cogs and other intricate
+contrivances. Then, sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would
+lift the ship, the helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman
+revolving round like Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of
+breaking on the wheel.</P>
+<P>The <I>harness-cask, </I>also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather
+meat-safe, in which a week's allowance of salt pork and beef is kept,
+deserves being chronicled. It formed part of the standing furniture of
+the quarter-deck. Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all
+silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded
+padlock, richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat, where
+he would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his
+head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking
+teeth. He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.</P>
+<P>Then the magnificent <I>capstan! </I>The pride and glory of the
+whole ship's company, the constant care and dandled darling of the
+cook, whose duty it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was
+an object of distant admiration to the steerage passengers. Like a
+parlor center-table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck,
+radiant with brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped
+veneerings of mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge,
+and the chief mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and
+pencil for memorandums. </P>
+<P>I might proceed and speak of the <I>booby-hatch, </I>used as a sort
+of settee by the officers, and the <I>fife-rail </I>round the mainmast,
+inclosing a little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white
+dog with a blue ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master's
+daughter, used to take his morning walks, and air himself in this small
+edition of the New York Bowling-Green.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_27">XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES</A>
+</H3>
+<P>As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
+aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more
+consideration, though not at all relaxing in a certain air of
+professional superiority. For the mere knowing of the names of the
+ropes, and familiarizing yourself with their places, so that you can
+lay hold of them in the darkest night; and the loosing and furling of
+the canvas, and reefing topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though
+of course forming an indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the
+business in which he is principally engaged; yet these are things which
+a beginner of ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far
+inferior to many other matters familiar to an <I>&quot;able seaman.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>What did I know, for instance, about <I>striking a top-gallant-mast, </I>
+and sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have <I>turned
+in a dead-eye, </I>or in the approved nautical style have <I>clapt a
+seizing on the main-stay? </I>What did I know of <I>&quot;passing a
+gammoning,&quot; &quot;reiving a Burton,&quot; &quot;strapping a shoe-block,&quot; &quot;clearing a
+foul hawse,&quot; </I>and innumerable other intricacies?</P>
+<P>The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much
+of a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
+considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.</P>
+<P>In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to
+the sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle
+colliers, where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an
+old copy of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember
+reading, that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at
+Blackheath, and sold for one half the price that the people of London
+then paid for it; but the Government would not suffer the mines to be
+opened, as it would destroy the great nursery for British seamen.</P>
+<P>A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must
+be a bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace
+about the shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of
+rope-yarns for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of
+millinery, so as to tie graceful bows and knots, such as <I>Matthew
+Walker's roses, </I>and <I>Turk's heads; </I>he must be a bit of a
+musician, in order to sing out at the halyards; he must be a sort of
+jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing rigging; he must be a
+carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of a yard in case of
+emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend the sails; a
+ropemaker, to twist <I>marline </I>and <I>Spanish foxes; </I>a
+blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he
+must be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And
+this, perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case
+with all things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is
+the reason we never know anything.</P>
+<P>A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools
+peculiar to his calling&#8212;<I>fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers,
+marlingspikes, palms, heavers, </I>and many more. The smaller sort he
+generally carries with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas
+reticule.</P>
+<P>The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
+accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
+who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
+who merely <I>&quot;hand, reef, and steer,&quot; </I>that is, run aloft, furl
+sails, haul ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is <I>&quot;a
+sailor-man&quot; </I>which means that he not only knows how to reef a
+topsail, but is an artist in the rigging.</P>
+<P>Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art
+and mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how
+that these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that
+I had only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short
+voyage too; and it was not worth while to teach <I>me </I>any thing,
+the fruit of which instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I
+might belong to. All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles,
+and the use of my backbone&#8212;comparatively small though it was at that
+time&#8212;by way of a lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when
+wanted. Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I
+was set to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service
+it is a religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something
+or other, never mind what, during their watch on deck.</P>
+<P>Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
+bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
+a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable
+fatality attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow
+they <I>would </I>drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of
+reserved hammers seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions
+I received from the chief mate for my clumsiness.</P>
+<P>At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
+hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
+gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.</P>
+<P>However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
+whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
+hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
+which I had often spouted on the stage at the High School at home.</P>
+<P>Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things coolly,
+in the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.</P>
+<P>All but the <I>&quot;turning out&quot; </I>or rising from your berth when the
+watch was called at night&#8212;<I>that </I>I never fancied. It was a sort
+of acquaintance, which the more I cultivated, the more I shrunk from; a
+thankless, miserable business, truly.</P>
+<P>Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours, you go
+below to sleep: and while thus innocently employed in reposing your
+wearied limbs, you are started up&#8212;it seems but the next instant after
+closing your lids&#8212;and hurried on deck again, into the same
+disagreeably dark and, perhaps, stormy night, from which you descended
+into the forecastle.</P>
+<P>The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost to me; at
+least the golden opportunity could not be appreciated: for though it is
+usually deemed a comfortable thing to be asleep, yet at the time no one
+is conscious that he is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little
+private arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other
+watch, just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and whisper in my
+ear&#8212;<I>&quot;Watch below, Buttons; watch below&quot;&#8212;</I>which pleasantly
+reminded me of the delightful fact. Then I would turn over on my side,
+and take another nap; and in this manner I enjoyed several complete
+watches in my bunk to the other sailor's one. I recommend the plan to
+all landsmen contemplating a voyage to sea.</P>
+<P>But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful sequel
+could not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be struck, and the men
+on deck, exhilarated by the prospect of changing places with us, would
+call the watch in a most provoking but mirthful and facetious style.</P>
+<P>As thus:&#8212;</P>
+<P>&quot;Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble up, my
+lively hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for your trunks: bear a
+hand, bear a hand with your knee-buckles, my sweet and pleasant
+fellows! fine shower-bath here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream
+is getting cold!&quot;</P>
+<P>Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting into their
+trowsers would reply with&#8212;&quot;Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in
+such a hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?&quot; with other exclamations,
+some of which were full of fury.</P>
+<P>And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the expiration of
+the ensuing watch, the tables would be turned; and we on deck became
+the wits and jokers, and those below the grizzly bears and growlers.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_28">XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND,
+AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL</A></H3>
+<P>The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so,
+the passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen
+days, employed us about thirty.</P>
+<P>At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland
+was in sight.</P>
+<P>Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard,
+but could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast.
+Was that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
+startling. If <I>that's </I>the way a foreign country looks, I might as
+well have staid at home.</P>
+<P>Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can
+not say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
+wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
+ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed
+at it with increasing interest.</P>
+<P>Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his
+before Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses:
+I thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my
+uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of
+the gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and
+I thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin
+and the Giant's Causeway.</P>
+<P>Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of
+it; but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as
+any other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the
+solitary man in it was actually a born native of the land in sight;
+that in all probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing
+about my friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat
+strange.</P>
+<P>He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
+distance, cried out&#8212;&quot;Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain't ye, my
+beautiful sailors?&quot; And concluded by calling upon; us to stop and heave
+a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
+mate accordingly backed I the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
+stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, &quot;pay
+out! pay out, my honeys; ah! but you're noble fellows!&quot; Till at last
+the mate asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, &quot;Haven't you
+enough rope yet?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Sure and I have,&quot; replied the fisherman, &quot;and it's time for Pat to
+cut and run!&quot; and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a
+Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the
+wind, and bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our
+tow-line.</P>
+<P>&quot;And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen
+hemp, you Irish blackguard!&quot; cried the mate, shaking his fist at the
+receding boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.</P>
+<P>Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
+fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
+travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
+and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
+any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
+well give it up.</P>
+<P>The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
+purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.</P>
+<P>Could this be really Wales?-Wales?&#8212;and I thought of the Prince of
+Wales.</P>
+<P>And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
+looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?&#8212;And then I thought
+of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
+queen at Bunker's Hill.</P>
+<P>But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was
+mortifyingly like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the
+Hudson River.</P>
+<P>With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we made
+Holyhead and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm, and what little wind
+we had, was ahead; so we kept tacking to and fro, just gliding through
+the water, and always hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the
+distance, which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself
+in conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting that lonely
+edifice, and whether they knew any thing about us.</P>
+<P>The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we arrived so
+near our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.</P>
+<P>He, and every thing connected with him were very different from our
+New York pilot. In the first place, the pilot boat that brought him was
+a plethoric looking sloop-rigged boat, with flat bows, that went
+wheezing through the water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a
+schooner, that bade us adieu off Sandy Hook. Aboard of her were ten or
+twelve other pilots, fellows with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy
+coats, who sat grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears,
+wintering in Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times, though,
+together; cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of Liverpool-bound
+vessels; smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water, and spinning yarns;
+till at last, one by one, they are all scattered on board of different
+ships, and meet again by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some
+Liverpool taproom, and prepare for another yachting.</P>
+<P>Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him as if he
+had been some wild animal just escaped from the Zoological Gardens; for
+here was a real live Englishman, just from England. Nevertheless, as he
+soon fell to ordering us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
+language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very common-place,
+and considerable of a bore after all.</P>
+<P>After running till about midnight, we <I>&quot;hove-to&quot; </I>near the
+mouth of the Mersey; and next morning, before day-break, took the first
+of the flood; and with a fair wind, stood into the river; which, at its
+mouth, is quite an arm of the sea. Presently, in the misty twilight, we
+passed immense buoys, and caught sight of distant objects on shore,
+vague and shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.</P>
+<P>As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon up some image
+of Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and
+while the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with
+a mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
+great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the
+solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a
+sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection,
+like belfry-mouthed Paul of Tarsus.</P>
+<P>It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to come out of
+the vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.</P>
+<P>Who was dead, and what could it be?</P>
+<P>I soon learned from my shipmates, that this was the famous <I>
+Bett-Buoy, </I>which is precisely what its name implies; and tolls fast
+or slow, according to the agitation of the waves. In a calm, it is
+dumb; in a moderate breeze, it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an
+alarum like the tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed
+fuller of dirges for the past, than of monitions for the future; and no
+one can give ear to it, without thinking of the sailors who sleep far
+beneath it at the bottom of the deep.</P>
+<P>As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came, and soon,
+passing two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire shore, we rapidly drew
+near the town, and at last, came to anchor in the stream.</P>
+<P>Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses, which
+seemed very deficient in the elements of the marvelous; and bore a most
+unexpected resemblance to the ware-houses along South-street in New
+York. There was nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them.
+There they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very good
+and substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted to the ends
+had in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact ware-houses,
+nevertheless, and that was all that could be said of them.</P>
+<P>To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool must be a
+Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral; but yet, these
+edifices I must confess, were a sad and bitter disappointment to me.</P>
+<P>But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to my surprise,
+looking about him delighted, exclaimed, &quot;Why, this 'ere is a
+considerable place&#8212;I'm <I>dummed if </I>it ain't quite a place.&#8212;Why,
+them 'ere houses is considerable houses. It beats the coast of Afrilcy,
+all hollow; nothing like this in <I>Madagasky, </I>I tell you;&#8212;I'm <I>
+dummed, </I>boys if Liverpool ain't a city!&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his hostility to
+civilization. Having been so long accustomed to associate foreign lands
+with the savage places of the Indian Ocean, he had been under the
+impression, that Liverpool must be a town of bamboos, situated in some
+swamp, and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to the
+cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For that any great
+commercial city existed three thousand miles from home, was a thing, of
+which Larry had never before had a <I>&quot;realizing sense.&quot; </I>He was
+accordingly astonished and delighted; and began to feel a sort of
+consideration for the country which could boast so extensive a town.
+Instead of holding Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen of
+Madagascar, as he had been accustomed to do; he ever after alluded to
+that lady with feeling and respect.</P>
+<P>As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country seemed to
+kindle no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion in the least. They
+looked around them with great presence of mind, and acted precisely as
+you or I would, if, after a morning's absence round the corner, we
+found ourselves returning home. Nearly all of them had made frequent
+voyages to Liverpool.</P>
+<P>Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and from one of
+them stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking woman, some
+thirty years of age, I should think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward
+among the sailors, she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately
+was forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation of <I>
+Sally.</I></P>
+<P>Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of Liverpool, had
+often assured me, that that city had the honor of containing a spouse
+of his; and that in all probability, I would have the pleasure of
+seeing her. But having heard a good many stories about the bigamies of
+seamen, and their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the round
+world over; and having been an eye-witness to a nuptial parting between
+this very Max and a lady in New York; I put down this relation of his,
+for what I thought it might reasonably be worth. What was my
+astonishment, therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming
+with a neat parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited, and
+ironed, and ready to put on at a moment's warning.</P>
+<P>They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those transports of
+pleasure, which always take place, I suppose, between man and wife
+after long separations.</P>
+<P>At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had behaved
+himself in New York; and concerning the state of his wardrobe; and
+going down into the forecastle, and inspecting it in person, Sally
+departed; having exchanged her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of
+soiled ones, and this was precisely what the New York wife had done for
+Max, not thirty I days previous.</P>
+<P>So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander daily; and
+approved herself a neat and expeditious getter-up of duck frocks and
+trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as far as I could see, a very
+well-behaved, discreet, and reputable woman.</P>
+<P>But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg, the New York
+wife, to have been equally well-behaved, discreet, and reputable; and
+equally devoted to the keeping in good order Max's wardrobe.</P>
+<P>And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by, just as
+Meg had done; and when we arrived at New York, Meg greeted Max
+precisely as Sally had greeted him in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more
+amiable wives never belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had
+so much as a difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being
+between them; and Max was equally polite and civil to both. For many
+years, he had been going Liverpool and New York voyages, plying between
+wife and wife with great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty
+domestic welcome on either side of the ocean.</P>
+<P>Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong and every
+way immoral, I once ventured to express to him my opinion on the
+subject. But I never did so again. He turned round on me, very
+savagely; and after rating me soundly for meddling in concerns not my
+own, concluded by asking me triumphantly, whether <I>old King Sol, </I>
+as he called the son of David, did not have a whole frigate-full of
+wives; and that being the case, whether he, a poor sailor, did not have
+just as good a right to have two? &quot;What was not wrong then, is right
+now,&quot; said Max; &quot;so, mind your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your
+pepper-box for you!&quot;</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_29">XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE
+SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER</A></H3>
+<P>In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders; we hove up
+the anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and hauling, and jamming
+against other ships, we wedged our way through a lock at high tide; and
+about dark, succeeded in working up to a berth in <I>Prince's Dock. </I>
+The hawsers and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to
+go ashore, select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.</P>
+<P>Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but necessary
+regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any kind are allowed on
+board the vessels within them; and hence, though the sailors are
+supposed to sleep in the forecastle, yet they must get their meals
+ashore, or live upon cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
+adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the landlord's
+bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool more than six
+weeks, as we of the Highlander did, forms no inconsiderable item in the
+expenses of the voyage. Other ships, however&#8212;the economical Dutch and
+Danish, for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch&#8212;feed their
+luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they give
+them at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked, which, indeed,
+is but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is very apt to induce the
+scurvy. A parsimonious proceeding like this is regarded with
+immeasurable disdain by the crews of the New York vessels, who, if
+their captains treated them after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.</P>
+<P>It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for the first
+time, I felt dusty particles of the renowned British soil penetrating
+into my eyes and lungs. As for <I>stepping </I>on it, that was out of
+the question, in the well-paved and flagged condition of the streets;
+and I did not have an opportunity to do so till some time afterward,
+when I got out into the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and
+snuffed its immortal loam-but not till then.</P>
+<P>Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took us up this
+street, and down that, till at last he brought us to a narrow lane,
+filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and sailors. Here we
+stopped before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by
+a gilded bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British
+Unicorn and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and
+lamb in the millennium.&#8212;A very judicious and tasty device, showing a
+delicate apprehension of the propriety of conciliating American sailors
+in an English boarding-house; and yet in no way derogating from the
+honor and dignity of England, but placing the two nations, indeed, upon
+a footing of perfect equality.</P>
+<P>Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first I took for
+a young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling lion. It was
+holding up one paw, as if it had a splinter in it; and on its head was
+a sort of basket-hilted, low-crowned hat, without a rim. I asked a
+sailor standing by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with a
+grin, he answered, &quot;Why, youngster, don't you know what that means?
+It's a young jackass, limping off with a kedgeree pot of rice out of
+the cuddy.&quot;</P>
+<P>Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by a
+broken-down American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who
+had married a buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for
+the lady, and not the sailor, proved to be the head of the
+establishment.</P>
+<P>She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years old, and among
+the seamen went by the name of <I>&quot;Handsome Mary.&quot; </I>But though, from
+the dissipated character of her spouse, Mary had become the business
+personage of the house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables,
+and conducted all the more important arrangements, yet she was by no
+means an Amazon to her husband, if she <I>did </I>play a masculine part
+in other matters. No; and the more is the pity, poor Mary seemed too
+much attached to Danby, to seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she
+went about her household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when,
+after a fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been
+beating her. The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered to
+give him a thorough thrashing before her eyes; but Mary would beg them
+not to do so, as Danby would, no doubt, be a better boy next time.</P>
+<P>But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that abominable
+bar of his stood upon the premises. As you entered the passage, it
+stared upon you on one side, ready to entrap all guests.</P>
+<P>It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a sentry-box,
+made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating in front, that lifted
+up like a portcullis. And here would this Danby sit all the day long;
+and when customers grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself,
+pouring down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
+quarter-casks.</P>
+<P>Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and
+then they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in
+concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a
+round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a
+lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean
+his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:</P>
+<blockquote>&quot;No <I>frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,</I><br>
+Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt<br>
+In jolly good ale and old,&#8212;<br>
+I stuff my skin so full within,<br>
+Of jolly good ale and old.&quot;</blockquote>
+<P>
+Or this,</P>
+<blockquote>
+<I>&quot;Four wines and brandies I detest,<br>
+Here's richer juice from barley press'd.<br>
+It is the quintessence of malt,<br>
+And they that drink it want no salt.<br>
+Come, then, quick come, and take this beer,<br>
+And water henceforth you'll forswear.&quot;</I>
+</blockquote>
+
+<P>Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private tears and
+remonstrances with the incorrigible Danby, so long as that brewery of a
+toper, Bob Still, daily eclipses thy threshold with the vast diameter
+of his paunch, and enthrones himself in the sentry-box, holding divided
+rule with thy spouse?</P>
+<P>The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob; and the songs
+pour out as the ale pours in, on the well-known principle, that the air
+in a vessel is displaced and expelled, as the liquid rises higher and
+higher in it.</P>
+<P>But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on good cheer, and
+dries up the thinner for every drop of fat ale he imbibes. It is plain
+and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankees, and operates
+differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be
+drank in a fog and a drizzle.</P>
+<P>Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into a small
+room on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary waited upon us with
+a courtesy, and received the compliments of several old guests among
+our crew. She then disappeared to provide our supper. While my
+shipmates were now engaged in tippling, and talking with numerous old
+acquaintances of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
+door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly upon
+the fact, that I was now seated upon an English bench, under an English
+roof, in an English tavern, forming an integral part of the English
+empire. It was a staggering fact, but none the less true.</P>
+<P>I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow, little
+room, with one small arched window with red curtains, looking out upon
+a smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy brick-wall, the top of which
+was horrible with pieces of broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.</P>
+<P>A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship suspended from
+the ceiling. The walls were covered with a paper, representing an
+endless succession of vessels of all nations continually
+circumnavigating the apartment. By way of a pictorial mainsail to one
+of these ships, a map was hung against it, representing in faded colors
+the flags of all nations. From the street came a confused uproar of
+ballad-singers, bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.</P>
+<P>And this is England?</P>
+<P>But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord
+mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby
+races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from
+all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England?
+Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.</P>
+<P>Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but a poor chance
+to see the sights. You are nothing but a poor sailor boy; and the Queen
+is not going to send a deputation of noblemen to invite you to St.
+James's.</P>
+<P>It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing the world
+as a sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for sailors only go <I>
+round </I>the world, without going <I>into </I>it; and their
+reminiscences of travel are only a dim recollection of a chain of
+tap-rooms surrounding the globe, parallel with the Equator. They but
+touch the perimeter of the circle; hover about the edges of
+terra-firma; and only land upon wharves and pier-heads. They would
+dream as little of traveling inland to see Kenilworth, or Blenheim
+Castle, as they would of sending a car overland to the Pope, when they
+touched at Naples.</P>
+<P>From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl hurrying
+from room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming, &quot;Supper, supper ready.&quot;</P>
+<P>Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the second floor.
+Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of
+what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul
+anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed
+against the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack
+putting his best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never
+heard.</P>
+<P>But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such a superabundance
+of solids and substantial! Was it possible that sailors fared
+thus?&#8212;the sailors, who at sea live upon salt beef and biscuit?</P>
+<P>First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles'
+shield, sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one
+end; midway was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of
+head-cheese; and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks,
+piled tier over tier. Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes
+of boiled potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a
+stand adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the supper
+table.</P>
+<P>We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot jackets of
+beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great celerity; and sitting
+down before the head-cheese, soon razed it to its foundations.</P>
+<P>Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to Peggy, one of
+the girls who had waited upon us, that a cup of tea would be a nice
+thing to take; and I would thank her for one. She replied that it was
+too late for tea; but she would get me a cup of <I>&quot;swipes&quot; </I>if I
+wanted it.</P>
+<P>Not knowing what <I>&quot;swipes&quot; </I>might be, I thought I would run the
+risk and try it; but it proved a miserable beverage, with a musty, sour
+flavor, as if it had been a decoction of spoiled pickles. I never
+patronized <I>swipes </I>again; but gave it a wide berth; though, at
+dinner afterward, it was furnished to an unlimited extent, and drunk by
+most of my shipmates, who pronounced it good.</P>
+<P>But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this <I>stripes,
+as I </I>learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer; or a bastard
+kind of beer; or the washings and rinsings of old beer-barrels. But I
+do not remember now what they said it was, precisely. I only know, that <I>
+swipes </I>was my abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only
+describe it as answering to the name itself; which is certainly
+significant of something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities by
+the poor people about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some degree,
+accounts for their poverty.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_30">XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY
+DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS</A></H3>
+<P>The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but as I do not
+mean to present a diary of my stay there, I shall here simply record
+the general tenor of the life led by our crew during that interval; and
+will then proceed to note down, at random, my own wanderings about
+town, and impressions of things as they are recalled to me now, after
+the lapse of so many years.</P>
+<P>But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain during
+our stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he sauntered down of a
+pleasant morning from the Arms <I>Hotel, I </I>believe it was, where he
+boarded; and after lounging about the ship, giving orders to his Prime
+Minister and Grand Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his
+drawing-rooms.</P>
+<P>From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping out of his
+pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters; and from the flush
+of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine old Port wine, for which
+Liverpool is famous.</P>
+<P>Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and mad,
+roystering nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson would have
+delighted in. For company over the cabin-table, he would have four or
+five whiskered sea-captains, who kept the steward drawing corks and
+filling glasses all the time. And once, the whole company were found
+under the table at four o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and
+tucked in by the two mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed with our
+woolly Doctor of Divinity, the black cook, that they should have been
+ashamed of themselves; but there is no shame in some sea-captains, who
+only blush after the third bottle.</P>
+<P>During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he always said
+something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless custom-house officer,
+who staid on board of us nearly all the time we lay in the dock.</P>
+<P>And weary days they must have been to this friendless custom-house
+officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with a newspaper; and rapping
+on the transom with his knuckles. He was kept on board to prevent
+smuggling; but he used to smuggle himself ashore very often, when,
+according to law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But no
+wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether above his
+situation; a most inglorious one, indeed; worse than driving geese to
+water.</P>
+<P>And now, to proceed with the crew.</P>
+<P>At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were washed down;
+then we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast; after which we worked at
+the rigging, or picked oakum, or were set to some employment or other,
+never mind how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
+half-past nine we resumed work; and finally <I>knocked of </I>at four
+o'clock in the afternoon, unless something particular was in hand. And
+after four o'clock, we could go where we pleased, and were not required
+to be on board again till next morning at daylight.</P>
+<P>As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our duties were
+light enough; and the chief mate was often put to it to devise some
+employment for us.</P>
+<P>We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore,
+relieving us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran on, as at
+sea. Sundays we had to ourselves.</P>
+<P>Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American
+ships in Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding in
+leisure. They live ashore on the fat of the land; and after a little
+wholesome exercise in the morning, have the rest of the day to
+themselves.</P>
+<P>Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to London and
+Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident seaman can take.
+Because, in New York he receives his month's advance; in Liverpool,
+another; both of which, in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by
+the time his voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to
+him; sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to India or
+China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements to economize, and
+far fewer motives to extravagance; and when he is paid off at last, he
+goes away jingling a quart measure of dollars.</P>
+<P>Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps, most
+abounds in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin,
+which make the hapless mariner their prey. In the shape of landlords,
+bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps, and boarding-house loungers, the
+land-sharks devour him, limb by limb; while the land-rats and mice
+constantly nibble at his purse.</P>
+<P>Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens of
+notorious Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks, which in
+depravity are not to be matched by any thing this side of the pit that
+is bottomless.</P>
+<P>And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages to
+distant parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon its
+charms and attractions, and extolling it above all other seaports in
+the world. For in Liverpool they find their Paradise&#8212; not the well
+known street of that name&#8212;and one of them told me he would be content
+to lie in Prince's Dock till <I>he hove up anchor </I>for the world to
+come.</P>
+<P>Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must
+ever prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given
+before the bane is removed.</P>
+<P>Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact of their
+being sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of
+character, ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally
+friendless and alone in the world; or if they have friends and
+relatives, they are almost constantly beyond the reach of their good
+influences; consider that after the rigorous discipline, hardships,
+dangers, and privations of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign
+port, and exposed to a thousand enticements, which, under the
+circumstances, would be hard even for virtue itself to withstand,
+unless virtue went about on crutches; consider that by their very
+vocation they are shunned by the better classes of people, and cut off
+from all access to respectable and improving society; consider all
+this, and the reflecting mind must very soon perceive that the case of
+sailors, as a class, is not a very promising one.</P>
+<P>Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the head of
+those chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it would seem, by
+ameliorating the moral organization of all civilization.</P>
+<P>Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into
+chapels, and launched into the docks; though the &quot;Boatswain's Mate&quot; and
+other clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed
+among them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and
+chaplains in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though
+evangelical boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony
+of ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of
+Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of
+grog while at sea:&#8212;notwithstanding all these things, and many more,
+the relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of
+mankind, seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.</P>
+<P>It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special advance,
+that unavoidable, and merely participative progress, which any one
+class makes in sharing the general movement of the race. Thus, because
+the sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across
+the Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors
+of Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen, and
+survived to riot themselves away at North Corner in Plymouth;&#8212;because
+the modem tar is not quite so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off
+some of his shaggy jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney
+queue:&#8212;therefore, in the estimation of some observers, he has begun to
+see the evils of his condition, and has voluntarily improved. But upon
+a closer scrutiny, it will be seen that he has but drifted along with
+that great tide, which, perhaps, has two flows for one ebb; he has made
+no individual advance of his own.</P>
+<P>There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to
+society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as
+indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which
+the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth,
+and glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still
+revolve in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can
+lift <I>them </I>out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be
+bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.</P>
+<P>Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the
+globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks;
+of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors,
+opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their
+destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are
+the <I>primum mobile </I>of all commerce; and, in short, were they to
+emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing
+would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the
+orators in the American Congress.</P>
+<P>And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that
+fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth,
+shun him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will
+you throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a
+season ticket to your pew in church?&#8212;No. You will do no such thing;
+but at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the
+building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or
+for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read.
+And the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak,
+more than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is
+useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and
+offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view of them is principally
+had through romances.</P>
+<P>But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted
+up from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old
+systems and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and
+sincere; for with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems
+almost as hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.</P>
+<P>But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor need those
+who toil for his good be at bottom disheartened, or Time must prove his
+friend in the end; and though sometimes he would almost seem as a
+neglected step-son of heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days
+with no hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and
+tenderly cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is the true Father
+of all, and that none of his children are without the pale of his care.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_31">XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT
+AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS</A></H3>
+<P>Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a collection of
+old European and English guide-books, which he had bought on his
+travels, a great many years ago. In my childhood, I went through many
+courses of studying them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous
+quaint embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange
+title-pages, some of which I thought resembled the mustached faces of
+foreigners. Among others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered
+pamphlet, the rouge here and there effaced upon its now thin and
+attenuated cheeks, entitled, <I>&quot;Voyage Descriptif et Philosophique de
+L'Ancien et du Nouveau Paris: Miroir Fidele&quot; </I>also a time-darkened,
+mossy old book, in marbleized binding, much resembling verd-antique,
+entitled, <I>&quot;Itineraire Instructif de Rome, ou Description Generale
+des Monumens Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables
+de Peinteur, de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette Celebre Ville;&quot; </I>
+on the russet title-page is a vignette representing a barren rock,
+partly shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn bit of landscape), and under
+the lee of the rock and the shade of the tree, maternally reclines the
+houseless foster-mother of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the
+illustrious twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the
+ground, with locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing
+occupation; a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough, and the
+wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed of barn-yard cows;
+the work is published <I>&quot;Avec privilege du Souverain Pontife.&quot; </I>
+There was also a velvet-bound old volume, in brass clasps, entitled, <I>
+&quot;The Conductor through Holland&quot; </I>with a plate of the Stadt House;
+also a venerable <I>&quot;Picture of London&quot; </I>abounding in
+representations of St. Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar,
+Hyde-Park-Corner, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and
+Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
+reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an
+elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the
+cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, <I>&quot;The Great Roads,
+both direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual
+Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
+describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those
+at which the Assizes are held, and gives the time of the Mails' arrival
+and departure from each: Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from
+which the stages go, and the Inns in the country which supply
+post-horses and carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats
+situated near the Road, with Maps of the Environs of London, Bath,
+Brighton, and Margate.&quot; </I>It is dedicated <I>&quot;To the Right Honorable
+the Earls of Chesterfield and Leicester, by their Lordships' Most
+Obliged, Obedient, and Obsequious Servant, John Gary, </I>1798.&quot; Also a
+green pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat of arms
+on the cover, looking like a diagram of the Labyrinth of Crete,
+entitled, &quot;A <I>Description of York, its Antiquities and Public
+Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled with great pains from
+the most authentic records.&quot; </I>Also a small scholastic-looking
+volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a frontispiece bringing
+together at one view the towers and turrets of King's College and the
+magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though geographically sixteen miles
+apart, entitled, <I>&quot;The Cambridge Guide: its Colleges, Halls,
+Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town and University,
+and some account of Ely Cathedral.&quot; </I>Also a pamphlet, with a
+japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly higgledy-piggledy
+group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an accurate
+representation of the <I>&quot;North or Grand Front of Blenheim,&quot; </I>and
+entitled, &quot;A <I>Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke
+of Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry,
+and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a
+General Description of the famous China Gallery, </I>6-c.; <I>with an
+Essay on Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the
+Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park.&quot; </I>And lastly,
+and to the purpose, there was a volume called &quot;THE PICTURE OF
+LIVERPOOL.&quot;</P>
+<P>It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
+associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
+could.</P>
+<P>But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from
+the life.</P>
+<P>As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so
+dear to my boyhood,&#8212;the very pages which, years and years ago, my
+father turned over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a
+soft, pleasing sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and
+forgotten!</P>
+<P>Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old
+quarto Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the
+hammer myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's
+shambles. I will, my beloved,&#8212;old family relic that you are;&#8212;till you
+drop leaf from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug
+shelf somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.</P>
+<P>In size, it is what the booksellers call an <I>18mo; </I>it is bound
+in green morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted
+and tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches
+of red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
+incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that
+he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
+anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
+after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
+make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.</P>
+<P>But let us open the volume.</P>
+<P>What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of
+a writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals
+and falling air-castles? Ah, no!&#8212;these are all part and parcel of the
+precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.</P>
+<P>Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
+sonnets, I might write under this horse, <I>&quot;Drawn at the age of three
+years,&quot; </I>and under this autograph, <I>&quot;Executed at the age of eight.&quot;</I>
+</P>
+<P>Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins;
+and the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.</P>
+<P>But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
+Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry
+captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are
+mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But
+not so fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.</P>
+<P>Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
+indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father's
+hand-writing, the following:&#8212;</P>
+<P ALIGN="CENTER">WALTER REDBURN.</P>
+<P>Riddough's Royal Hotel, Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.</P>
+<P>Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced miscellaneous
+memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a methodical mind, and therefore
+indubitably my father's, which he must have made at various times
+during his stay in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued,
+old, midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous
+effacements, it is much like cross-reading to make them out; yet, I
+must here copy a few at random:&#8212;</P>
+<center>
+<table>
+<tr><td width="70%">                    </td><td align="right" width="7%">&pound;</td><td align="right" width="7%">s.</td><td align="right" width="6%"> d</td>
+<tr><td>Guide-Book                      </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">            3</td><td align="right">            6</td>
+<tr><td>Dinner at the Star and Garter   </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">           10</td>
+<tr><td>Trip to Preston (distance 31 m.)</td><td align="right">                 2</td><td align="right">            6</td><td align="right">            3</td>
+<tr><td>Gratuities                      </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">            4</td>
+<tr><td>Hack                            </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">            4</td><td align="right">            6</td>
+<tr><td>Thompson's Seasons              </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">            5</td>
+<tr><td>Library                         </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">            1</td>
+<tr><td>Boat on the river               </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">            6</td>
+<tr><td>Port wine and cigar             </td><td align="right">                  </td><td align="right">             </td><td align="right">            4</td>
+</table>
+</center>
+<P>And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:</P>
+<center>
+<table>
+<tr><td width="100%"><I>Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.</I>          </td>
+<tr><td><I>Call upon Mr. Morille same day.</I>                       </td>
+<tr><td><I>Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.</I>             </td>
+<tr><td><I>Theatre Friday night&#8212;Richard III. and new farce.</I></td>
+<tr><td><I>Present letter at Miss L&#8212;&#8212;'s on Tuesday.</I>  </td>
+<tr><td><I>Call on Sampson &amp; Wilt, Friday.</I>                   </td>
+<tr><td><I>Get my draft on London cashed.</I>                        </td>
+<tr><td><I>Write home by the Princess.</I>                           </td>
+<tr><td><I>Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.</I>                     </td>
+</table>
+</center>
+<P>Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the midst of
+the British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy text, that this is <I>
+&quot;A Plan of the Town of Liverpool.&quot; </I>But there seems little plan in
+the confined and crooked looking marks for the streets, and the docks
+irregularly scattered along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along,
+a peaceful stream of shaded line engraving.</P>
+<P>On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara of yellowish
+white: a desert, which still bears marks of my zeal in endeavoring to
+populate it with all manner of uncouth monsters in crayons. The space
+designated by that spot is now, doubtless, completely built up in
+Liverpool.</P>
+<P>Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines, radiating in
+all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where stands marked <I>
+&quot;Riddough's Hotel,&quot; </I>the house my father stopped at.</P>
+<P>These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I
+follow the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares;
+and penetrate with them into the narrowest courts.</P>
+<P>By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in
+a foreign land; but attended St. John's Church near the Hay-market, and
+other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in
+Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
+he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian,
+poet, and banker.</P>
+<P>Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and
+come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a
+piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals,
+pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her
+head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an
+oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
+motto elastically stretched for a border&#8212;<I>&quot;Deus nobis haec otia
+fecit.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
+representation of a now extinct fowl, called the <I>&quot;Liver,&quot; </I>said
+to have inhabited a <I>&quot;pool,&quot; </I>which antiquarians assert once
+covered a good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from
+that bird, and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.</P>
+<P>At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full
+sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to
+roll over a huge bale of goods.</P>
+<P>Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the
+following title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to
+give a facsimile:&#8212;</P>
+<center>
+<I>
+The Picture<br>
+of Liverpool:<br>
+or, Stranger's Guide<br>
+and Gentleman's Pocket Companion<br>
+</I><B>
+FOR THE TOWN.<br>
+</B>
+Embellished<br>
+With Engravings<br>
+By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.<br>
+Liverpool:<br>
+Printed in Swift's Court,<br>
+And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.<br>
+<br>
+</center>
+<P>A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time
+bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to
+previous editions of the work; and quotes <I>&quot;testimonies of respect
+which had lately appeared in various quarters </I>&#8212;<I>the British
+Critic, Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and
+Wales&quot;&#8212;</I>and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new,
+revised, and illustrated edition might <I>&quot;render it less unworthy of
+the public notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended
+to illustrate.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time and
+place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end-Hope <I>Place,
+1st Sept. </I>1803.</P>
+<P>But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger over this
+circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded the precise hour
+of the day, and by what timepiece; and if he had but mentioned his age,
+occupation, and name.</P>
+<P>But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this estimable
+author must needs share the oblivious fate of all literary incognitos.</P>
+<P>He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated ideas of true
+fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a solitary initial. Could I
+find him out now, sleeping neglected in some churchyard, I would buy
+him a headstone, and record upon it naught but his title-page, deeming
+that his noblest epitaph.</P>
+<P>After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a prologue
+written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of Mrs. Barbauld, upon
+the opening of the Theater Royal, Liverpool, in 1772:&#8212;</P>
+<P>
+<I>&quot;Where Mersey's stream, long winding o'er the plain, Pours his full
+tribute to the circling main, A band of fishers chose their humble
+seat; Contented labor blessed the fair retreat, Inured to hardship,
+patient, bold, and rude, They braved the billows for precarious food:
+Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore, Their nets and
+little boats their only store.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>
+Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical
+quotations, and old-fashioned classical allusions to the Aeneid and
+Falconer's Shipwreck.</P>
+<P>And the anonymous author must have been not only a scholar and a
+gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness, combined with true
+city patriotism; for in his <I>&quot;Survey of</I><I> the Town&quot; </I>are nine
+thickly printed pages of a neglected poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.</P>
+<P>By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion upon the
+public of so long an episode, he courteously and feelingly introduces
+it by saying, that <I>&quot;the poem has now for several years been scarce,
+and is at present but little known; and hence a very small portion of
+it will no doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader;
+especially as this noble epic is written with great felicity of
+expression and the sweetest delicacy of feeling.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my mind, that
+the author of the Guide-Book might have been the author of the epic.
+But that was years ago; and I have never since permitted so
+uncharitable a reflection to insinuate itself into my mind.</P>
+<P>This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in the old
+stately style, and rolls along commanding as a coach and four. It sings
+of Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and
+bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when <I>
+&quot;his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled,&quot; </I>the poet breaks forth
+like all Parnassus with:&#8212;</P>
+<P>
+<I>&quot;Now o'er the wondering world her name resounds, From northern
+climes to India's distant bounds&#8212; Where'er his shores the broad
+Atlantic waves; Where'er the Baltic rolls his wintry waves; Where'er
+the honored flood extends his tide, That clasps Sicilia like a favored
+bride. Greenland for her its bulky whale resigns, And temperate Gallia
+rears her generous vines: 'Midst warm Iberia citron orchards blow, And
+the ripe fruitage bends the laboring bough; In every clime her
+prosperous fleets are known, She makes the wealth of every clime her
+own.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>
+It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr. Roscoe:&#8212;</P>
+
+<blockquote>
+<I>&quot;And here</I> R*s*o*, <I>with genius all his own, New tracks explores, and all
+before unknown?&quot;</I>
+</blockquote>
+<P>
+Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book, and the gifted
+bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished the wannest appreciation of
+the fact, that to their beloved town Roscoe imparted a reputation which
+gracefully embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He is
+called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence, and his
+histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken of with
+classical admiration.</P>
+<P>The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like way, by
+informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude and longitude of
+Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there may be no misunderstanding on
+that head. It then goes on to give an account of the history and
+antiquities of the town, beginning with a record in the <I>
+Doomsday-Book </I>of William the Conqueror.</P>
+<P>Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding
+his numerous other merits, my favorite author betrays a want of the
+uttermost antiquarian and penetrating spirit, which would have scorned
+to stop in its researches at the reign of the Norman monarch, but would
+have pushed on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man
+of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a doubt, that
+the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.</P>
+<P>But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the chapter of
+antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing reflections upon
+an interesting fact he records: to wit, that in a.d. 1571, the
+inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen Elizabeth, praying relief under a
+subsidy, wherein they style themselves <I>&quot;her majesty's poor decayed
+town of Liverpool.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated old guide-book,
+bearing every token of the ravages of near half a century, and read how
+this piece of antiquity enlarges like a modern upon previous
+antiquities, I am forcibly reminded that the world is indeed growing
+old. And when I turn to the second chapter, <I>&quot;On the increase of the
+town, and number of inhabitants,&quot; </I>and then skim over page after
+page throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense
+grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than quadrupled in
+population, opulence, and splendor, and whose present inhabitants must
+look back upon the period here spoken of with a swelling feeling of
+immeasurable superiority and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness
+at the vanity of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is
+the corner-stone of tomorrow; and as St. Peter's church was built in
+great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our erections, however
+imposing, we but form quarries and supply ignoble materials for the
+grander domes of posterity.</P>
+<P>And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
+Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting
+of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as
+the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers,
+flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our
+Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From
+far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are
+now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad
+boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into
+the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and
+Fourteenth-street; and going still farther south, may exhume the
+present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and
+mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.</P>
+<P>As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the dignified
+style of this <I>&quot;Picture of Liverpool,&quot; </I>so different from the
+brief, pert, and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara and Buffalo of the
+present day, I shall now insert the chapter of antiquarian researches;
+especially as it is entertaining in itself, and affords much valuable,
+and perhaps rare information, which the reader may need, concerning the
+famous town, to which I made <I>my first voyage. </I>And I think that
+with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself am wholly ignorant,
+it is far better to quote my old friend verbatim, than to mince his
+substantial baron-of-beef of information into a flimsy ragout of my
+own; and so, pass it off as original. Yes, I will render unto my
+honored guide-book its due.</P>
+<P>But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down the pages into
+a soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye, shed over the type all
+the pleasant associations which the original carries to me!</P>
+<P>No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies of fond
+family reminiscences, I will not! I will <I>not </I>quote thee, old
+Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your
+antiquities would only be skipped and dishonored by shallow-minded
+readers; and for me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by
+plagiarizing from a guide-book-the most vulgar and ignominious of
+thefts!</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_32">XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD
+GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN</A></H3>
+<P>When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along,
+supposing that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I
+would most probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself
+proved.</P>
+<P>Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
+infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.</P>
+<P>On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first
+place, I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of
+the town, as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I
+mastered the columns of statistics, touching the advance of population;
+and pored over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For
+I was determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content
+with a mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with
+most students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
+descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text
+with the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
+other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
+seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
+impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
+recognizing the originals in a moment.</P>
+<P>In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
+guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
+fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
+building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
+I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
+it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.</P>
+<P>In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
+pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
+up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
+attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
+seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets
+there depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked,
+like the map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I
+could march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the
+most distant dock upon a pressing emergency.</P>
+<P>Dear delusion!</P>
+<P>It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book,
+fifty years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would
+prove but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
+Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I,
+his son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
+accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco guide-book with the
+town it described, that the bare thought of there being any
+discrepancy, never entered my mind.</P>
+<P>While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the dock, I got out my
+guide-book to see how the map would compare with the identical place
+itself. But they bore not the slightest resemblance. However, thinks I,
+this is owing to my taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye
+survey. So, never mind old guide-book, <I>you, </I>at least, are all
+right.</P>
+<P>But my faith received a severe shock that same evening, when the
+crew went ashore to supper, as I have previously related.</P>
+<P>The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's Dock's
+walls; and having my guide-book in my pocket, I drew it forth to
+compare notes, when I found, that precisely upon the spot where I and
+my shipmates were standing, and a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling
+their glasses, my infallible old Morocco, in that very place, located a
+fort; adding, that it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while
+to visit it for the purpose of beholding the guard relieved in the
+evening.</P>
+<P>This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken for a
+castle? and this was about the hour mentioned for the guard to turn
+out; yet not a red coat was to be seen. But for all this, I could not,
+for one small discrepancy, condemn the old family servant who had so
+faithfully served my own father before me; and when I learned that this
+tavern went by the name of <I>&quot;The Old Fort Tavern;&quot; </I>and when I was
+told that many of the old stones were yet in the walls, I almost
+completely exonerated my guide-book from the half-insinuated charge of
+misleading me.</P>
+<P>The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself; and now,
+thought I, my guide-book and I shall have a famous ramble up street and
+down lane, even unto the furthest limits of this Liverpool.</P>
+<P>I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my ablutions
+&quot;with Eastern scrupulosity,&quot; and I arrayed myself in my red shirt and
+shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's pantaloons; and crowned my entire
+man with the tarpaulin; so that from this curious combination of
+clothing, and particularly from my red shirt, I must have looked like a
+very strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two soldier,
+to one of the sailor.</P>
+<P>My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance; but I heeded
+them not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore, full of brilliant
+anticipations.</P>
+<P>My gait was erect, and I was rather tall for my age; and that may
+have been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking along the dock, a
+drunken sailor passing, exclaimed, <I>&quot;Eyes right! quick step there!&quot;</I>
+</P>
+<P>Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going fox-hunting;
+and one of the dock-police, stationed at the gates, after peeping out
+upon me from his sentry box, a snug little den, furnished with benches
+and newspapers, and hung round with storm jackets and oiled capes,
+issued forth in a great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into
+the street, and commanded me to <I>halt! </I>I obeyed; when scanning my
+appearance pertinaciously, he desired to know where I got that
+tarpaulin hat, not being able to account for the phenomenon of its
+roofing the head of a broken-down fox-hunter. But I pointed to my ship,
+which lay at no great distance; when remarking from my voice that I was
+a Yankee, this faithful functionary permitted me to pass.</P>
+<P>It must be known that the police stationed at the gates of the docks
+are extremely observant of strangers going out; as many thefts are
+perpetrated on board the ships; and if they chance to see any thing
+suspicious, they probe into it without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy <I>
+&quot;shakings,&quot; </I>and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong
+side out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the
+walls. And often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's
+clothes, even if he be a very thin man, with attenuated and almost
+imperceptible pockets.</P>
+<P>But where was I going?</P>
+<P>I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit
+Riddough's Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than thirty years
+before: and then, with the map in my hand, follow him through all the
+town, according to the dotted lines in the diagram. For thus would I be
+performing a filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my
+eyes.</P>
+<P>At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street toward
+Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according to my authority;
+and when, taking out my map, I found that Old Hall-street was marked
+there, through its whole extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond,
+affectionate emotions rushed around my heart.</P>
+<P>Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging my
+father walked. Then I almost wept, when I looked down on my sorry
+apparel, and marked how the people regarded me; the men staring at so
+grotesque a young stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and
+ruffles, crossing the walk a little to shun me.</P>
+<P>How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps in a blue
+coat, buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did he think, that a son
+of his would ever visit Liverpool as a poor friendless sailor-boy. But
+I was not born then: no, when he walked this flagging, I was not so
+much as thought of; I was not included in the census of the universe.
+My own father did not know me then; and had never seen, or heard, or so
+much as dreamed of me. And that thought had a touch of sadness to me;
+for if it had certainly been, that my own parent, at one time, never
+cast a thought upon me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
+Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed friendless and
+forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a strange town, and the very
+thought of your father's having been here before you, but carries with
+it the reflection that, he then knew you not, nor cared for you one
+whit.</P>
+<P>But dispelling these dismal reflections as well as I could, I pushed
+on my way, till I got to Chapel-street, which I crossed; and then,
+going under a cloister-like arch of stone, whose gloom and narrowness
+delighted me, and filled my Yankee soul with romantic thoughts of old
+Abbeys and Minsters, I emerged into the fine quadrangle of the
+Merchants' Exchange.</P>
+<P>There, leaning against the colonnade, I took out my map, and traced
+my father right across Chapel-street, and actually through the very
+arch at my back, into the paved square where I stood.</P>
+<P>So vivid was now the impression of his having been here, and so
+narrow the passage from which he had emerged, that I felt like running
+on, and overtaking him around the Town Hall adjoining, at the head of
+Castle-street. But I soon checked myself, when remembering that he had
+gone whither no son's search could find him in this world. And then I
+thought of all that must have happened to him since he paced through
+that arch. What trials and troubles he had encountered; how he had been
+shaken by many storms of adversity, and at last died a bankrupt. I
+looked at my own sorry garb, and had much ado to keep from tears.</P>
+<P>But I rallied, and gazed round at the sculptured stonework, and
+turned to my guide-book, and looked at the print of the spot. It was
+correct to a pillar; but wanted the central ornament of the quadrangle.
+This, however, was but a slight subsequent erection, which ought not to
+militate against the general character of my friend for
+comprehensiveness.</P>
+<P>The ornament in question is a group of statuary in bronze, elevated
+upon a marble pedestal and basement, representing Lord Nelson expiring
+in the arms of Victory. One foot rests on a rolling foe, and the other
+on a cannon. Victory is dropping a wreath on the dying admiral's brow;
+while Death, under the similitude of a hideous skeleton, is insinuating
+his bony hand under the hero's robe, and groping after his heart. A
+very striking design, and true to the imagination; I never could look
+at Death without a shudder.</P>
+<P>At uniform intervals round the base of the pedestal, four naked
+figures in chains, somewhat larger than life, are seated in various
+attitudes of humiliation and despair. One has his leg recklessly thrown
+over his knee, and his head bowed over, as if he had given up all hope
+of ever feeling better. Another has his head buried in despondency, and
+no doubt looks mournfully out of his eyes, but as his face was averted
+at the time, I could not catch the expression. These woe-begone figures
+of captives are emblematic of Nelson's principal victories; but I never
+could look at their swarthy limbs and manacles, without being
+involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.</P>
+<P>And my thoughts would revert to Virginia and Carolina; and also to
+the historical fact, that the African slave-trade once constituted the
+principal commerce of Liverpool; and that the prosperity of the town
+was once supposed to have been indissolubly linked to its prosecution.
+And I remembered that my father had often spoken to gentlemen visiting
+our house in New York, of the unhappiness that the discussion of the
+abolition of this trade had occasioned in Liverpool; that the struggle
+between sordid interest and humanity had made sad havoc at the
+fire-sides of the merchants; estranged sons from sires; and even
+separated husband from wife. And my thoughts reverted to my father's
+friend, the good and great Roscoe, the intrepid enemy of the trade; who
+in every way exerted his fine talents toward its suppression; writing a
+poem <I>(&quot;the Wrongs of Africa&quot;), </I>several pamphlets; and in his
+place in Parliament, he delivered a speech against it, which, as coming
+from a member for Liverpool, was supposed to have turned many votes,
+and had no small share in the triumph of sound policy and humanity that
+ensued.</P>
+<P>How this group of statuary affected me, may be inferred from the
+fact, that I never went through Chapel-street without going through the
+little arch to look at it again. And there, night or day, I was sure to
+find Lord Nelson still falling back; Victory's wreath still hovering
+over his swordpoint; and Death grim and grasping as ever; while the
+four bronze captives still lamented their captivity.</P>
+<P>Now, as I lingered about the railing of the statuary, on the Sunday
+I have mentioned, I noticed several persons going in and out of an
+apartment, opening from the basement under the colonnade; and,
+advancing, I perceived that this was a news-room, full of files of
+papers. My love of literature prompted me to open the door and step in;
+but a glance at my soiled shooting-jacket prompted a dignified looking
+personage to step up and shut the door in my face. I deliberated a
+minute what I should do to him; and at last resolutely determined to
+let him alone, and pass on; which I did; going down Castle-street (so
+called from a castle which once stood there, said my guide-book), and
+turning down into Lord.</P>
+<P>Arrived at the foot of the latter street, I in vain looked round for
+the hotel. How serious a disappointment was this may well be imagined,
+when it is considered that I was all eagerness to behold the very house
+at which my father stopped; where he slept and dined, smoked his cigar,
+opened his letters, and read the papers. I inquired of some gentlemen
+and ladies where the missing hotel was; but they only stared and passed
+on; until I met a mechanic, apparently, who very civilly stopped to
+hear my questions and give me an answer.</P>
+<P>&quot;Riddough's Hotel?&quot; said he, &quot;upon my word, I think I have heard of
+such a place; let me see&#8212;yes, yes&#8212;that was the hotel where my father
+broke his arm, helping to pull down the walls. My lad, you surely can't
+be inquiring for Riddough's Hotel! What do you want to find there?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh! nothing,&quot; I replied, &quot;I am much obliged for your
+information&quot;&#8212;and away I walked.</P>
+<P>Then, indeed, a new light broke in upon me concerning my guide-book;
+and all my previous dim suspicions were almost confirmed. It was nearly
+half a century behind the age! and no more fit to guide me about the
+town, than the map of Pompeii.</P>
+<P>It was a sad, a solemn, and a most melancholy thought. The book on
+which I had so much relied; the book in the old morocco cover; the book
+with the cocked-hat corners; the book full of fine old family
+associations; the book with seventeen plates, executed in the highest
+style of art; this precious book was next to useless. Yes, the thing
+that had guided the father, could not guide the son. And I sat down on
+a shop step, and gave loose to meditation.</P>
+<P>Here, now, oh, Wellingborough, thought I, learn a lesson, and never
+forget it. This world, my boy, is a moving world; its Riddough's Hotels
+are forever being pulled down; it never stands still; and its sands are
+forever shifting. This very harbor of Liverpool is gradually filling
+up, they say; and who knows what your son (if you ever have one) may
+behold, when he comes to visit Liverpool, as long after you as you come
+after his grandfather. And, Wellingborough, as your father's guidebook
+is no guide for you, neither would yours (could you afford to buy a
+modern one to-day) be a true guide to those who come after you.
+Guide-books, Wellingborough, are the least reliable books in all
+literature; and nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of
+guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the
+thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can
+their posterity trace, amid avenues of modem erections; to how few is
+the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guidebooks, and
+the old ones are used for waste paper. But there is one Holy
+Guide-Book, Wellingborough, that will never lead you astray, if you but
+follow it aright; and some noble monuments that remain, though the
+pyramids crumble.</P>
+<P>But though I rose from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and
+though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for
+infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred
+pages which had once been a beacon to my sire.</P>
+<P>No.&#8212;Poor old guide-book, thought I, tenderly stroking its back, and
+smoothing the dog-ears with reverence; I will not use you with despite,
+old Morocco! and you will yet prove a trusty conductor through many old
+streets in the old parts of this town; even if you are at fault, now
+and then, concerning a Riddough's Hotel, or some other forgotten thing
+of the past. As I fondly glanced over the leaves, like one who loves
+more than he chides, my eye lighted upon a passage concerning <I>&quot;The
+Old Dock,&quot; </I>which much aroused my curiosity. I determined to see the
+place without delay: and walking on, in what I presumed to be the right
+direction, at last found myself before a spacious and splendid pile of
+sculptured brown stone; and entering the porch, perceived from
+incontrovertible tokens that it must be the Custom-house. After
+admiring it awhile, I took out my guide-book again; and what was my
+amazement at discovering that, according to its authority, I was
+entirely mistaken with regard to this Custom-house; for precisely where
+I stood, <I>&quot;The Old Dock&quot; </I>must be standing, and reading on
+concerning it, I met with this very apposite passage:&#8212;<I>&quot;The first
+idea that strikes the stranger in coming to this dock, is the
+singularity of so great a number of ships afloat in the very heart of
+the town, without discovering any connection with the sea.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Here, now, was a poser! Old Morocco confessed that there was a good
+deal of &quot;singularity&quot; about the thing; nor did he pretend to deny that
+it was, without question, amazing, that this fabulous dock should seem
+to have no <I>connection with the sea! </I>However, the same author
+went on to say, that the <I>&quot;astonished stranger must suspend his
+wonder for awhile, and turn to the left.&quot; </I>But, right or left, no
+place answering to the description was to be seen.</P>
+<P>This was too confounding altogether, and not to be easily accounted
+for, even by making ordinary allowances for the growth and general
+improvement of the town in the course of years. So, guide-book in hand,
+I accosted a policeman standing by, and begged him to tell me whether
+he was acquainted with any place in that neighborhood called the <I>
+&quot;Old Dock.&quot; </I>The man looked at me wonderingly at first, and then
+seeing I was apparently sane, and quite civil into the bargain, he
+whipped his well-polished boot with his rattan, pulled up his
+silver-laced coat-collar, and initiated me into a knowledge of the
+following facts.</P>
+<P>It seems that in this place originally stood the <I>&quot;pool,&quot; </I>from
+which the town borrows a part of its name, and which originally wound
+round the greater part of the old settlements; that this pool was made
+into the &quot;Old Dock,&quot; for the benefit of the shipping; but that, years
+ago, it had been filled up, and furnished the site for the Custom-house
+before me.</P>
+<P>I now eyed the spot with a feeling somewhat akin to the Eastern
+traveler standing on the brink of the Dead Sea. For here the doom of
+Gomorrah seemed reversed, and a lake had been converted into
+substantial stone and mortar.</P>
+<P>Well, well, Wellingborough, thought I, you had better put the book
+into your pocket, and carry it home to the Society of Antiquaries; it
+is several thousand leagues and odd furlongs behind the march of
+improvement. Smell its old morocco binding, Wellingborough; does it not
+smell somewhat mummy-ish? Does it not remind you of Cheops and the
+Catacombs? I tell you it was written before the lost books of Livy, and
+is cousin-german to that irrecoverably departed volume, entitled, <I>
+&quot;The Wars of the Lord&quot; </I>quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it
+up, Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow
+your nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and
+thin: and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire your landmarks.</P>
+<P>No!&#8212;And again I rubbed its back softly, and gently adjusted a loose
+leaf: No, no, I'll not give you up yet. Forth, old Morocco! and lead me
+in sight of tie venerable Abbey of Birkenhead; and let these eager eyes
+behold the mansion once occupied by the old earls of Derby!</P>
+<P>For the book discoursed of both places, and told how the Abbey was
+on the Cheshire shore, full in view from a point on the Lancashire
+side, covered over with ivy, and brilliant with moss! And how the house
+of the noble Derby's was now a common jail of the town; and how that
+circumstance was full of suggestions, and pregnant with wisdom!</P>
+<P>But, alas! I never saw the Abbey; at least none was in sight from
+the water: and as for the house of the earls, I never saw that.</P>
+<P>Ah me, and ten times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the
+land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least
+glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire
+but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a
+brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old
+gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks
+were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a
+deceit&#8212;a gull&#8212;a sham&#8212;a hoax! This boasted England is no older than
+the State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs &#8212;point out the
+vouchers. Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall?
+Show me Stonehenge!</P>
+<P>But, Wellingborough, I remonstrated with myself, you are only in
+Liverpool; the old monuments lie to the north, south, east, and west of
+you; you are but a sailor-boy, and you can not expect to be a great
+tourist, and visit the antiquities, in that preposterous
+shooting-jacket of yours. Indeed, you can not, my boy.</P>
+<P>True, true&#8212;that's it. I am not the traveler my father was. I am
+only a common-carrier across the Atlantic.</P>
+<P>After a weary day's walk, I at last arrived at the sign of the
+Baltimore Clipper to supper; and Handsome Mary poured me out a brimmer
+of tea, in which, for the time, I drowned all my melancholy.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_33">XXXII. THE DOCKS</A></H3>
+<P>For more than six weeks, the ship Highlander lay in Prince's Dock;
+and during that time, besides making observations upon things
+immediately around me, I made sundry excursions to the neighboring
+docks, for I never tired of admiring them.</P>
+<P>Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves, and
+slip-shod, shambling piers of New York, the sight of these mighty docks
+filled my young mind with wonder and delight. In New York, to be sure,
+I could not but be struck with the long line of shipping, and tangled
+thicket of masts along the East River; yet, my admiration had been much
+abated by those irregular, unsightly wharves, which, I am sure, are a
+reproach and disgrace to the city that tolerates them.</P>
+<P>Whereas, in Liverpool, I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast
+piers of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely
+inclosed, and many of them communicating, which almost recalled to mind
+the great American chain of lakes: Ontario, Erie, St. Clair, Huron,
+Michigan, and Superior. The extent and solidity of these structures,
+seemed equal to what I had read of the old Pyramids of Egypt.</P>
+<P>Liverpool may justly claim to have originated the model of the &quot;Wet
+Dock,&quot; so called, of the present day; and every thing that is connected
+with its design, construction, regulation, and improvement. Even London
+was induced to copy after Liverpool, and Havre followed her example. In
+magnitude, cost, and durability, the docks of Liverpool, even at the
+present day surpass all others in the world.</P>
+<P>The first dock built by the town was the <I>&quot;Old Dock,&quot; </I>alluded
+to in my Sunday stroll with my guide-book. This was erected in 1710,
+since which period has gradually arisen that long line of dock-masonry,
+now flanking the Liverpool side of the Mersey.</P>
+<P>For miles you may walk along that river-side, passing dock after
+dock, like a chain of immense fortresses:&#8212;Prince's, George's,
+Salt-House, Clarence, Brunswick, Trafalgar, King's, Queen's, and many
+more.</P>
+<P>In a spirit of patriotic gratitude to those naval heroes, who by
+their valor did so much to protect the commerce of Britain, in which
+Liverpool held so large a stake; the town, long since, bestowed upon
+its more modern streets, certain illustrious names, that Broadway might
+be proud of:&#8212;Duncan, Nelson, Rodney, St. Vincent, Nile.</P>
+<P>But it is a pity, I think, that they had not bestowed these noble
+names upon their noble docks; so that they might have been as a rank
+and file of most fit monuments to perpetuate the names of the heroes,
+in connection with the commerce they defended.</P>
+<P>And how much better would such stirring monuments be; full of life
+and commotion; than hermit obelisks of Luxor, and idle towers of stone;
+which, useless to the world in themselves, vainly hope to eternize a
+name, by having it carved, solitary and alone, in their granite. Such
+monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of
+the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked
+with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something
+free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that
+commemorate his death, but celebrate not his Me. It is well enough that
+over the inglorious and thrice miserable grave of a Dives, some vast
+marble column should be reared, recording the fact of his having lived
+and died; for such records are indispensable to preserve his shrunken
+memory among men; though that memory must soon crumble away with the
+marble, and mix with the stagnant oblivion of the mob. But to build
+such a pompous vanity over the remains of a hero, is a slur upon his
+fame, and an insult to his ghost. And more enduring monuments are built
+in the closet with the letters of the alphabet, than even Cheops
+himself could have founded, with all Egypt and Nubia for his quarry.</P>
+<P>Among the few docks mentioned above, occur the names of the <I>
+King's </I>and <I>Queens. </I>At the time, they often reminded me of
+the two principal streets in the village I came from in America,
+which streets once rejoiced in the same royal appellations. But they
+had been christened previous to the Declaration of Independence; and
+some years after, in a fever of freedom, they were abolished, at an
+enthusiastic town-meeting, where King George and his lady were solemnly
+declared unworthy of being immortalized by the village of L&#8212;. A
+country antiquary once told me, that a committee of two barbers were
+deputed to write and inform the distracted old gentleman of the fact.</P>
+<P>As the description of any one of these Liverpool docks will pretty
+much answer for all, I will here endeavor to give some account of
+Prince's Dock, where the Highlander rested after her passage across the
+Atlantic.</P>
+<P>This dock, of comparatively recent construction, is perhaps the
+largest of all, and is well known to American sailors, from the fact,
+that it is mostly frequented by the American ship-, ping. Here lie the
+noble New York packets, which at home are found at the foot of
+Wall-street; and here lie the Mobile and Savannah cotton ships and
+traders.</P>
+<P>This dock was built like the others, mostly upon the bed of the
+river, the earth and rock having been laboriously scooped out, and
+solidified again as materials for the quays and piers. From the river,
+Prince's Dock is protected by a long pier of masonry, surmounted by a
+massive wall; and on the side next the town, it is bounded by similar
+walls, one of which runs along a thoroughfare. The whole space thus
+inclosed forms an oblong, and may, at a guess, be presumed to comprise
+about fifteen or twenty acres; but as I had not the rod of a surveyor
+when I took it in, I will not be certain.</P>
+<P>The area of the dock itself, exclusive of the inclosed quays
+surrounding it, may be estimated at, say, ten acres. Access to the
+interior from the streets is had through several gateways; so that,
+upon their being closed, the whole dock is shut up like a house. From
+the river, the entrance is through a water-gate, and ingress to ships
+is only to be had, when the level of the dock coincides with that of
+the river; that is, about the time of high tide, as the level of the
+dock is always at that mark. So that when it is low tide in the river,
+the keels of the ships inclosed by the quays are elevated more than
+twenty feet above those of the vessels in the stream. This, of course,
+produces a striking effect to a stranger, to see hundreds of immense
+ships floating high aloft in the heart of a mass of masonry.</P>
+<P>Prince's Dock is generally so filled with shipping, that the
+entrance of a new-comer is apt to occasion a universal stir among all
+the older occupants. The dock-masters, whose authority is declared by
+tin signs worn conspicuously over their hats, mount the poops and
+forecastles of the various vessels, and hail the surrounding strangers
+in all directions:&#8212; <I>&quot;Highlander ahoy! Cast off your bowline, and
+sheer alongside the Neptune!&quot;&#8212;&quot;Neptune ahoy! get out a stern-line, and
+sheer alongside the Trident!&quot;&#8212;&quot;Trident ahoy! get out a bowline, and
+drop astern of the Undaunted!&quot; </I>And so it runs round like a shock of
+electricity; touch one, and you touch all. This kind of work irritates
+and exasperates the sailors to the last degree; but it is only one of
+the unavoidable inconveniences of inclosed docks, which are outweighed
+by innumerable advantages.</P>
+<P>Just without the water-gate, is a basin, always connecting with the
+open river, through a narrow entrance between pierheads. This basin
+forms a sort of ante-chamber to the dock itself, where vessels lie
+waiting their turn to enter. During a storm, the necessity of this
+basin is obvious; for it would be impossible to <I>&quot;dock&quot; </I>a ship
+under full headway from a voyage across the ocean. From the turbulent
+waves, she first glides into the ante-chamber between the pier-heads
+and from thence into the docks.</P>
+<P>Concerning the cost of the docks, I can only state, that the <I>
+King's Dock, </I>comprehending but a comparatively small area, was
+completed at an expense of some &pound;20,000.</P>
+<P>Our old ship-keeper, a Liverpool man by birth, who had long followed
+the seas, related a curious story concerning this dock. One of the
+ships which carried over troops from England to Ireland in King
+William's war, in 1688, entered the King's Dock on the first day of its
+being opened in 1788, after an interval of just one century. She was a
+dark little brig, called the <I>Port-a-Ferry. </I>And probably, as her
+timbers must have been frequently renewed in the course of a hundred
+years, the name alone could have been all that was left of her at the
+time. A paved area, very wide, is included within the walls; and along
+the edge of the quays are ranges of iron sheds, intended as a temporary
+shelter for the goods unladed from the shipping. Nothing can exceed the
+bustle and activity displayed along these quays during the day; bales,
+crates, boxes, and cases are being tumbled about by thousands of
+laborers; trucks are corning and going; dock-masters are shouting;
+sailors of all nations are singing out at their ropes; and all this
+commotion is greatly increased by the resoundings from the lofty walls
+that hem in the din.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_34">XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND
+GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS</A></H3>
+<P>Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a
+walled town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small
+archipelago, an epitome of the world, where all the nations of
+Christendom, and even those of Heathendom, are represented. For, in
+itself, each ship is an island, a floating colony of the tribe to which
+it belongs.</P>
+<P>Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in
+the collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the
+globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts. Canada and
+New Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak;
+Norway her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for
+Honduras and Cam-peachy, is seen at his post by the wheel. Here, under
+the beneficent sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries
+embrace; and yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.</P>
+<P>A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the
+spacious and liberal plan of the <I>Astor House. </I>Here ships are
+lodged at a moderate charge, and payment is not demanded till the time
+of departure. Here they are comfortably housed and provided for;
+sheltered from all weathers and secured from all calamities. For I can
+hardly credit a story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales,
+ships lying in the very middle of the docks have lost their
+top-gallant-masts. Whatever the toils and hardships encountered on the
+voyage, whether they come from Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here
+their sufferings are ended, and they take their ease in their watery
+inn.</P>
+<P>I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in
+Prince's Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future
+prospects in life. Some had just arrived from the most distant ports,
+worn, battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o&#8212;spruce, gay,
+and brilliant, in readiness for sea.</P>
+<P>Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor. A black brig from
+Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid,
+thrifty-looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French
+hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck
+elastic from much dancing.</P>
+<P>On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a
+seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart's or Delmonico's
+afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board
+its live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be
+tending their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.</P>
+<P>I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little
+salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a
+pilot-boat, but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails,
+which looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard.
+These little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for
+ships bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of
+those lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the
+carcass of a black buffalo.</P>
+<P>When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the
+water; and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen
+them flying through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and
+sail, and a man at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured
+under hatches. </P>
+<P>It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of
+any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of
+an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as
+much of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his
+craft was none of the largest, it was subject to <I>him; </I>and though
+his crew might only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he
+achieved a triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the
+victories of Alexander.</P>
+<P>These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charming-est,
+most delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an
+old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses
+placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small
+firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless,
+the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being
+indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and
+narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the
+skipper and his family. Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife,
+seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door,
+engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his
+hair, as he kneeled before her. And once, while marveling how a couple
+like this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy
+irruption of cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they
+came rolling forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.</P>
+<P>Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a
+salt-drogher, and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor,
+who kept house all alone. I found him a very sociable, comfortable old
+fellow, who had an eye to having things cozy around him. It was in the
+evening; and he invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there
+we sat together like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.</P>
+<P>&quot;He, he,&quot; he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little
+cask of beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet&#8212;&quot;You see,
+Jack, I keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself.
+Just before going to bed, it ain't bad to take a nightcap, you know;
+eh! Jack?&#8212;here now, smack your lips over that, my boy&#8212;have a
+pipe?&#8212;but stop, let's to supper first.&quot;</P>
+<P>So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and
+groping in it awhile, and addressing it with&#8212;<I>&quot;What cheer here, what
+cheer?&quot; </I>at last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and
+a jar of butter. And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table,
+the pitcher of beer in the center. &quot;Why that's but a two legged table,&quot;
+said I, &quot;let's make it four.&quot;</P>
+<P>So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.</P>
+<P>He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did
+my soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and
+sparkling on his nut-brown beard. He looked so like a great mug of ale,
+that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.</P>
+<P>&quot;Now Jack,&quot; said he, when supper was over, &quot;now Jack, my boy, do you
+smoke?&#8212;Well then, load away.&quot; And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
+tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
+of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
+notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
+fog.</P>
+<P>&quot;He, he, my boy,&quot; then said he&#8212;&quot;I don't never have any bugs here, I
+tell ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And where may you sleep?&quot; said I, looking round, and seeing no sign
+of a bed.</P>
+<P>&quot;Sleep?&quot; says he, &quot;why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
+counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Very funny,&quot; says I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Have some more ale?&quot; says he; &quot;plenty more.&quot; &quot;No more, thank you,&quot;
+says I; &quot;I guess I'll go;&quot; for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale,
+I began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote
+me for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.</P>
+<P>&quot;Now, don't go,&quot; said he; &quot;don't go, my boy; don't go out into the
+damp; take an old Christian's advice,&quot; laying his hand on my shoulder;
+&quot;it won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and
+get broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping
+off for a nice little nap.&quot;</P>
+<P>But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
+departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
+interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the
+large New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every
+thing comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
+infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
+middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
+mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
+one ship.</P>
+<P>Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on
+the forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their
+fine ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
+rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
+would think you were in a cathedral.</P>
+<P>They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch,
+sing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious
+custom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before
+them, as they hie to the land of the stranger.</P>
+<P>And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly
+and valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
+census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
+the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
+wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
+hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.</P>
+<P>There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America
+has been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish
+the prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all
+nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a
+drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.
+Be he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who
+scoffs at an American, calls his own brother <I>Raca, </I>and stands in
+danger of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a
+bigoted Hebrew nationality&#8212;whose blood has been debased in the attempt
+to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.
+No: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand
+noble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a
+world; for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like
+Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.</P>
+<P>For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any
+Romulus and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the
+universal paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and
+Homer and Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much
+the world's as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all
+nations we divide our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all
+tribes and people are forming into one federated whole; and there is a
+future which shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to
+the old hearthstone in Eden.</P>
+<P>The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout
+before Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead,
+that first struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's
+Paradise. Not a Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good
+pleasure, and in the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown,
+and the harvest must come; and our children's children, on the world's
+jubilee morning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then
+shall the curse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the
+language they shall speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen,
+and Danes, and Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the
+Mediterranean, and in the regions round about; Italians, and Indians,
+and Moors; there shall appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_35">XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY</A></H3>
+<P>Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me
+more than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a <I>&quot;country ship,&quot; </I>which is
+the name bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India.
+Forty years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the
+world; and they still exceed the generality. They are built of the
+celebrated teak wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, <I>
+&quot;the King of the Oaks.&quot; </I>The Irrawaddy had just arrived from
+Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton. She was manned by forty or fifty
+Lascars, the native seamen of India, who seemed to be immediately
+governed by a countryman of theirs of a higher caste. While his
+inferiors went about in strips of white linen, this dignitary was
+arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace, a cocked hat, and
+drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled by his bare feet.</P>
+<P>In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in
+flagellating the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which
+long practice had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped
+away with the tackle-rope, elastic as cats.</P>
+<P>One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
+accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently
+pushed it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of
+my motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very
+considerately let me pass.</P>
+<P>I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
+dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of <I>
+kayar, </I>or cocoa-nut fiber.</P>
+<P>The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
+Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
+&quot;kids&quot; full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
+they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for
+quite another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in
+Hindostanee, but I found that several of them could also speak very
+good English. They were a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was
+informed made excellent seamen, though ill adapted to stand the
+hardships of northern voyaging.</P>
+<P>They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
+Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
+met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
+violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
+more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.</P>
+<P>I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the
+loss of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they
+would never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes,
+even in the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer
+would about the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.</P>
+<P>The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
+mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
+where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
+heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
+idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
+the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.</P>
+<P>As if to symbolize this state of things, the <I>&quot;fancy piece&quot; </I>
+astern comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and
+a miter; while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a
+figure-head&#8212;a dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a
+switchy-looking tail.</P>
+<P>After her cargo was discharged, which was done &quot;to the sound of
+flutes and soft recorders&quot;&#8212;something as work is done in the navy to
+the music of the boatswain's pipe&#8212;the Lascars were set to <I>
+&quot;stripping the ship&quot; </I>that is, to sending down all her spars and
+ropes.</P>
+<P>At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
+drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars
+hopped about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless,
+showing much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their
+work.</P>
+<P>Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to
+see this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds
+of the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
+strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
+the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
+old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
+even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
+seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
+they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
+Zoological Gardens.</P>
+<P>One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
+through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
+wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as
+the regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on
+board his vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the
+odor from it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied <I>&quot;Joggerry,&quot; </I>
+which is a species of weed, used in place of tobacco.</P>
+<P>Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative,
+like most smokers, I sat down by <I>Dattabdool-mans, as </I>he called
+himself, and we fell into conversation. So instructive was his
+discourse, that when we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of
+knowledge. Indeed, it is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this.
+He knows things you never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man
+from the moon&#8212;wholly strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn
+romance, or gain an insight into things quaint, curious, .and
+marvelous, drop your books of travel, and take a stroll along the docks
+of a great commercial port. Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe
+himself among the crowds of mariners from all parts of the globe.</P>
+<P>But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon
+which I and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give
+his account of the <I>teakwood </I>and <I>kayar rope, </I>concerning
+which things I was curious, and sought information.</P>
+<P>The <I>&quot;sagoon&quot; </I>as he called the tree which produces the teak,
+grows in its greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence
+large quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of
+another kind of wood, the <I>&quot;sissor,&quot; </I>which supplies most of the <I>
+&quot;shin-logs,&quot; </I>or &quot;knees,&quot; and crooked timbers in the <I>country
+ships. </I>The sagoon grows to an immense size; sometimes there is
+fifty feet of trunk, three feet through, before a single bough is put
+forth. Its leaves are very large; and to convey some idea of them, my
+Lascar likened them to elephants' ears. He said a purple dye was
+extracted from them, for the purpose of staining cottons and silks. The
+wood is specifically heavier than water; it is easily worked, and
+extremely strong and durable. But its chief merit lies in resisting the
+action of the salt water, and the attacks of insects; which resistance
+is caused by its containing a resinous oil called <I>&quot;poonja.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built
+by the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted,
+surpassed the European artisans.</P>
+<P>The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the <I>kayar, </I>
+of which it is composed, is now getting into use both in England and
+America, as well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar
+friend's account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be
+uninteresting.</P>
+<P>In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia.
+The cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but
+partially ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly,
+with both hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the
+ground. In this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day.
+But the <I>kayar </I>is not made from the husk, as might be supposed,
+but from the rind of the nut; which, after being long soaked in water,
+is beaten with mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this
+being dried in the sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar
+substance. The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes,
+extremely well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the
+running rigging of a ship; while the same causes, united with its great
+strength and buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and
+hawsers.</P>
+<P>But the elasticity of the <I>kayar </I>ill fits it for the shrouds
+and standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
+Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the
+Lascar told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
+standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
+loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
+to this circumstance.</P>
+<P>After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
+spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her <I>kayar </I>shrouds with
+hempen ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_36">XXXV. GALLIOTS,
+COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL</A></H3>
+<P>Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
+Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
+high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
+traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked
+hat among modish beavers.</P>
+<P>The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and
+the northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt
+seas in this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition
+to these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.</P>
+<P>They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks
+and spars, so that all over it resembles the <I>&quot;bright side&quot; </I>or
+polished <I>streak, </I>usually banding round an American ship.</P>
+<P>Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of
+a well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much
+wax and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well;
+but on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they
+make leeway at a sad rate.</P>
+<P>Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly
+would I gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant,
+ere a still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.</P>
+<P>Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of
+Guinea. In appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black,
+clipper-built about the bows, and her decks in a state of most
+piratical disorder.</P>
+<P>She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
+was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran,
+condemned by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It
+was an antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns,
+anchors, eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those
+of a tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's
+head; and by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a
+human ear; and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the
+concussions it had heard.</P>
+<P>The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
+that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
+Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
+mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
+ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
+the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
+particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese
+cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
+memorandum-book in hand.</P>
+<P>The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
+shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and
+hobbled about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a
+deal of swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
+reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.</P>
+<P>This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted
+into a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple
+took the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of
+the steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I
+used to see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading
+his Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the <I>
+muezzin </I>or cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would
+call the strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on
+his own account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but
+muster round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war.
+This old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times,
+and found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
+went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
+allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell
+of the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which
+I ever experienced.</P>
+<P>The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks,
+form one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen
+visiting Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as
+very few of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they
+might pass them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a
+Sunday, address them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or
+wherever they can procure an audience.</P>
+<P>Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
+congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
+myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
+globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
+Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
+full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
+heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
+like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
+precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
+undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
+fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
+to be pressed home by plain facts.</P>
+<P>And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
+clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
+which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
+succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
+vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to
+the ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged
+upon. And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman
+addressing a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes
+and alleys in the neighborhood.</P>
+<P>Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the
+reverend clergy is like their divine Master's;&#8212;not to bring the
+righteous, but sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the
+converted and comfortable congregations, before whom they have
+ministered year after year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the
+infected centers and hearts of vice: <I>then </I>indeed, would they
+find a strong enemy to cope with; and a victory gained over <I>him, </I>
+would entitle them to a conqueror's wreath. Better to save one sinner
+from an obvious vice that is destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten
+thousand saints. And as from every corner, in Catholic towns, the
+shrines of Holy Mary and the Child Jesus perpetually remind the
+commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so should Protestant pulpits be
+founded in the market-places, and at street corners, where the men of
+God might be heard by all of His children.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_37">XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST.
+NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE</A></H3>
+<P>The floating chapel recalls to mind the <I>&quot;Old Church,&quot; </I>well
+known to the seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It
+stands very near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the
+town's people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the
+best preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.</P>
+<P>Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of
+worship on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of
+Walton was a <I>chapel-of-ease; </I>though from the straight backed
+pews, there could have been but little comfort taken in it.</P>
+<P>In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
+Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
+offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
+voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
+delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
+arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it;
+something like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow
+Bells. <I>&quot;Wettingborough! Wettingborough! you must not forget to go to
+church, Wettingborough! Don't forget, Wettingborough! Wettingborough!
+don't forget.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
+every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
+illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
+custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.</P>
+<P>What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
+what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
+which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
+grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
+swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
+thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
+but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
+multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing
+the death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
+noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
+retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
+grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
+one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
+these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
+inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
+death:&#8212;</P>
+<center>
+<B>HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER.</B>
+</center>
+<P>For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
+indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
+Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to
+the Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall
+in the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
+Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
+Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
+prison and stable; when, no doubt, another <I>&quot;sumptuous stall&quot; </I>was
+erected for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.</P>
+<P>In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in
+Paris, where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by
+their friends, or till buried at the public charge.</P>
+<P>From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
+always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
+used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
+upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
+opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
+of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
+upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
+headstone.</P>
+<P>I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of
+persons falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a
+less amount if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old
+men and women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after
+bodies. I observed them principally early in the morning, when they
+issued from their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
+rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
+the night-harvest has ripened.</P>
+<P>There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be
+rendered merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and
+hearse-drivers, get their living from the dead; and in times of plague
+most thrive. And these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses
+to keep from going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the
+most wretched of starvelings.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_38">XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN
+LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY </A></H3>
+<P>The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity
+of the docks are many very painful sights.</P>
+<P>In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
+generally passed through a narrow street called &quot;Launcelott's-Hey,&quot;
+lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
+rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
+old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.</P>
+<P>Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which
+seemed to come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked
+side-walk where I stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting
+the mid-day into twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and
+could almost have run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the
+low, hopeless, endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I
+advanced to an opening which communicated downward with deep tiers of
+cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet
+below the walk, crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed
+over, was the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to
+her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward
+her, one on each side. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or
+dead. They made no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault
+came that soul-sickening wail.</P>
+<P>I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and
+near; but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children
+lifted its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes,
+and lay motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but
+let fall her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How
+they had crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had
+crawled to die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for
+death was so stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I
+almost regarded them as already no more. I stood looking down on them,
+while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right
+had any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like
+this were to be seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make
+a man-hater of a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were
+they not human beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and
+ears like any queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with
+blood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life.</P>
+<P>At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
+there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
+rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
+sold for a trifle.</P>
+<P>I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons
+I had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
+then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
+strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
+instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
+who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
+beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
+errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be
+taken. &quot;Yes,&quot; she replied, &quot;to the church-yard.&quot; I said she was alive,
+and not dead.</P>
+<P>&quot;Then she'll never die,&quot; was the rejoinder. &quot;She's been down there
+these three days, with nothing to eat;&#8212;that I know myself.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;She desarves it,&quot; said an old hag, who was just placing on her
+crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter
+off, &quot;that Betsy Jennings desarves it&#8212;was she ever married? tell me
+that.&quot;</P>
+<P>Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street;
+and soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman
+and the girls.</P>
+<P>&quot;It's none of my business, Jack,&quot; said he. &quot;I don't belong to that
+street.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Who does then?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a
+Yankee?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes,&quot; said I, &quot;but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you
+say so.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
+these matters to the town.&quot;</P>
+<P>I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they
+would not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of
+the way, in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three
+outcasts, hiding away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.</P>
+<P>Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but
+this time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet
+stood irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered
+window in a loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned
+to the man, a sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I
+pointed down into the vault.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well,&quot; said he, &quot;what of it?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Can't we get them out?&quot; said I, &quot;haven't you some place in your
+warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;You're crazy, boy,&quot; said he; &quot;do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
+want their warehouse turned into a hospital?&quot;</P>
+<P>I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I
+had seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
+girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
+them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
+away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough)
+without looking after the whole neighborhood.</P>
+<P>Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up
+old Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called <I>
+Brandy-Nan; </I>and begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she
+had nothing better, to take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm
+of swearing at the miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I
+then stepped into the room where our dinner was being spread; and
+waiting till the girl had gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese
+from a stand, and thrusting it into the bosom of my frock, left the
+house. Hurrying to the lane, I dropped the food down into the vault.
+One of the girls caught at it convulsively, but fell back, apparently
+fainting; the sister pushed the other's arm aside, and took the bread
+in her hand; but with a weak uncertain grasp like an infant's. She
+placed it to her mouth; but letting it fall again, murmuring faintly
+something like &quot;water.&quot; The woman did not stir; her head was bowed
+over, just as I had first seen her.</P>
+<P>Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little
+sailor tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept
+it refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
+boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to
+the ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I
+hurried to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen
+running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house;
+and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day,
+filled it with water.</P>
+<P>With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
+difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
+it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
+stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
+with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
+woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
+and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
+she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
+clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
+there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to
+withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager
+little babe&#8212;the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its
+face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes
+looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.</P>
+<P>The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls
+who they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly,
+muttering something that could not be understood.</P>
+<P>The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
+deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
+of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
+street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
+than that, might die in seclusion.</P>
+<P>I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again,
+almost repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only
+tend to prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for
+die they must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to
+help them. I hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that
+occurred to me as I stood there; but it was this-I felt an almost
+irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting
+an end to their horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I
+think, had I not been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew
+that the law, which would let them perish of themselves without giving
+them one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in
+convicting him who should so much as offer to relieve them from their
+miserable existence.</P>
+<P>The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and
+still met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on
+each side, and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her
+head bowed. The first evening I did not see the bread that I had
+dropped down in the morning; but the second evening, the bread I had
+dropped that morning remained untouched. On the third morning the smell
+that came from the vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I
+had accosted before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him
+that the persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better
+have them removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added,
+that it was not his street.</P>
+<P>When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
+guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to
+whom I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that
+the Dock Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not
+the right place to lodge my information.</P>
+<P>I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the
+ship; but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
+Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of
+the women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.</P>
+<P>I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone;
+but my prayer was answered&#8212;they were dead, departed, and at peace.</P>
+<P>But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the
+pale, shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds,
+and how do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of
+Lazarus again, that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and
+forlorn. Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen,
+and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains,
+are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in
+the house of the dead?</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_39">XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS</A></H3>
+<P>I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
+more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
+and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
+of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
+return to the docks.</P>
+<P>The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
+empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
+day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the
+heaps of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.</P>
+<P>As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a
+rope yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New
+York, inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and,
+moreover, as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and
+worthless dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish
+accumulated in the appointed receptacles for depositing it within the
+walls is extremely large, and is constantly receiving new accessions
+from every vessel that unlades at the quays.</P>
+<P>Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
+wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the
+dirt, and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk.
+Their findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
+immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to
+collect, and sell on his own account, all the condemned &quot;old junk&quot; of
+the vessel to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in
+the buckets of rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns
+as possible.</P>
+<P>In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of
+pork-rinds and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a
+six months' voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from
+the sale, and in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be
+imagined, then, how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers
+be, to ransack heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.</P>
+<P>Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in
+the streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the
+remarkable army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of
+the day.</P>
+<P>At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue
+in crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This
+hour is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves
+against the outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone
+to excite the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed
+through this long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that
+such an array of misery could be furnished by any town in the world.</P>
+<P>Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
+showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
+shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
+this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.</P>
+<P>Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age;
+young girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital;
+sturdy men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their
+mouths; young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding
+up puny babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the
+scene.</P>
+<P>But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice,
+or art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
+such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.</P>
+<P>I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
+huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
+was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
+machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
+with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
+silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
+wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
+his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
+finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
+which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
+chalk:&#8212;</P>
+<P>
+<I>&quot;I have had no food for three days; My wife and children are dying.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>
+Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed,
+showing an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.</P>
+<P>In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
+flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
+covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.</P>
+<P>But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
+destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
+wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
+the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
+catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, <I>
+for Heaven's sake,</I> and <I>for God's sake, </I>and <I>for Christ's
+sake, </I>beseeching of you but <I>one ha'penny. </I>If you so much as
+glanced your eye on one of them, even for an instant, it was perceived
+like lightning, and the person never left your side until you turned
+into another street, or satisfied his demands. Thus, at least, it was
+with the sailors; though I observed that the beggars treated the town's
+people differently.</P>
+<P>I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution
+which three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit
+had made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of
+them had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some
+inducement to infest the dock walls as they did.</P>
+<P>As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
+suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case
+of an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and
+rain, occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always
+passing. He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg,
+and dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
+continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
+to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
+jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
+the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
+poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
+old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.</P>
+<P>The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them
+greeted him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for
+many long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg
+at the battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his
+wooden one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship,
+the Victory.</P>
+<P>Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets,
+and claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these
+pretensions demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see
+through their disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.</P>
+<P>As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the
+docks as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought
+of my utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up
+a prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the
+docks into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them,
+man and woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in
+the garden.</P>
+<P>Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
+part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
+as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
+Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
+torment indeed.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_40">XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN</A>
+</H3>
+<P>The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at
+noon, in a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are
+continually encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor
+boarding-houses are kept.</P>
+<P>In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
+numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
+population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them.
+Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix
+with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
+groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
+distinguished by gilded emblems outside&#8212;an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
+windlass, or a dolphin&#8212;proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
+from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
+laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
+strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
+stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
+invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
+the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.</P>
+<P>There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of
+these streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of
+mendicants from other parts of the town.</P>
+<P>Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was
+led up and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little
+saucer to receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted,
+certain words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing
+back his head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His
+chant was a lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced
+the same effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation
+to the Sun did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was
+something like this, drawn out in an endless groan&#8212;</P>
+<P>&quot;Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he
+see sun nor moon&#8212;no more see sun nor moon!&quot; And thus would he pass
+through the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance,
+holding his hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and
+then leaving him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting
+coppers.</P>
+<P>But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
+sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
+printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
+man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
+middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
+and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
+thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
+singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
+it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
+performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that
+in falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
+injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.</P>
+<P>I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common
+character. He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in
+terrific stories of pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical
+enormities. He was a monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate
+Calendar of the robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in
+the sailor quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon
+kindred subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them
+printed for sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at
+this business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the
+dock to go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the <I>Old
+Fort Tavern; </I>and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of
+the town had just been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor
+from Cadiz. The murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes,
+and the very next morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm,
+was singing the tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing
+round printed copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought
+up by the seamen.</P>
+<P>This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the
+events which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
+frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
+which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
+Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
+which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
+and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
+murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
+this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
+enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
+sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked,
+from the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing,
+gambling, pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty
+for the infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that
+I should enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and
+resurrectionists are almost saints and angels to them. They seem
+leagued together, a company of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing
+all the malice to mankind in their power. With sulphur and brimstone
+they ought to be burned out of their arches like vermin.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_41">XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS,
+TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS</A></H3>
+<P>As I wish to group together what fell under my observation
+concerning the Liverpool docks, and the scenes roundabout, I will try
+to throw into this chapter various minor things that I recall.</P>
+<P>The advertisements of pauperism chalked upon the flagging round the
+dock walls, are singularly accompanied by a multitude of quite
+different announcements, placarded upon the walls themselves. They are
+principally notices of the approaching departure of <I>&quot;superior,
+fast-sailing, coppered and copper-fastened ships,&quot; </I>for the United
+States, Canada, New South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with
+these, are the advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the
+judicious seamen where he can procure of the best and the cheapest;
+together with ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks
+and empirics who prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus
+publicly giving notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable
+Sangrados and pretended Samaritans hire a parcel of shabby
+workhouse-looking knaves, whose business consists in haunting the dock
+walls about meal times, and silently thrusting mysterious little
+billets&#8212;duodecimo editions of the larger advertisements&#8212;into the
+astonished hands of the tars.</P>
+<P>They do this, with such <I>a </I>mysterious hang-dog wink; such a
+sidelong air; such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that,
+at first, you are almost tempted to knock them down for their pains.</P>
+<P>Conspicuous among the notices on the walls, are huge Italic
+inducements to all seamen disgusted with the merchant service, to
+accept a round bounty, and embark in her Majesty's navy.</P>
+<P>In the British armed marine, in time of peace, they do not ship men
+for the general service, as in the American navy; but for particular
+ships, going upon particular cruises. Thus, the frigate Thetis may be
+announced as about to sail under the command of that fine old sailor,
+and noble father to his crew, <I>Lord George Flagstaff.</I></P>
+<P>Similar announcements may be seen upon the walls concerning
+enlistments in the army. And never did auctioneer dilate with more
+rapture upon the charms of some country-seat put up for sale, than the
+authors of these placards do, upon the beauty and salubrity of the
+distant climes, for which the regiments wanting recruits are about to
+sail. Bright lawns, vine-clad hills, endless meadows of verdure, here
+make up the landscape; and adventurous young gentlemen, fond of travel,
+are informed, that here is a chance for them to see the world at their
+leisure, and be paid for enjoying themselves into the bargain. The
+regiments for India are promised plantations among valleys of palms;
+while to those destined for New Holland, a novel sphere of life and
+activity is opened; and the companies bound to Canada and Nova Scotia
+are lured by tales of summer suns, that ripen grapes in December. No
+word of war is breathed; hushed is the clang of arms in these
+announcements; and the sanguine recruit is almost tempted to expect
+that pruning-hooks, instead of swords, will be the weapons he will
+wield.</P>
+<P>Alas! is not this the cruel stratagem of Brace at Bannockburn, who
+decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For
+instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit
+encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny
+bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry upon the bleak
+ramparts of Quebec, a lofty mark for the bitter blasts from Baffin's
+Bay and Labrador. There, as his eye sweeps down the St. Lawrence, whose
+every billow is bound for the main that laves the shore of Old England;
+as he thinks of his long term of enlistment, which sells him to the
+army as Doctor Faust sold himself to the devil; how the poor fellow
+must groan in his grief, and call to mind the church-yard stile, and
+his Mary.</P>
+<P>These army announcements are well fitted to draw recruits in
+Liverpool. Among the vast number of emigrants, who daily arrive from
+all parts of Britain to embark for the United States or the colonies,
+there are many young men, who, upon arriving at Liverpool, find
+themselves next to penniless; or, at least, with only enough money to
+carry them over the sea, without providing for future contingencies.
+How easily and naturally, then, may such youths be induced to enter
+upon the military life, which promises them a free passage to the most
+distant and flourishing colonies, and certain pay for doing nothing;
+besides holding out hopes of vineyards and farms, to be verified in the
+fullness of time. For in a moneyless youth, the decision to leave home
+at all, and embark upon a long voyage to reside in a remote clime, is a
+piece of adventurousness only one removed from the spirit that prompts
+the army recruit to enlist.</P>
+<P>I never passed these advertisements, surrounded by crowds of gaping
+emigrants, without thinking of rattraps.</P>
+<P>Besides the mysterious agents of the quacks, who privily thrust
+their little notes into your hands, folded up like a powder; there are
+another set of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; 'who
+make strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had
+some state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of
+the commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints
+and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a
+pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat
+of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look
+completely indifferent, as to the surrounding universe; how they
+saunter off, as if lazily wending their way to an affectionate wife and
+family.</P>
+<P>The first time one of these mysterious personages accosted me, I
+fancied him crazy, and hurried forward to avoid him. But arm in arm
+with my shadow, he followed after; till amazed at his conduct, I turned
+round and paused.</P>
+<P>He was a little, shabby, old man, with a forlorn looking coat and
+hat; and his hand was fumbling in his vest pocket, as if to take out a
+card with his address. Seeing me stand still he made a sign toward a
+dark angle of the wall, near which we were; when taking him for a
+cunning foot-pad, I again wheeled about, and swiftly passed on. But
+though I did not look round, I <I>felt </I>him following me still; so
+once more I stopped. The fellow now assumed so mystic and admonitory an
+air, that I began to fancy he came to me on some warning errand; that
+perhaps a plot had been laid to blow up the Liverpool docks, and he was
+some Monteagle bent upon accomplishing my flight. I was determined to
+see what he was. With all my eyes about me, I followed him into the
+arch of a warehouse; when he gazed round furtively, and silently
+showing me a ring, whispered, &quot;You may have it for a shilling; it's
+pure gold-I found it in the gutter-hush! don't speak! give me the
+money, and it's yours.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;My friend,&quot; said I, &quot;I don't trade in these articles; I don't want
+your ring.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Don't you? Then take, that,&quot; he whispered, in an intense hushed
+passion; and I fell flat from a blow on the chest, while this infamous
+jeweler made away with himself out of sight. This business transaction
+was conducted with a counting-house promptitude that astonished me.</P>
+<P>After that, I shunned these scoundrels like the leprosy: and the
+next time I was pertinaciously followed, I stopped, and in a loud
+voice, pointed out the man to the passers-by; upon which he absconded;
+rapidly turning up into sight a pair of obliquely worn and battered
+boot-heels. I could not help thinking that these sort of fellows, so
+given to running away upon emergencies, must furnish a good deal of
+work to the shoemakers; as they might, also, to the growers of hemp and
+gallows-joiners.</P>
+<P>Belonging to a somewhat similar fraternity with these irritable
+merchants of brass jewelry just mentioned, are the peddlers of
+Sheffield razors, mostly boys, who are hourly driven out of the dock
+gates by the police; nevertheless, they contrive to saunter back, and
+board the vessels, going among the sailors and privately exhibiting
+their wares. Incited by the extreme cheapness of one of the razors, and
+the gilding on the case containing it, a shipmate of mine purchased it
+on the spot for a commercial equivalent of the price, in tobacco. On
+the following Sunday, he used that razor; and the result was a pair of
+tormented and tomahawked cheeks, that almost required a surgeon to
+dress them. In old times, by the way, it was not a bad thought, that
+suggested the propriety of a barber's practicing surgery in connection
+with the chin-harrowing vocation. Another class of knaves, who practice
+upon the sailors in Liverpool, are the pawnbrokers, inhabiting little
+rookeries among the narrow lanes adjoining the dock. I was astonished
+at die multitude of gilded balls in these streets, emblematic of their
+calling. They were generally next neighbors to the gilded grapes over
+the spirit-vaults; and no doubt, mutually to facilitate business
+operations, some of these establishments have connecting doors inside,
+so as to play their customers into each other's hands. I often saw
+sailors in a state of intoxication rushing from a spirit-vault into a
+pawnbroker's; stripping off their boots, hats, jackets, and
+neckerchiefs, and sometimes even their pantaloons on the spot, and
+offering to pawn them for a song. Of course such applications were
+never refused. But though on shore, at Liverpool, poor Jack finds more
+sharks than at sea, he himself is by no means exempt from practices,
+that do not savor of a rigid morality; at least according to law. In
+tobacco smuggling he is an adept: and when cool and collected, often
+manages to evade the Customs completely, and land goodly packages of
+the weed, which owing to the immense duties upon it in England,
+commands a very high price.</P>
+<P>As soon as we came to anchor in the river, before reaching the dock,
+three Custom-house underlings boarded us, and coming down into the
+forecastle, ordered the men to produce all the tobacco they had.
+Accordingly several pounds were brought forth.</P>
+<P>&quot;Is that all?&quot; asked the officers.</P>
+<P>&quot;All,&quot; said the men.</P>
+<P>&quot;We will see,&quot; returned the others.</P>
+<P>And without more ado, they emptied the chests right and left; tossed
+over the bunks and made a thorough search of the premises; but
+discovered nothing. The sailors were then given to understand, that
+while the ship lay in dock, the tobacco must remain in the cabin, under
+custody of the chief mate, who every morning would dole out to them one
+plug per head, as a security against their carrying it ashore.</P>
+<P>&quot;Very good,&quot; said the men.</P>
+<P>But several of them had secret places in the ship, from whence they
+daily drew pound after pound of tobacco, which they smuggled ashore in
+the manner following.</P>
+<P>When the crew went to meals, each man carried at least one plug in
+his pocket; <I>that </I>he had a right to; and as many more were hidden
+about his person as he dared. Among the great crowds pouring out of the
+dock-gates at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance
+of detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing
+by. And though these <I>&quot;Charlies&quot; </I>might suppose there were tobacco
+smugglers passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would
+be as hard, as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand
+darting under a ship's bows.</P>
+<P>Our forecastle was often visited by foreign sailors, who knowing we
+came from America, were anxious to purchase tobacco at a cheap rate;
+for in Liverpool it is about an American penny per pipe-full. Along the
+docks they sell an English pennyworth, put up in a little roll like
+confectioners' mottoes, with poetical lines, or instructive little
+moral precepts printed in red on the back.</P>
+<P>Among all the sights of the docks, the noble truck-horses are not
+the least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes,
+with such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put
+on by a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step,
+lifting their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not
+lay stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they
+are guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at
+a whisper. So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these
+fine truck-horses look&#8212;so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that
+often I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in
+contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I
+could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh;
+though I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their
+language, I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable
+information touching the docks, where they passed the whole of their
+dignified lives.</P>
+<P>There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you
+mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye,
+be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the
+mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs
+and horses. They see through us at a glance. And after all, what is a
+horse but a species of four-footed dumb man, in a leathern overall, who
+happens to live upon oats, and toils for his masters, half-requited or
+abused, like the biped hewers of wood and drawers of water? But there
+is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a
+horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. As for those
+majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think
+of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their
+holy hides.</P>
+<P>It is wonderful what loads their majesties will condescend to draw.
+The truck is a large square platform, on four low wheels; and upon this
+the lumpers pile bale after bale of cotton, as if they were filling a
+large warehouse, and yet a procession of three of these horses will
+tranquilly walk away with the whole.</P>
+<P>The truckmen themselves are almost as singular a race as their
+animals. Like the Judiciary in England, they wear gowns, &#8212;not of the
+same cut and color though,&#8212;which reach below their knees; and from the
+racket they make on the pavements with their hob-nailed brogans, you
+would think they patronized the same shoemaker with their horses. I
+never could get any thing out of these truckmen. They are a reserved,
+sober-sided set, who, with all possible solemnity, march at the head of
+their animals; now and then gently advising them to sheer to the right
+or the left, in order to avoid some passing vehicle. Then spending so
+much of their lives in the high-bred company of their horses, seems to
+have mended their manners and improved their taste, besides imparting
+to them something of the dignity of their animals; but it has also
+given to them a sort of refined and uncomplaining aversion to human
+society.</P>
+<P>There are many strange stories told of the truck-horse. Among others
+is the following: There was a parrot, that from having long been
+suspended in its cage from a low window fronting a dock, had learned to
+converse pretty fluently in the language of the stevedores and
+truckmen. One day a truckman left his vehicle standing on the quay,
+with its back to the water. It was noon, when an interval of silence
+falls upon the docks; and Poll, seeing herself face to face with the
+horse, and having a mind for a chat, cried out to him, <I>&quot;Back! back!
+back!&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Backward went the horse, precipitating himself and truck into the
+water.</P>
+<P>Brunswick Dock, to the west of Prince's, is one of the most
+interesting to be seen. Here lie the various black steamers (so unlike
+the American boats, since they have to navigate the boisterous Narrow
+Seas) plying to all parts of the three kingdoms. Here you see vast
+quantities of produce, imported from starving Ireland; here you see the
+decks turned into pens for oxen and sheep; and often, side by side with
+these inclosures, Irish deck-passengers, thick as they can stand,
+seemingly penned in just like the cattle. It was the beginning of July
+when the Highlander arrived in port; and the Irish laborers were daily
+coming over by thousands, to help harvest the English crops.</P>
+<P>One morning, going into the town, I heard a tramp, as of a drove of
+buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of
+the street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged
+from Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray,
+corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust.
+Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption
+of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the
+country; and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the
+corporation, took the middle of the street, to save the side-walks.</P>
+<P>&quot;Sing <I>Langolee, and the Lakes of Killarney,&quot; </I>cried one
+fellow, tossing his stick into the air, as he danced in his brogans at
+the head of the rabble. And so they went! capering on, merry as pipers.</P>
+<P>When I thought of the multitudes of Irish that annually land on the
+shores of the United States and Canada, and, to my surprise, witnessed
+the additional multitudes embarking from Liverpool to New Holland; and
+when, added to all this, I daily saw these hordes of laborers,
+descending, thick as locusts, upon the English corn-fields; I could not
+help marveling at the fertility of an island, which, though her crop of
+potatoes may fail, never yet failed in bringing her annual crop of men
+into the world.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_42">XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HITHER AND
+THITHER</A></H3>
+<P>I do not know that any other traveler would think it worth while to
+mention such a thing; but the fact is, that during the summer months in
+Liverpool, the days are exceedingly lengthy; and the first evening I
+found myself walking in the twilight after nine o'clock, I tried to
+recall my astronomical knowledge, in order to account satisfactorily
+for so curious a phenomenon. But the days in summer, and the nights in
+winter, are just as long in Liverpool as at Cape Horn; for the latitude
+of the two places very nearly corresponds.</P>
+<P>These Liverpool days, however, were a famous thing for me; who,
+thereby, was enabled after my day's work aboard the Highlander, to
+ramble about the town for several hours. After I had visited all the
+noted places I could discover, of those marked down upon my father's
+map, I began to extend my rovings indefinitely; forming myself into a
+committee of one, to investigate all accessible parts of the town;
+though so many years have elapsed, ere I have thought of bringing in my
+report.</P>
+<P>This was a great delight to me: for wherever I have been in the
+world, I have always taken a vast deal of lonely satisfaction in
+wandering about, up and down, among out-of-the-way streets and alleys,
+and speculating upon the strangers I have met. Thus, in Liverpool I
+used to pace along endless streets of dwelling-houses, looking at the
+names on the doors, admiring the pretty faces in the windows, and
+invoking a passing blessing upon the chubby children on the door-steps.
+I was stared at myself, to be sure: but what of that? We must give and
+take on such occasions. In truth, I and my shooting-jacket produced
+quite a sensation in Liverpool: and I have no doubt, that many a father
+of a family went home to his children with a curious story, about a
+wandering phenomenon they had encountered, traversing the side-walks
+that day. In the words of the old song, <I>&quot;I cared for nobody, no not
+I, and nobody cared for me.&quot; </I>I stared my fill with impunity, and
+took all stares myself in good part.</P>
+<P>Once I was standing in a large square, gaping at a splendid chariot
+drawn up at a portico. The glossy horses quivered with good-living, and
+so did the sumptuous calves of the gold-laced coachman and footmen in
+attendance. I was particularly struck with the red cheeks of these men:
+and the many evidences they furnished of their enjoying this meal with
+a wonderful relish.</P>
+<P>While thus standing, I all at once perceived, that the objects of my
+curiosity, were making me an object of their own; and that they were
+gazing at me, as if I were some unauthorized intruder upon the British
+soil. Truly, they had reason: for when I now think of the figure I must
+have cut in those days, I only marvel that, in my many strolls, my
+passport was not a thousand times demanded.</P>
+<P>Nevertheless, I was only a forlorn looking mortal among tens of
+thousands of rags and tatters. For in some parts of the town, inhabited
+by laborers, and poor people generally; I used to crowd my way through
+masses of squalid men, women, and children, who at this evening hour,
+in those quarters of Liverpool, seem to empty themselves into the
+street, and live there for the time. I had never seen any thing like it
+in New York. Often, I witnessed some curious, and many very sad scenes;
+and especially I remembered encountering a pale, ragged man, rushing
+along frantically, and striving to throw off his wife and children, who
+clung to his arms and legs; and, in God's name, conjured him not to
+desert them. He seemed bent upon rushing down to the water, and
+drowning himself, in some despair, and craziness of wretchedness. In
+these haunts, beggary went on before me wherever I walked, and dogged
+me unceasingly at the heels. Poverty, poverty, poverty, in almost
+endless vistas: and want and woe staggered arm in arm along these
+miserable streets.</P>
+<P>And here, I must not omit one thing, that struck me at the time. It
+was the absence of negroes; who in the large towns in the &quot;free states&quot;
+of America, almost always form a considerable portion of the destitute.
+But in these streets, not a negro was to be seen. All were whites; and
+with the exception of the Irish, were natives of the soil: even
+Englishmen; as much Englishmen, as the dukes in the House of Lords.
+This conveyed a strange feeling: and more than any thing else, reminded
+me that I was not in my own land. For <I>there, </I>such a being as a
+native beggar is almost unknown; and to be a born American citizen
+seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from
+the virtue of a vote.</P>
+<P>Speaking of negroes, recalls the looks of interest with which
+negro-sailors are regarded when they walk the Liverpool streets. In
+Liverpool indeed the negro steps with a prouder pace, and lifts his
+head like a man; for here, no such exaggerated feeling exists in
+respect to him, as in America. Three or four times, I encountered our
+black steward, dressed very handsomely, and walking arm in arm with a
+good-looking English woman. In New York, such a couple would have been
+mobbed in three minutes; and the steward would have been lucky to
+escape with whole limbs. Owing to the friendly reception extended to
+them, and the unwonted immunities they enjoy in Liverpool, the black
+cooks and stewards of American ships are very much attached to the
+place and like to make voyages to it.</P>
+<P>Being so young and inexperienced then, and unconsciously swayed in
+some degree by those local and social prejudices, that are the marring
+of most men, and from which, for the mass, there seems no possible
+escape; at first I was surprised that a colored man should be treated
+as he is in this town; but a little reflection showed that, after all,
+it was but recognizing his claims to humanity and normal equality; so
+that, in some things, we Americans leave to other countries the
+carrying out of the principle that stands at the head of our
+Declaration of Independence.</P>
+<P>During my evening strolls in the wealthier quarters, I was subject
+to a continual mortification. It was the humiliating fact, wholly
+unforeseen by me, that upon the whole, and barring the poverty and
+beggary, Liverpool, away from the docks, was very much such a place as
+New York. There were the same sort of streets pretty much; the same
+rows of houses with stone steps; the same kind of side-walks and curbs;
+and the same elbowing, heartless-looking crowd as ever.</P>
+<P>I came across the Leeds Canal, one afternoon; but, upon my word, no
+one could have told it from the Erie Canal at Albany. I went into St.
+John's Market on a Saturday night; and though it was strange enough to
+see that great roof supported by so many pillars, yet the most
+discriminating observer would not have been able to detect any
+difference between the articles exposed for sale, and the articles
+exhibited in Fulton Market, New York.</P>
+<P>I walked down Lord-street, peering into the jewelers' shops; but I
+thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that
+all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a
+nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to
+see beyond him.</P>
+<P>It is true, that I often thought of London's being only seven or
+eight hours' travel by railroad from where I was; and that <I>there, </I>
+surely, must be a world of wonders waiting my eyes: but more of London
+anon.</P>
+<P>Sundays were the days upon which I made my longest explorations. I
+rose bright and early, with my whole plan of operations in my head.
+First walking into some dock hitherto unexamined, and then to
+breakfast. Then a walk through the more fashionable streets, to see the
+people going to church; and then I myself went to church, selecting the
+goodliest edifice, and the tallest Kentuckian of a spire I could find.</P>
+<P>For I am an admirer of church architecture; and though, perhaps, the
+sums spent in erecting magnificent cathedrals might better go to the
+founding of charities, yet since these structures are built, those who
+disapprove of them in one sense, may as well have the benefit of them
+in another.</P>
+<P>It is a most Christian thing, and a matter most sweet to dwell upon
+and simmer over in solitude, that any poor sinner may go to church
+wherever he pleases; and that even St. Peter's in Rome is open to him,
+as to a cardinal; that St. Paul's in London is not shut against him;
+and that the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York, opens all her broad
+aisles to him, and will not even have doors and thresholds to her pews,
+the better to allure him by an unbounded invitation. I say, this
+consideration of the hospitality and democracy in churches, is a most
+Christian and charming thought. It speaks whole volumes of folios, and
+Vatican libraries, for Christianity; it is more eloquent, and goes
+farther home than all the sermons of Massillon, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley,
+and Archbishop Tillotson.</P>
+<P>Nothing daunted, therefore, by thinking of my being a stranger in
+the land; nothing daunted by the architectural superiority and
+costliness of any Liverpool church; or by the streams of silk dresses
+and fine broadcloth coats flowing into the aisles, I used humbly to
+present myself before the sexton, as a candidate for admission. He
+would stare a little, perhaps (one of them once hesitated), but in the
+end, what could he do but show me into a pew; not the most commodious
+of pews, to be sure; nor commandingly located; nor within very plain
+sight or hearing of the pulpit. No; it was remarkable, that there was
+always some confounded pillar or obstinate angle of the wall in the
+way; and I used to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held
+a secret meeting on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most
+inconvenient pew in the churches under their charge. However, they
+always gave me a seat of some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken
+bench in the open air of the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the
+attention of the congregation between myself and the clergyman. The
+whole congregation seemed to know that I was a foreigner of distinction.</P>
+<P>It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
+preached&#8212;just as the same things were going on three thousand five
+hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
+majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
+that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.</P>
+<P>How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic
+aisles, thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved
+to go a roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and
+buttresses; winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling,
+and wriggling my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there
+all the morning long, through noon, unto night. But at last the
+benediction would come; and appropriating my share of it, I would
+slowly move away, thinking how I should like to go home with some of
+the portly old gentlemen, with high-polished boots and Malacca canes,
+and take a seat at their cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas!
+there was no dinner for me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.</P>
+<P>Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up .were not to be
+scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the
+immortal plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies.
+But to finish off with that abominable <I>&quot;swipes&quot; </I>almost spoiled
+all the rest: not that I myself patronized <I>&quot;swipes&quot; </I>but my
+shipmates did; and every cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but
+taste in imagination, and even then the flavor was bad.</P>
+<P>On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
+curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The
+servant girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose
+dinners were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were
+collectively known by the names of their ships.</P>
+<P>&quot;Where are the <I>Arethusas?&#8212;</I>Here's their beef been smoking
+this half-hour.&quot;&#8212;&quot;Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the <I>Splendids.&quot;&#8212;</I>
+&quot;Run, Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the <I>Highlanders</I>
+.&quot;&#8212;&quot;You Peggy, where's the <I>Siddons' pickle-pat?&quot;&#8212;&quot;I </I>say, Judy,
+are you never coming with that pudding for the <I>Lord Nelsons?&quot;</I></P>
+<P>On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once
+we came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at
+each end of the Highlanders' table. Jackson was indignant at the
+outrage.</P>
+<P>He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared
+himself on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs,
+so as to include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby,
+the boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at
+the head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
+fault-findings.</P>
+<P>Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing
+the philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the
+peroration of Jackson's address to him; which consisted of the two
+bullock hearts, snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by
+way of a recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then
+broke up in disgust, and dined elsewhere.</P>
+<P>Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet
+the rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
+afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George's-square, I found
+myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
+Fourth's equestrian statue.</P>
+<P>The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday
+clothes; but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank,
+and dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
+belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
+were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and
+decorum prevailed.</P>
+<P>Addressing this orderly throng was a pale, hollow-eyed young man, in
+a snuff-colored surtout, who looked worn with much watching, or much
+toil, or too little food. His features were good, his whole air was
+respectable, and there was no mistaking the fact, that he was strongly
+in earnest in what he was saying.</P>
+<P>In his hand was a soiled, inflammatory-looking pamphlet, from which
+he frequently read; following up the quotations with nervous appeals to
+his hearers, a rolling of his eyes, and sometimes the most frantic
+gestures. I was not long within hearing of him, before I became aware
+that this youth was a Chartist.</P>
+<P>Presently the crowd increased, and some commotion was raised, when I
+noticed the police officers augmenting in number; and by and by, they
+began to glide through the crowd, politely hinting at the propriety of
+dispersing. The first persons thus accosted were the soldiers, who
+accordingly sauntered off, switching their rattans, and admiring their
+high-polished shoes. It was plain that the Charter did not hang very
+heavy round their hearts. For the rest, they also gradually broke up;
+and at last I saw the speaker himself depart.</P>
+<P>I do not know why, but I thought he must be some despairing elder
+son, supporting by hard toil his mother and sisters; for of such many
+political desperadoes are made.</P>
+<P>That same Sunday afternoon, I strolled toward the outskirts of the
+town, and attracted by the sight of two great Pompey's pillars, in the
+shape of black steeples, apparently rising directly from the soil, I
+approached them with much curiosity. But looking over a low parapet
+connecting them, what was my surprise to behold at my feet a smoky
+hollow in the ground, with rocky walls, and dark holes at one end,
+carrying out of view several lines of iron railways; while far beyond,
+straight out toward the open country, ran an endless railroad. Over the
+place, a handsome Moorish arch of stone was flung; and gradually, as I
+gazed upon it, and at the little side arches at the bottom of the
+hollow, there came over me an undefinable feeling, that I had
+previously seen the whole thing before. Yet how could that be?
+Certainly, I had never been in Liverpool before: but then, that Moorish
+arch! surely I remembered that very well. It was not till several
+months after reaching home in America, that my perplexity upon this
+matter was cleared away. In glancing over an old number of the Penny
+Magazine, there I saw a picture of the place to the life; and
+remembered having seen the same print years previous. It was a
+representation of the spot where the Manchester railroad enters the
+outskirts of the town.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_43">XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE <I>
+CROSS </I>OLD GENTLEMAN</A></H3>
+<P>My adventure in the News-Room in the Exchange, which I have related
+in a previous chapter, reminds me of another, at the Lyceum, some days
+after, which may as well be put down here, before I forget it.</P>
+<P>I was strolling down Bold-street, I think it was, when I was struck
+by the sight of a brown stone building, very large and handsome. The
+windows were open, and there, nicely seated, with their comfortable
+legs crossed over their comfortable knees, I beheld several sedate,
+happy-looking old gentlemen reading the magazines and papers, and one
+had a fine gilded volume in his hand.</P>
+<P>Yes, this must be the Lyceum, thought I; let me see. So I whipped
+out my guide-book, and opened it at the proper place; and sure enough,
+the building before me corresponded stone for stone. I stood awhile on
+the opposite side of the street, gazing at my picture, and then at its
+original; and often dwelling upon the pleasant gentlemen sitting at the
+open windows; till at last I felt an uncontrollable impulse to step in
+for a moment, and run over the news.</P>
+<P>I'm a poor, friendless sailor-boy, thought I, and they can not
+object; especially as I am from a foreign land, and strangers ought to
+be treated with courtesy. I turned the matter over again, as I walked
+across the way; and with just a small tapping of a misgiving at my
+heart, I at last scraped my feet clean against the curb-stone, and
+taking off my hat while I was yet in the open air, slowly sauntered in.</P>
+<P>But I had not got far into that large and lofty room, filled with
+many agreeable sights, when a crabbed old gentleman lifted up his eye
+from the <I>London Times, </I>which words I saw boldly printed on the
+back of the large sheet in his hand, and looking at me as if I were a
+strange dog with a muddy hide, that had stolen out of the gutter into
+this fine apartment, he shook his silver-headed cane at me fiercely,
+till the spectacles fell off his nose. Almost at the same moment, up
+stepped a terribly cross man, who looked as if he had a mustard plaster
+on his back, that was continually exasperating him; who throwing down
+some papers which he had been filing, took me by my innocent shoulders,
+and then, putting his foot against the broad part of my pantaloons,
+wheeled me right out into the street, and dropped me on the walk,
+without so much as offering an apology for the affront. I sprang after
+him, but in vain; the door was closed upon me.</P>
+<P>These Englishmen have no manners, that's plain, thought I; and I
+trudged on down the street in a reverie.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_44">XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE
+INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS</A>
+</H3>
+<P>Who that dwells in America has not heard of the bright fields and
+green hedges of England, and longed to behold them? Even so had it been
+with me; and now that I was actually in England, I resolved not to go
+away without having a good, long look at the open fields.</P>
+<P>On a Sunday morning I started, with a lunch in my pocket. It was a
+beautiful day in July; the air was sweet with the breath of buds and
+flowers, and there was a green splendor in the landscape that ravished
+me. Soon I gained an elevation commanding a wide sweep of view; and
+meadow and mead, and woodland and hedge, were all around me.</P>
+<P>Ay, ay! this was old England, indeed! I had found it at last &#8212;there
+it was in the country! Hovering over the scene was a soft, dewy air,
+that seemed faintly tinged with the green of the grass; and I thought,
+as I breathed my breath, that perhaps I might be inhaling the very
+particles once respired by Rosamond the Fair.</P>
+<P>On I trudged along the London road&#8212;smooth as an entry floor&#8212;and
+every white cottage I passed, embosomed in honeysuckles, seemed alive
+in the landscape.</P>
+<P>But the day wore on; and at length the sun grew hot; and the long
+road became dusty. I thought that some shady place, in some shady
+field, would be very pleasant to repose in. So, coming to a charming
+little dale, undulating down to a hollow, arched over with foliage, I
+crossed over toward it; but paused by the road-side at a frightful
+announcement, nailed against an old tree, used as a gate-post&#8212;</P>
+<p>
+<i>&quot;man-traps and spring-guns!&quot;</i></p>
+<P>
+In America I had never heard of the like. What could it mean? They
+were not surely <I>cannibals, </I>that dwelt down in that beautiful
+little dale, and lived by catching men, like weasels and beavers in
+Canada!</P>
+<P>&quot;A <I>man-trap!&quot; </I>It must be so. The announcement could bear but
+one meaning&#8212;that there was something near by, intended to catch human
+beings; some species of mechanism, that would suddenly fasten upon the
+unwary rover, and hold him by the leg like a dog; or, perhaps, devour
+him on the spot.</P>
+<P>Incredible! In a Christian land, too! Did that sweet lady, Queen
+Victoria, permit such diabolical practices? Had her gracious majesty
+ever passed by this way, and seen the announcement?</P>
+<P>And who put it there?</P>
+<P>The proprietor, probably.</P>
+<P>And what right had he to do so?</P>
+<P>Why, he owned the soil.</P>
+<P>And where are his title-deeds?</P>
+<P>In his strong-box, I suppose.</P>
+<P>Thus I stood wrapt in cogitations.</P>
+<P>You are a pretty fellow, Wellingborough, thought I to myself; you
+are a mighty traveler, indeed:&#8212;stopped on your travels by a <I>
+man-trap! </I>Do you think Mungo Park was so served in Africa? Do you
+think Ledyard was so entreated in Siberia? Upon my word, you will go
+home not very much wiser than when you set out; and the only excuse you
+can give, for not having seen more sights, will be <I>
+man-traps&#8212;mantraps, my masters! </I>that frightened you!</P>
+<P>And then, in my indignation, I fell back upon first principles. What
+right has this man to the soil he thus guards with dragons? What
+excessive effrontery, to lay sole claim to a solid piece of this
+planet, right down to the earth's axis, and, perhaps, straight through
+to the antipodes! For a moment I thought I would test his traps, and
+enter the forbidden Eden. </P>
+<P>But the grass grew so thickly, and seemed so full of sly things,
+that at last I thought best to pace off.</P>
+<P>Next, I came to a hawthorn lane, leading down very prettily to a
+nice little church; a mossy little church; a beautiful little church;
+just such a church as I had always dreamed to be in England. The porch
+was viny as an arbor; the ivy was climbing about the tower; and the
+bees were humming about the hoary old head-stones along the walls.</P>
+<P>Any man-traps here? thought I&#8212;any spring-guns?</P>
+<P>No.</P>
+<P>So I walked on, and entered the church, where I soon found a seat.
+No Indian, red as a deer, could have startled the simple people more.
+They gazed and they gazed; but as I was all attention to the sermon,
+and conducted myself with perfect propriety, they did not expel me, as
+at first I almost imagined they might.</P>
+<P>Service over, I made my way through crowds of children, who stood
+staring at the marvelous stranger, and resumed my stroll along the
+London Road.</P>
+<P>My next stop was at an inn, where under a tree sat a party of
+rustics, drinking ale at a table.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good day,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good day; from Liverpool?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I guess so.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;For London?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No; not this time. I merely come to see the country.&quot;</P>
+<P>At this, they gazed at each other; and I, at myself; having doubts
+whether I might not look something like a horse-thief.</P>
+<P>&quot;Take a seat,&quot; said the landlord, a fat fellow, with his wife's
+apron on, I thought.</P>
+<P>&quot;Thank you.&quot;</P>
+<P>And then, little by little, we got into a long talk: in the course
+of which, I told who I was, and where I was from. I found these rustics
+a good-natured, jolly set; and I have no doubt they found me quite a
+sociable youth. They treated me to ale; and I treated them to stories
+about America, concerning which, they manifested the utmost curiosity.
+One of them, however, was somewhat astonished that I had not made the
+acquaintance of a brother of his, who had resided somewhere on the
+banks of the Mississippi for several years past; but among twenty
+millions of people, I had never happened to meet him, at least to my
+knowledge.</P>
+<P>At last, leaving this party, I pursued my way, exhilarated by the
+lively conversation in which I had shared, and the pleasant sympathies
+exchanged: and perhaps, also, by the ale I had drunk:&#8212;fine old ale;
+yes, English ale, ale brewed in England! And I trod English soil; and
+breathed English air; and every blade of grass was an Englishman born.
+Smoky old Liverpool, with all its pitch and tar was now far behind;
+nothing in sight but open meadows and fields.</P>
+<P>Come, Wellingborough, why not push on for London?&#8212; Hurra! what say
+you? let's have a peep at St. Paul's I Don't you want to see the queen?
+Have you no longing to behold the duke? Think of Westminster Abbey, and
+the Tunnel under the Thames! Think of Hyde Park, and the ladies!</P>
+<P>But then, thought I again, with my hands wildly groping in my two
+vacuums of pockets&#8212;who's to pay the bill?&#8212;You can't beg your way,
+Wellingborough; that would never do; for you are your father's son,
+Wellingborough; and you must not disgrace your family in a foreign
+land; you must not turn pauper.</P>
+<P>Ah! Ah! it was indeed too true; there was no St. Paul's or
+Westminster Abbey for me; that was flat.</P>
+<P>Well, well, up heart, you'll see it one of these days.</P>
+<P>But think of it! here I am on the very road that leads to the
+Thames&#8212;think of <I>that!&#8212;</I>here I am&#8212;ay, treading in the
+wheel-tracks of coaches that are bound for the metropolis!&#8212;It was too
+bad; too bitterly bad. But I shoved my old hat over my brows, and
+walked on; till at last I came to a green bank, deliriously shaded by a
+fine old tree with broad branching arms, that stretched themselves over
+the road, like a hen gathering her brood under her wings. Down on the
+green grass I threw myself and there lay my head, like a last year's
+nut. People passed by, on foot and in carriages, and little thought
+that the sad youth under the tree was the great-nephew of a late
+senator in the American Congress.</P>
+<P>Presently, I started to my feet, as I heard a gruff voice behind me
+from the field, crying out&#8212;&quot;What are you doing there, you young
+rascal?&#8212;run away from the work'us, have ye? Tramp, or I'll set Blucher
+on ye!&quot;</P>
+<P>And who was Blucher? A cut-throat looking dog, with his black
+bull-muzzle thrust through a gap in the hedge. And his master? A sturdy
+farmer, with an alarming cudgel in his hand.</P>
+<P>&quot;Come, are you going to start?&quot; he cried.</P>
+<P>&quot;Presently,&quot; said I, making off with great dispatch. When I had got
+a few yards into the middle of the highroad (which belonged as much to
+me as it did to the queen herself), I turned round, like a man on his
+own premises, and said&#8212; &quot;Stranger! if you ever Visit America, just
+call at our house, and you'll always find there a dinner and a bed.
+Don't fail.&quot;</P>
+<P>I then walked on toward Liverpool, full of sad thoughts concerning
+the cold charities of the world, and the infamous reception given to
+hapless young travelers, in broken-down shooting-jackets.</P>
+<P>On, on I went, along the skirts of forbidden green fields; until
+reaching a cottage, before which I stood rooted.</P>
+<P>So sweet a place I had never seen: no palace in Persia could be
+pleasanter; there were flowers in the garden; and six red cheeks, like
+six moss-roses, hanging from the casement. At the embowered doorway,
+sat an old man, confidentially communing with his pipe: while a little
+child, sprawling on the ground, was playing with his shoestrings. A
+hale matron, but with rather a prim expression, was reading a journal
+by his side: and three charmers, three Peris, three Houris! were
+leaning out of the window close by.</P>
+<P>Ah! Wellingborough, don't you wish you could step in?</P>
+<P>With a heavy heart at his cheerful sigh, I was turning to go,
+when&#8212;is it possible? the old man called me back, and invited me in.</P>
+<P>&quot;Come, come,&quot; said he, &quot;you look as if you had walked far; come,
+take a bowl of milk. Matilda, my dear&quot; (how my heart jumped), &quot;go fetch
+some from the dairy.&quot; And the white-handed angel did meekly obey, and
+handed <I>me&#8212;me, </I>the vagabond, a bowl of bubbling milk, which I
+could hardly drink down, for gazing at the dew on her lips.</P>
+<P>As I live, I could have married that charmer on the spot!</P>
+<P>She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England.
+But I endeavored to dissemble my ardent admiration; and in order to do
+away at once with any unfavorable impressions arising from the close
+scrutiny of my miserable shooting-jacket, which was now taking place, I
+declared myself a Yankee sailor from Liverpool, who was spending a
+Sunday in the country.</P>
+<P>&quot;And have you been to church to-day, young man?&quot; said the old lady,
+looking daggers.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good madam, I have; the little church down yonder, you know&#8212;a most
+excellent sermon&#8212;I am much the better for it.&quot;</P>
+<P>I wanted to mollify this severe looking old lady; for even my short
+experience of old ladies had convinced me that they are the hereditary
+enemies of all strange young men.</P>
+<P>I soon turned the conversation toward America, a theme which I knew
+would be interesting, and upon which I could be fluent and agreeable. I
+strove to talk in Addisonian English, and ere long could see very
+plainly that my polished phrases were making a surprising impression,
+though that miserable shooting-jacket of mine was a perpetual drawback
+to my claims to gentility.</P>
+<P>Spite of all my blandishments, however, the old lady stood her post
+like a sentry; and to my inexpressible chagrin, kept the three charmers
+in the background, though the old man frequently called upon them to
+advance. This fine specimen of an old Englishman seemed to be quite as
+free from ungenerous suspicions as his vinegary spouse was full of
+them. But I still lingered, snatching furtive glances at the young
+ladies, and vehemently talking to the old man about Illinois, and the
+river Ohio, and the fine farms in the Genesee country, where, in
+harvest time, the laborers went into the wheat fields a thousand strong.</P>
+<P>Stick to it, Wellingborough, thought I; don't give the old lady time
+to think; stick to it, my boy, and an invitation to tea will reward
+you. At last it came, and the old lady abated her frowns.</P>
+<P>It was the most delightful of meals; the three charmers sat all on
+one side, and I opposite, between the old man and his wife. The middle
+charmer poured out the souchong, and handed me the buttered muffins;
+and such buttered muffins never were spread on the other side of the
+Atlantic. The butter had an aromatic flavor; by Jove, it was perfectly
+delicious.</P>
+<P>And there they sat&#8212;the charmers, I mean&#8212;eating these buttered
+muffins in plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. Every
+minute they grew handsomer and handsomer; and I could not help thinking
+what a fine thing it would be to carry home a beautiful English wife!
+how my friends would stare! a lady from England!</P>
+<P>I might have been mistaken; but certainly I thought that Matilda,
+the one who had handed me the milk, sometimes looked rather
+benevolently in the direction where I sat. She certainly <I>did </I>
+look at my jacket; and I am constrained to think at my face. Could it
+be possible she had fallen in love at first sight? Oh, rapture! But oh,
+misery! that was out of the question; for what a looking suitor was
+Wellingborough?</P>
+<P>At length, the old lady glanced toward the door, and made some
+observations about its being yet a long walk to town. She handed me the
+buttered muffins, too, as if performing a final act of hospitality; and
+in other fidgety ways vaguely hinted her desire that I should decamp.</P>
+<P>Slowly I rose, and murmured my thanks, and bowed, and tried to be
+off; but as quickly I turned, and bowed, and thanked, and lingered
+again and again. Oh, charmers! oh, Peris! thought I, must I go? Yes,
+Wellingborough, you must; so I made one desperate congee, and darted
+through the door.</P>
+<P>I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day
+I live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers.</P>
+<P>As the long twilight was waning deeper and deeper into the night, I
+entered the town; and, plodding my solitary way to the same old docks,
+I passed through the gates, and scrambled my way among tarry smells,
+across the tiers of ships between the quay and the Highlander. My only
+resource was my bunk; in I turned, and, wearied with my long stroll,
+was soon fast asleep, dreaming of red cheeks and roses.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_45">XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER
+HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE READER</A></H3>
+<P>It was the day following my Sunday stroll into the country, and when
+I had been in England four weeks or more, that I made the acquaintance
+of a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, young Harry Bolton.
+He was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling
+hair, and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His
+complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl's; his feet were
+small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and
+womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp.</P>
+<P>But where, among the tarry docks, and smoky sailor-lanes and by-ways
+of a seaport, did I, a battered Yankee boy, encounter this courtly
+youth?</P>
+<P>Several evenings I had noticed him in our street of boarding-houses,
+standing in the doorways, and silently regarding the animated scenes
+without. His beauty, dress, and manner struck me as so out of place in
+such a street, that I could not possibly divine what had transplanted
+this delicate exotic from the conservatories of some Regent-street to
+the untidy potato-patches of Liverpool.</P>
+<P>At last I suddenly encountered him at the sign of the Baltimore
+Clipper. He was speaking to one of my shipmates concerning America; and
+from something that dropped, I was led to imagine that he contemplated
+a voyage to my country. Charmed with his appearance, and all eagerness
+to enjoy the society of this incontrovertible son of a gentleman&#8212;a
+kind of pleasure so long debarred me&#8212;I smoothed down the skirts of my
+jacket, and at once accosted him; declaring who I was, and that nothing
+would afford me greater delight than to be of the least service, in
+imparting any information concerning America that he needed.</P>
+<P>He glanced from my face to my jacket, and from my jacket to my face,
+and at length, with a pleased but somewhat puzzled expression, begged
+me to accompany him on a walk.</P>
+<P>We rambled about St. George's Pier until nearly midnight; but before
+we parted, with uncommon frankness, he told me many strange things
+respecting his history.</P>
+<P>According to his own account, Harry Bolton was a native of Bury St.
+Edmunds, a borough of Suffolk, not very far from London, where he was
+early left an orphan, under the charge of an only aunt. Between his
+aunt and himself, his mother had divided her fortune; and young Harry
+thus fell heir to a portion of about five thousand pounds.</P>
+<P>Being of a roving mind, as he approached his majority he grew
+restless of the retirement of a country place; especially as he had no
+profession or business of any kind to engage his attention.</P>
+<P>In vain did Bury, with all its fine old monastic attractions, lure
+him to abide on the beautiful banks of her Larke, and under the shadow
+of her stately and storied old Saxon tower.</P>
+<P>By all my rare old historic associations, breathed Bury; by my
+Abbey-gate, that bears to this day the arms of Edward the Confessor; by
+my carved roof of the old church of St. Mary's, which escaped the low
+rage of the bigoted Puritans; by the royal ashes of Mary Tudor, that
+sleep in my midst; by my Norman ruins, and by all the old abbots of
+Bury, do not, oh Harry! abandon me. Where will you find shadier walks
+than under my lime-trees? where lovelier gardens than those within the
+old walls of my monastery, approached through my lordly Gate? Or if, oh
+Harry! indifferent to my historic mosses, and caring not for my annual
+verdure, thou must needs be lured by other tassels, and wouldst fain,
+like the Prodigal, squander thy patrimony, then, go not away from old
+Bury to do it. For here, on Angel-Hill, are my coffee and card-rooms,
+and billiard saloons, where you may lounge away your mornings, and
+empty your glass and your purse as you list.</P>
+<P>In vain. Bury was no place for the adventurous Harry, who must needs
+hie to London, where in one winter, in the company of gambling
+sportsmen and dandies, he lost his last sovereign.</P>
+<P>What now was to be done? His friends made interest for him in the
+requisite quarters, and Harry was soon embarked for Bombay, as a
+midshipman in the East India service; in which office he was known as a <I>
+&quot;guinea-pig,&quot; </I>a humorous appellation then bestowed upon the middies
+of the Company. And considering the perversity of his behavior, his
+delicate form, and soft complexion, and that gold guineas had been his
+bane, this appellation was not altogether, in poor Harry's case,
+inapplicable.</P>
+<P>He made one voyage, and returned; another, and returned; and then
+threw up his warrant in disgust. A few weeks' dissipation in London,
+and again his purse was almost drained; when, like many prodigals,
+scorning to return home to his aunt, and amend&#8212;though she had often
+written him the kindest of letters to that effect&#8212;Harry resolved to
+precipitate himself upon the New World, and there carve out a fresh
+fortune. With this object in view, he packed his trunks, and took the
+first train for Liverpool. Arrived in that town, he at once betook
+himself to the docks, to examine the American shipping, when a new
+crotchet entered his brain, born of his old sea reminiscences. It was
+to assume duck browsers and tarpaulin, and gallantly cross the Atlantic
+as a sailor. There was a dash of romance in it; a taking abandonment;
+and scorn of fine coats, which exactly harmonized with his reckless
+contempt, at the time, for all past conventionalities.</P>
+<P>Thus determined, he exchanged his trunk for a mahogany chest; sold
+some of his superfluities; and moved his quarters to the sign of the
+Gold Anchor in Union-street.</P>
+<P>After making his acquaintance, and learning his intentions, I was
+all anxiety that Harry should accompany me home in the Highlander, a
+desire to which he warmly responded.</P>
+<P>Nor was I without strong hopes that he would succeed in an
+application to the captain; inasmuch as during our stay in the docks,
+three of our crew had left us, and their places would remain unsupplied
+till just upon the eve of our departure.</P>
+<P>And here, it may as well be related, that owing to the heavy charges
+to which the American ships long staying in Liverpool are subjected,
+from the obligation to continue the wages of their seamen, when they
+have little or no work to employ them, and from the necessity of
+boarding them ashore, like lords, at their leisure, captains interested
+in the ownership of their vessels, are not at all indisposed to let
+their sailors abscond, if they please, and thus forfeit their money;
+for they well know that, when wanted, a new crew is easily to be
+procured, through the crimps of the port.</P>
+<P>Though he spake English with fluency, and from his long service in
+the vessels of New York, was almost an American to behold, yet Captain
+Riga was in fact a Russian by birth, though this was a fact that he
+strove to conceal. And though extravagant in his personal expenses, and
+even indulging in luxurious habits, costly as Oriental dissipation, yet
+Captain Riga was a niggard to others; as, indeed, was evinced in the
+magnificent stipend of three dollars, with which he requited my own
+valuable services. Therefore, as it was agreed between Harry and me,
+that he should offer to ship as a <I>&quot;boy,&quot; </I>at the same rate of
+compensation with myself, I made no doubt that, incited by the
+cheapness of the bargain, Captain Riga would gladly close with him; and
+thus, instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going
+tar, who would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury,
+at the rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that
+by the end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of
+leaving <I>a. </I>handsome balance of salt beef and pork in the <I>
+harness-cask.</I></P>
+<P>With part of the money obtained by the sale of a few of his velvet
+vests, Harry, by my advice, now rigged himself in a Guernsey frock and
+man-of-war browsers; and thus equipped, he made his appearance, one
+fine morning, on the quarterdeck of the Highlander, gallantly doffing
+his virgin tarpaulin before the redoubtable Riga.</P>
+<P>No sooner were his wishes made known, than I perceived in the
+captain's face that same bland, benevolent, and bewitchingly merry
+expression, that had so charmed, but deceived me, when, with Mr. Jones,
+I had first accosted him in the cabin.</P>
+<P>Alas, Harry! thought I,&#8212;as I stood upon the forecastle looking
+astern where they stood,&#8212;that <I>&quot;gallant, gay deceiver&quot; </I>shall not
+altogether cajole you, if Wellingborough can help it. Rather than that
+should be the case, indeed, I would forfeit the pleasure of your
+society across the Atlantic.</P>
+<P>At this interesting interview the captain expressed a sympathetic
+concern touching the sad necessities, which he took upon himself to
+presume must have driven Harry to sea; he confessed to a warm interest
+in his future welfare; and did not hesitate to declare that, in going
+to America, under such circumstances, to seek his fortune, he was
+acting a manly and spirited part; and that the voyage thither, as a
+sailor, would be an invigorating preparative to the landing upon a
+shore, where he must battle out his fortune with Fate.</P>
+<P>He engaged him at once; but was sorry to say, that he could not
+provide him a home on board till the day previous to the sailing of the
+ship; and during the interval, he could not honor any drafts upon the
+strength of his wages.</P>
+<P>However, glad enough to conclude the agreement upon any terms at
+all, my young blade of Bury expressed his satisfaction; and full of
+admiration at so urbane and gentlemanly a sea-captain, he came forward
+to receive my congratulations.</P>
+<P>&quot;Harry,&quot; said I, &quot;be not deceived by the fascinating Riga&#8212; that gay
+Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or
+the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when
+he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and
+browsers. For <I>then </I>he is another personage altogether, and
+adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more
+condolings and sympathy then; no more blarney; he will hold you a
+little better than his boots, and would no more think of addressing you
+than of invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head on our bows.&quot;</P>
+<P>And I further admonished my friend concerning our crew, particularly
+of the diabolical Jackson, and warned him to be cautious and wary. I
+told him, that unless he was somewhat accustomed to the rigging, and
+could furl a royal in a squall, he would be sure to subject himself to
+a sort of treatment from the sailors, in the last degree ignominious to
+any mortal who had ever crossed his legs under mahogany.</P>
+<P>And I played the inquisitor, in cross-questioning Harry respecting
+the precise degree in which he was a practical sailor; &#8212;whether he had
+a giddy head; whether his arms could bear the weight of his body;
+whether, with but one hand on a shroud, a hundred feet aloft in a
+tempest, he felt he could look right to windward and beard it.</P>
+<P>To all this, and much more, Harry rejoined with the most off-hand
+and confident air; saying that in his <I>&quot;guinea-pig&quot; </I>days, he had
+often climbed the masts and handled the sails in a gentlemanly and
+amateur way; so he made no doubt that he would very soon prove an
+expert tumbler in the Highlander's rigging.</P>
+<P>His levity of manner, and sanguine assurance, coupled with the
+constant sight of his most unseamanlike person&#8212;more suited to the
+Queen's drawing-room than a ship's forecastle-bred many misgivings in
+my mind. But after all, every one in this world has his own fate
+intrusted to himself; and though we may warn, and forewarn, and give
+sage advice, and indulge in many apprehensions touching our friends;
+yet our friends, for the most part, will <I>&quot;gang their ain gate;&quot; </I>
+and the most we can do is, to hope for the best. Still, I suggested to
+Harry, whether he had not best cross the sea as a steerage passenger,
+since he could procure enough money for that; but no, he was bent upon
+going as a sailor.</P>
+<P>I now had a comrade in my afternoon strolls, and Sunday excursions;
+and as Harry was a generous fellow, he shared with me his purse and his
+heart. He sold off several more of his fine vests and browsers, his
+silver-keyed flute and enameled guitar; and a portion of the money thus
+furnished was pleasantly spent in refreshing ourselves at the road-side
+inns in the vicinity of the town.</P>
+<P>Reclining side by side in some agreeable nook, we exchanged our
+experiences of the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a
+London Me; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave
+me the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first
+introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over
+the sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but
+enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble
+daughter of an anonymous earl.</P>
+<P>Even in conversation, Harry was a prodigal; squandering his
+aristocratic narrations with a careless hand; and, perhaps, sometimes
+spending funds of reminiscences not his own.</P>
+<P>As for me, I had only my poor old uncle the senator to fall back
+upon; and I used him upon all emergencies, like the knight in the game
+of chess; making him hop about, and stand stiffly up to the encounter,
+against all my fine comrade's array of dukes, lords, curricles, and
+countesses.</P>
+<P>In these long talks of ours, I frequently expressed the earnest
+desire I cherished, to make a visit to London; and related how strongly
+tempted I had been one Sunday, to walk the whole way, without a penny
+in my pocket. To this, Harry rejoined, that nothing would delight him
+more, than to show me the capital; and he even meaningly but
+mysteriously hinted at the possibility of his doing so, before many
+days had passed. But this seemed so idle a thought, that I only imputed
+it to my friend's good-natured, rattling disposition, which sometimes
+prompted him to out with any thing, that he thought would be agreeable.
+Besides, would this fine blade of Bury be seen, by his aristocratic
+acquaintances, walking down Oxford-street, say, arm in arm with the
+sleeve of my shooting-jacket? The thing was preposterous; and I began
+to think, that Harry, after all, was a little bit disposed to impose
+upon my Yankee credulity.</P>
+<P>Luckily, my Bury blade had no acquaintance in Liverpool, where,
+indeed, he was as much in a foreign land, as if he were already on the
+shores of Lake Erie; so that he strolled about with me in perfect
+abandonment; reckless of the cut of my shooting-jacket; and not caring
+one whit who might stare at so singular a couple.</P>
+<P>But once, crossing a square, faced on one side by a fashionable
+hotel, he made a rapid turn with me round a corner; and never stopped,
+till the square was a good block in our rear. The cause of this sudden
+retreat, was a remarkably elegant coat and pantaloons, standing upright
+on the hotel steps, and containing a young buck, tapping his teeth with
+an ivory-headed riding-whip.</P>
+<P>&quot;Who was he, Harry?&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;My old chum, Lord Lovely,&quot; said Harry, with a careless air, &quot;and
+Heaven only knows what brings Lovely from London.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;A lord?&quot; said I starting; &quot;then I must look at him again;&quot; for
+lords are very scarce in Liverpool.</P>
+<P>Unmindful of my companion's remonstrances, I ran back to the corner;
+and slowly promenaded past the upright coat and pantaloons on the steps.</P>
+<P>It was not much of a lord to behold; very thin and limber about the
+legs, with small feet like a doll's, and a small, glossy head like a
+seal's. I had seen just such looking lords standing in sentimental
+attitudes in front of Palmo's in Broadway.</P>
+<P>However, he and I being mutual friends of Harry's, I thought
+something of accosting him, and taking counsel concerning what was best
+to be done for the young prodigal's welfare; but upon second thoughts I
+thought best not to intrude; especially, as just then my lord Lovely
+stepped to the open window of a flashing carriage which drew up; and
+throwing himself into an interesting posture, with the sole of one boot
+vertically exposed, so as to show the stamp on it&#8212;a coronet&#8212;fell into
+a sparkling conversation with a magnificent white satin hat, surmounted
+by a regal marabou feather, inside.</P>
+<P>I doubted not, this lady was nothing short of a peeress; and thought
+it would be one of the pleasantest and most charming things in the
+world, just to seat myself beside her, and order the coachman to take
+us a drive into the country.</P>
+<P>But, as upon further consideration, I imagined that the peeress
+might decline the honor of my company, since I had no formal card of
+introduction; I marched on, and rejoined my companion, whom I at once
+endeavored to draw out, touching Lord Lovely; but he only made
+mysterious answers; and turned off the conversation, by allusions to
+his visits to Ickworth in Suffolk, the magnificent seat of the Most
+Noble Marquis of Bristol, who had repeatedly assured Harry that he
+might consider Ickworth his home.</P>
+<P>Now, all these accounts of marquises and Ickworths, and Harry's
+having been hand in glove with so many lords and ladies, began to breed
+some suspicions concerning the rigid morality of my friend, as a teller
+of the truth. But, after all, thought I to myself, who can prove that
+Harry has fibbed? Certainly, his manners are polished, he has a mighty
+easy address; and there is nothing altogether impossible about his
+having consorted with the master of Ickworth, and the daughter of the
+anonymous earl. And what right has a poor Yankee, like me, to insinuate
+the slightest suspicion against what he says? What little money he has,
+he spends freely; he can not be a polite blackleg, for I am no pigeon
+to pluck; so <I>that </I>is out of the question;&#8212;perish such a
+thought, concerning my own bosom friend!</P>
+<P>But though I drowned all my suspicions as well as I could, and ever
+cherished toward Harry a heart, loving and true; yet, spite of all
+this, I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences
+of high life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel
+ill at ease in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from
+him; when, in its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the
+unbounded bosom of some immaculate friend.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_46">XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN,
+AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON</A></H3>
+<P>It might have been a week after our glimpse of Lord Lovely, that
+Harry, who had been expecting a letter, which, he told me, might
+possibly alter his plans, one afternoon came bounding on board the
+ship, and sprang down the hatchway into the <I>between-decks, </I>
+where, in perfect solitude, I was engaged picking oakum; at which
+business the mate had set me, for want of any thing better.</P>
+<P>&quot;Hey for London, Wellingborough!&quot; he cried. &quot;Off tomorrow! first
+train&#8212;be there the same night&#8212;come! I have money to rig you all
+out&#8212;drop that hangman's stuff there, and away! Pah! how it smells
+here! Come; up you jump!&quot;</P>
+<P>I trembled with amazement and delight.</P>
+<P>London? it could not be!&#8212;and Harry&#8212;how kind of him! he was then
+indeed what he seemed. But instantly I thought of all the circumstances
+of the case, and was eager to know what it was that had induced this
+sudden departure.</P>
+<P>In reply my friend told me, that he had received a remittance, and
+had hopes of recovering a considerable sum, lost in some way that he
+chose to conceal.</P>
+<P>&quot;But how am I to leave the ship, Harry?&quot; said I; &quot;they will not let
+me go, will they? You had better leave me behind, after all; I don't
+care very much about going; and besides, I have no money to share the
+expenses.&quot;</P>
+<P>This I said, only pretending indifference, for my heart was jumping
+all the time.</P>
+<P>&quot;Tut! my Yankee bantam,&quot; said Harry; &quot;look here!&quot; and he showed me a
+handful of gold.</P>
+<P>&quot;But they are <I>yours, </I>and not <I>mine, </I>Harry,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Yours <I>and </I>mine, my sweet fellow,&quot; exclaimed Harry. &quot;Come,
+sink the ship, and let's go!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But you don't consider, if I quit the ship, they'll be sending a
+constable after me, won't they?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What! and do you think, then, they value your services so highly?
+Ha! ha!-Up, up, Wellingborough: I can't wait.&quot;</P>
+<P>True enough. I well knew that Captain Riga would not trouble himself
+much, if I <I>did </I>take French leave of him. So, without further
+thought of the matter, I told Harry to wait a few moments, till the
+ship's bell struck four; at which time I used to go to supper, and be
+free for the rest of the day.</P>
+<P>The bell struck; and off we went. As we hurried across the quay, and
+along the dock walls, I asked Harry all about his intentions. He said,
+that go to London he must, and to Bury St. Edmunds; but that whether he
+should for any time remain at either place, he could not now tell; and
+it was by no means impossible, that in less than a week's time we would
+be back again in Liverpool, and ready for sea. But all he said was
+enveloped in a mystery that I did not much like; and I hardly know
+whether I have repeated correctly what he said at the time.</P>
+<P>Arrived at the <I>Golden Anchor, </I>where Harry put up, he at once
+led me to his room, and began turning over the contents of his chest,
+to see what clothing he might have, that would fit me.</P>
+<P>Though he was some years my senior, we were about the same size&#8212;if
+any thing, I was larger than he; so, with a little stretching, a shirt,
+vest, and pantaloons were soon found to suit. As for a coat and hat,
+those Harry ran out and bought without delay; returning with a loose,
+stylish sack-coat, and a sort of foraging cap, very neat, genteel, and
+unpretending.</P>
+<P>My friend himself soon doffed his Guernsey frock, and stood before
+me, arrayed in a perfectly plain suit, which he had bought on purpose
+that very morning. I asked him why he had gone to that unnecessary
+expense, when he had plenty of other clothes in his chest. But he only
+winked, and looked knowing. This, again, I did not like. But I strove
+to drown ugly thoughts.</P>
+<P>Till quite dark, we sat talking together; when, locking his chest,
+and charging his landlady to look after it well, till he called, or
+sent for it; Harry seized my arm, and we sallied into the street.</P>
+<P>Pursuing our way through crowds of frolicking sailors and fiddlers,
+we turned into a street leading to the Exchange. There, under the
+shadow of the colonnade, Harry told me to stop, while he left me, and
+went to finish his toilet. Wondering what he meant, I stood to one
+side; and presently was joined by a stranger in whiskers and mustache.</P>
+<P>&quot;It's <I>me&quot; </I>said the stranger; and who was <I>me </I>but Harry,
+who had thus metamorphosed himself? I asked him the reason; and in a
+faltering voice, which I tried to make humorous, expressed a hope that
+he was not going to turn gentleman forger.</P>
+<P>He laughed, and assured me that it was only a precaution against
+being recognized by his own particular friends in London, that he had
+adopted this mode of disguising himself.</P>
+<P>&quot;And why afraid of your friends?&quot; asked I, in astonishment, &quot;and we
+are not in London yet.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Pshaw! what a Yankee you are, Wellingborough. Can't you see very
+plainly that I have a plan in my head? And this disguise is only for a
+short time, you know. But I'll tell you all by and by.&quot;</P>
+<P>I acquiesced, though not feeling at ease; and we walked on, till we
+came to a public house, in the vicinity of the place at which the cars
+are taken.</P>
+<P>We stopped there that night, and next day were off, whirled along
+through boundless landscapes of villages, and meadows, and parks: and
+over arching viaducts, and through wonderful tunnels; till, half
+delirious with excitement, I found myself dropped down in the evening
+among gas-lights, under a great roof in Euston Square.</P>
+<P>London at last, and in the West-End!</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_47">XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON</A>
+</H3>
+<P>&quot;No time to lose,&quot; said Harry, &quot;come along.&quot;</P>
+<P>He called a cab: in an undertone mentioned the number of a house in
+some street to the driver; we jumped in, and were off.</P>
+<P>As we rattled over the boisterous pavements, past splendid squares,
+churches, and shops, our cabman turning corners like a skater on the
+ice, and all the roar of London in my ears, and no end to the walls of
+brick and mortar; I thought New York a hamlet, and Liverpool a
+coal-hole, and myself somebody else: so unreal seemed every thing about
+me. My head was spinning round like a top, and my eyes ached with much
+gazing; particularly about the comers, owing to my darting them so
+rapidly, first this side, and then that, so as not to miss any thing;
+though, in truth, I missed much.</P>
+<P>&quot;Stop,&quot; cried Harry, after a long while, putting his head out of the
+window, all at once&#8212;&quot;stop! do you hear, you deaf man? you have passed
+the house&#8212;No. 40 I told you&#8212;that's it &#8212;the high steps there, with
+the purple light!&quot;</P>
+<P>The cabman being paid, Harry adjusting his whiskers and mustache,
+and bidding me assume a lounging look, pushed his hat a little to one
+side, and then locking arms, we sauntered into the house; myself
+feeling not a little abashed; it was so long since I had been in any
+courtly society.</P>
+<P>It was some semi-public place of opulent entertainment; and far
+surpassed any thing of the kind I had ever seen before.</P>
+<P>The floor was tesselated with snow-white, and russet-hued marbles;
+and echoed to the tread, as if all the Paris catacombs were underneath.
+I started with misgivings at that hollow, boding sound, which seemed
+sighing with a subterraneous despair, through all the magnificent
+spectacle around me; mocking it, where most it glared.</P>
+<P>The walk were painted so as to deceive the eye with interminable
+colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of
+variegated marbles&#8212;emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with
+silver, Sienna with porphyry&#8212;supported a resplendent fresco ceiling,
+arched like a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through
+all the East of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever
+youthful Apollo, driving forth the horses of the sun. From sculptured
+stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas
+lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored,
+porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood; as
+if every porcelain sphere were a moon; and this superb apartment was
+the moon-lit garden of Portia at Belmont; and the gentle lovers,
+Lorenzo and Jessica, lurked somewhere among the vines.</P>
+<P>At numerous Moorish looking tables, supported by Caryatides of
+turbaned slaves, sat knots of gentlemanly men, with cut decanters and
+taper-waisted glasses, journals and cigars, before them.</P>
+<P>To and fro ran obsequious waiters, with spotless napkins thrown over
+their arms, and making a profound salaam, and hemming deferentially,
+whenever they uttered a word.</P>
+<P>At the further end of this brilliant apartment, was a rich mahogany
+turret-like structure, partly built into the wall, and communicating
+with rooms in the rear. Behind, was a very handsome florid old man,
+with snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket&#8212;he
+looked like an almond tree in blossom&#8212;who seemed to be standing, a
+polite sentry over the scene before him; and it was he, who mostly
+ordered about the waiters; and with a silent salute, received the
+silver of the guests.</P>
+<P>Our entrance excited little or no notice; for every body present
+seemed exceedingly animated about concerns of their own; and a large
+group was gathered around one tall, military looking gentleman, who was
+reading some India war-news from the Times, and commenting on it, in a
+very loud voice, condemning, in toto, the entire campaign.</P>
+<P>We seated ourselves apart from this group, and Harry, rapping on the
+table, called for wine; mentioning some curious foreign name.</P>
+<P>The decanter, filled with a pale yellow wine, being placed before
+us, and my comrade having drunk a few glasses; he whispered me to
+remain where I was, while he withdrew for a moment.</P>
+<P>I saw him advance to the turret-like place, and exchange a
+confidential word with the almond tree there, who immediately looked
+very much surprised,&#8212;I thought, a Little disconcerted,&#8212;and then
+disappeared with him.</P>
+<P>While my friend was gone, I occupied myself with looking around me,
+and striving to appear as indifferent as possible, and as much used to
+all this splendor as if I had been born in it. But, to tell the truth,
+my head was almost dizzy with the strangeness of the sight, and the
+thought that I was really in London. What would my brother have said?
+What would Tom Legare, the treasurer of the Juvenile Temperance
+Society, have thought?</P>
+<P>But I almost began to fancy I had no friends and relatives living in
+a little village three thousand five hundred miles off, in America; for
+it was hard to unite such a humble reminiscence with the splendid
+animation of the London-like scene around me.</P>
+<P>And in the delirium of the moment, I began to indulge in foolish
+golden visions of the counts and countesses to whom Harry might
+introduce me; and every instant I expected to hear the waiters
+addressing some gentleman as <I>&quot;My Lord,&quot; </I>or <I>&quot;four Grace.&quot; </I>
+But if there were really any lords present, the waiters omitted their
+titles, at least in my hearing.</P>
+<P>Mixed with these thoughts were confused visions of St. Paul's and
+the Strand, which I determined to visit the very next morning, before
+breakfast, or perish in the attempt. And I even longed for Harry's
+return, that we might immediately sally out into the street, and see
+some of the sights, before the shops were all closed for the night.</P>
+<P>While I thus sat alone, I observed one of the waiters eying me a
+little impertinently, as I thought, and as if he saw something queer
+about me. So I tried to assume a careless and lordly air, and by way of
+helping the thing, threw one leg over the other, like a young Prince
+Esterhazy; but all the time I felt my face burning with embarrassment,
+and for the time, I must have looked very guilty of something. But
+spite of this, I kept looking boldly out of my eyes, and straight
+through my blushes, and observed that every now and then little parties
+were made up among the gentlemen, and they retired into the rear of the
+house, as if going to a private apartment. And I overheard one of them
+drop the word <I>Rouge; </I>but he could not have used rouge, for his
+face was exceedingly pale. Another said something about <I>Loo.</I></P>
+<P>At last Harry came back, his face rather flushed.</P>
+<P>&quot;Come along, Redburn,&quot; said he.</P>
+<P>So making no doubt we were off for a ramble, perhaps to Apsley
+House, in the Park, to get a sly peep at the old Duke before he retired
+for the night, for Harry had told me the Duke always went to bed early,
+I sprang up to follow him; but what was my disappointment and surprise,
+when he only led me into the passage, toward a staircase lighted by
+three marble Graces, unitedly holding a broad candelabra, like an elk's
+antlers, over the landing.</P>
+<P>We rambled up the long, winding slope of those aristocratic stairs,
+every step of which, covered with Turkey rugs, looked gorgeous as the
+hammer-cloth of the Lord Mayor's coach; and Harry hied straight to a
+rosewood door, which, on magical hinges, sprang softly open to his
+touch.</P>
+<P>As we entered the room, methought I was slowly sinking in some
+reluctant, sedgy sea; so thick and elastic the Persian carpeting,
+mimicking parterres of tulips, and roses, and jonquils, like a bower in
+Babylon.</P>
+<P>Long lounges lay carelessly disposed, whose fine damask was
+interwoven, like the Gobelin tapestry, with pictorial tales of tilt and
+tourney. And oriental ottomans, whose cunning warp and woof were
+wrought into plaited serpents, undulating beneath beds of leaves, from
+which, here and there, they flashed out sudden splendors of green
+scales and gold.</P>
+<P>In the broad bay windows, as the hollows of King Charles' oaks, were
+Laocoon-like chairs, in the antique taste, draped with heavy fringers
+of bullion and silk.</P>
+<P>The walls, covered with a sort of tartan-French paper, variegated
+with bars of velvet, were hung round with mythological oil-paintings,
+suspended by tasseled cords of twisted silver and blue.</P>
+<P>They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to
+Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan
+oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from
+Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the
+pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps,
+in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii&#8212;in
+that part of it called by Varro <I>the hollow of the house: </I>such
+pictures as Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private
+cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the
+bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas:
+such pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading
+from the left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of
+Aphrodite in Corinth.</P>
+<P>In the principal pier was a marble bracket, sculptured in the
+semblance of a dragon's crest, and supporting a bust, most wonderful to
+behold. It was that of a bald-headed old man, with a
+mysteriously-wicked expression, and imposing silence by one thin finger
+over his lips. His 'marble mouth seemed tremulous with secrets.</P>
+<P>&quot;Sit down, Wellingborough,&quot; said Harry; &quot;don't be frightened, we are
+at home.&#8212;Ring the bell, will you? But stop;&quot;&#8212; and advancing to the
+mysterious bust, he whispered something in its ear.</P>
+<P>&quot;He's a knowing mute, Wellingborough,&quot; said he; &quot;who stays in this
+one place all the time, while he is yet running of errands. But mind
+you don't breathe any secrets in his ear.&quot;</P>
+<P>In obedience to a summons so singularly conveyed, to my amazement a
+servant almost instantly appeared, standing transfixed in the attitude
+of a bow.</P>
+<P>&quot;Cigars,&quot; said Harry. When they came, he drew up a small table into
+the middle of the room, and lighting his cigar, bade me follow his
+example, and make myself happy.</P>
+<P>Almost transported with such princely quarters, so undreamed of
+before, while leading my dog's life in the filthy forecastle of the
+Highlander, I twirled round a chair, and seated myself opposite my
+friend.</P>
+<P>But all the time, I felt ill at heart; and was filled with an
+undercurrent of dismal forebodings. But I strove to dispel them; and
+turning to my companion, exclaimed, &quot;And pray, do you live here, Harry,
+in this Palace of Aladdin?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Upon my soul,&quot; he cried, &quot;you have hit it:&#8212;you must have been here
+before! Aladdin's Palace! Why, Wellingborough, it goes by that very
+name.&quot;</P>
+<P>Then he laughed strangely: and for the first time, I thought he had
+been quaffing too freely: yet, though he looked wildly from his eyes,
+his general carriage was firm.</P>
+<P>&quot;Who are you looking at so hard, Wellingborough?&quot; said he.</P>
+<P>&quot;I am afraid, Harry,&quot; said I, &quot;that when you left me just now, you
+must have been drinking something stronger than wine.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Hear him now,&quot; said Harry, turning round, as if addressing the
+bald-headed bust on the bracket,&#8212;&quot;a parson 'pon honor! &#8212;But remark
+you, Wellingborough, my boy, I must leave you again, and for a
+considerably longer time than before:&#8212;I may not be back again
+to-night.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What?&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Be still,&quot; he cried, &quot;hear me, I know the old duke here, and-&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Who? not the Duke of Wellington,&quot; said I, wondering whether Harry
+was really going to include <I>him </I>too, in his long list of
+confidential friends and acquaintances.</P>
+<P>&quot;Pooh!&quot; cried Harry, &quot;I mean the white-whiskered old man you saw
+below; they call him <I>the Duke:&#8212;he </I>keeps the house. I say, I
+know him well, and he knows <I>me; </I>and he knows what brings me
+here, also. Well; we have arranged every thing about you; you are to
+stay in this room, and sleep here tonight, and&#8212;and&#8212;&quot; continued he,
+speaking low&#8212;&quot;you must guard this letter&#8212;&quot; slipping a sealed one into
+my hand-&quot;and, if I am not back by morning, you must post right on to
+Bury, and leave the letter there;&#8212;here, take this paper&#8212;it's all set
+down here in black and white&#8212;where you are to go, and what you are to
+do. And after that's done&#8212;mind, this is all in case I don't
+return&#8212;then you may do what you please: stay here in London awhile, or
+go back to Liverpool. And here's enough to pay all your expenses.&quot;</P>
+<P>All this was a thunder stroke. I thought Harry was crazy. I held the
+purse in my motionless hand, and stared at him, till the tears almost
+started from my eyes.</P>
+<P>&quot;What's the matter, Redburn?&quot; he cried, with a wild sort of
+laugh&#8212;&quot;you are not afraid of me, are you?&#8212;No, no! I believe in you,
+my boy, or you would not hold that purse in your hand; no, nor that
+letter.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What in heaven's name do you mean?&quot; at last I exclaimed, &quot;you don't
+really intend to desert me in this strange place, do you, Harry?&quot; and I
+snatched him by the hand.</P>
+<P>&quot;Pooh, pooh,&quot; he cried, &quot;let me go. I tell you, it's all right: do
+as I say: that's all. Promise me now, will you? Swear it!-no, no,&quot; he
+added, vehemently, as I conjured him to tell me more&#8212;&quot;no, I won't: I
+have nothing more to tell you&#8212;not a word. Will you swear?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But one sentence more for your own sake, Harry: hear me!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Not a syllable! Will you swear?&#8212;you will not? then here, give me
+that purse:&#8212;there&#8212;there&#8212;take that&#8212;and that&#8212;and that;&#8212;that will
+pay your fare back to Liverpool; good-by to you: you are not my
+friend,&quot; and he wheeled round his back.</P>
+<P>I know not what flashed through my mind, but something suddenly
+impelled me; and grasping his hand, I swore to him what he demanded.</P>
+<P>Immediately he ran to the bust, whispered a word, and the
+white-whiskered old man appeared: whom he clapped on the shoulder, and
+then introduced me as his friend&#8212;young Lord Stormont; and bade the
+almond tree look well to the comforts of his lordship, while
+he&#8212;Harry&#8212;was gone.</P>
+<P>The almond tree blandly bowed, and grimaced, with a peculiar
+expression, that I hated on the spot. After a few words more, he
+withdrew. Harry then shook my hand heartily, and without giving me a
+chance to say one word, seized his cap, and darted out of the room,
+saying, &quot;Leave not this room tonight; and remember the letter, and
+Bury!&quot;</P>
+<P>I fell into a chair, and gazed round at the strange-looking walls
+and mysterious pictures, and up to the chandelier at the ceiling; then
+rose, and opened the door, and looked down the lighted passage; but
+only heard the hum from the roomful below, scattered voices, and a
+hushed ivory rattling from the closed apartments adjoining. I stepped
+back into the room, and a terrible revulsion came over me: I would have
+given the world had I been safe back in Liverpool, fast asleep in my
+old bunk in Prince's Dock.</P>
+<P>I shuddered at every footfall, and almost thought it must be some
+assassin pursuing me. The whole place seemed infected; and a strange
+thought came over me, that in the very damasks around, some eastern
+plague had been imported. And was that pale yellow wine, that I drank
+below, drugged? thought I. This must be some house whose foundations
+take hold on the pit. But these fearful reveries only enchanted me fast
+to my chair; so that, though I then wished to rush forth from the
+house, my limbs seemed manacled.</P>
+<P>While thus chained to my seat, something seemed suddenly flung open;
+a confused sound of imprecations, mixed with the ivory rattling, louder
+than before, burst upon my ear, and through the partly open door of the
+room where I was, I caught sight of a tall, frantic man, with clenched
+hands, wildly darting through the passage, toward the stairs.</P>
+<P>And all the while, Harry ran through my soul&#8212;in and out, at every
+door, that burst open to his vehement rush.</P>
+<P>At that moment my whole acquaintance with him passed like lightning
+through my mind, till I asked myself why he had come here, to London,
+to do this thing?&#8212;why would not Liverpool have answered? and what did
+he want of me? But, every way, his conduct was unaccountable. From the
+hour he had accosted me on board the ship, his manner seemed gradually
+changed; and from the moment we had sprung into the cab, he had seemed
+almost another person from what he had seemed before.</P>
+<P>But what could I do? He was gone, that was certain;-would he ever
+come back? But he might still be somewhere in the house; and with a
+shudder, I thought of that ivory rattling, and was almost ready to dart
+forth, search every room, and save him. But that would be madness, and
+I had sworn not to do so. There seemed nothing left, but to await his
+return. Yet, if he did not return, what then? I took out the purse, and
+counted over the money, and looked at the letter and paper of memoranda.</P>
+<P>Though I vividly remember it all, I will not give the superscription
+of the letter, nor the contents of the paper. But after I had looked at
+them attentively, and considered that Harry could have no conceivable
+object in deceiving me, I thought to myself, Yes, he's in earnest; and
+here I am&#8212;yes, even in London! And here in this room will I stay, come
+what will. I will implicitly follow his directions, and so see out the
+last of this thing.</P>
+<P>But spite of these thoughts, and spite of the metropolitan
+magnificence around me, I was mysteriously alive to a dreadful feeling,
+which I had never before felt, except when penetrating into the lowest
+and most squalid haunts of sailor iniquity in Liverpool. All the
+mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I
+thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice
+is a serpent still.</P>
+<P>It was now grown very late; and faint with excitement, I threw
+myself upon a lounge; but for some time tossed about restless, in a
+sort of night-mare. Every few moments, spite of my oath, I was upon the
+point of starting up, and rushing into the street, to inquire where I
+was; but remembering Harry's injunctions, and my own ignorance of the
+town, and that it was now so late, I again tried to be composed.</P>
+<P>At last, I fell asleep, dreaming about Harry fighting a duel of
+dice-boxes with the military-looking man below; and the next thing I
+knew, was the glare of a light before my eyes, and Harry himself, very
+pale, stood before me.</P>
+<P>&quot;The letter and paper,&quot; he cried.</P>
+<P>I fumbled in my pockets, and handed them to him.</P>
+<P>&quot;There! there! there! thus I tear you,&quot; he cried, wrenching the
+letter to pieces with both hands like a madman, and stamping upon the
+fragments. &quot;I am off for America; the game is up.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;For God's sake explain,&quot; said I, now utterly bewildered, and
+frightened. &quot;Tell me, Harry, what is it? You have not been gambling?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ha, ha,&quot; he deliriously laughed. &quot;Gambling? red and white, you
+mean?&#8212;cards?&#8212;dice?&#8212;the bones?&#8212;Ha, ha!&#8212;Gambling? gambling?&quot; he
+ground out between his teeth&#8212;&quot;what two devilish, stiletto-sounding
+syllables they are!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Wellingborough,&quot; he added, marching up to me slowly, but with his
+eyes blazing into mine&#8212;&quot;Wellingborough&quot;&#8212;and fumbling in his
+breast-pocket, he drew forth a dirk&#8212;&quot;Here, Wellingborough, take
+it&#8212;take it, I say&#8212;are you stupid?-there, there&quot;&#8212;and he pushed it
+into my hands. &quot;Keep it away from me&#8212;keep it out of my sight&#8212;I don't
+want it near me, while I feel as I do. They serve suicides scurvily
+here, Wellingborough; they don't bury them decently. See that
+bell-rope! By Heaven, it's an invitation to hang myself'&#8212;and seizing
+it by the gilded handle at the end, he twitched it down from the wall.</P>
+<P>&quot;In God's name, what ails you?&quot; I cried.</P>
+<P>&quot;Nothing, oh nothing,&quot; said Harry, now assuming a treacherous,
+tropical calmness&#8212;&quot;nothing, Redburn; nothing in the world. I'm the
+serenest of men.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But give me that dirk,&quot; he suddenly cried&#8212;&quot;let me have it, I say.
+Oh! I don't mean to murder myself&#8212;I'm past that now&#8212;give it me&quot;&#8212;and
+snatching it from my hand, he flung down an empty purse, and with a
+terrific stab, nailed it fast with the dirk to the table.</P>
+<P>&quot;There now,&quot; he cried, &quot;there's something for the old duke to see
+to-morrow morning; that's about all that's left of me&#8212; that's my
+skeleton, Wellingborough. But come, don't be downhearted; there's a
+little more gold yet in Golconda; I have a guinea or two left. Don't
+stare so, my boy; we shall be in Liverpool to-morrow night; we start in
+the morning&quot;&#8212;and turning his back, he began to whistle very fiercely.</P>
+<P>&quot;And this, then,&quot; said I, &quot;is your showing me London, is it, Harry?
+I did not think this; but tell me your secret, whatever it is, and I
+will not regret not seeing the town.&quot;</P>
+<P>He turned round upon me like lightning, and cried, &quot;Red-burn! you
+must swear another oath, and instantly.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And why?&quot; said I, in alarm, &quot;what more would you have me swear?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Never to question me again about this infernal trip to London!&quot; he
+shouted, with the foam at his lips&#8212;&quot;never to breathe it! swear!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I certainly shall not trouble you, Harry, with questions, if you do
+not desire it,&quot; said I, &quot;but there's no need of swearing.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Swear it, I say, as you love me, Redburn,&quot; he added, imploringly.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, then, I solemnly do. Now lie down, and let us forget
+ourselves as soon as we can; for me, you have made me the most
+miserable dog alive.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And what am I?&quot; cried Harry; &quot;but pardon me, Redburn, I did not
+mean to offend; if you knew all&#8212;but no, no!&#8212;never mind, never mind!&quot;
+And he ran to the bust, and whispered in its ear. A waiter came.</P>
+<P>
+&quot;Brandy,&quot; whispered Harry, with clenched teeth.</P>
+<P>
+&quot;Are you not going to sleep, then?&quot; said I, more and more alarmed at
+his wildness, and fearful of the effects of his drinking still more, in
+such a mood.</P>
+<P>&quot;No sleep for me! sleep if <I>you </I>can&#8212;I mean to sit up with a
+decanter!&#8212;let me see&quot;&#8212;looking at the ormolu clock on the
+mantel&#8212;&quot;it's only two hours to morning.&quot;</P>
+<P>The waiter, looking very sleepy, and with a green shade on his brow,
+appeared with the decanter and glasses on a salver, and was told to
+leave it and depart.</P>
+<P>Seeing that Harry was not to be moved, I once more threw myself on
+the lounge. I did not sleep; but, like a somnambulist, only dozed now
+and then; starting from my dreams; while Harry sat, with his hat on, at
+the table; the brandy before him; from which he occasionally poured
+into his glass. Instead of exciting him, however, to my amazement, the
+spirits seemed to soothe him down; and, ere long, he was comparatively
+calm.</P>
+<P>At last, just as I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was wakened by
+his shaking me, and saying our cab was at the door.</P>
+<P>&quot;Look! it is broad day,&quot; said he, brushing aside the heavy hangings
+of the window.</P>
+<P>We left the room; and passing through the now silent and deserted
+hall of pillars, which, at this hour, reeked as with blended roses and
+cigar-stumps decayed; a dumb waiter; rubbing his eyes, flung open the
+street door; we sprang into the cab; and soon found ourselves whirled
+along northward by railroad, toward Prince's Dock and the Highlander.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_48">XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND</A></H3>
+<P>Once more in Liverpool; and wending my way through the same old
+streets to the sign of the Golden Anchor; I could scarcely credit the
+events of the last thirty-six hours.</P>
+<P>So unforeseen had been our departure in the first place; so rapid
+our journey; so unaccountable the conduct of Harry; and so sudden our
+return; that all united to overwhelm me. That I had been at all in
+London seemed impossible; and that I had been there, and come away
+little the wiser, was almost distracting to one who, like me, had so
+longed to behold that metropolis of marvels.</P>
+<P>I looked hard at Harry as he walked in silence at my side; I stared
+at the houses we passed; I thought of the cab, the gas lighted hall in
+the Palace of Aladdin, the pictures, the letter, the oath, the dirk;
+the mysterious place where all these mysteries had occurred; and then,
+was almost ready to conclude, that the pale yellow wine had been
+drugged.</P>
+<P>As for Harry, stuffing his false whiskers and mustache into his
+pocket, he now led the way to the boarding-house; and saluting the
+landlady, was shown to his room; where we immediately shifted our
+clothes, appearing once more in our sailor habiliments.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, what do you propose to do now, Harry?&quot; said I, with a heavy
+heart.</P>
+<P>&quot;Why, visit your Yankee land in the Highlander, of course &#8212;what
+else?' he replied.</P>
+<P>&quot;And is it to be a visit, or a long stay?&quot; asked I.</P>
+<P>&quot;That's as it may turn out,&quot; said Harry; &quot;but I have now more than
+ever resolved upon the sea. There is nothing like the sea for a fellow
+like me, Redburn; a desperate man can not get any further than the
+wharf, you know; and the next step must be a long jump. But come, let's
+see what they have to eat here, and then for a cigar and a stroll. I
+feel better already. Never say die, is my motto.&quot;</P>
+<P>We went to supper; after that, sallied out; and walking along the
+quay of Prince's Dock, heard that the ship Highlander had that morning
+been advertised to sail in two days' time.</P>
+<P>&quot;Good!&quot; exclaimed Harry; and I was glad enough myself.</P>
+<P>Although I had now been absent from the ship a full forty-eight
+hours, and intended to return to her, yet I did not anticipate being
+called to any severe account for it from the officers; for several of
+our men had absented themselves longer than I had, and upon their
+return, little or nothing was said to them. Indeed, in some cases, the
+mate seemed to know nothing about it. During the whole time we lay in
+Liverpool, the discipline of the ship was altogether relaxed; and I
+could hardly believe they were the same officers who were so
+dictatorial at sea. The reason of this was, that we had nothing
+important to do; and although the captain might now legally refuse to
+receive me on board, yet I was not afraid of that, as I was as stout a
+lad for my years, and worked as cheap, as any one he could engage to
+take my place on the homeward passage.</P>
+<P>Next morning we made our appearance on board before the rest of the
+crew; and the mate perceiving me, said with an oath, &quot;Well, sir, you
+have thought best to return then, have you? Captain Riga and I were
+flattering ourselves that you had made a run of it for good.&quot;</P>
+<P>Then, thought I, the captain, who seems to affect to know nothing of
+the proceedings of the sailors, has been aware of my absence.</P>
+<P>&quot;But turn to, sir, turn to,&quot; added the mate; &quot;here! aloft there, and
+free that pennant; it's foul of the backstay&#8212;jump!&quot;</P>
+<P>The captain coming on board soon after, looked very benevolently at
+Harry; but, as usual, pretended not to take the slightest notice of
+myself.</P>
+<P>We were all now very busy in getting things ready for sea. The cargo
+had been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from
+shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the <I>
+between-decks, </I>extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle,
+for the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes
+were already littering the decks.</P>
+<P>To provide for their wants, a far larger supply of water was needed
+than upon the outward-bound passage. Accordingly, besides the usual
+number of casks on deck, rows of immense tierces were lashed
+amid-ships, all along the <I>between-decks, </I>forming a sort of aisle
+on each side, furnishing access to four rows of bunks,&#8212;three tiers,
+one above another,&#8212;against the ship's sides; two tiers being placed
+over the tierces of water in the middle. These bunks were rapidly
+knocked together with coarse planks. They looked more like dog-kennels
+than any thing else; especially as the place was so gloomy and dark; no
+light coming down except through the fore and after hatchways, both of
+which were covered with little houses called <I>&quot;booby-hatches.&quot; </I>
+Upon the main-hatches, which were well calked and covered over with
+heavy tarpaulins, the <I>&quot;passengers-gattey&quot; </I>was solidly lashed
+down.</P>
+<P>This <I>galley </I>was a large open stove, or iron range&#8212;made
+expressly for emigrant ships, wholly unprotected from the weather, and
+where alone the emigrants are permitted to cook their food while at sea.</P>
+<P>After two days' work, every thing was in readiness; most of the
+emigrants on board; and in the evening we worked the ship close into
+the outlet of Prince's Dock, with the bow against the water-gate, to go
+out with the tide in the morning.</P>
+<P>In the morning, the bustle and confusion about us was indescribable.
+Added to the ordinary clamor of the docks, was the hurrying to and fro
+of our five hundred emigrants, the last of whom, with their baggage,
+were now coming on board; the appearance of the cabin passengers,
+following porters with their trunks; the loud orders of the
+dock-masters, ordering the various ships behind us to preserve their
+order of going out; the leave-takings, and good-by's, and
+God-bless-you's, between the emigrants and their friends; and the
+cheers of the surrounding ships.</P>
+<P>At this time we lay in such a way, that no one could board us except
+by the bowsprit, which overhung the quay. Staggering along that
+bowsprit, now came a one-eyed <I>crimp </I>leading a drunken tar by the
+collar, who had been shipped to sail with us the day previous. It has
+been stated before, that two or three of our men had left us for good,
+while in port. When the crimp had got this man and another safely
+lodged in a bunk below, he returned on shore; and going to a miserable
+cab, pulled out still another apparently drunken fellow, who proved
+completely helpless. However, the ship now swinging her broadside more
+toward the quay, this stupefied sailor, with a Scotch cap pulled down
+over his closed eyes, only revealing a sallow Portuguese complexion,
+was lowered on board by a rope under his arms, and passed forward by
+the crew, who put him likewise into a bunk in the forecastle, the crimp
+himself carefully tucking him in, and bidding the bystanders not to
+disturb him till the ship was away from the land.</P>
+<P>This done, the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the
+dock. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and
+tears were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream,
+was a policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.</P>
+<P>A steam-tug, the <I>Goliath, </I>now took us by the arm, and
+gallanted us down the river past the fort.</P>
+<P>The scene was most striking.</P>
+<P>Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for
+four days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of
+ships for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast
+fleet of merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails
+glistened in the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of
+sultans; and from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song <I>
+Ho-o-he-yo, cheerily men! </I>as the crews called their anchors.</P>
+<P>The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth; and the
+poor emigrants were in high spirits at so auspicious a beginning of
+their voyage. They were reclining all over the decks, talking of soon
+seeing America, and relating how the agent had told them, that twenty
+days would be an uncommonly long voyage.</P>
+<P>Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the great number of ships
+sailing to the Yankee ports from Liverpool, the competition among them
+in obtaining emigrant passengers, who as a cargo are much more
+remunerative than crates and bales, is exceedingly great; so much so,
+that some of the agents they employ, do not scruple to deceive the poor
+applicants for passage, with all manner of fables concerning the short
+space of time, in which their ships make the run across the ocean.</P>
+<P>This often induces the emigrants to provide a much smaller stock of
+provisions than they otherwise would; the effect of which sometimes
+proves to be in the last degree lamentable; as will be seen further on.
+And though benevolent societies have been long organized in Liverpool,
+for the purpose of keeping offices, where the emigrants can obtain
+reliable information and advice, concerning their best mode of
+embarkation, and other matters interesting to them; and though the
+English authorities have imposed a law, providing that every captain of
+an emigrant ship bound for any port of America shall see to it, that
+each passenger is provided with rations of food for sixty days; yet,
+all this has not deterred mercenary ship-masters and unprincipled
+agents from practicing the grossest deception; nor exempted the
+emigrants themselves, from the very sufferings intended to be averted.</P>
+<P>No sooner had we fairly gained the expanse of the Irish Sea, and,
+one by one, lost sight of our thousand consorts, than the weather
+changed into the most miserable cold, wet, and cheerless days and
+nights imaginable. The wind was tempestuous, and dead in our teeth; and
+the hearts of the emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied
+below, to escape the uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two <I>
+&quot;booby-hatches&quot; </I>came the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and
+weeping. That irresistible wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the
+stoutest of their number, and the women and children were embracing and
+sobbing in all the agonies of the poor emigrant's first storm at sea.</P>
+<P>Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the
+cabin, who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and
+stewards to run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads,
+and tenderly inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset:
+and even then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing
+malady, such ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as
+unendurable, and put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy
+annihilation; all of which, however, only arises from their intense
+anxiety to preserve their valuable lives.</P>
+<P>How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
+cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
+that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
+can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the
+drenching seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley
+on deck? How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a
+first voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just
+as hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter,
+and seventeen servants.</P>
+<P>Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
+Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
+indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
+storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
+the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head
+down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened
+cesspool.</P>
+<P>But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on
+board some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are
+enforced, to prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy
+precincts of the quarter-deck, the only completely open space on
+ship-board. Consequently&#8212;even in fine weather&#8212;when they come up from
+below, they are crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the
+boats, casks, and spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by
+the officers, for unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.</P>
+<P>The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all;
+and to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian
+incursions of the <I>&quot;wild Irish&quot; </I>emigrants, ropes were passed
+athwart-ships, by the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the
+boundary line between those who had paid three pounds passage-money,
+from those who had paid twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers
+themselves were the most urgent in having this regulation maintained.</P>
+<P>Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls
+are deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry
+about purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they
+could precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the
+rest of humanity.</P>
+<P>But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what
+it is to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no
+doubt, this circumstance has something to do with my slight and
+harmless indignation at these things.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_49">XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE</A></H3>
+<P>It was destined that our departure from the English strand, should
+be marked by a tragical event, akin to the sudden end of the suicide,
+which had so strongly impressed me on quitting the American shore.</P>
+<P>Of the three newly shipped men, who in a state of intoxication had
+been brought on board at the dock gates, two were able to be engaged at
+their duties, in four or five hours after quitting the pier. But the
+third man yet lay in his bunk, in the self-same posture in which his
+limbs had been adjusted by the crimp, who had deposited him there.</P>
+<P>His name was down on the ship's papers as Miguel Saveda, and for
+Miguel Saveda the chief mate at last came forward, shouting down the
+forecastle-scuttle, and commanding his instant presence on deck. But
+the sailors answered for their new comrade; giving the mate to
+understand that Miguel was still fast locked in his trance, and could
+not obey him; when, muttering his usual imprecation, the mate retired
+to the quarterdeck.</P>
+<P>This was in the first dog-watch, from four to six in the evening. At
+about three bells, in the next watch, Max the Dutchman, who, like most
+old seamen, was something of a physician in cases of drunkenness,
+recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he
+should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any
+thing be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself,
+capriciously forbade this proceeding.</P>
+<P>So the sailor still lay out of sight in his bunk, which was in the
+extreme angle of the forecastle, behind the <I>bowsprit-bitts&#8212;two </I>
+stout timbers rooted in the ship's keel. An hour or two afterward, some
+of the men observed a strange odor in the forecastle, which was
+attributed to the presence of some dead rat among the hollow spaces in
+the side planks; for some days before, the forecastle had been smoked
+out, to extirpate the vermin overrunning her. At midnight, the larboard
+watch, to which I belonged, turned out; and instantly as every man
+waked, he exclaimed at the now intolerable smell, supposed to be
+heightened by the shaking up the bilge-water, from the ship's rolling.</P>
+<P>&quot;Blast that rat!&quot; cried the Greenlander.</P>
+<P>&quot;He's blasted already,&quot; said Jackson, who in his drawers had crossed
+over to the bunk of Miguel. &quot;It's a water-rat, shipmates, that's dead;
+and here he is&quot;&#8212;and with that, he dragged forth the sailor's arm,
+exclaiming, &quot;Dead as a timber-head!&quot;</P>
+<P>Upon this the men rushed toward the bunk, Max with the light, which
+he held to the man's face.</P>
+<P>&quot;No, he's not dead,&quot; he cried, as the yellow flame wavered for a
+moment at the seaman's motionless mouth. But hardly had the words
+escaped, when, to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish
+fire, like a forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a
+moment, the cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike
+flames.</P>
+<P>The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered
+all over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in
+the silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us,
+precisely like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.</P>
+<P>The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll,
+and every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound
+in curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and
+eternal death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.</P>
+<P>One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
+tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
+there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
+letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
+flickering ground of blue.</P>
+<P>&quot;Where's that d&#8212;d Miguel?&quot; was now shouted down among us from the
+scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
+have every man up that belonged to his watch.</P>
+<P>&quot;He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor,&quot; coughed
+Jackson. &quot;Come you down, sir, and look.&quot;</P>
+<P>Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in
+a rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
+bullet. &quot;My God!&quot; he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.</P>
+<P>&quot;Take hold of it,&quot; said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; &quot;it
+must go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of
+it, I say! But stop&quot;&#8212;and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled
+it partly out of the bunk.</P>
+<P>A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the
+phosphorescent sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating
+wake as it sank.</P>
+<P>This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror;
+nor did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on
+deck at all serve to soothe me.</P>
+<P>But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
+infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
+brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
+of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the
+bill he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a
+corpse on board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a
+live body in a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had
+known of such things having been done before. But that a really dead
+body ever burned in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the
+sailors seemed familiar with such things; or at least with the stories
+of such things having happened to others.</P>
+<P>For me, who at that age had never so much as happened to hear of a
+case like this, of animal combustion, in the horrid mood that came over
+me, I almost thought the burning body was a premonition of the hell of
+the Calvinists, and that Miguel's earthly end was a foretaste of his
+eternal condemnation.</P>
+<P>Immediately after the burial, an iron pot of red coals was placed in
+the bunk, and in it two handfuls of coffee were roasted. This done, the
+bunk was nailed up, and was never opened again during the voyage; and
+strict orders were given to the crew not to divulge what had taken
+place to the emigrants; but to this, they needed no commands.</P>
+<P>After the event, no one sailor but Jackson would stay alone in the
+forecastle, by night or by noon; and no more would they laugh or sing,
+or in any way make merry there, but kept all their pleasantries for the
+watches on deck. All but Jackson: who, while the rest would be sitting
+silently smoking on their chests, or in their bunks, would look toward
+the fatal spot, and cough, and laugh, and invoke the dead man with
+incredible scoffs and jeers. He froze my blood, and made my soul stand
+still.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_50">XLIX. CARLO</A></H3>
+<P>There was on board our ship, among the emigrant passengers, a
+rich-cheeked, chestnut-haired Italian boy, arrayed in a faded,
+olive-hued velvet jacket, and tattered trowsers rolled up to his knee.
+He was not above fifteen years of age; but in the twilight pensiveness
+of his full morning eyes, there seemed to sleep experiences so sad and
+various, that his days must have seemed to him years. It was not an eye
+like Harry's tho' Harry's was large and womanly. It shone with a soft
+and spiritual radiance, like a moist star in a tropic sky; and spoke of
+humility, deep-seated thoughtfulness, yet a careless endurance of all
+the ills of life.</P>
+<P>The head was if any thing small; and heaped with thick clusters of
+tendril curls, half overhanging the brows and delicate ears, it somehow
+reminded you of a classic vase, piled up with Falernian foliage.</P>
+<P>From the knee downward, the naked leg was beautiful to behold as any
+lady's arm; so soft and rounded, with infantile ease and grace. His
+whole figure was free, fine, and indolent; he was such a boy as might
+have ripened into life in a Neapolitan vineyard; such a boy as gipsies
+steal in infancy; such a boy as Murillo often painted, when he went
+among the poor and outcast, for subjects wherewith to captivate the
+eyes of rank and wealth; such a boy, as only Andalusian beggars are,
+full of poetry, gushing from every rent.</P>
+<P>Carlo was his name; a poor and friendless son of earth, who had no
+sire; and on life's ocean was swept along, as spoon-drift in a gale.</P>
+<P>Some months previous, he had landed in Prince's Dock, with his
+hand-organ, from a Messina vessel; and had walked the streets of
+Liverpool, playing the sunny airs of southern chines, among the
+northern fog and drizzle. And now, having laid by enough to pay his
+passage over the Atlantic, he had again embarked, to seek his fortunes
+in America.</P>
+<P>From the first, Harry took to the boy.</P>
+<P>&quot;Carlo,&quot; said Harry, &quot;how did you succeed in England?&quot;</P>
+<P>He was reclining upon an old sail spread on the long-boat; and
+throwing back his soiled but tasseled cap, and caressing one leg like a
+child, he looked up, and said in his broken English&#8212;that seemed like
+mixing the potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup:&#8212;said he,
+&quot;Ah! I succeed very well!&#8212;for I have tunes for the young and the old,
+the gay and the sad. I have marches for military young men, and
+love-airs for the ladies, and solemn sounds for the aged. I never draw
+a crowd, but I know from their faces what airs will best please them; I
+never stop before a house, but I judge from its portico for what tune
+they will soonest toss me some silver. And I ever play sad airs to the
+merry, and merry airs to the sad; and most always the rich best fancy
+the sad, and the poor the merry.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;But do you not sometimes meet with cross and crabbed old men,&quot; said
+Harry, &quot;who would much rather have your room than your music?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, sometimes,&quot; said Carlo, playing with his foot, &quot;sometimes I
+do.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And then, knowing the value of quiet to unquiet men, I suppose you
+never leave them under a shilling?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No,&quot; continued the boy, &quot;I love my organ as I do myself, for it is
+my only friend, poor organ! it sings to me when I am sad, and cheers
+me; and I never play before a house, on purpose to be paid for leaving
+off, not I; would I, poor organ?&quot;&#8212; looking down the hatchway where it
+was. &quot;No, that I never have done, and never will do, though I starve;
+for when people drive me away, I do not think my organ is to blame, but
+they themselves are to blame; for such people's musical pipes are
+cracked, and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into
+their souls.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps,&quot; said Harry, with a laugh.</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah! there's the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
+hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
+more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
+chords.&quot;</P>
+<P>Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when
+the vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady
+breeze, and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings,
+were gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy
+reclinings; went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with
+his organ.</P>
+<P>Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are
+to be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
+music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
+Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
+Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
+high-priests tended the Jewish altars&#8212;never to be touched by a hand
+profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from
+a beggar's hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.</P>
+<P>And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
+negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
+architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
+cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken
+all the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on
+a moon-lit sward of violets.</P>
+<P>But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
+might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
+our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?</P>
+<P>Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
+transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
+to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
+and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
+account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
+melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
+baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
+Wales.</P>
+<P>But look! here is poor Carlo's organ; and while the silent crowd
+surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
+him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
+his instrument.</P>
+<P>Behold the organ!</P>
+<P>Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if
+their melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine
+ravishments may we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old
+organ, which might almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King
+Saul himself was buried.</P>
+<P>A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
+belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic
+order; in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.</P>
+<P>What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies! &#8212;what
+mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
+with devotional sunsets!&#8212;what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
+niches with saints!&#8212;But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
+live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
+interior Alhambra.</P>
+<P>Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
+Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air&#8212;a mixed and
+liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.</P>
+<P>Play on, play on, Italian boy! what though the notes be broken,
+here's that within that mends them. Turn hither your pensive, morning
+eyes; and while I list to the organs twain&#8212; one yours, one mine&#8212;let
+me gaze fathoms down into thy fathomless eye;&#8212;'tis good as gazing down
+into the great South Sea, and seeing the dazzling rays of the dolphins
+there.</P>
+<P>Play on, play on! for to every note come trooping, now, triumphant
+standards, armies marching&#8212;all the pomp of sound. Methinks I am
+Xerxes, the nucleus of the martial neigh of all the Persian studs. Like
+gilded damask-flies, thick clustering on some lofty bough, my satraps
+swarm around me.</P>
+<P>But now the pageant passes, and I droop; while Carlo taps his ivory
+knobs; and plays some flute-like saraband&#8212;soft, dulcet, dropping
+sounds, like silver cans in bubbling brooks. And now a clanging,
+martial air, as if ten thousand brazen trumpets, forged from spurs and
+swordhilts, called North, and South, and East, to rush to West!</P>
+<P>Again-what blasted heath is this?&#8212;what goblin sounds of Macbeth's
+witches?&#8212;Beethoven's Spirit Waltz! the muster-call of sprites and
+specters. Now come, hands joined, Medusa, Hecate, she of Endor, and all
+the Blocksberg's, demons dire.</P>
+<P>Once more the ivory knobs are tapped; and long-drawn, golden sounds
+are heard-some ode to Cleopatra; slowly loom, and solemnly expand,
+vast, rounding orbs of beauty; and before me float innumerable queens,
+deep dipped in silver gauzes.</P>
+<P>All this could Carlo do&#8212;make, unmake me; build me up; to pieces
+take me; and join me limb to limb. He is the architect of domes of
+sound, and bowers of song.</P>
+<P>And all is done with that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street
+organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in
+squadrons of Parisian orchestras.</P>
+<P>But look! Carlo has that to feast the eye as well as ear; and the
+same wondrous magic in me, magnifies them into grandeur; though every
+figure greatly needs the artist's repairing hand, and sadly needs a
+dusting.</P>
+<P>His York Minster's West-Front opens; and like the gates of Milton's
+heaven, it turns on golden binges.</P>
+<P>What have we here? The inner palace of the Great Mogul? Group and
+gilded columns, in confidential clusters; fixed fountains; canopies and
+lounges; and lords and dames in silk and spangles.</P>
+<P>The organ plays a stately march; and presto! wide open arches; and
+out come, two and two, with nodding plumes, in crimson turbans, a troop
+of martial men; with jingling scimiters, they pace the hall; salute,
+pass on, and disappear.</P>
+<P>Now, ground and lofty tumblers; jet black Nubian slaves. They fling
+themselves on poles; stand on their heads; and downward vanish. </P>
+<P>And now a dance and masquerade of figures, reeling from the
+side-doors, among the knights and dames. Some sultan leads a sultaness;
+some emperor, a queen; and jeweled sword-hilts of carpet knights fling
+back the glances tossed by coquettes of countesses.</P>
+<P>On this, the curtain drops; and there the poor old organ stands,
+begrimed, and black, and rickety.</P>
+<P>Now, tell me, Carlo, if at street corners, for a single penny, I may
+thus transport myself in dreams Elysian, who so rich as I? Not he who
+owns a million.</P>
+<P>And Carlo! ill betide the voice that ever greets thee, my Italian
+boy, with aught but kindness; cursed the slave who ever drives thy
+wondrous box of sights and sounds forth from a lordling's door!</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_51">L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA</A></H3>
+<P>As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as
+a sailor.</P>
+<P>Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over
+me, even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but
+carried you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you
+up with your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.</P>
+<P>But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not
+be glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is
+it, that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
+departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
+is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
+every spring renews the green life of the trees.</P>
+<P>But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I
+see you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence
+obvious to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?</P>
+<P>But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs
+of fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine
+imaginings, like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and
+there, in the embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings
+that astonish the world.</P>
+<P>But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is
+the same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs,
+you show like a zebra, banding with elks.</P>
+<P>And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and
+hair, Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not
+unlike the soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild
+Bushmen, bounds through Caffrarian woods.</P>
+<P>How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
+unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
+bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!</P>
+<P>Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
+girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
+Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
+they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
+concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
+strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
+hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked
+him before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every
+one knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even
+sailors are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and
+for a time, abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my
+friend a cold and unsympathizing civility.</P>
+<P>As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind;
+and the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as
+with every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And
+though his money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet
+that troubled him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.</P>
+<P>But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
+should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
+inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his
+familiarity with lofty life, only the less qualified him for
+understanding the other extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade
+once came on deck in a brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers,
+and tasseled smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.</P>
+<P>As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had
+previously crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to
+myself that, spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have
+been at sea before, even as a <I>Guinea-pig </I>in an Indiaman; for the
+slightest acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have
+prevented him, it would seem, from enacting this folly.</P>
+<P>&quot;Who's that Chinese mandarin?&quot; cried the mate, who had made voyages
+to Canton. &quot;Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl
+it in a trice.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Sir?&quot; said Harry, starting back. &quot;Is not this the morning watch,
+and is not mine a morning gown?&quot;</P>
+<P>But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
+appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
+and the offensive gown and cap were removed.</P>
+<P>&quot;It is too bad!&quot; exclaimed Harry to me; &quot;I meant to lounge away the
+watch in that gown until coffee time;&#8212;and I suppose your Hottentot of
+a mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
+but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!&quot;</P>
+<P>Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at
+the want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet
+and pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
+indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.</P>
+<P>The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
+which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
+ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
+filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
+through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
+sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
+his extensive stock.</P>
+<P>It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown
+out by the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this
+collection of silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know
+exactly what they thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in
+believing that, by abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for
+the gamblers. Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his
+browsers, to test the color of his calves.</P>
+<P>It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth,
+of easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's
+company, the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an
+irresistible necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade
+the constables.</P>
+<P>These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
+themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our
+tar. What else can bring them to sea?</P>
+<P>Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning,
+was put down for a very equivocal character.</P>
+<P>Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance;
+especially one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he
+was obliged to mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he
+carried two mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down
+quill-driver, or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old
+maid's tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to
+Harry as if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on
+board. For to his no small astonishment,&#8212;but just as I had
+predicted,&#8212;Captain Riga never noticed him now, but left the business
+of indoctrinating him into the little experiences of a greenhorn's
+career solely in the hands of his officers and crew.</P>
+<P>But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there
+was any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was
+indefatigable in coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks;
+ignoring the fact that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds.
+And when all hands of the watch would be engaged <I>clewing up a
+t'-gallant-sail, </I>that is, pulling the proper ropes on deck that
+wrapped the sail up on the yard aloft, Harry would always manage to get
+near the <I>belaying-pin, so </I>that when the time came for two of us
+to spring into the rigging, he would be inordinately fidgety in making
+fast the <I>clew-lines, </I>and would be so absorbed in that
+occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round the pin, that it
+was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to mount over the
+bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However, after securing the
+clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting loose, Harry would
+always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry for the shrouds;
+but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance, would retreat,
+apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from the
+opportunity of signalizing his activity.</P>
+<P>At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming
+fact was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it
+never would do: <I>he could not go aloft; </I>his nerves would not hear
+of it.</P>
+<P>&quot;Then, Harry,&quot; said I, &quot;better you had never been born. Do you know
+what it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no
+doubt you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say
+that you had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship.
+But you only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very
+soon find yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree.&quot;</P>
+<P>
+But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, <I>
+his nerves could not stand it; </I>in the course of his courtly career,
+he had drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had
+smoked altogether too many Havannas.</P>
+<P>At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out
+one morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve
+the short signal halyards.</P>
+<P>&quot;Sir?&quot; said Harry, aghast.</P>
+<P>&quot;Away you go!&quot; said the mate, snatching a whip's end.</P>
+<P>&quot;Don't strike me!&quot; screamed Harry, drawing himself up.</P>
+<P>&quot;Take that, and along with you,&quot; cried the mate, laying the rope
+once across his back, but lightly.</P>
+<P>&quot;By heaven!&quot; cried Harry, wincing&#8212;not with the blow, but the
+insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long
+arm, kept him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared
+a broken head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the
+officer.</P>
+<P>&quot;Captain Riga!&quot; cried Harry.</P>
+<P>&quot;Don't call upon <I>him&quot; </I>said the mate; &quot;he's asleep, and won't
+wake up till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!&quot; he added,
+flourishing the rope's end.</P>
+<P>Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
+indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing
+there no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only
+resource, he made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the
+main-top in a trice. I thought a few more springs would take him to the
+truck, and was a little fearful that in his desperation he might then
+jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such
+things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and
+looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber;
+and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out
+for him not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. &quot;Up you go, sir.&quot; But
+Harry said nothing.</P>
+<P>&quot;You Max,&quot; cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, &quot;spring after him,
+and help him; you understand?&quot;</P>
+<P>Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head
+with a bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil
+drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went
+my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
+signal halyards&#8212;, hardly bigger than common twine&#8212;were flying in the
+wind. &quot;Unreeve!&quot; cried the mate.</P>
+<P>I saw Harry's arm stretched out&#8212;his legs seemed shaking in the
+rigging, even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed
+was done.</P>
+<P>He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
+quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
+above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
+an altered person.</P>
+<P>At the time, he went to the mate&#8212;since he could not get speech of
+the captain&#8212;and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name
+might be stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he
+might make the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he
+bound himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his
+in New York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate
+gave him a blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a
+sailor on board a ship, and <I>always </I>a sailor for that voyage, at
+least; for within so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate
+on terms of any thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered
+about at his pleasure.</P>
+<P>Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased,
+but go aloft again he <I>could </I>not, and <I>would </I>not. He would
+do any thing else but that.</P>
+<P>This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew
+now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led
+a miserable life indeed.</P>
+<P>Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects
+of finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
+sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
+your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you
+lead, and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such
+a sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon
+would be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and
+kicked without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth
+of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
+circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of
+these evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange
+constitutional nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become
+as a hunted hare to the merciless crew.</P>
+<P>But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
+appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
+of a spirit not easily tamed&#8212;how was it, that he could now yield
+himself up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt?
+Perhaps his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not
+undertake to explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and
+there are passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the
+common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of
+themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_52">LI. THE EMIGRANTS</A></H3>
+<P>After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
+intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
+head winds', till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
+rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
+were out of the weather emphatically called <I>&quot;Channel weather,&quot; </I>
+and the last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain
+sight, and all the rest was broad ocean.</P>
+<P>
+<I>Land ho!</I> was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north. At
+the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
+America itself was at hand.</p>
+<P>&quot;Where is it?&quot; cried one of them, running out a little way on the
+bowsprit. &quot;Is <I>that </I>it?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Aye, it doesn't look much like <I>ould </I>Ireland, does it?&quot; said
+Jackson.</P>
+<P>&quot;Not a bit, honey:&#8212;and how long before we get there? to-night?&quot;</P>
+<P>Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants,
+when they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their
+own native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in
+a steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
+newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
+bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.</P>
+<P>They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to
+have no adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have
+seemed as a place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on
+deck, to see how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for
+hours together, looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected
+to see New York city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two
+thousand miles distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.</P>
+<P>The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
+search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
+bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice&#8212;&quot;Look, look, ye
+divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!&quot;</P>
+<P>At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
+false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
+place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
+purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
+though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
+ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
+a ridiculous tale.</P>
+<P>Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease.
+He would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long
+boat, and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up his organ,
+and play for several hours; much to the delight of his fellow voyagers,
+who blessed him and his organ again and again; and paid him for his
+music by furnishing him his meals. Sometimes, the steward would come
+forward, when it happened to be very much of a moonlight, with a
+message from the cabin, for Carlo to repair to the quarterdeck, and
+entertain the gentlemen and ladies.</P>
+<P>There was a fiddler on board, as will presently be seen; and
+sometimes, by urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with
+Carlo's, for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only
+twice or thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated
+above the other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of
+fiddling to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons,
+entirely unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest
+interest, were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most
+part, the gentlemen and ladies were fain to dance as well as they could
+to my little Italian's organ.</P>
+<P>It was the most accommodating organ in the world; for it could play
+any tune that was called for; Carlo pulling in and out the ivory knobs
+at one side, and so manufacturing melody at pleasure.</P>
+<P>
+True, some censorious gentlemen cabin-passengers protested, that
+such or such an air, was not precisely according to Handel or Mozart;
+and some ladles, whom I overheard talking about throwing their nosegays
+to Malibran at Covent Garden, assured the attentive Captain Riga, that
+Carlo's organ was a most wretched affair, and made a horrible din.</P>
+<P>&quot;Yes, ladies,&quot; said the captain, bowing, &quot;by your leave, I think
+Carlo's organ must have lost its mother, for it squeals like a pig
+running after its dam.&quot;</P>
+<P>Harry was incensed at these criticisms; and yet these cabin-people
+were all ready enough to dance to poor Carlo's music.</P>
+<P>&quot;Carlo&quot;&#8212;said I, one night, as he was marching forward from the
+quarter-deck, after one of these sea-quadrilles, which took place
+during my watch on deck:&#8212;&quot;Carlo&quot;&#8212;said I, &quot;what do the gentlemen and
+ladies give you for playing?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Look!&quot;&#8212;and he showed me three copper medals of Britannia and her
+shield&#8212;three English pennies.</P>
+<P>Now, whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should
+ever be a little suspicious of ourselves. It may be, therefore, that
+the natural antipathy with which almost all seamen and
+steerage-passengers, regard the inmates of the cabin, was one cause at
+least, of my not feeling very charitably disposed toward them, myself.</P>
+<P>Yes: that might have been; but nevertheless, I will let nature have
+her own way for once; and here declare roundly, that, however it was, I
+cherished a feeling toward these cabin-passengers, akin to contempt.
+Not because they happened to be cabin-passengers: not at all: but only
+because they seemed the most finical, miserly, mean men and women, that
+ever stepped over the Atlantic.</P>
+<P>One of them was an old fellow in a robust looking coat, with broad
+skirts; he had a nose like a bottle of port-wine; and would stand for a
+whole hour, with his legs straddling apart, and his hands deep down in
+his breeches pockets, as if he had two mints at work there, coining
+guineas. He was an abominable looking old fellow, with cold, fat,
+jelly-like eyes; and avarice, heartlessness, and sensuality stamped all
+over him. He seemed all the time going through some process of mental
+arithmetic; doing sums with dollars and cents: his very mouth, wrinkled
+and drawn up at the corners, looked like a purse. When he dies, his
+skull ought to be turned into a savings box, with the till-hole between
+his teeth.</P>
+<P>Another of the cabin inmates, was a middle-aged Londoner, in a
+comical Cockney-cut coat, with a pair of semicircular tails: so that he
+looked as if he were sitting in a swing. He wore a spotted neckerchief;
+a short, little, fiery-red vest; and striped pants, very thin in the
+calf, but very full about the waist. There was nothing describable
+about him but his dress; for he had such a meaningless face, I can not
+remember it; though I have a vague impression, that it looked at the
+time, as if its owner was laboring under the mumps.</P>
+<P>Then there were two or three buckish looking young fellows, among
+the rest; who were all the time playing at cards on the poop, under the
+lee of the <I>spanker; </I>or smoking cigars on the taffrail; or sat
+quizzing the emigrant women with opera-glasses, leveled through the
+windows of the upper cabin. These sparks frequently called for the
+steward to help them to brandy and water, and talked about going on to
+Washington, to see Niagara Falls.</P>
+<P>There was also an old gentleman, who had brought with him three or
+four heavy files of the <I>London Times, </I>and other papers; and he
+spent all his hours in reading them, on the shady side of the deck,
+with one leg crossed over the other; and without crossed legs, he never
+read at all. That was indispensable to the proper understanding of what
+he studied. He growled terribly, when disturbed by the sailors, who now
+and then were obliged to move him to get at the ropes.</P>
+<P>As for the ladies, I have nothing to say concerning them; for ladies
+are like creeds; if you can not speak well of them, say nothing.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_53">LII. THE EMIGRANTS' KITCHEN</A></H3>
+<P>I have made some mention of the &quot;galley,&quot; or great stove for the
+steerage passengers, which was planted over the main hatches.</P>
+<P>During the outward-bound passage, there were so few occupants of the
+steerage, that they had abundant room to do their cooking at this
+galley. But it was otherwise now; for we had four or five hundred in
+the steerage; and all their cooking was to be done by one fire; a
+pretty large one, to be sure, but, nevertheless, small enough,
+considering the number to be accommodated, and the fact that the fire
+was only to be kindled at certain hours.</P>
+<P>For the emigrants in these ships are under a sort of martial-law;
+and in all their affairs are regulated by the despotic ordinances of
+the captain. And though it is evident, that to a certain extent this is
+necessary, and even indispensable; yet, as at sea no appeal lies beyond
+the captain, he too often makes unscrupulous use of his power. And as
+for going to law with him at the end of the voyage, you might as well
+go to law with the Czar of Russia.</P>
+<P>At making the fire, the emigrants take turns; as it is often very
+disagreeable work, owing to the pitching of the ship, and the heaving
+of the spray over the uncovered &quot;galley.&quot; Whenever I had the morning
+watch, from four to eight, I was sure to see some poor fellow crawling
+up from below about daybreak, and go to groping over the deck after
+bits of rope-yarn, or tarred canvas, for kindling-stuff. And no sooner
+would the fire be fairly made, than up came the old women, and men, and
+children; each armed with an iron pot or saucepan; and invariably a
+great tumult ensued, as to whose turn to cook came next; sometimes the
+more quarrelsome would fight, and upset each other's pots and pans.</P>
+<P>Once, an English lad came up with a little coffee-pot, which he
+managed to crowd in between two pans. This done, he went below. Soon
+after a great strapping Irishman, in knee-breeches and bare calves,
+made his appearance; and eying the row of things on the fire, asked
+whose coffee-pot that was; upon being told, he removed it, and put his
+own in its place; saying something about that individual place
+belonging to him; and with that, he turned aside.</P>
+<P>Not long after, the boy came along again; and seeing his pot
+removed, made a violent exclamation, and replaced it; which the
+Irishman no sooner perceived, than he rushed at him, with his fists
+doubled. The boy snatched up the boiling coffee, and spirted its
+contents all about the fellow's bare legs; which incontinently began to
+dance involuntary hornpipes and fandangoes, as a preliminary to giving
+chase to the boy, who by this time, however, had decamped.</P>
+<P>Many similar scenes occurred every day; nor did a single day pass,
+but scores of the poor people got no chance whatever to do their
+cooking.</P>
+<P>This was bad enough; but it was a still more miserable thing, to see
+these poor emigrants wrangling and fighting together for the want of
+the most ordinary accommodations. But thus it is, that the very
+hardships to which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them,
+only tends, by imbittering their tempers, to set them against each
+other; and thus they themselves drive the strongest rivet into the
+chain, by which their social superiors hold them subject.</P>
+<P>It was with a most reluctant hand, that every evening in the second
+dog-watch, at the mate's command, I would march up to the fire, and
+giving notice to the assembled crowd, that the time was come to
+extinguish it, would dash it out with my bucket of salt water; though
+many, who had long waited for a chance to cook, had now to go away
+disappointed.</P>
+<P>The staple food of the Irish emigrants was oatmeal and water, boiled
+into what is sometimes called <I>mush; </I>by the Dutch is known as <I>
+supaan; </I>by sailors <I>burgoo; </I>by the New Englanders <I>
+hasty-pudding; </I>in which hasty-pudding, by the way, the poet Barlow
+found the materials for a sort of epic.</P>
+<P>Some of the steerage passengers, however, were provided with
+sea-biscuit, and other perennial food, that was eatable all the year
+round, fire or no fire.</P>
+<P>There were several, moreover, who seemed better to do in the world
+than the rest; who were well furnished with hams, cheese, Bologna
+sausages, Dutch herrings, alewives, and other delicacies adapted to the
+contingencies of a voyager in the steerage.</P>
+<P>There was a little old Englishman on board, who had been a grocer
+ashore, whose greasy trunks seemed all pantries; and he was constantly
+using himself for a cupboard, by transferring their contents into his
+own interior. He was a little light of head, I always thought. He
+particularly doated on his long strings of sausages; and would
+sometimes take them out, and play with them, wreathing them round him,
+like an Indian juggler with charmed snakes. What with this diversion,
+and eating his cheese, and helping himself from an inexhaustible junk
+bottle, and smoking his pipe, and meditating, this crack-pated grocer
+made time jog along with him at a tolerably easy pace.</P>
+<P>But by far the most considerable man in the steerage, in point of
+pecuniary circumstances at least, was a slender little pale-faced
+English tailor, who it seemed had engaged a passage for himself and
+wife in some imaginary section of the ship, called the <I>second cabin, </I>
+which was feigned to combine the comforts of the first cabin with the
+cheapness of the steerage. But it turned out that this second cabin was
+comprised in the after part of the steerage itself, with nothing
+intervening but a name. So to his no small disgust, he found himself
+herding with the rabble; and his complaints to the captain were
+unheeded.</P>
+<P>This luckless tailor was tormented the whole voyage by his wife, who
+was young and handsome; just such a beauty as farmers'-boys fall in
+love with; she had bright eyes, and red cheeks, and looked plump and
+happy.</P>
+<P>She was a sad coquette; and did not turn away, as she was bound to
+do, from the dandy glances of the cabin bucks, who ogled her through
+their double-barreled opera glasses. This enraged the tailor past
+telling; he would remonstrate with his wife, and scold her; and lay his
+matrimonial commands upon her, to go below instantly, out of sight. But
+the lady was not to be tyrannized over; and so she told him. Meantime,
+the bucks would be still framing her in their lenses, mightily enjoying
+the fun. The last resources of the poor tailor would be, to start up,
+and make a dash at the rogues, with clenched fists; but upon getting as
+far as the mainmast, the mate would accost him from over the rope that
+divided them, and beg leave to communicate the fact, that he could come
+no further. This unfortunate tailor was also a fiddler; and when fairly
+baited into desperation, would rush for his instrument, and try to get
+rid of his wrath by playing the most savage, remorseless airs he could
+think of.</P>
+<P>While thus employed, perhaps his wife would accost him&#8212;</P>
+<P>&quot;Billy, my dear;&quot; and lay her soft hand on his shoulder. </P>
+<P>But Billy, he only fiddled harder.</P>
+<P>&quot;Billy, my love!&quot;</P>
+<P>The bow went faster and faster.</P>
+<P>&quot;Come, now, Billy, my dear little fellow, let's make it all up;&quot; and
+she bent over his knees, looking bewitchingly up at him, with her
+irresistible eyes.</P>
+<P>Down went fiddle and bow; and the couple would sit together for an
+hour or two, as pleasant and affectionate as possible.</P>
+<P>But the next day, the chances were, that the old feud would be
+renewed, which was certain to be the case at the first glimpse of an
+opera-glass from the cabin.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_54">LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII</A></H3>
+<P>With a slight alteration, I might begin this chapter after the
+manner of Livy, in the 24th section of his first book:&#8212;&quot;It <I>
+happened, that in each family were three twin brothers, between whom
+there was little disparity in point of age or of strength.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Among the steerage passengers of the Highlander, were two women from
+Armagh, in Ireland, widows and sisters, who had each three twin sons,
+born, as they said, on the same day.</P>
+<P>They were ten years old. Each three of these six cousins were as
+like as the mutually reflected figures in a kaleidoscope; and like the
+forms seen in a kaleidoscope, together, as well as separately, they
+seemed to form a complete figure. But, though besides this fraternal
+likeness, all six boys bore a strong cousin-german resemblance to each
+other; yet, the O'Briens were in disposition quite the reverse of the
+O'Regans. The former were a timid, silent trio, who used to revolve
+around their mother's waist, and seldom quit the maternal orbit;
+whereas, the O'Regans were &quot;broths of boys,&quot; full of mischief and fun,
+and given to all manner of devilment, like the tails of the comets.</P>
+<P>Early every morning, Mrs. O'Regan emerged from the steerage, driving
+her spirited twins before her, like a riotous herd of young steers; and
+made her way to the capacious deck-tub, full of salt water, pumped up
+from the sea, for the purpose of washing down the ship. Three splashes,
+and the three boys were ducking and diving together in the brine; their
+mother engaged in <I>shampooing </I>them, though it was haphazard sort
+of work enough; a rub here, and a scrub there, as she could manage to
+fasten on a stray limb.</P>
+<P>&quot;Pat, ye divil, hould still while I wash ye. Ah! but it's you,
+Teddy, you rogue. Arrah, now, Mike, ye spalpeen, don't be mixing your
+legs up with Pat's.&quot;</P>
+<P>The little rascals, leaping and scrambling with delight, enjoyed the
+sport mightily; while this indefatigable, but merry matron, manipulated
+them all over, as if it were a matter of conscience.</P>
+<P>Meanwhile, Mrs. O'Brien would be standing on the boatswain's
+locker&#8212;or rope and tar-pot pantry in the vessel's bows &#8212;with a large
+old quarto Bible, black with age, laid before her between the
+knight-heads, and reading aloud to her three meek little lambs.</P>
+<P>The sailors took much pleasure in the deck-tub performances of the
+O'Regans, and greatly admired them always for their archness and
+activity; but the tranquil O'Briens they did not fancy so much. More
+especially they disliked the grave matron herself; hooded in rusty
+black; and they had a bitter grudge against her book. To that, and the
+incantations muttered over it, they ascribed the head winds that
+haunted us; and Blunt, our Irish cockney, really believed that Mrs.
+O'Brien purposely came on deck every morning, in order to secure a foul
+wind for the next ensuing twenty-four hours.</P>
+<P>At last, upon her coming forward one morning, Max the Dutchman
+accosted her, saying he was sorry for it, but if she went between the
+knight-heads again with her book, the crew would throw it overboard for
+her.</P>
+<P>Now, although contrasted in character, there existed a great warmth
+of affection between the two families of twins, which upon this
+occasion was curiously manifested.</P>
+<P>Notwithstanding the rebuke and threat of the sailor, the widow
+silently occupied her old place; and with her children clustering round
+her, began her low, muttered reading, standing right in the extreme
+bows of the ship, and slightly leaning over them, as if addressing the
+multitudinous waves from a floating pulpit. Presently Max came behind
+her, snatched the book from her hands, and threw it overboard. The
+widow gave a wail, and her boys set up a cry. Their cousins, then
+ducking in the water close by, at once saw the cause of the cry; and
+springing from the tub, like so many dogs, seized Max by the legs,
+biting and striking at him: which, the before timid little O'Briens no
+sooner perceived, than they, too, threw themselves on the enemy, and
+the amazed seaman found himself baited like a bull by all six boys.</P>
+<P>And here it gives me joy to record one good thing on the part of the
+mate. He saw the fray, and its beginning; and rushing forward, told Max
+that he would harm the boys at his peril; while he cheered them on, as
+if rejoiced at their giving the fellow such a tussle. At last Max,
+sorely scratched, bit, pinched, and every way aggravated, though of
+course without a serious bruise, cried out &quot;enough!&quot; and the assailants
+were ordered to quit him; but though the three O'Briens obeyed, the
+three O'Regans hung on to him like leeches, and had to be dragged off.</P>
+<P>&quot;There now, you rascal,&quot; cried the mate, &quot;throw overboard another
+Bible, and I'll send you after it without a bowline.&quot;</P>
+<P>This event gave additional celebrity to the twins throughout the
+vessel. That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and
+reviewed by the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular
+interest in them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of
+them show in public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and
+questioning their nurses.</P>
+<P>&quot;And were you all born at one time?&quot; asked an old lady, letting her
+eye run in wonder along the even file of white heads.</P>
+<P>&quot;Indeed, an' we were,&quot; said Teddy; &quot;wasn't we, mother?&quot;</P>
+<P>Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was
+taken up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers,
+which resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny
+apiece.</P>
+<P>I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable
+feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable
+or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two
+sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet,
+the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to
+me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this
+should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples
+of the same phenomenon. Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and
+Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet,
+eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they
+possibly can be?</P>
+<P>Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for
+the particular benefit of twins?</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_55">LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND <I>
+PIG-TAIL</I></A></H3>
+<P>It has been mentioned how advantageously my shipmates disposed of
+their tobacco in Liverpool; but it is to be related how those nefarious
+commercial speculations of theirs reduced them to sad extremities in
+the end.</P>
+<P>True to their improvident character, and seduced by the high prices
+paid for the weed in England, they had there sold off by far the
+greater portion of what tobacco they had; even inducing the mate to
+surrender the portion he had secured under lock and key by command of
+the Custom-house officers. So that when the crew were about two weeks
+out, on the homeward-bound passage, it became sorrowfully evident that
+tobacco was at a premium.</P>
+<P>Now, one of the favorite pursuits of sailors during a dogwatch below
+at sea is cards; and though they do not understand whist, cribbage, and
+games of that kidney, yet they are adepts at what is called <I>
+&quot;High-low-Jack-and-the-game,&quot; </I>which name, indeed, has a Jackish and
+nautical flavor. Their stakes are generally so many plugs of tobacco,
+which, like rouleaux of guineas, are piled on their chests when they
+play. Judge, then, the wicked zest with which the Highlander's crew now
+shuffled and dealt the pack; and how the interest curiously and
+invertedly increased, as the stakes necessarily became less and less;
+and finally resolved themselves into <I>&quot;chaws.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>So absorbed, at last, did they become at this business, that some of
+them, after being hard at work during a nightwatch on deck, would rob
+themselves of rest below, in order to have a brush at the cards. And as
+it is very difficult sleeping in the presence of gamblers; especially
+if they chance to be sailors, whose conversation at all times is apt to
+be boisterous; these fellows would often be driven out of the
+forecastle by those who desired to rest. They were obliged to repair on
+deck, and make a card-table of it; and invariably, in such cases, there
+was a great deal of contention, a great many ungentlemanly charges of
+nigging and cheating; and, now and then, a few parenthetical blows were
+exchanged. </P>
+<P>But this was not so much to be wondered at, seeing they could see
+but very little, being provided with no light but that of a midnight
+sky; and the cards, from long wear and rough usage, having become
+exceedingly torn and tarry, so much so, that several members of the
+four suits might have seceded from their respective clans, and formed
+into a fifth tribe, under the name of <I>&quot;Tar-spots.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Every day the tobacco grew scarcer and scarcer; till at last it
+became necessary to adopt the greatest possible economy in its use. The
+modicum constituting an ordinary <I>&quot;chaw,&quot; </I>was made to last a
+whole day; and at night, permission being had from the cook, this
+self-same <I>&quot;chaw&quot; </I>was placed in the oven of the stove, and there
+dried; so as to do duty in a pipe.</P>
+<P>In the end not a plug was to be had; and deprived of a solace and a
+stimulus, on which sailors so much rely while at sea, the crew became
+absent, moody, and sadly tormented with the hypos. They were something
+like opium-smokers, suddenly cut off from their drug. They would sit on
+their chests, forlorn and moping; with a steadfast sadness, eying the
+forecastle lamp, at which they had lighted so many a pleasant pipe.
+With touching eloquence they recalled those happier evenings&#8212;the time
+of smoke and vapor; when, after a whole day's delectable <I>&quot;chawing,&quot; </I>
+they beguiled themselves with their genial, and most companionable
+puffs.</P>
+<P>One night, when they seemed more than usually cast down and
+disconsolate, Blunt, the Irish cockney, started up suddenly with an
+idea in his head&#8212;&quot;Boys, let's search under the bunks!&quot; Bless you,
+Blunt! what a happy conceit! Forthwith, the chests were dragged out;
+the dark places explored; and two sticks of <I>nail-rod </I>tobacco,
+and several old <I>&quot;chaws,&quot; </I>thrown aside by sailors on some
+previous voyage, were their cheering reward. They were impartially
+divided by Jackson, who, upon this occasion, acquitted himself to the
+satisfaction of all.</P>
+<P>Their mode of dividing this tobacco was the rather curious one
+generally adopted by sailors, when the highest possible degree of
+impartiality is desirable. I will describe it, recommending its earnest
+consideration to all heirs, who may hereafter divide an inheritance;
+for if they adopted this nautical method, that universally slanderous
+aphorism of Lavater would be forever rendered nugatory&#8212;&quot;Expert <I>not
+to understand any man till you have divided with him an inheritance.&quot;</I>
+</P>
+<P>The <I>nail-rods </I>they cut as evenly as possible into as many
+parts as there were men to be supplied; and this operation having been
+performed in the presence of all, Jackson, placing the tobacco before
+him, his face to the wall, and back to the company, struck one of the
+bits of weed with his knife, crying out, &quot;Whose is this?&quot; Whereupon a
+respondent, previously pitched upon, replied, at a venture, from the
+opposite corner of the forecastle, &quot;Blunt's;&quot; and to Blunt it went; and
+so on, in like manner, till all were served.</P>
+<P>I put it to you, lawyers&#8212;shade of Blackstone, I invoke you &#8212;if a
+more impartial procedure could be imagined than this?</P>
+<P>But the nail-rods and last-voyage <I>&quot;chaws&quot; </I>were soon gone, and
+then, after a short interval of comparative gayety, the men again
+drooped, and relapsed into gloom.</P>
+<P>They soon hit upon an ingenious device, however&#8212;but not altogether
+new among seamen&#8212;to allay the severity of the depression under which
+they languished. Ropes were unstranded, and the yarns picked apart;
+and, cut up into small bits, were used as a substitute for the weed.
+Old ropes were preferred; especially those which had long lain in the
+hold, and had contracted an epicurean dampness, making still richer
+their ancient, cheese-like flavor.</P>
+<P>In the middle of most large ropes, there is a straight, central
+part, round which the exterior strands are twisted. When in picking
+oakum, upon various occasions, I have chanced, among the old junk used
+at such times, to light upon a fragment of this species of rope, I have
+ever taken, I know not what kind of strange, nutty delight in
+untwisting it slowly, and gradually coming upon its deftly hidden and
+aromatic <I>&quot;heart;&quot; </I>for so this central piece is denominated.</P>
+<P>It is generally of a rich, tawny, Indian hue, somewhat inclined to
+luster; is exceedingly agreeable to the touch; diffuses a pungent odor,
+as of an old dusty bottle of Port, newly opened above ground; and,
+altogether, is an object which no man, who enjoys his dinners, could
+refrain from hanging over, and caressing.</P>
+<P>Nor is this delectable morsel of <I>old junk </I>wanting in many
+interesting, mournful, and tragic suggestions. Who can say in what
+gales it may have been; in what remote seas it may have sailed? How
+many stout masts of seventy-fours and frigates it may have staid in the
+tempest? How deep it may have lain, as a hawser, at the bottom of
+strange harbors? What outlandish fish may have nibbled at it in the
+water, and what un-catalogued sea-fowl may have pecked at it, when
+forming part of a lofty stay or a shroud?</P>
+<P>Now, this particular part of the rope, this nice little &quot;cut&quot; it
+was, that among the sailors was the most eagerly sought after. And
+getting hold of a foot or two of old cable, they would cut into it
+lovingly, to see whether it had any <I>&quot;tenderloin.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>For my own part, nevertheless, I can not say that this tit-bit was
+at all an agreeable one in the mouth; however pleasant to the sight of
+an antiquary, or to the nose of an epicure in nautical fragrancies.
+Indeed, though possibly I might have been mistaken, I thought it had
+rather an astringent, acrid taste; probably induced by the tar, with
+which the flavor of all ropes is more or less vitiated. But the sailors
+seemed to like it, and at any rate nibbled at it with great gusto. They
+converted one pocket of their trowsers into a junk-shop, and when
+solicited by a shipmate for a <I>&quot;chaw,&quot; </I>would produce a small coil
+of rope.</P>
+<P>Another device adopted to alleviate their hardships, was the
+substitution of dried tea-leaves, in place of tobacco, for their pipes.
+No one has ever supped in a forecastle at sea, without having been
+struck by the prodigious residuum of tea-leaves, or cabbage stalks, in
+his tin-pot of bohea. There was no lack of material to supply every
+pipe-bowl among us.</P>
+<P>I had almost forgotten to relate the most noteworthy thing in this
+matter; namely, that notwithstanding the general scarcity of the
+genuine weed, Jackson was provided with a supply; nor did it give out,
+until very shortly previous to our arrival in port.</P>
+<P>In the lowest depths of despair at the loss of their precious
+solace, when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish
+captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an
+upper one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down
+upon the mourners below, with a sardonic grin at their forlornness.</P>
+<P>He recalled to mind their folly in selling for filthy lucre, their
+supplies of the weed; he painted their stupidity; he enlarged upon the
+sufferings they had brought upon themselves; he exaggerated those
+sufferings, and every way derided, reproached, twitted, and hooted at
+them. No one dared to return his scurrilous animadversions, nor did any
+presume to ask him to relieve their necessities out of his fullness. On
+the contrary, as has been just related, they divided with him the <I>
+nail-rods </I>they found.</P>
+<P>The extraordinary dominion of this one miserable Jackson, over
+twelve or fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution
+must be left to the philosophers.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_45">LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST
+SCENE IN JACKSON'S CAREER</A></H3>
+<P>
+<B></B></P>
+<P>
+The closing allusion to Jackson in the chapter preceding, reminds me
+of a circumstance&#8212;which, perhaps, should have been mentioned
+before&#8212;that after we had been at sea about ten days, he pronounced
+himself too unwell to do duty, and accordingly went below to his bunk.
+And here, with the exception of a few brief intervals of sunning
+himself in fine weather, he remained on his back, or seated
+cross-legged, during the remainder of the homeward-bound passage.</P>
+<P>Brooding there, in his infernal gloom, though nothing but a castaway
+sailor in canvas trowsers, this man was still a picture, worthy to be
+painted by the dark, moody hand of Salvator. In any of that master's
+lowering sea-pieces, representing the desolate crags of Calabria, with
+a midnight shipwreck in the distance, this Jackson's would have been
+the face to paint for the doomed vessel's figurehead, seamed and
+blasted by lightning.</P>
+<P>Though the more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered
+among themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or
+off, was only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that,
+from his excesses in Liverpool, the malady which had long fastened its
+fangs in his flesh, was now gnawing into his vitals.</P>
+<P>His cheek became thinner and yellower, and the bones projected like
+those of a skull. His snaky eyes rolled in red sockets; nor could he
+lift his hand without a violent tremor; while his racking cough many a
+time startled us from sleep. Yet still in his tremulous grasp he swayed
+his scepter, and ruled us all like a tyrant to the last.</P>
+<P>The weaker and weaker he grew, the more outrageous became his
+treatment of the crew. The prospect of the speedy and unshunable death
+now before him, seemed to exasperate his misanthropic soul into
+madness; and as if he had indeed sold it to Satan, he seemed determined
+to die with a curse between his teeth. </P>
+<P>I can never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with
+short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that
+misanthrope upon the throne of the world&#8212; the diabolical Tiberius at
+Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and
+unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did
+not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him to
+his own perdition, all who came within the evil spell of his power. And
+though Tiberius came in the succession of the Caesars, and though
+unmatchable Tacitus has embalmed his carrion, yet do I account this
+Yankee Jackson full as dignified a personage as he, and as well
+meriting his lofty gallows in history; even though he was a nameless
+vagabond without an epitaph, and none, but I, narrate what he was. For
+there is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell
+is a democracy of devils, where all are equals. There, Nero howls side
+by side with his own malefactors. If Napoleon were truly but a martial
+murderer, I pay him no more homage than I would a felon. Though
+Milton's Satan dilutes our abhorrence with admiration, it is only
+because he is not a genuine being, but something altered from a genuine
+original. We gather not from the four gospels alone, any high-raised
+fancies concerning this Satan; we only know him from thence as the
+personification of the essence of evil, which, who but pickpockets and
+burglars will admire? But this takes not from the merit of our
+high-priest of poetry; it only enhances it, that with such unmitigated
+evil for his material, he should build up his most goodly structure.
+But in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and
+lifting up and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples
+of wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be
+sure of fame.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_56">LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE
+LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION</A></H3>
+<P>A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their
+harps on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of
+Palestine before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to
+themselves, those melodies of other times and a distant land were as
+sweet as the June dew on Hermon.</P>
+<P>And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
+captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
+a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
+insulted and derided him.</P>
+<P>His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person
+like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through
+the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by
+pied and pansied margins.</P>
+<P>
+&quot;<I>I </I>can't sing to-night&quot;&#8212;sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with
+his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
+melody&#8212;&quot;I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough,&quot; he
+whispered,&#8212;and I stooped my ear,&#8212; &quot;come <I>you </I>with me under the
+lee of the long-boat, and there I'll hum you an air.&quot;
+<P>It was <I>The Banks of the Blue Moselle.</I></P>
+<P>Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
+singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
+fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,&#8212;to be
+singing it <I>here&#8212;here, </I>as I live, under the tarry lee of our
+long-boat.</P>
+<P>But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all
+with sprites, and cried <I>&quot;chassez!&quot; &quot;hands across!&quot; </I>to the
+multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.</P>
+<P>But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
+ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew
+from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to
+master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so
+delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well
+knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least,
+they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more
+deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight.
+Carlo's organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury
+blade was an accordion in their ears.</P>
+<P>So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
+jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
+Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
+like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
+fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled
+in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
+fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
+relinquished their prey.</P>
+<P>Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more
+and more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant
+company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their
+secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love;
+and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius,
+whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude.</P>
+<P>But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past
+career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many
+things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very
+curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to
+aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by
+which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.
+However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and
+if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a
+measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
+were, which the future held out to him.</P>
+<P>He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the
+expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of
+his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and
+that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon
+which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
+yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to
+England; and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal
+felicity.</P>
+<P>&quot;I have forgotten England,&quot; he said, &quot;and never more mean to think
+of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?&quot;</P>
+<P>It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young
+though I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine
+powder in the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could
+sympathize with one in similar circumstances. For though we may look
+grave and behave kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet,
+if we have never actually experienced something like the woe that
+weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy.
+And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may
+be, that we should distrust that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole
+with us.</P>
+<P>So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch
+by talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor,
+as I certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home;
+even as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood
+toward him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my
+country; I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more
+befitting, that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that <I>
+his </I>prospects and plans should engage our attention, in preference
+to my own.</P>
+<P>Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such
+bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be
+turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably&#8212;&quot;Gad, my boy,
+you have hit it, you have,&quot; and then he went on to mention, that in
+some places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of
+highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately
+in lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats&#8212;it was
+customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain
+their livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into
+silvery shillings.</P>
+<P>They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell&#8212;Are <I>the
+ladies and gentlemen in? </I>Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking,
+if not sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at
+once; and when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would
+rise with a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, <I>We come, ladies and
+gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are singers, at your service. </I>And
+so, without waiting reply, forth they burst into song; and having most
+mellifluous voices, enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so,
+that at the conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to
+be well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again,
+and make the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.</P>
+<P>&quot;Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?&quot; said
+Harry, &quot;or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?&quot; he
+anxiously added.</P>
+<P>Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a
+civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets,
+fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he
+would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in
+essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.</P>
+<P>I could not but be struck&#8212;and had I not been, from my birth, as it
+were, a cosmopolite&#8212;I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to
+the civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might
+have resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees
+lived in wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of
+a Cockney, and had shut up his Christendom in London.</P>
+<P>Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should
+not play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly
+popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the
+enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on
+such a business.</P>
+<P>Said I, &quot;My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb
+man has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I
+think myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling.&quot;</P>
+<P>So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the
+idea of singing himself into a livelihood.</P>
+<P>&quot;No, I won't sing for my mutton,&quot; said he&#8212;&quot;what would Lady
+Georgiana say?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry,&quot;
+returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my
+bosom friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and
+right honorable friends and relations.</P>
+<P>&quot;But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among
+your other accomplishments; and <I>that </I>at least, will be sure to
+help you.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I <I>do </I>write a hand,&quot; he gladly rejoined&#8212;&quot;there, look at the
+implement!&#8212;do you not think, that such a hand as <I>that </I>might dot
+an <I>i, </I>or cross a <I>t, </I>with a touching grace and tenderness?&quot;</P>
+<P>Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship. It was
+small; and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded;
+the nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few
+characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the
+sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided
+the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that
+elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the
+forum.</P>
+<P>His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages
+of that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline
+fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his
+noble birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of
+us&#8212;the son of a <I>man. </I>And so are the dainty-handed, and
+wee-footed half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were
+entitled to consideration, would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.</P>
+<P>Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known by his
+finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture:
+or that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the
+foot, when even a fish has no foot at all!</P>
+<P>Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured,
+oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad
+base. It is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.</P>
+<P>But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had once been
+white as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the
+reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and
+clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes,
+had somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.</P>
+<P>Often he ruefully eyed it.</P>
+<P>Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you come to? Is it
+seemly, that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed
+countesses to their coaches? Is <I>this </I>the hand I kissed to the
+divine Georgiana? with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified
+my bond to Lord Lovely? <I>This </I>the hand that Georgiana clasped to
+her bosom, when she vowed she was mine?&#8212;Out of sight, recreant and
+apostate!&#8212;deep down&#8212;disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where
+I thrust you!</P>
+<P>After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided,
+that upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my
+few friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he
+might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by
+traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
+are gently drawn through a park for an airing.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_57">LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE</A></H3>
+<P>&quot;Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little
+troughs, just like our pigs at home.&quot; Thus exclaimed one of the
+steerage children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the
+forecastle, where the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the
+&quot;kids,&quot; which, indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.</P>
+<P>&quot;Pigs, is it?&quot; coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat
+presiding over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had
+lost his appetite by chewing sulphur.&#8212;&quot;Pigs, is it?&#8212;and the day is
+close by, ye spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at
+our troughs!&quot;</P>
+<P>This malicious prophecy proved true.</P>
+<P>As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
+drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
+shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to
+their outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable
+results.</P>
+<P>Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had
+nothing to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be
+supplied from the ship's stores, or starve.</P>
+<P>This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from
+the cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
+demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
+sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.</P>
+<P>But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their
+hunger: hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult.
+The consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night,
+scores of the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might
+devour. They plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls,
+cooked them at the public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in
+the boat, and carried off a promising young shoat: <I>him </I>they
+devoured raw, not venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they
+prowled about the cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle
+of scalding water; they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions
+from the cook to the cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the
+bread-barge; they beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets,
+craving a mouthful in the name of the Church.</P>
+<P>At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand
+Russian, Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect:
+Whatsoever emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied
+into the rigging and flogged.</P>
+<P>Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
+alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
+after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
+punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
+their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought
+that such rigorous discipline as <I>that </I>might exasperate five
+hundred emigrants into an insurrection.</P>
+<P>A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs&#8212;the half of a cask;
+and into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the
+bottom of the tub. The head&#8212;divided in the middle, across the diameter
+of the orifice&#8212;was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was
+forthwith coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders,
+while his legs protruded through the holes in the bottom.</P>
+<P>It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
+ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
+laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.</P>
+<P>&quot;Now, Pat, my boy,&quot; said the mate, &quot;fill that big wooden belly of
+yours, if you can.&quot;</P>
+<P>Compassionating his situation, our old &quot;doctor&quot; used to give him
+alms of food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last,
+when the time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and
+would fain have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of
+this starving voyage.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_58">LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS
+INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS
+BEHIND</A></H3>
+<P>Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
+frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it
+is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even
+sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage.
+Though in the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must
+occasion so great a detention. It is also true, that generally the
+passage out from America is shorter than the return; which is to be
+ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.</P>
+<P>We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still
+harassed by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole,
+when we were visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the
+greater part of a week.</P>
+<P>During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
+this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
+sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
+appearance on deck, during the entire passage.</P>
+<P>During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the
+public galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done
+in the steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air.
+When the lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually
+cleanly emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to
+toss into the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of
+these ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
+ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would
+continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One
+morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a
+gallon or two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his
+face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be
+standing by at the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the
+spot; and ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any
+thing to windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.</P>
+<P>During the frequent <I>hard blows </I>we experienced, the hatchways
+on the steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down
+in their noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to
+be marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
+overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
+during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
+overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.</P>
+<P>Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in
+so close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
+sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
+personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.</P>
+<P>The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was
+it known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
+cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
+steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
+grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.</P>
+<P>Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning,
+sought out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers;
+begging him to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might
+prevent the disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this
+person denied being a physician; and from fear of contagion&#8212;though he
+did not confess that to be the motive&#8212;refused even to enter the
+steerage. The cases increased: the utmost alarm spread through the
+ship: and scenes ensued, over which, for the most part, a veil must be
+drawn; for such is the fastidiousness of some readers, that, many
+times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a narrative like
+mine.</P>
+<P>Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled
+on deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather&#8212;wet,
+cold, and tempestuous&#8212;drove the best part of them again below. Yet any
+other human beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most
+outrageous storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the
+steerage. But some of these poor people must have been so used to the
+most abasing calamities, that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost
+seemed their natural air.</P>
+<P>The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
+emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
+barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
+this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
+thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
+make still worse, what was already direful enough.</P>
+<P>It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and
+coaxing, that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to
+accomplish the captain's order.</P>
+<P>The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It
+was like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds
+of meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
+chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
+suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
+place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
+In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
+lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
+to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
+the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their
+breath with a gasp.</P>
+<P>At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
+while&#8212;notwithstanding the crowd&#8212;in front of it was a clear area,
+which the fear of contagion had left open.</P>
+<P>&quot;That bulkhead must come down,&quot; cried the mate, in a voice that rose
+above the din. &quot;Take hold of it, boys.&quot;</P>
+<P>But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
+pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
+they would slay us, if we did not desist.</P>
+<P>&quot;Haul it down!&quot; roared the mate.</P>
+<P>But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
+having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
+fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
+had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
+depart, without achieving our object.</P>
+<P>About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all
+men; and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme.
+Certainly, the bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were
+sailing, concealed nothing more frightful.</P>
+<P>Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was
+unnecessary. By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of
+their wives, rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with
+hurried rites, were dropped into the ocean.</P>
+<P>At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree
+of devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his
+medicines; but the captain did not again go down to them.</P>
+<P>It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and
+had it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it
+madness to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and
+unsheltered decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered
+above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the
+present, this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused
+to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the
+greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of
+the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to
+assist in what seemed their own salvation.</P>
+<P>The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion
+to themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of
+the captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast.
+Their clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the
+present they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their
+old quarters, which communicated with the cabin.</P>
+<P>On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee
+from an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in
+the very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from
+it; and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually
+guard against contagion.</P>
+<P>Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
+presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
+before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair
+winds and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last,
+even prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the
+loud jest had been so often heard.</P>
+<P>Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect
+of that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
+spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
+thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.</P>
+<P>On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on
+the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland
+sailor, and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was
+afterward supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last
+deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
+cabin-passengers, and emigrants&#8212;all looked upon each other like
+lepers. All but the only true leper among us&#8212;the mariner Jackson, who
+seemed elated with the thought, that for <I>him&#8212;</I>already in the
+deadly clutches of another disease&#8212;no danger was to be apprehended
+from a fever which only swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in
+the midst of the despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was
+not cast down; not, at least, by the same considerations that appalled
+the rest.</P>
+<P>And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now
+on this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and
+drenched in rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward
+her port.</P>
+<P>On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
+stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
+ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
+on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
+drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
+gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.</P>
+<P>But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in
+the rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague,
+panic, and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first
+cry of one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of
+its father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded
+by death, both mothers and babes survived.</P>
+<P>At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and,
+for the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.</P>
+<P>In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass,
+watching the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon
+which fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which
+villages, and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a
+landscape in Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often
+tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the
+seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human
+beings.</P>
+<P>By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we
+bore down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and
+aloft; and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
+elbow;&#8212;bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.</P>
+<P>The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
+emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck,
+snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun,
+and regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who
+of late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment
+of them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the
+steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing,
+sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was
+more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This
+day we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us,
+with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway,
+soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the
+mate.</P>
+<P>But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
+still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,
+the fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of
+the fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on;
+and we made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward
+steered for New York.</P>
+<P>Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
+still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers&#8212;at
+least by far the greater number&#8212;wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
+little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
+reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives,
+or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard
+and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief
+is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing
+reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind
+condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends;
+and they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their
+pallbearers throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.</P>
+<P>How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from
+home, suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with
+but a few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a
+strange land?</P>
+<P>As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they?
+drawing nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the
+promised land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay,
+the jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
+steward.</P>
+<P>The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
+from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or
+relative on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger
+dying among strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.</P>
+<P>But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted
+people in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered
+others, upon the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.</P>
+<P>And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril,
+proves grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
+perish;&#8212;therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
+minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
+with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
+there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
+that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
+themselves. Accordingly, <I>craven </I>is the phrase too often applied
+to any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the
+prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he
+have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of <I>craven </I>
+would you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has
+beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The
+subject invites much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of
+death, and his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best
+index to his life and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then
+begun, Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was
+not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of the
+Christian,&#8212;humble, composed, without bravado; and though the most
+skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless
+faith, that embraces the spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity;
+Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison,
+calling upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die;
+but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of
+the Christian.</P>
+<P>The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest
+kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young
+sparks, who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor,
+now no more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same
+youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of
+his companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited
+the slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by
+the observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the little
+glass in the cabin bulk-head.</P>
+<P>But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
+shone in the sun, none braver than he.</P>
+<P>One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into
+holy orders upon his arrival in New York.</P>
+<P>&quot;Why so?&quot; said the other, &quot;have I such an orotund voice?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No;&quot; profanely returned his friend&#8212;&quot;but you are a coward &#8212;just
+the man to be a parson, and pray.&quot;</P>
+<P>However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever
+among the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
+happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
+taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
+generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head. <I>
+There </I>is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea.
+They die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are
+heard or seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the
+catalogue of passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of
+news, who are more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a
+world of Me and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies
+shrunk into a three-worded sentence!</P>
+<P>You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no
+groans of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you
+mark not the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:&#8212;all
+is a blank. And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting
+the details of the Highlander's calamity.</P>
+<P>Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last
+woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed
+circumstances of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known,
+operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid
+detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most
+palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.</P>
+<P>In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
+concerning emigrant ships in general.</P>
+<P>Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such
+multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let
+us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they
+have God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her
+miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole
+world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall
+of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the
+emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and
+will.</P>
+<P>Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
+certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
+were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
+done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
+supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
+hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.</P>
+<P>But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the
+hard lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the
+captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent
+lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are
+immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance
+necessitates him to place the <I>galley, </I>or steerage-passengers'
+stove, in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their
+cooking during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance obliges him to
+give them more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore
+and aft?&#8212;There is no law concerning these things. And if there was,
+who but some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is
+there a Howard in office!</P>
+<P>We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of <I>
+them, </I>go to heaven, before some of <I>us? </I>We may have civilized
+bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this
+world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know,
+that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what
+Christianity is striving to make us.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_59">LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON</A></H3>
+<P>&quot;Off Cape Cod!&quot; said the steward, coming forward from the
+quarter-deck, where the captain had just been taking his noon
+observation; sweeping the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy
+circumnavigating the dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.</P>
+<P>
+<I>Off Cape Cod!</I></P>
+<p>
+and in the shore-bloom that came to us&#8212; even from that desert of
+sand-hillocks&#8212;methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance of
+the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at
+home. Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
+flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from
+afar.</p>
+<P>The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two
+broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By
+night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to
+make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we
+carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a
+switch.</P>
+<P>In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at
+last the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef
+into all three top-sails.</P>
+<P>While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before
+they had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of
+several, Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time
+in four weeks or more, took hold of a rope.</P>
+<P>Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been
+off duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to
+entering port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that
+he expected his wages; but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.</P>
+<P>At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than
+upon an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul
+on deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.</P>
+<P>His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes
+were like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his
+dark tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.</P>
+<P>Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was
+tottering up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing
+his place at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard&#8212;which in
+reefing is accounted the post of honor. For it was one of the
+characteristics of this man, that though when on duty he would shy away
+from mere dull work in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed
+the van, and would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause
+of his unbounded dominion over the men.</P>
+<P>Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship
+rearing and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping
+his reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward
+Jackson, whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.</P>
+<P>His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning
+backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle. At
+all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose
+spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they
+hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and <I>then </I>it is, too,
+that they are the most profane.</P>
+<P>&quot;Haul out to windward!&quot; coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and
+he threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his
+hand. But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands
+dropped to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent
+of blood from his lungs.</P>
+<P>As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell
+headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver
+into the sea.</P>
+<P>It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long
+projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon
+the water. His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck,
+some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail,
+while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind
+man might have known something deadly had happened.</P>
+<P>Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to
+the one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our
+shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of
+the waves, and Jackson never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting
+an order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but
+instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, &quot;Bear a hand, and
+reef away, men!&quot; from the mate.</P>
+<P>Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save
+Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the
+sea&#8212;and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have
+driven his soul from his lacerated lungs &#8212;our jolly-boat would have
+taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.</P>
+<P>And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which
+too many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster
+befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.</P>
+<P>Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the
+jolly-boat. The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two,
+was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its
+sides. It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It was
+filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this the jolly-boat
+was capsized without a <I>thole-pin </I>in the gunwales; its bottom
+bleaching and cracking in the sun.</P>
+<P>Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked;
+yet in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats. To
+be sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions,
+could in case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part
+of the souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a
+handful of survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even
+in the worst of the calamities that befell patient Job, some <I>one </I>
+at least of his servants escaped to report it.</P>
+<P>In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my
+hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest allusion to the
+departed Jackson. One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing
+up his memory among them. Whether it was, that the severity of the
+bondage under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode
+in their secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection
+of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that <I>
+his </I>death was <I>their </I>deliverance; which they celebrated by an
+elevation of spirits, unknown before. Doubtless, this was to be in part
+imputed, however, to their now drawing near to their port.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_60">LX. HOME AT LAST</A></H3>
+<P>Next day was Sunday; and the mid-day sun shone upon a glassy sea.</P>
+<P>After the uproar of the breeze and the gale, this profound,
+pervading calm seemed suited to the tranquil spirit of a day, which, in
+godly towns, makes quiet vistas of the most tumultuous thoroughfares.</P>
+<P>The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while
+all around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches,
+betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common
+port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from
+Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them
+all in one.</P>
+<P>Full before us quivered and danced, in the noon-day heat and
+mid-air, the green heights of New Jersey; and by an optical delusion,
+the blue sea seemed to flow under them.</P>
+<P>The sailors whistled and whistled for a wind; the impatient
+cabin-passengers were arrayed in their best; and the emigrants
+clustered around the bows, with eyes intent upon the long-sought land.</P>
+<P>But leaning over, in a reverie, against the side, my Carlo gazed
+down into the calm, violet sea, as if it were an eye that answered his
+own; and turning to Harry, said, &quot;This America's skies must be down in
+the sea; for, looking down in this water, I behold what, in Italy, we
+also behold overhead. Ah! after all, I find my Italy somewhere,
+wherever I go. I even found it in rainy Liverpool.&quot;</P>
+<P>Presently, up came a dainty breeze, wafting to us a white wing from
+the shore&#8212;the pilot-boat! Soon a monkey-jacket mounted the side, and
+was beset by the captain and cabin people for news. And out of
+bottomless pockets came bundles of newspapers, which were eagerly
+caught by the throng.</P>
+<P>The captain now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a
+tiger of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the
+braces, and trimming the ship, to catch the least <I>cat's-paw </I>of
+wind.</P>
+<P>When, among sea-worn people, a strange man from shore suddenly
+stands among them, with the smell of the land in his beard, it conveys
+a realization of the vicinity of the green grass, that not even the
+distant sight of the shore itself can transcend.</P>
+<P>The steerage was now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and
+tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and
+hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the
+quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in
+the steerage to be committed to the deep.&#8212;A command that was received
+by the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were
+assured, that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise
+long detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore
+reluctantly complied; and overboard went pallet and pillow. Following
+them, went old pots and pans, bottles and baskets. So, all around, the
+sea was strewn with stuffed bed-ticks, that limberly floated on the
+waves&#8212;couches for all mermaids who were not fastidious. Numberless
+things of this sort, tossed overboard from emigrant ships nearing the
+harbor of New York, drift in through the Narrows, and are deposited on
+the shores of Staten Island; along whose eastern beach I have often
+walked, and speculated upon the broken jugs, torn pillows, and
+dilapidated baskets at my feet.</P>
+<P>A second order was now passed for the emigrants to muster their
+forces, and give the steerage a final, thorough cleaning with sand and
+water. And to this they were incited by the same warning which had
+induced them to make an offering to Neptune of their bedding. The place
+was then fumigated, and dried with pans of coals from the galley; so
+that by evening, no stranger would have imagined, from her appearance,
+that the Highlander had made otherwise than a tidy and prosperous
+voyage. Thus, some sea-captains take good heed that benevolent citizens
+shall not get a glimpse of the true condition of the steerage while at
+sea.</P>
+<P>That night it again fell calm; but next morning, though the wind was
+somewhat against us, we set sail for the Narrows; and making short
+tacks, at last ran through, almost bringing our jib-boom over one of
+the forts.</P>
+<P>An early shower had refreshed the woods and fields, that glowed with
+a glorious green; and to our salted lungs, the land breeze was spiced
+with aromas. The steerage passengers almost neighed with delight, like
+horses brought back to spring pastures; and every eye and ear in the
+Highlander was full of the glad sights and sounds of the shore.</P>
+<P>No more did we think of the gale and the plague; nor turn our eyes
+upward to the stains of blood, still visible on the topsail, whence
+Jackson had fallen; but we fixed our gaze on the orchards and meads,
+and like thirsty men, drank in all their dew.</P>
+<P>On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow
+flag, denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to
+symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition
+of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the
+world, taint the air with the streamings of their f ever-flag.</P>
+<P>But though the long rows of white-washed hospitals on the hill side
+were now in plain sight, and though scores of ships were here lying at
+anchor, yet no boat came off to us; and to our surprise and delight, on
+we sailed, past a spot which every one had dreaded. How it was that
+they thus let us pass without boarding us, we never could learn.</P>
+<P>Now rose the city from out the bay, and one by one, her spires
+pierced the blue; while thick and more thick, ships, brigs, schooners,
+and sail boats, thronged around. We saw the Hartz Forest of masts and
+black rigging stretching along the East River; and northward, up the
+stately old Hudson, covered with white sloop-sails like fleets of
+swans, we caught a far glimpse of the purple Palisades.</P>
+<P>Oh! he who has never been afar, let him once go from home, to know
+what home is. For as you draw nigh again to your old native river, he
+seems to pour through you with all his tides, and in your enthusiasm,
+you swear to build altars like mile-stones, along both his sacred banks.</P>
+<P>Like the Czar of all the Russias, and Siberia to boot, Captain Riga,
+telescope in hand, stood on the poop, pointing out to the passengers,
+Governor's Island, Castle Garden, and the Battery.</P>
+<P>&quot;And <I>that&quot; </I>said he, pointing out a vast black hull which,
+like a shark, showed tiers of teeth, <I>&quot;that, </I>ladies, is a
+line-of-battle-ship, the North Carolina.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Oh, dear!&quot;&#8212;and &quot;Oh my!&quot;&#8212;ejaculated the ladies, and&#8212; &quot;Lord, save
+us,&quot; responded an old gentleman, who was a member of the Peace Society.</P>
+<P>Hurra! hurra! and ten thousand times hurra! down goes our old
+anchor, fathoms down into the free and independent Yankee mud, one
+handful of which was now worth a broad manor in England.</P>
+<P>The Whitehall boats were around us, and soon, our cabin passengers
+were all off, gay as crickets, and bound for a late dinner at the Astor
+House; where, no doubt, they fired off a salute of champagne corks in
+honor of their own arrival. Only a very few of the steerage passengers,
+however, could afford to pay the high price the watermen demanded for
+carrying them ashore; so most of them remained with us till morning.
+But nothing could restrain our Italian boy, Carlo, who, promising the
+watermen to pay them with his music, was triumphantly rowed ashore,
+seated in the stern of the boat, his organ before him, and something
+like &quot;Hail Columbia!&quot; his tune. We gave him three rapturous cheers, and
+we never saw Carlo again.</P>
+<P>Harry and I passed the greater part of the night walking the deck,
+and gazing at the thousand lights of the city.</P>
+<P>At sunrise, we <I>warped </I>into a berth at the foot of
+Wall-street, and knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But
+that knotting of <I>her, </I>was the unknotting of the bonds of the
+sailors, among whom, it is a maxim, that the ship once fast to the
+wharf, they are free. So with a rush and a shout, they bounded ashore,
+followed by the tumultuous crowd of emigrants, whose friends,
+day-laborers and housemaids, stood ready to embrace them.</P>
+<P>But in silent gratitude at the end of a voyage, almost equally
+uncongenial to both of us, and so bitter to one, Harry and I sat on a
+chest in the forecastle. And now, the ship that we had loathed, grew
+lovely in our eyes, which lingered over every familiar old timber; for
+the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past;
+and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the
+presence of delight.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_61">LXI. REDBURN AND HABBY, ARM IN ARM,
+IN HARBOR</A></H3>
+<P>There we sat in that tarry old den, the only inhabitants of the
+deserted old ship, but the mate and the rats.</P>
+<P>At last, Harry went to his chest, and drawing out a few shillings,
+proposed that we should go ashore, and return with a supper, to eat in
+the forecastle. Little else that was eatable being for sale in the
+paltry shops along the wharves, we bought several pies, some doughnuts,
+and a bottle of ginger-pop, and thus supplied we made merry. For to us,
+whose very mouths were become pickled and puckered, with the continual
+flavor of briny beef, those pies and doughnuts were most delicious. And
+as for the ginger-pop, why, that ginger-pop was divine! I have
+reverenced ginger-pop ever since.</P>
+<P>We kept late hours that night; for, delightful certainty! placed
+beyond all doubt&#8212;like royal landsmen, we were masters of the watches
+of the night, and no <I>starb-o-leens ahoy! </I>would annoy us again.</P>
+<P>&quot;All night in! think of <I>that, </I>Harry, my friend!&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ay, Wellingborough, it's enough to keep me awake forever, to think
+I may now sleep as long as I please.&quot;</P>
+<P>We turned out bright and early, and then prepared for the shore,
+first stripping to the waist, for a toilet.</P>
+<P>&quot;I shall never get these confounded tar-stains out of my fingers,&quot;
+cried Harry, rubbing them hard with a bit of oakum, steeped in strong
+suds. &quot;No! they will <I>not </I>come out, and I'm ruined for life. Look
+at my hand once, Wellingborough!&quot;</P>
+<P>It was indeed a sad sight. Every finger nail, like mine, was dyed of
+a rich, russet hue; looking something like bits of fine tortoise shell.</P>
+<P>&quot;Never mind, Harry,&quot; said I&#8212;&quot;You know the ladies of the east steep
+the tips of their fingers in some golden dye.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And by Plutus,&quot; cried Harry&#8212;&quot;I'd steep mine up to the armpits in
+gold; since you talk about <I>that. </I>But never mind, I'll swear I'm
+just from Persia, my boy.&quot;</P>
+<P>We now arrayed ourselves in our best, and sallied ashore; and, at
+once, I piloted Harry to the sign of a Turkey Cock in Fulton-street,
+kept by one Sweeny, a place famous for cheap Souchong, and capital
+buckwheat cakes.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, gentlemen, what will you have?&quot;&#8212;said a waiter, as we seated
+ourselves at a table.</P>
+<P>
+&quot;<I>Gentlemen!</I>&quot; whispered Harry to me&#8212;&quot;<I>gentlemen!</I>&#8212;hear him!&#8212;I say now,
+Redburn, they didn't talk to us that way on board the old Highlander.
+By heaven, I begin to feel my straps again:&#8212;Coffee and hot rolls,&quot; he
+added aloud, crossing his legs like a lord, &quot;and fellow&#8212;come
+back&#8212;bring us a venison-steak.&quot;
+<P>&quot;Haven't got it, gentlemen.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ham and eggs,&quot; suggested I, whose mouth was watering at the
+recollection of that particular dish, which I had tasted at the sign of
+the Turkey Cock before. So ham and eggs it was; and royal coffee, and
+imperial toast.</P>
+<P>But the butter!</P>
+<P>&quot;Harry, did you ever taste such butter as this before?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Don't say a word,&quot;&#8212;said Harry, spreading his tenth slice of toast
+&quot;I'm going to turn dairyman, and keep within the blessed savor of
+butter, so long as I live.&quot;</P>
+<P>We made a breakfast, never to be forgotten; paid our bill with a
+flourish, and sallied into the street, like two goodly galleons of
+gold, bound from Acapulco to Old Spain.</P>
+<P>&quot;Now,&quot; said Harry, &quot;lead on; and let's see something of these United
+States of yours. I'm ready to pace from Maine to Florida; ford the
+Great Lakes; and jump the River Ohio, if it comes in the way. Here,
+take my arm;&#8212;lead on.&quot;</P>
+<P>Such was the miraculous change, that had now come over him. It
+reminded me of his manner, when we had started for London, from the
+sign of the Golden Anchor, in Liverpool.</P>
+<P>He was, indeed, in most wonderful spirits; at which I could not help
+marveling; considering the cavity in his pockets; and that he was a
+stranger in the land.</P>
+<P>By noon he had selected his boarding-house, a private establishment,
+where they did not charge much for their board, and where the
+landlady's butcher's bill was not very large.</P>
+<P>Here, at last, I left him to get his chest from the ship; while I
+turned up town to see my old friend Mr. Jones, and learn what had
+happened during my absence.</P>
+<P>With one hand, Mr. Jones shook mine most cordially; and with the
+other, gave me some letters, which I eagerly devoured. Their purport
+compelled my departure homeward; and I at once sought out Harry to
+inform him.</P>
+<P>Strange, but even the few hours' absence which had intervened;
+during which, Harry had been left to himself, to stare at strange
+streets, and strange faces, had wrought a marked change in his
+countenance. He was a creature of the suddenest impulses. Left to
+himself, the strange streets seemed now to have reminded him of his
+friendless condition; and I found him with a very sad eye; and his
+right hand groping in his pocket.</P>
+<P>&quot;Where am I going to dine, this day week?&quot;&#8212;he slowly said. &quot;What's
+to be done, Wellingborough?&quot;</P>
+<P>And when I told him that the next afternoon I must leave him; he
+looked downhearted enough. But I cheered him as well as I could; though
+needing a little cheering myself; even though I <I>had </I>got home
+again. But no more about that.</P>
+<P>Now, there was a young man of my acquaintance in the city, much my
+senior, by the name of Goodwell; and a good natured fellow he was; who
+had of late been engaged as a clerk in a large forwarding house in
+South-street; and it occurred to me, that he was just the man to
+befriend Harry, and procure him a place. So I mentioned the thing to my
+comrade; and we called upon Goodwell.</P>
+<P>I saw that he was impressed by the handsome exterior of my friend;
+and in private, making known the case, he faithfully promised to do his
+best for him; though the times, he said, were quite dull.</P>
+<P>That evening, Goodwell, Harry, and I, perambulated the streets,
+three abreast:&#8212;Goodwell spending his money freely at the
+oyster-saloons; Harry full of allusions to the London Clubhouses: and
+myself contributing a small quota to the general entertainment.</P>
+<P>Next morning, we proceeded to business.</P>
+<P>Now, I did not expect to draw much of a salary from the ship; so as
+to retire for life on the profits of <I>my first voyage; </I>but
+nevertheless, I thought that a dollar or two might be coming. For
+dollars are valuable things; and should not be overlooked, when they
+are owing. Therefore, as the second morning after our arrival, had been
+set apart for paying off the crew, Harry and I made our appearance on
+ship-board, with the rest. We were told to enter the cabin; and once
+again I found myself, after an interval of four months, and more,
+surrounded by its mahogany and maple.</P>
+<P>Seated in a sumptuous arm-chair, behind a lustrous, inlaid desk, sat
+Captain Riga, arrayed in his City Hotel suit, looking magisterial as
+the Lord High Admiral of England. Hat in hand, the sailors stood
+deferentially in a semicircle before him, while the captain held the
+ship-papers in his hand, and one by one called their names; and in
+mellow bank notes&#8212;beautiful sight! &#8212;paid them their wages.</P>
+<P>Most of them had less than ten, a few twenty, and two, thirty
+dollars coming to them; while the old cook, whose piety proved
+profitable in restraining him from the expensive excesses of most
+seafaring men, and who had taken no pay in advance, had the goodly
+round sum of seventy dollars as his due.</P>
+<P>Seven ten dollar bills! each of which, as I calculated at the time,
+was worth precisely one hundred dimes, which were equal to one thousand
+cents, which were again subdivisible into fractions. So that he now
+stepped into a fortune of seventy thousand American <I>&quot;mitts.&quot; </I>
+Only seventy dollars, after all; but then, it has always seemed to me,
+that stating amounts in sounding fractional sums, conveys a much fuller
+notion of their magnitude, than by disguising their immensity in such
+aggregations of value, as doubloons, sovereigns, and dollars. Who would
+not rather be worth 125,000 francs in Paris, than only &pound;5000 in London,
+though the intrinsic value of the two sums, in round numbers, is pretty
+much the same.</P>
+<P>With a scrape of the foot, and such a bow as only a negro can make,
+the old cook marched off with his fortune; and I have no doubt at once
+invested it in a grand, underground oyster-cellar.</P>
+<P>The other sailors, after counting their cash very carefully, and
+seeing all was right, and not a bank-note was dog-eared, in which case
+they would have demanded another: for they are not to be taken in and
+cheated, your sailors, and they know their rights, too; at least, when
+they are at liberty, after the voyage is concluded:&#8212; the sailors also
+salaamed, and withdrew, leaving Harry and me face to face with the
+Paymaster-general of the Forces.</P>
+<P>We stood awhile, looking as polite as possible, and expecting every
+moment to hear our names called, but not a word did we hear; while the
+captain, throwing aside his accounts, lighted a very fragrant cigar,
+took up the morning paper&#8212;I think it was the Herald&#8212;threw his leg
+over one arm of the chair, and plunged into the latest intelligence
+from all parts of the world.</P>
+<P>I looked at Harry, and he looked at me; and then we both looked at
+this incomprehensible captain.</P>
+<P>At last Harry hemmed, and I scraped my foot to increase the
+disturbance.</P>
+<P>The Paymaster-general looked up.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, where do you come from? Who are <I>you, </I>pray? and what do
+you want? Steward, show these young gentlemen out.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;I want my money,&quot; said Harry.</P>
+<P>&quot;My wages are due,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>The captain laughed. Oh! he was exceedingly merry; and taking a long
+inspiration of smoke, removed his cigar, and sat sideways looking at
+us, letting the vapor slowly wriggle and spiralize out of his mouth.</P>
+<P>&quot;Upon my soul, young gentlemen, you astonish me. Are your names down
+in the City Directory? have you any letters of introduction, young
+gentlemen?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Captain Riga!&quot; cried Harry, enraged at his impudence&#8212;&quot;I tell you
+what it is, Captain Riga; this won't do&#8212;where's the rhino?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Captain Riga,&quot; added I, &quot;do you not remember, that about four
+months ago, my friend Mr. Jones and myself had an interview with you in
+this very cabin; when it was agreed that I was to go out in your ship,
+and receive three dollars per month for my services? Well, Captain
+Riga, I have gone out with you, and returned; and now, sir, I'll thank
+you for my pay.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Ah, yes, I remember,&quot; said the captain. <I>&quot;Mr. Jones! </I>Ha! ha!
+I remember Mr. Jones: a very gentlemanly gentleman; and stop&#8212;<I>you, </I>
+too, are the son of a wealthy French importer; and &#8212;let me think&#8212;was
+not your great-uncle a barber?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No!&quot; thundered I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, well, young gentleman, really I beg your pardon. Steward,
+chairs for the young gentlemen&#8212;be seated, young gentlemen. And now,
+let me see,&quot; turning over his accounts&#8212; &quot;Hum, hum!&#8212;yes, here it is:
+Wellingborough Redburn, at three dollars a month. Say four months,
+that's twelve dollars; less three dollars advanced in Liverpool&#8212;that
+makes it nine dollars; less three hammers and two scrapers lost
+overboard&#8212; that brings it to four dollars and a quarter. I owe you
+four dollars and a quarter, I believe, young gentleman?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;So it seems, sir,&quot; said I, with staring eyes.</P>
+<P>&quot;And now let me see what you owe me, and then well be able to square
+the yards, Monsieur Redburn.&quot;</P>
+<P>Owe <I>him! </I>thought I&#8212;what do I owe him but a grudge, but I
+concealed my resentment; and presently he said, &quot;By running away from
+the ship in Liverpool, you forfeited your wages, which amount to twelve
+dollars; and as there has been advanced to you, in money, hammers, and
+scrapers, seven dollars and seventy-five cents, you are therefore
+indebted to me in precisely that sum. Now, young gentleman, I'll thank
+you for the money;&quot; and he extended his open palm across the desk.</P>
+<P>&quot;Shall I pitch into him?&quot; whispered Harry.</P>
+<P>I was thunderstruck at this most unforeseen announcement of the
+state of my account with Captain Riga; and I began to understand why it
+was that he had till now ignored my absence from the ship, when Harry
+and I were in London. But a single minute's consideration showed that I
+could not help myself; so, telling him that he was at liberty to begin
+his suit, for I was a bankrupt, and could not pay him, I turned to go.</P>
+<P>Now, here was this man actually turning a poor lad adrift without a
+copper, after he had been slaving aboard his ship for more than four
+mortal months. But Captain Riga was a bachelor of expensive habits, and
+had run up large wine bills at the City Hotel. He could not afford to
+be munificent. Peace to his dinners.</P>
+<P>&quot;Mr. Bolton, I believe,&quot; said the captain, now blandly bowing toward
+Harry. &quot;Mr. Bolton, <I>you </I>also shipped for three dollars per
+month: and you had one month's advance in Liverpool; and from dock to
+dock we have been about a month and a half; so I owe you just one
+dollar and a half, Mr. Bolton; and here it is;&quot; handing him six
+two-shilling pieces.</P>
+<P>&quot;And this,&quot; said Harry, throwing himself into a tragical attitude, <I>
+&quot;this </I>is the reward of my long and faithful services!&quot;</P>
+<P>Then, disdainfully flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed,
+&quot;There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in <I>your </I>
+purse, and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good morning, sir.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Good morning, young gentlemen; pray, call again,&quot; said the captain,
+coolly bagging the coins. His politeness, while in port, was invincible.</P>
+<P>Quitting the cabin, I remonstrated with Harry upon his recklessness
+in disdaining his wages, small though they were; I begged to remind him
+of his situation; and hinted that every penny he could get might prove
+precious to him. But he only cried <I>Pshaw! </I>and that was the last
+of it.</P>
+<P>Going forward, we found the sailors congregated on the
+forecastle-deck, engaged in some earnest discussion; while several
+carts on the wharf, loaded with their chests, were just in the act of
+driving off, destined for the boarding-houses uptown. By the looks of
+our shipmates, I saw very plainly that they must have some mischief
+under weigh; and so it turned out.</P>
+<P>Now, though Captain Riga had not been guilty of any particular
+outrage against the sailors; yet, by a thousand small meannesses&#8212;such
+as indirectly causing their allowance of bread and beef to be
+diminished, without betraying any appearance of having any inclination
+that way, and without speaking to the sailors on the subject&#8212;by this,
+and kindred actions, I say, he had contracted the cordial dislike of
+the whole ship's company; and long since they had bestowed upon him a
+name unmentionably expressive of their contempt.</P>
+<P>The voyage was now concluded; and it appeared that the subject being
+debated by the assembly on the forecastle was, how best they might give
+a united and valedictory expression of the sentiments they entertained
+toward their late lord and master. Some emphatic symbol of those
+sentiments was desired; some unmistakable token, which should forcibly
+impress Captain Riga with the justest possible notion of their feelings.</P>
+<P>It was like a meeting of the members of some mercantile company,
+upon the eve of a prosperous dissolution of the concern; when the
+subordinates, actuated by the purest gratitude toward their president,
+or chief, proceed to vote him a silver pitcher, in token of their
+respect. It was something like this, I repeat&#8212;but with a material
+difference, as will be seen.</P>
+<P>At last, the precise manner in which the thing should be done being
+agreed upon, Blunt, the &quot;Irish cockney,&quot; was deputed to summon the
+captain. He knocked at the cabin-door, and politely requested the
+steward to inform Captain Riga, that some gentlemen were on the
+pier-head, earnestly seeking him; whereupon he joined his comrades.</P>
+<P>In a few moments the captain sallied from the cabin, and found the <I>
+gentlemen </I>alluded to, strung along the top of the bulwarks, on the
+side next to the wharf. Upon his appearance, the row suddenly wheeled
+about, presenting their backs; and making a motion, which was a polite
+salute to every thing before them, but an abominable insult to all who
+happened to be in their rear, they gave three cheers, and at one bound,
+cleared the ship.</P>
+<P>True to his imperturbable politeness while in port, Captain Riga
+only lifted his hat, smiled very blandly, and slowly returned into his
+cabin.</P>
+<P>Wishing to see the last movements of this remarkable crew, who were
+so clever ashore and so craven afloat, Harry and I followed them along
+the wharf, till they stopped at a sailor retreat, poetically
+denominated &quot;The Flashes.&quot; And here they all came to anchor before the
+bar; and the landlord, a lantern-jawed landlord, bestirred himself
+behind it, among his villainous old bottles and decanters. He well
+knew, from their looks, that his customers were &quot;flush,&quot; and would
+spend their money freely, as, indeed, is the case with most seamen,
+recently paid off.</P>
+<P>It was a touching scene.</P>
+<P>&quot;Well, maties,&quot; said one of them, at last&#8212;&quot;I spose we shan't see
+each other again:&#8212;come, let's splice the main-brace all round, and
+drink to <I>the last voyage!&quot;</I></P>
+<P>Upon this, the landlord danced down his glasses, on the bar,
+uncorked his decanters, and deferentially pushed them over toward the
+sailors, as much as to say&#8212;<I>&quot;Honorable gentlemen, it is not for me
+to allowance your liquor;&#8212;help yourselves, your honors.&quot;</I></P>
+<P>And so they did; each glass a bumper; and standing in a row, tossed
+them all off; shook hands all round, three times three; and then
+disappeared in couples, through the several doorways; for <I>&quot;The
+Flashes&quot; </I>was on a corner.</P>
+<P>If to every one, life be made up of farewells and greetings, and a <I>
+&quot;Good-by, God bless you,&quot; </I>is heard for every <I>&quot;How d'ye do,
+welcome, my boy&quot;&#8212;</I>then, of all men, sailors shake the most hands,
+and wave the most hats. They are here and then they are there; ever
+shifting themselves, they shift among the shifting: and like rootless
+sea-weed, are tossed to and fro.</P>
+<P>As, after shaking our hands, our shipmates departed, Harry and I
+stood on the corner awhile, till we saw the last man disappear.</P>
+<P>&quot;They are gone,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Thank heaven!&quot; said Harry.</P>
+<H3 ALIGN="CENTER"><A NAME="1_0_62">LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD
+OF HARRY BOLTON</A></H3>
+<P>That same afternoon, I took my comrade down to the Battery; and we
+sat on one of the benches, under the summer shade of the trees.</P>
+<P>It was a quiet, beautiful scene; full of promenading ladies and
+gentlemen; and through the foliage, so fresh and bright, we looked out
+over the bay, varied with glancing ships; and then, we looked down to
+our boots; and thought what a fine world it would be, if we only had a
+little money to enjoy it. But that's the everlasting rub&#8212;oh, who can
+cure an empty pocket?</P>
+<P>&quot;I have no doubt, Goodwell will take care of you, Harry,&quot; said I,
+&quot;he's a fine, good-hearted fellow; and will do his best for you, I
+know.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;No doubt of it,&quot; said Harry, looking hopeless.</P>
+<P>&quot;And I need not tell you, Harry, how sorry I am to leave you so
+soon.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;And I am sorry enough myself,&quot; said Harry, looking very sincere.</P>
+<P>&quot;But I will be soon back again, I doubt not,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;Perhaps so,&quot; said Harry, shaking his head. &quot;How far is it off?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Only a hundred and eighty miles,&quot; said I.</P>
+<P>&quot;A hundred and eighty miles!&quot; said Harry, drawing the words out like
+an endless ribbon. &quot;Why, I couldn't walk that in a month.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Now, my dear friend,&quot; said I, &quot;take my advice, and while I am gone,
+keep up a stout heart; never despair, and all will be well.&quot;</P>
+<P>But notwithstanding all I could say to encourage him, Harry felt so
+bad, that nothing would do, but a rush to a neighboring bar, where we
+both gulped down a glass of ginger-pop; after which we felt better.</P>
+<P>He accompanied me to the steamboat, that was to carry me homeward;
+he stuck close to my side, till she was about to put off; then,
+standing on the wharf, he shook me by the hand, till we almost
+counteracted the play of the paddles; and at last, with a mutual jerk
+at the arm-pits, we parted. I never saw Harry again.</P>
+<P>I pass over the reception I met with at home; how I plunged into
+embraces, long and loving:&#8212;I pass over this; and will conclude <I>my
+first voyage </I>by relating all I know of what overtook Harry Bolton.</P>
+<P>Circumstances beyond my control, detained me at home for several
+weeks; during which, I wrote to my friend, without receiving an answer.</P>
+<P>I then wrote to young Goodwell, who returned me the following
+letter, now spread before me.</P>
+<P>
+<I>&quot;Dear Redburn&#8212;Your poor friend, Harry, I can not find any where.
+After you left, he called upon me several times, and we walked out
+together; and my interest in him increased every day. But you don't
+know how dull are the times here, and what multitudes of young men,
+well qualified, are seeking employment in counting-houses. I did my
+best; but could not get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he
+grew more and more melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold
+all his clothes but those on his back to pay his board. I offered to
+loan him a few dollars, but he would not receive them. I called upon
+him two or three times after this, but he was not in; at last, his
+landlady told me that he had permanently left her house the very day
+before. Upon my questioning her closely, as to where he had gone, she
+answered, that she did not know, but from certain hints that had
+dropped from our poor friend, she feared he had gone on a whaling
+voyage. I at once went to the offices in South-street, where men are
+shipped for the Nantucket whalers, and made inquiries among them; but
+without success. And this,</I> I <I>am heartily grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can
+not believe that his melancholy could bring him to the insanity of
+throwing himself away in a whaler; and I still think, that he must be
+somewhere in the city. You must come down yourself, and help me seek
+him out.&quot;</I></p>
+<P>
+This! letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
+London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield
+to the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
+friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
+terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered
+to think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
+living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
+glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
+or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.</P>
+<P>I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought
+him all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.</P>
+<P>To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry
+must indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his
+bitter experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
+nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.</P>
+<P>At last I was forced to give him up.</P>
+<P>*****</P>
+<P>Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board
+of a whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat's
+crew that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
+sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.</P>
+<P>Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel
+at Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made
+allusion to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several
+years, and that the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor
+of originally bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked
+him why he had abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky
+of ships.</P>
+<P>&quot;We had hardly been out three months,&quot; said he, &quot;when on the Brazil
+banks we lost a boat's crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next
+day lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never
+entered the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the
+ship, and a whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he
+had a hard time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman's son,
+and when you could coax him to it, he sang like a bird.&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;What was his name?&quot; said I, trembling with expectation; &quot;what kind
+of eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?&quot;</P>
+<P>&quot;Harry Bolton was not your brother?&quot; cried the stranger, starting.</P>
+<P>
+<I>Harry Bolton!</I></P>
+<p>
+It was even he!</p>
+<P>But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
+passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, <I>
+My First Voyage</I>&#8212;which here I end.</P>
+
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<BR>
+<PRE>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, REDBURN. HIS FIRST VOYAGE ***
+
+This file should be named 8redb10h.htm or 8redb10h.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8redb11h.htm
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8redb10ah.htm
+
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+<a href="http://gutenberg.net">http://gutenberg.net</a> or
+<a href="http://promo.net.pg">http://promo.net/pg</a>
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04">http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05</a> or
+<a href="ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04">ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext05</a>
+
+Or /etext05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html">http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html</a>
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+<a href="mailto:hart@pobox.com">Michael S. Hart [hart@pobox.com]</a>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+</PRE>
+
+</BODY>
+</HTML>
diff --git a/old/8redb10h.zip b/old/8redb10h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8237890
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/8redb10h.zip