A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Redburn. His First Voyage

H >> Herman Melville >> Redburn. His First Voyage




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.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.