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Redburn. His First Voyage

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




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.

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