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Redburn. His First Voyage

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




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.

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