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Redburn. His First Voyage

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




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.

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