Cast Away in the Cold Read online

  CHAPTER IV.

  The Old Man, having related to the Little People howthe Young Man went to Sea, now proceeds to tellwhat the Young Man did there.

  The two days which the old man and his young friends had passed togetherhad so completely broken down all restraint between them, that thechildren almost felt as if they had known the old man all their lives.It was therefore quite natural, that, when they went down next day, theyshould feel inclined to give him a surprise. So they concerted a plan ofsneaking quietly around the house that they might come upon himsuddenly, for they saw him working in his garden, hoeing up the weeds.

  "Now let's astonish him," said William.

  "That's a jolly idea," said Fred, while Alice said nothing at all, butwas as pleased as she could be.

  The little party crawled noiselessly along the fence, through the opengate, and sprang upon the Captain with a yell, like a parcel of wildIndians; and sure enough they did surprise him, for he jumped behind hishoe, as if preparing to defend himself against an attack of enemies.

  "Heyday, my hearties!" exclaimed the Captain, when he saw who was there."Ain't you ashamed of yourselves to scare the old man that way?" and hejoined the laugh that the children raised at his own expense,--enjoyingit as much as they did.

  "That's a trick of William's, I'll be bound," said he; "but no matter,I'll forgive you; and I'm right glad you've come, too, for it's precioushot, and I'm tired hoeing up the weeds; so now, let us get out of thesun, into the crow's nest."

  "The crow's nest!" cried William. "What's that?"

  "Why, the arbor, to be sure," said the Captain. "Don't you like thename?"

  "Of course I do," answered William. "It's such a cunning name."

  It was but a few steps to the "crow's nest," and the happy party onceseated, the Captain was ready in an instant to pick up the thread wherehe had broken it short off when they had parted in the golden evening ofthe day before, and then to spin on the yarn.

  "And now, my lively trickster and genius of the quill," said he toWilliam, "how is it about writing down the story? What does your fathersay?"

  "O," answered William, "I've written down almost every word of what yousaid, and papa has examined it, and says he likes it. There it is";--andhe pulled a roll of paper from his pocket and handed it to the Captain.

  The old man took it from William's hand, looking all the while muchgratified; and after pulling out a pair of curious-looking,old-fashioned spectacles from a curious-looking, old-fashionedred-morocco case, which was much the worse for wear, he fixed them onhis nose very carefully, and then, after unfolding the sheets of paper,he glanced knowingly over them.

  "That's good," said he; "that's ship-shape, and as it ought to be. Why,lad, you're a regular genius, and sure to turn out a second Scott, orCooper, or some such writing chap."

  "I am glad you like it, Captain Hardy," said William, pleased that hehad pleased his friend.

  "Like it!" exclaimed the Captain. "Like it!! that's just _what_ I do;and now, since I'm to be made famous in this way, I'll be more carefulwith my speech. And no bad spelling either," ran on the Captain, whilehe kept turning back the leaves, "as there would have been if you hadput it down just as I spoke it. But never mind that now; take back thepapers, lad, and keep them safe; we'll go on now, if we can only findwhere the yarn was broken yesterday. Do any of you remember?"

  "I do," said William, laughing. "You had just got out into the greatocean, and were frightened half to death."

  "O yes, that's it," went on the Captain,--"frightened half to death;that's sure enough, and no mistake; and so would you have been, my lad,if you had been in my place. But I don't think I'll tell you anythingmore about my miserable life on board that ship. Hadn't we better skipthat?"

  "O no, no!" cried the children all together, "don't skip anything."

  "Well, then," said the obliging Captain, glad enough to see how much hisyoung friends were interested, "if you _will_ know what sort of amiserable time young sailors have of it, I'll tell you; and let me tellyou, too, there's many a one of them has just as bad a time as I had.

  "In the first place, you see, they gave me such wretched food to eat,all out of a rusty old tin plate, and I was all the time so sick fromthe motion of the vessel as we went tossing up and down on the roughsea, and from the tobacco-smoke of the forecastle, and all the other badsmells, that I could hardly eat a mouthful, so that I was half ready todie of starvation; and, as if this was not misery enough, the sailorswere all the time, when in the forecastle, quarrelling like so many wildbeasts in a cage; and as two of them had pistols, and all of them hadknives, I was every minute in dread lest they should take it into theirheads to murder each other, and kill me by mistake. So, I can tell you,being a young sailor-boy isn't what it's cracked up to be."

  "O, wasn't it dreadful!" said Alice, "to be sick all the time, andnobody there to take care of you."

  "Well, I wasn't so sick, maybe, after all," answered the Captain,smiling,--"only _sea-sick_, you know; and then, for the credit of theship, I'll say that, if you had nice plum-pudding every day for dinner,you would think it horrid stuff if you were sea-sick."

  "But don't people die when they are sea-sick?" inquired Alice.

  "Not often, child," answered the Captain, playfully; "but they feel allthe time as if they were going to, and when they don't feel that way,they feel as if they'd like to.

  "However, I was miserable enough in more ways than one; for to thesetroubles was added a great distress of mind, caused by the sport thesailors made of me, and also by remorse of conscience for having runaway from home, and thus got myself into this great scrape. Then, tomake the matter worse,--as if it was not bad enough already,--a violentstorm set upon us in the dark night. You could never imagine how theship rolled about over the waves. Sometimes they swept clear across theship, as if threatening our lives; and all the time the creaking of themasts, the roaring of the wind through the rigging, and the lashing ofthe seas, filled my ears with such awful sounds that I was in thegreatest terror, and I thought that every moment would certainly be mylast. Then, as if still further to add to my fears, one of the sailorstold me, right in the midst of the storm, that we were bound for theNorthern seas, to catch whales and seals. So now, what little scrap ofcourage I had left took instant flight, and I fell at once to praying(which I am ashamed to say I had never in my life done before), fullysatisfied as I was that, if this course did not save me, nothing would.In truth, I believe I should actually have died of fright had not thestorm come soon to an end; and indeed it was many days before I got overthinking that I should, in one way or another, have a speedy passageinto the next world, and therefore I did not much concern myself withwhere we were going in this. Hence I grew to be very unpopular with thepeople in the ship, and learned next to nothing. I was always insomebody's way, was always getting hold of the wrong rope, and was intruth all the time doing mischief rather than good. So I was set down asa hopeless idiot, and was considered proper game for everybody. Thesailors tormented me in every possible way.

  "One day (knowing how green I was) they set to talking about fixing up atable in the forecastle, and one of them said, 'What a fine thing itwould be if the mate (who turned out to be the red-faced man I had metin the street, and who took me to the shipping-office) would only let ushave the keelson.' So this being agreed to in a very serious manner(which I hadn't wit enough to see was all put on), I was sent to carrytheir petition. Seeing the mate on the quarter-deck, I approached, andin a very respectful manner thus addressed him: 'If you please, sir, Icome to ask if you will let us have the keelson for a table?' Whereuponthe mate turned fiercely upon me, and, to my great astonishment, roaredout at the very top of his voice, 'What! what's that you say? Say thatagain, will you?' So I repeated the question as he had told meto,--feeling all the while as if I should like the deck to open andswallow me up. I had scarcely finished before I perceived that the matewas growing more and more angry; if, indeed, anything could possiblyexceed the passion he was in alrea
dy. His face was many shades redderthan it was before,--and, indeed, it was so very red that it looked asif it might shine in the dark. His hat fell off, as it seemed to me, inconsequence of his stiff red hair rising up on end, and he raised hisvoice so loud that it sounded more like the howl of a wild beast thananything I could compare it to. 'You lubber!' he shouted. 'You villain!'he shrieked; 'you, you!'--and here it seemed as if he was choking withhard words which he couldn't get rid of,--'you come here to play trickson me! You try to fool me! I'll teach you!'--and, seizing hold of thefirst thing he could lay his hands on (I did not stop to see what itwas, but wheeled about greatly terrified), he let fly at me with suchviolence that I am sure I must have been finished off for certain had Inot quickly dodged my head. When I returned to the forecastle, thesailors had a great laugh at me, and they called me ever afterwards'Jack Keelson.' The keelson, you must know, is a great mass of wooddown in the very bottom of the ship, running the whole length of it; buthow should I have learned that?

  "At another time I was told to go and 'grease the saddle.' Not knowingthat this was a block of wood spiked to the mainmast to support the mainboom, and thinking this a trick too, I refused to go, and came againnear getting my head broken by the red-faced mate. I did not believethere was anything like a 'saddle' in the ship.

  "And thus the sailors continued to worry me. Once, when I was very weakwith sea-sickness and wanted to keep down a dinner which I had justeaten, they insisted upon it, that, if I would only put into my mouth apiece of fat pork, and _keep it there_, my dinner would stay in itsplace. The sailors were right enough, for as soon as my dinner began tostart up, of course away went the fat pork out ahead of it.

  "But by and by I came to my senses, and, upon discovering that the badusage I received was partly my own fault, I stopped lamenting over myunhappy condition, and began to show more spirit. Would you believe it?I had actually been in the vessel five days before I had curiosityenough to inquire her name. They told me that it was called the_Blackbird_; but what ever possessed anybody to give it such aridiculous name I never could imagine. If they had called it Black Duck,or Black Diver, there would have been some sense in it, for the ship wasdriving head foremost into the water pretty much all the time. But Ifound out that the vessel was not exactly a ship after all, but a sortof half schooner, half brig,--what they call a brigantine, having twomasts, a mainmast and a foremast. On the former there was a sail runningfore and aft, just like the sail of the little yacht _Alice_, and onthe latter there was a foresail, a foretop-sail, a foretop-gallant-sail,and a fore-royal-sail,--all of course square sails, that is, runningacross the vessel, and fastened to what are called yards. The vessel waspainted jet-black on the outside, but inside the bulwarks the color wasa dirty sort of green.

  "Such, as nearly I can remember, was the brigantine _Blackbird_, threehundred and forty-two tons register. Brigantine is, however, too large aword; so when we pay the _Blackbird_ the compliment of mentioning her,we will call her a ship.

  "Having picked up the name of the ship, I was tempted to pursue myinquiries further, and it was not long before I had got quite arespectable stock of seaman's knowledge, and hence I grew in favor. Ilearned to distinguish between a 'halyard,' which is rope for pullingthe yards up and letting them down, from a 'brace,' which is used topull them around so as to 'trim the sails,' and a 'sheet,' which is arope for keeping the sails in their proper places. I found out that whatI called a floor the sailors called a 'deck'; a kitchen they called a'galley'; a pot, a 'copper'; a pulley was a 'block'; a post was a'stancheon'; to fall down was to 'heel over'; to climb up was to 'goaloft'; and to walk straight, and keep one's balance when the ship waspitching over the waves, was to 'get your sea legs on.' I found out,too, that everything behind you was 'abaft,' and everything ahead was'forwards,' or for'ad as the sailors say; that a large rope was a'hawser,' and that every other rope was a 'line'; to make anythingtemporarily secure was to 'belay' it; to make one thing fast to anotherwas to 'bend it on'; and when two things were close together, they were'chock-a-block.' I learned, also, that the right-hand side of the vesselwas the 'starboard' side, while the left-hand side was the 'port' or'larboard' side; that the lever which moves the rudder that steers theship was called the 'helm,' and that to steer the ship was to take 'atrick at the wheel'; that to 'put the helm up' was to turn it in thedirection from which the wind was coming (windward), and to 'put thehelm down' was to turn it in the direction the wind was going (leeward).I found out still further, that a ship has a 'waist,' like a woman, a'forefoot,' like a beast, besides 'bull's eyes' (which are small holeswith glass in them to admit light), and 'cat-heads,' and 'monkey-rails,'and 'cross-trees,' as well as 'saddles' and 'bridles' and 'harness,' andmany other things which I thought I should never hear anything more ofafter I left the farm. I might go on and tell you a great many morethings that I learned, but I should only tire your patience withoutdoing any good. I only want to show you how John Hardy began his marineeducation.

  "When it was discovered how much I had improved, they proposedimmediately to turn it to their own account; for I was at once sent totake 'a trick at the wheel,' from which I came away, after two hours'hard work, with my hands dreadfully blistered, and my legs bruised, andwith the recollection of much abusive language from the red-faced mate,who could never see anything right in what I did. I gave him, however,some good reason this time to abuse me, and I was glad of it afterwards,though I was badly enough scared at the time. I steered the ship sobadly that a wave which I ought to have avoided by a skilful turn of thewheel, came breaking in right over the quarter-deck, wetting the matefrom head to foot. He thought I did it on purpose (which you may be sureI did not do). Again his face grew red enough to shine of a dark night,and his mind invented hard words faster than his tongue would let themout of his ugly throat.

  "I tell you all this, that you may have some idea of what a ship is, andhow sailors live, and what they have to do. You can easily see that theyhave no easy time of it, and, let me tell you, there isn't a bit ofromance about it, except the stories that are cut out of whole cloth tomake books and songs of. However, I never could have much sympathy formy shipmates in the _Blackbird_; for if they did treat me a littlebetter when they found that I could do something, especially when Icould take a trick at the wheel, I still continued to look upon them aslittle better than a set of pirates, and I felt satisfied that, if theywere not born to be hanged, they would certainly drown."

  "I don't think I'll be a sailor," said Fred.

  "Nor I either," said William. "But, Captain," continued the cunningfellow, "if a sailor's life is so miserable, what do you go to sea somuch for?"

  "Well, now, my lad," replied the Captain, evidently at first a littlepuzzled, "that's a question that would require more time to explain thanwe have to devote to it to-day. Besides" (he was fully recovered now),"you know that going to sea in the cabin is as different from going tosea in the forecastle as you are from a Yahoo Indian. But never mindthat, I must get on with my story, or it will never come to an end. I'vehardly begun it yet."