Chapter VIII: He Sees the Equator (3)

The hands of the others groped at the hilts of their cutlasses;
all three eyed me now, and there was murder in every man’s
look. Without a word I stepped to the side, and sprang into
the boat. One of them threw the line off the pin into the sea.
“Hoise your sail and steer that way, or we shoot!” bellowed the
yellow ruffian, waving his cutlass towards the sea astern. God
knows there were small arms enough in the cabin to enable them
to fulfil _that_ threat. I grasped the halliards, mast-headed
the little lug, and throwing an oar over the stern, sculled
the boat’s head round, and in a minute was slipping away from
the hull, at the stern of which the three men stood watching
me, the blade in the boatswain’s hand shining to the sun like
a wand of fire as he continued to point with it into the
south-east.

Here now was I adrift in the mighty heart of the Indian Ocean
in a small boat like a canoe, so shaped that she was little
likely to lie close to the wind; hundreds of leagues from the
nearest point of land, and in a part of the deep navigated
in those days at long intervals only—I mean by the Dutch and
English traders to the east; for the smaller vessels kept a
much more westerly longitude than where I was, after rounding
the Cape; often striking through the Mozambique or so climbing
as to keep Mauritius aboard. Never was human being in a more
wildly-desperate situation. I did not for an instant doubt
that this was the beginning of the end, that if I was not
capsized and drowned out of hand by some growing sea, I was
to perish (unless I took my own life) of hunger and thirst.
Yet the rage and terror which were upon me when I looked over
my shoulder at the receding wreck passed away, with the help
of God to be sure, ere the figures of the miscreants who had
served me thus had been blended by distance out of their shapes
into the body and hues of the hull. I thought to myself it is
an escape, at all events. I _may_ perish here; yet is there
hope; but had I stayed _yonder_ I was doomed: the sight of the
gold had made them thirsty for my life. In my sleep, ay, or
even waking, they would have hacked me to pieces and flung me
overboard to the sharks here.

In this consideration, I say, I seemed to find a source of
comfort. If I died as I now was, it would be God’s act, whereas
had I remained in the wreck I must have been brutally butchered
by the wretches whom the devil had despatched to me in the
darkness of the morning that was gone. Nevertheless I was at a
loss to comprehend their motive in thus using me. First of all
by sending me away in their boat, they had robbed themselves
of their only chance of escape should the wreck founder.
Then again, I was a man, with a serviceable pair of hands
belonging to me, and how necessary willing help was to persons
circumstanced as they were, they could easily have gathered
from the labours of the day. Besides, they would be able to
judge of my condition by my attire, and how could they be sure
that I should demand the treasure or put in my claim for a
share of it? But I need not weary you with my speculations.

The sun sank when there was a space of about a league betwixt
my boat and the wreck, and the darkness came in a stride out of
the east. The wind was weak and hot, and there was a crackling
noise of ripples round about the boat as she lay with scarce
any way upon her, lightly but briskly bobbing upon the tropic
ocean dimples. When the darkness came I let fall my sail,
intending later on, when the wreck should have got well away
towards the horizon, to head north; for methought the further
I drew towards the equator out of these seas the better would
be my chance of being rescued. The stars were very plentiful,
rich, and brilliant that night. I gave God thanks for their
company, and for the stillness and peace upon the ocean, and I
prayed to Him to watch over and to succour me. When the moon
rose I stood up and looked around, but saw nothing of the
wreck; on which I hoisted my sail afresh and headed the boat
north, as I conjectured by the position of the moon. There was
a deal of fire in the sea, and I would again and again direct
my eyes at the fitful flashing over the side with a dread in me
of witnessing the outline of a shark.

The moon had risen about two hours, when I spied the gleam
of water in the bottom of the boat. I was greatly startled,
believing that she was leaking. Certainly there had been no
water when I first entered her, nor down to this minute had I
noticed the light or heard the noise of it in her. There was a
little pewter mug in the stern sheets, a relic of the ship from
which the Portuguese had come. I fell to bailing with it, and
presently emptied the boat. No more water entered, for which at
first I was deeply thankful; but after a little I got musing
upon how it could have penetrated, seeing that no more came;
and then a dreadful suspicion entering my mind, I looked for
the jar which the Portuguese had handed into the boat, and saw
it lying on its bilge in the bows. I picked it up and shook it;
it was empty! It had been corked by a piece of canvas which
still remained in the bung, but on the jar capsizing through
the jerking of the boat, the water had easily drained out, and
it was this precious fluid which I had been feverishly baling
and casting overboard!

Maddened as I was by this discovery, I had yet sense enough
remaining to sop my handkerchief in the little puddle that
still damped the bottom of the boat, and to wring the moisture
into the pewter measure. But at the outside half a pint was the
utmost I recovered, which done I sat me down, my face buried in
my hands, with my eyes scorched as though they were seared by
the burning tears that rose to them from my full and breaking
heart.

The night passed. Hour after hour I lay in a sort of
stupefaction in the stern sheets, taking no notice of the
weather, my eyes fixed upon the stars, a little space of which
directly over my head I would crazily essay to number. Once I
pressed the handkerchief to my parched lips, but found the damp
of it brackish, and threw it from me. But I would not touch the
precious drop of water I had preserved. Too bitterly well did
I guess how the morrow’s sun would serve me, and the very soul
within me seemed to recoil from the temptation to moisten my
dry and burning tongue.

The memory of the early hours of that morning, of daybreak,
of the time that followed, is but that of a delirium. I took
no heed of my navigation. The sheet of the sail was fast, and
the boat travelled softly before the gentle breeze that sat in
little curls upon the water. I recollect thinking in a stupid,
half-numbed way, that the boat was pursuing the path of the
wreck whose one sail would suffer her to travel only straight
before the wind. But the pain of thirst, the anguish of my
situation, the maddening heat of the sun, the cruel, eternal
barrenness of the ocean; these things combined lay like death
upon me. I was sensible only that I lived and suffered. There
was biscuit in the canvas bag which had been put in the boat.
I thought by munching a fragment to ease the anguish in my
throat, but found I could not swallow. Ah, heavenly God! the
deliriousness of the gaze which I fastened upon the clear,
cool, blue water over the side, the horrible temptation to
drink of it, to plunge, and soak, and drown in it the torment
of the seething and creaming noises of its ripples against the
burning sides of the boat, which sickened the atmosphere with
their poisonous smell of hot paint!

The night came—a second night. Some relief from the thirst
which tortured me I had obtained by soaking my underclothes,
and wearing the garments streaming. It was a night of wonderful
oceanic beauty and tenderness: the moon, a glorious sphere
of brilliancy, the wind sweet and cool with dew, and the sea
sleeping to the quiet cradling of its swell. I had not closed
my eyes for many a long weary hour, and nature could hold out
no longer. It was a little before midnight I think that I fell
asleep; the boat was then sailing quietly along, and steering
herself, making a fair straight course of her progress—though
to what quarter of the heavens she was carrying me I knew not,
nor for a long while had thought of guessing. When I awoke the
darkness was still upon the ocean, and the moon behind a body
of high light cloud which she whitened and which concealed her,
though her radiance yet lay in the atmosphere as a twilight.
Right ahead of me, but at what distance I could not imagine,
there floated a dark object upon the water. My glance had gone
to her sleepily, but the instant it fell upon her I sprang to
my feet, and bounded like a dart into the bow of the boat, and
stood with my hands on the square of the canoe-shaped stem
straining my sight into the gloom.

She was a ship—no doubt of that; yet she puzzled me greatly.
The light was so thin and deceptive that I could distinguish
little more than the block of blackness she made upon the dark
sea. Apparently she was lying with all sails furled, or else
hauled up close to the yards. One moment I would think that she
was without masts; then I imagined I could perceive a visionary
fabric of spar and rope. But she was a ship! Help she would
yield me—the succour of her deck, and, oh my God! one drink,
but _one_ drink of water!

I flung the oars over, and weak as I was fell to rowing with
might and main. The boat buzzed through the ripples to the
impulse of my thirst-maddened arms. The shadow ahead slowly
loomed larger and closer, till all in a breath I saw by a
sudden gleam of moonlight which sparkled through a rent in the
cloud, that she was _La Mulette_!

I dropped the oars, let fall the sail, and stood with my eyes
fixed upon her, considering a little. Would the men murder me
if I boarded her? Or would they not fill my empty jar for me on
my beseeching them, on my pointing to my frothing lip as the
yellow man had done, on my asking for water only, promising to
depart at once? Why, it was better to be butchered by their
cutlasses than to perish thus. I felt mad at the thought of a
long sweet draught of wine and water out of a cold pannikin,
and rendered utterly defiant, absolutely reckless by my
sufferings, and by the dream and allurement of a drink of
water, I fell to the oars again, and rowed the boat alongside
the wreck.

I now noticed for the first time that the mast and sail which
the fellows had erected were gone. Indeed the mast lay over
the side, and the sail floated black under it in the water. I
listened; all was hushed as death in the motionless hulk. I
secured the painter of the boat to the chain plate, sprang on
to the deck and stood looking a minute. Close to the wheel lay
the figure of a man. He was sound asleep as I might suppose,
his head pillowed on his arm, and the other arm over his face
in a posture of sheltering it. He was the only one of the three
visible. Wildly reckless always and goaded with the agony of
thirst I went straight to the hatch and dropped into the cabin.
The blackness was that of a coal-mine, but I knew the way, and
after a little groping found the pantry door and entered. With
an eager hand I sought for a candle, found one and lighted it,
and in a few minutes my thirst was assuaged and I was standing
with clasped uplifted hands thanking God for the exquisite
comfort of the draught. Yet I drank cautiously. My need made
me believe that I could have drained a cask to its dregs, but
I forced my dreadful craving to be satisfied with scarce more
than a quarter of a pint. The drink relaxed the muscles of
my throat and I was able to eat. Afterwards I drank a little
again, and then I felt a new man.

I stayed about twenty minutes in the pantry, in which time I
heard no kind of noise saving a dim creak now and again from
the hold of the wreck. Extinguishing the candle I entered the
cabin and stood debating with myself on the course I should
follow. Water I must have: should I fill a jar and carry
it stealthily to the boat and be off and take my chance of
managing the business unheard? Yes, I would do that, and if I
aroused the sleepers, why, seeing that I was willing to go they
might not refuse me a supply of drink....

I was musing thus when there was the sound of a yawn on deck.
At that moment I remembered the array of cutlasses that
embellished the cabin ceiling. It was the noise the fellow
made, the perception that one of the three at all events was
awake with his mates somewhere at hand to swiftly alarm, which
put the thought of those cutlasses into my head, or it is fifty
to one if in the blackness of that interior I should have
recollected them. I sprang upon the table and in a moment was
gripping a blade. The very feel of it, the mere sense of being
armed sent the blood rushing through my veins as though to
some tonic of miraculous potency. “Now,” thought I, setting my
teeth, “let the ruffians fall upon me if they will. If my life
is to be taken it shall not be for the want of an English arm
to defend it.”

I jumped on to the deck, went stealthily to the foot of the
steps and listened. The man yawned again, and I heard the
tread of his foot as he moved, whence I suspected him to be
the yellow boatswain, the others being unshod, though to be
sure there were shoes enough in the ’tween decks for them had
they a mind to help themselves. As I sent a look up through the
lifted corner of tarpaulin over the hatch I spied the delicate,
illusive grey of daybreak in the air, and so speedy was the
coming of the dawn that it lay broad with the sun close under
the rim of the horizon ere I could form a resolution whilst
listening to make sure that he who was on deck continued alone.
Then hearing him yawn again and no sound of the others reaching
my ears, I mounted the steps and gained the deck.

It was the Portuguese boatswain, as I had imagined. He was in
the act of seating himself much in the same place where I had
seen him sleeping when I boarded the vessel; but he instantly
saw me as I arose, and remained motionless and rigid as though
blasted by a flash of lightning. His jaw dropped, his hideous
little eyes protruded bright with horror and fright from their
sockets, and his yellow face changed into a sort of greenish
tint like mottled soap or the countenance of a man in a fit.
No doubt he supposed me a spectre, rising as I did in that way
out of the cabin when the rogue would imagine me a hundred
miles off, or floating a corpse in the water, and I dare say
but for the paralysis of terror that had fixed his jaw some
pious sentences would have dropped from him. For my part I hung
in the wind undecided, at a loss to act. I sent a look over my
shoulder to observe if the others were about, and the movement
of my head seemed like the release of him from the constraint
of my eye. He leapt into an erect posture and rushed to the
side, saw the boat, uttered a cry for all the world resembling
the rough, saw-like yell of the albatross stooping to some bait
in the foaming eddies of a wake, in a bound came back to the
binnacle, the body of which stood, though the compass, hood
and glass were gone, and thrusting his hand into it pulled out
a pistol which he levelled at me. The weapon flashed as I ran
at him. Ere he had time to draw the cutlass which dangled at
his hip, I had buried the blade, the large heavy hilt of which
I grasped with both hands, deep in his neck, crushing clean
through his right jaw; and even whilst he was in the act of
falling I had lifted and brought the cutlass down upon him
again, this time driving the edge of it so deep into his skull
that the weight of him as he dropped dead dragged the weapon
out of my hand, and it was a wrestle of some moments to free
the blade.

I swept round fully prepared for the confrontment of the
others, who, I took it, if they were sleeping below, would rush
up on deck on hearing the report of the pistol. My head was
full of blood; I felt on fire from my throat to my feet. God
knows why or how it was, for I should have imagined of myself
that the taking of a human life would palsy my muscles with
the horror of the thing to the weakness of a woman’s arm; and
yet in the instant of my rounding, prepared for, panting for a
sight of the other two, I seemed conscious of the strength of a
dozen men in me.

All was still. The sun had risen in splendour; the ocean was
a running surface of glory under him, and the blue of the
south had the dark tenderness of violet with the gushing into
it of the hot and sparkling breeze which had sprung up in the
north with the coming of the morn. Where were the others? My
eyes reeled as they went from the corpse of the Portuguese
to the pistol he had let drop. I picked it up; it was a rude
weapon belonging to the armoury of _La Mulette_. I conjectured
that the miscreant would not have thus armed himself without
providing a stock of ammunition at hand, and on putting my arm
into the binnacle stand I found, sure enough, a powder-horn
and a parcel of pistol-bullets. I carefully loaded the weapon,
narrowly seeing to the priming, all the while constantly
glancing along the deck and listening. Then with the pistol in
one hand and the cutlass in the other, I stepped below, furious
and eager for a sight of the dead man’s mates.

The lifted tarpaulin let the morning sunshine fall fair into
the cabin, and now I saw that which had before been invisible
to me; I mean a great blood-stain upon the deck, with a
spattering of blood-drops and spots of more hideous suggestion
yet, round about. A thin trail of blood went from the large
stain upon the floor along through the passage betwixt the
berths, and so to the main hatch. Ha! thought I, _this_
signifies murder! I found nothing in the cabins. The door of
the berth in which the chest of gold stood, was locked, but
on putting my whole weight against it with knee and shoulder
it flew open. The contents of the place were as I had before
taken notice of; and there were no signs here of either dead or
living men. I regained the deck, and walking forward observed a
thin line of blood going from the coamings of the main hatch to
the side. It was the continuation and termination of the trail
below, and most unmistakably denoted the passage of a bleeding
body borne through the hatch and cast overboard. I walked
further forward yet, and on the forecastle witnessed another
wide stain of blood. It looked fresher than the other—nay, it
was not yet dry, and the heat went out of my body, and ice cold
shudders swept through my limbs as I turned my back upon it,
sick, dizzy, and trembling.

Those horrible marks gave me the whole story as fully as though
the dead brute aft had recited it to me at large ere I struck
him down. He had murdered his mates one after the other to be
alone with the gold. It had been murder cold and deliberate,
I was sure. There were no signs of a struggle; there were no
hints of any previous conflict in the person of the yellow
Portuguese. It was as though he had crept behind the men one
after another, and struck them down with a chopper. Indeed I
was as sure of this as though I had witnessed the deed; and
there was the chest of gold in the cabin to explain the reason
of it. How he hoped to manage if he fell in with a ship (and I
know not what other expectation of coming off with his life he
could have formed) it is useless to conjecture. Some plausible
tale no doubt he would have taken care to prepare, claiming the
gold as his by law of treasure-trove.

I let fall the weapons, and lay over a little strip of
bulwark, panting for breath. My eyes were upon the water over
the side, but a minute after on directing them at the sea-line,
I spied the sails of a ship, a square of pearl glimmering
in the blue distance, and slightly leaning from the hot and
brilliant breeze gushing fair down upon her starboard beam.
Scarce had my mind time to recognize the object as a ship, when
it vanished; a reddish gloom boiled up mistlike all about me;
the ocean to a mile away from the side of the wreck turned of
the deep crimson of blood, spinning round like a teetotum; then
followed blackness, and I remember no more....

When consciousness returned I found myself lying in a bunk in
a ship’s cabin. The place was familiar to me, and I recollect
in a weak way trying to find out why it should be so. “Why,
confound it all,” I muttered, “this is my cabin aboard the
_Ruby_. God! what a dream it has been!”

“Very glad your senses have returned to you, Mr. Catesby. It’s
been a doocid long faint, sir,” exclaimed a familiar voice, and
no less a person than the second mate of the _Ruby_ came to my
bedside.

A moment after the door opened, and the doctor of the ship
entered. I was about to speak; he peremptorily motioned
silence, felt my pulse and brow, nodding approvingly; then
addressing the mate, thanked him for keeping watch and told
him he could go. As my dawning intellects brightened, my
eagerness to make sure of the reality of the adventure I had
come through grew into a little fever. When I looked round the
cabin and saw my clothes hanging upon the bulkhead, my books,
the twenty odds and ends of the homely furniture of my berth,
I could not but believe that I had fallen ill, been seized
perhaps with a fever, and that the incidents of the wreck, the
open boat, the murderous Portuguese, were a mere vision of my
distempered brain. But for some hours the doctor had his way,
would not suffer me to talk, with his own hand brought me broth
and wine, and now, finding me strong enough, as I supposed, to
support a conversation, went out and in a few minutes returned
with Captain Bow.

It was _then_ my suspicion that all that had happened to me
was most horribly and fearfully real was confirmed. The boat
that had left me aboard the wreck had been sighted sweeping
down in the mist; twenty ropes’ ends had been hove at her from
the _Ruby_, and in a few minutes her people were safe on the
Indiaman’s deck. Sail was shortened to close-reefed topsails,
but a black blowing night drew around, as you know, and when
the dawn broke the wreck was nowhere visible. Light, baffling
weather followed. Meanwhile Bow swore that he would not quit
these waters till he had exhausted the inside of a week in
search for me. At sunrise that morning the wreck was signalled
from the foretopgallant yard of the _Ruby_. The ship was
immediately headed for it, and in a couple of hours the hulk
was close aboard. The chief officer was sent in charge of a
boat, and I was found lying, dead as they thought, a fathom’s
distance from a large stain of blood, whilst aft was the body
of a half-caste with his head cut open. They left _him_ as he
lay, but me they handed into the boat to carry on board, with
the design of giving me a Christian burial, till the doctor,
looking at me, asked if they wanted to add to the horrors
of the wreck by drowning a living man, and ordered me to be
conveyed at once to my bed.

This was the captain’s story, and I then related mine. Both he
and the doctor exchanged looks as I talked. It was tolerably
evident to my mind that they only believed in about a quarter
of what I told them.

“But, Captain,” I cried, “on my solemn honour as a gentleman,
as I am alive here to say it, there was gold to the value of
many thousands of pounds in the chest.”

“Yes, yes,” he answered with a glance of compassion at me. “I
don’t doubt it, Mr. Catesby. So much the better for the mermen
when it goes down to them; it will render the mermaids more
placable, I don’t doubt.”

“But, gracious mercy!” I cried, “it is only the sending of a
boat, you know. Why, sir, there’s enough in that chest to yield
a little fortune to every mother’s son of us aboard.”

“Yes, yes,” said Captain Bow, with a faint smile of concern
at the doctor, who kept his eyes with a knowing look in them
fastened upon the deck. “But we took you off the wreck, my dear
sir, a little before nine o’clock, and it is now after four,
and as our speed has been a comfortable eight knots ever since,
you may reckon the hulk at sixty miles’ distance astern. No,
Mr. Catesby, we’re bound to Bombay this time in earnest, sir.
No more hunting after wrecks this voyage.”

But I got every man-jack of the passengers, with the whole
ship’s company to boot, to credit my story up to the hilt
before we had measured half the length of the Bay of Bengal,
and such was the conviction I had inspired forwards at all
events that the third mate one night told me it was reported
that a number of the forecastle hands had made up their minds
to charter, if possible, if not, then to run away with, a
country wallah on the _Ruby’s_ arrival at Bombay, and sail the
Indian Ocean till they fell in with the wreck—if she was still
afloat.

But now to resume the story of Master Rockafellar’s voyage: we caught the south-east trades much closer to the equator than they are used to blow, and bowled merrily down the South Atlantic, rounding the Cape of Good Hope at a distance of fifty leagues from it, and driving ahead, with a strong westerly gale over our stern, straight as an arrow for Cape Leeuwin. Though the _Lady Violet_ showed like a frigate upon the water, with a beam that made her look somewhat tub-like, and a round massive bow that would crush a sea as the head of a whale might, she sailed nobly, easily reeling off a full twelve knots when there was wind enough to drive her, looking up when on a bowline with erect spars and a wake without an inch of lee-way in it; and I have known her, even in regions of calms and cats-paws and baffling airs, to travel in some mysterious manner a hundred miles in twenty-four hours.

She was a favourite ship among passengers, and almost as punctual in her dates as though she were a steamer; and this voyage, true to her old records, she sailed through the Sydney Heads one sparkling morning at about eight o’clock, making the time of her passage from the Thames exactly eighty-one days.

I will pass swiftly over our stay at Sydney. I should need a deal of room to describe the glories of this rich Australian scene, of islands and blue water and shores, with white houses peeping out from amidst the fringe of the bush. We hauled in alongside the Circular Quay, and then followed much grimy work in the shape of discharging cargo, furbishing up the ship, attending to the rigging, and the like. Then the vessel was conveyed to the other side of the harbour to receive her freight of wool. I was ashore a good many times, yet cannot say that I saw much of Sydney. Many a long hour would I spend in the beautiful Botanical Gardens, gazing at the astonishing vegetation, and watching with admiration the songless birds of superb plumage which throng those acres of grace, beauty, and colour. Mr. Cock took me to the theatre. I was out rowing and sailing too very often; but the captain would not let me have much liberty. He said I was too young to be cruising about ashore alone, and indeed my half-crown a week did not help me very largely to partake of the diversions of Sydney. My chief pleasure lay in sitting in the main-chains, when there was nothing to do, and fishing. Many fish, wonderful in colour, did I haul up, and some of them were a very delicate food.

The _Lady Violet_ was pretty deep with wool when we were towed out to sea. The passengers we had brought out were replaced by a new set—all of them colonials, intending a visit to the old home for purposes of pleasure or business. Three of our sailors had run away, and new men were taken in their place; otherwise the ship’s company remained as it had been.

I remember going on the forecastle in the second dog-watch of the first day that we were out, and leaning over the head-rail and looking into the evening-shadowed distance, and saying to myself, “We are homeward bound!” Ah, the delight of those words to the sailor, be he old or young! It is the most inspiriting of all the sentiments in the songs Jack sings. It is a thought that seems to compensate for all past hardships, and to hearten a man to endure all that may be harsh and painful in the time that yet lies between him and his arrival home. My young heart beat high, I remember, and I found a wonderful delight, as I overlay the forecastle rail, in looking straight down under me, where the coppered fore-foot of the ship was sheering through the satin-like seas rolling to her bow, and in thinking that every fathom of white water, with its tinkling foam-bells and bubbles of yellow spume which ran past, shortened the distance between me and my dear old home by six feet!

We were in the South Pacific now, making for the terrible Cape Horn, about whose enormous icebergs and leviathan seas and black snow-storms there was a deal said in our midshipmen’s berth; but it was still delicious weather; the indescribable sweetness and softness of the Pacific was in the temperature; the sun-touched billows chased us in lines of dark blue and flaming gold; sea-birds with breasts of snow, poised on long tremulous wings of ermine, hovered in our wake; and the albicore and the bonito merrily kept us company, as the _Lady Violet_ went ambling through the caressing waters.

This was the pleasantest part of the voyage, so far as I was concerned. I made friends with one of the boatswain’s mates, and was much in the forecastle with him during my watches below. I can see myself now, sitting on his sea-chest, listening to the yarns he spun me about the voyages he had made and the countries he had visited, or learning from him how to lay up sennit, to wield a marline-spike, to use the palm and needle, and so on. A lamp fed by slush spluttered under a blackened beam just over us; a number of hammocks hung from the ceiling or upper deck, with here and there a weather-darkened face, well whiskered, overlying the edge of the canvas with a pipe in its mouth. A double tier of bunks went curving into the eyes of the ship where the hawse-pipes were, and where the gloom lay heavy. In one of these beds a man would lie with a book in his hand, laboriously reading, his lips moving like a child’s as his eyes spelt down the page. Squatting on a chest would be a grim unshaven salt, sourly stitching at a pair of breeches. Elsewhere you would see a fellow greasing his sea-boots, another munching at a sea-biscuit with his eyes fixed like an owl’s, a third cutting up a pipeful of tobacco from a black flat cake that made me think of toffee. Yet, despite the life and movement within, the forecastle was always very quiet. My boatswain’s mate would talk to me in hoarse whispers, and the other sailors rarely conversed above their breath. Sleep is naturally prized at sea. The opportunities for taking it are short, and must be made the most of. Hence, seamen are very careful that their mates, when turned in, should repose undisturbed that when their own turn comes round for a nap they may sleep in quiet.

The dog-watches are the holiday hours at sea, and on a fine evening, whilst we were in the Pacific, I would repair to the forecastle and there sit, listening to and watching the men until the sun went down and the black shadow of night came along. They had a fiddle amongst them, and one of them played the concertina, and these instruments made music enough to set them a-dancing. I have laughed till the tears stood in my eyes to watch the brawny capering Jacks sliding about in a waltz, tenderly embracing one another as partners, capsizing over the flukes of the stowed anchors, and making a very pageant of the forecastle deck—with its rough details of capstan, catheads, scuttle and the like—by their swimming, floating, jovial figures, coloured of every hue with the clothes they wore. My friend the boatswain’s mate danced the hornpipe to perfection. He valued himself on this art, and was not always very forward in obliging us. When he suffered himself to be coaxed, the treat he gave us was a real one. He would dress himself so as to resemble a man-of-war’s man, and make his appearance with a straw hat on the back of his head-on “nine-hairs,” as sailors say—flowing trousers, pumps, an open shirt that disclosed his mossy breast, and take his stand on a part of the forecastle where the passengers aft could see him. The fiddler would then clamber on to the booms over the long-boat, and begin to saw away, and off would start the boatswain’s mate in a delightful shuffle—feet twinkling, legs vibrating, arms arched—a manly figure indeed! whilst the sailors noisily clapped their hands in huge relish of the show.

We were drawing into colder weather, though Cape Horn was still a long way off, when there happened two incidents in the same morning, one of which—as you will suppose when I have related it—made a very deep impression on me.

The ship was under all plain sail, by which is signified all the canvas a vessel carries saving her studding-sails. The breeze was moderate and off the bow, and there was very little sea; but through the bosom of the deep there ran, as regular as the beat of the pulse, a long swell, slipping its volumes into our quarter with weight enough in each broad-backed fold to keep the _Lady Violet_ curtseying until the forecastle of her looked as flat as a spoon on the slope of water ahead. I was at work with Kennet in one of the quarter-boats, clearing her out. The boat hung from a pair of irons, termed “davits,” over the side, and was steadied by flat mat-like lashings, called “gripes.” From over the gunwale of the boat we could obtain a clear view of the sea ahead, whereas, from the poop the horizon over the bows was concealed by the foresail and mainsail.

Presently, pausing in my work to glance ahead, I caught sight of a body of foam about a couple of points on the bow, as we should say, though how far off it was I could not imagine. Figure the moon reflecting herself in water just as she shows in the heavens—that is to say, as a bright silver disk—and you will obtain a good idea of the appearance on which my eyes had fastened. It rose and fell upon the swell, by which one knew that it must be afloat, whatever it was.

“See that, Kennet?” said I.

He peered and cried, “Ha! doth it move?”

We stared at it.

“No,” said he, “it ith’nt moving. I thought it wath a whirlwind firtht. I thay tho’—what the doothe—tain’t a _windmill_, ith it?”

I now saw, as he had seen, what resembled the vanes of a windmill revolving in the foam—a wet black arm that rose and fell out of the white seething like to the blades of a propeller rotating under the counter of a tall light steamer, amidst the boiling of the water churned up by the machine.

“See that thrasher!” suddenly shouted the chief mate. “By George, gentlemen and ladies, a fight between a thrasher and a whale, as I live! A rare sight, truly!”

And all the passengers who were on deck came rushing with him over to the side to look. As we approached, the spectacle grew in magnitude, and proved one of the wildest—I may say one of the most terrific—pictures which the imagination could body forth, even of the sea—that arena of wonders and of terrors. There was so much fury of foaming water, that it was hard to distinguish the gigantic combatants. Yet now and again I would catch a sight of a large space of the gleaming dark body of a leviathan whale, upon which the great arms of the thrasher were beating in blows, the echoes of which had something of a metallic twang in them that made you think of a giant blacksmith striking upon an enormous anvil. The boiling commotion covered a large space of water, and might easily have passed for the first fierce foamings of a waterspout.

I watched, breathless with astonishment and awe, my eyes half out of my head. Here was something to talk about to my father and mother! But would they believe it? It was a sight I could scarcely credit, specially when Kennet told me that what I saw of the whale was only a little bit of him.

“Will the thrasher kill him?” said I.

“I expect tho,” he answered; “anyhow, of the two, I’d thooner not be the whale.”

When the monster duellists had settled down upon our quarter, the long black arms suddenly vanished. The seething turmoil expired into smooth water, and the swell rolled flawless as before.

“The whale’th killed,” said Kennet; “keep a bright look-out, Rockafellar, and you’ll thee his body rithe.”

But though I stared long and earnestly, it was to no purpose; the body did _not_ rise: haply because the whale wasn’t dead.

“Oh, but,” said Kennet, “a big chap like that ithn’t going to rithe up with a pop ath though he wath a little fith. When a whale gothe to work, no matter what hith buthineth ith, he’th bound to take hith time. Did you ever thee a fat man hurry himthelf. Courth not. Tho ith it with whaleth.”

For a long time I continued to furtively glance at the sea, and then gave up looking, secretly pleasing myself with the idea that the whale was still alive, and not very much hurt; for it seemed to me very hard that any creature should meet with so dreadful an end as being flogged to death.