by Ellen Wood
Master Gruff it proved to be; and shamefaced enough. For he was come to ask grace of his father for his past rebellion, and fervently to implore never to be sent to sea again.
“So you have had enough of it!” cried the squire, his surprise a little abated, when the gentleman reached his presence.
Master Gruff, albeit getting on now to be Mr Gruff, burst into tears: long-restrained, grievous, heart-broken tears, none the less bitter for their having been for months suppressed. “Oh, father! don’t send me back again I” he wailed forth. “A sailor’s life on board those working vessels is worse than a dog’s!”
“Highty tighty, but this is news!” exclaimed the squire. “A fine change in the weather, this! I understood you to say that in going to sea you would step into a sort of terrestrial paradise.”
“Paradise!” groaned Gruff.
“You did say it. Where’s the mistake, Hugh?”
“Father, it is the most awful life,” wailed Hugh. “It’s enough to kill a dog. There! And you are beaten black and blue besides! And instead of the ship being a beautiful, trim, clean thing, ever in apple-pie order, with her noble sails set, as you read of in Marryat’s novels, or as the talk used to be in the school, and Vane boasted, she’s a dirty, clumsy, unmanageable mass of ugliness, always wanting to be attended to, with no place where you can sit, and close fetid holes to sleep in, worse than your dog-kennels, and scores of rats running over you! And we are kept at labour night and day, and our naked feet and hands are cut and bruised with the work; and for weeks together we don’t have a dry thread about us, for the water washes in, and soaks everything on board, clothes on and clothes off. O sir! do have pity upon me! I can’t go back again.”
Squire Jones never felt more inclined to laugh. It was precisely what he had anticipated.
“And then the language you hear; ay, and get to learn, too!” went on Mr Gruff, his sobs nearly choking him. “It’s a wonder that the skies don’t fall with it. And you have to eat biscuit with the maggots in it, and green beef — junk they call it — oh, it’s awfully sickening. Father, I’d rather be put to sweep a crossing at home than I’d be at sea!”
“I can’t believe my own ears,” mocked the squire, keeping his countenance. “I have told everybody what a charming life my eldest son had entered upon; nothing that I had ever heard or read could come up to it, save fairy land, or the scenes in the ‘Tales of the Genii.’ How is it, I say, Hugh?”
“Don’t send me back again!” besought Gruff, in his agony. “Put me into a coffin, and follow me to the grave if you like, but don’t send me back again. Father, dear father! I would ten times over rather be dead and lying at peace in my grave, than live under the hardships of a sea life.”
Mr Jones changed his tone to seriousness. “You chose the life, Hugh.”
“I did not choose that — the life I found. I chose the picture drawn by the boys and Harry Vane — the false, pleasant aspect given to it in false books. You remember those two plates, father, in ‘ Martin Chuzzlewit,’ of the famous city of Eden. The beauty, the fertility of the drawn picture, and the utter desolation of the reality. Well, going to sea is like those pictures: it is an exact illustration of them; I have thought of them many a time in my misery, when I have been up aloft. We are led to look for everything that’s pleasant and smooth; but when we get afloat, we find out the deceit, and the horrors we have entered on.”
“You lead yourselves to look for smoothness, Hugh. I told you you’d find what it seems you have found.” Gruff hung his head. “It’s true, father. My mind was perverted, and I would not listen to you. Forgive me the past, and let me stay on land. You will not force me to go again?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the squire, keeping up the joke. “Perhaps another voyage would prove better, more agreeable to you than the last has been?” Down went Gruff on his knees, and sobbed out his prayer, more terrified than before.
“I should never come back again alive. I should die of the hardships. Father, don’t send me!”
“Will you turn rebellious again, Hugh, if I forgive you now!”
“Never. This has cured me, father.”
“Very well. I am glad it has. There’s nothing like self-cure. Get up. Which of the two do you think now knew best, young sir — you or I?”
Gruff rose from his knees humble and thankful. His contrition was genuine, for so had been his hardships.
“Another of you is off to-day, I hear,” remarked the squire—” William Allair.”
“Not off to sea!” returned Gruff.
“It is supposed so. He has disappeared, nobody knows whither, taking some shirts with him. Went away in the night. He had the sea fever upon him, so there’s little doubt that he is off to it.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Gruff, rubbing his tearful face. “Run away to sea! I am sorry for him. Poor Allair! he little thinks what it is.”
“A pity but you had come home a day sooner. It might have stopped him.”
“I don’t know,” mused Hugh, casting his thoughts back to his fever. “When you are regularly in for it, all the talking in the world doesn’t stop you. You don’t believe it, and don’t listen to it.”
“The only thing would be, then, to drive back the fever in its onset, not to suffer it to take hold of you,” said the squire.
“Ah! if we could! — if we did but know!” lamented Gruff. —
“Could!” returned the squire. “What do you mean by that? A right-minded lad, anxious to do his duty, does not say ‘If I could.’ He says ‘I will.’ Don’t forget that, Master Hugh.”
Pray don’t you forget it, either, boys.
CHAPTER XIII.
AWAKING FROM THE DELUSION.
BUT meanwhile where was William Allair? Speeding fast to that delightful Eden of his imagination, the sea.
He reached Liverpool unmolested, unpursued. Mr Allair, you see, was on a false scent: he had gone to London. William’s object was to engage himself on board some vessel, any that was about to start, as a working sailor: he could not expect to go in a higher capacity at present. Difficulties, however, lay in his path. He had no registered ticket, no discharge, no outfit. It was his fortune, however, to fall in with people who taught him how to overcome these little obstacles: certain men called crimps, who infest seaport towns, and are ever on the look-out for victims, young men green as William Allair, green as you would be, my dear boy, were you to run blindfold into their friendly hands. They assumed the protectorship of William, and things went on swimmingly and smoothly.
A ship was instantly found for him, one about to depart at once — the “Prosperous,” an American vessel, hailing from New York. He bound himself to work on board her for three years, as an “apprentice,” and a small outfit was provided; how very small and short, William never knew until he was at sea; the clothes he had gone down in, and the contents of his pockets, including the valuable gold watch which had been a legacy from his grandfather, being left on shore in compensation. That gold watch was worth forty pounds. He rather rebelled at the binding himself for three years; but was assured that it was the only way in which he could get to sea, and that at the end of the three years he would be promoted to the place of second mate, with immense wages. William believed his friends.
The vessel was a trader, of four hundred tons burthen, having the usual complement of men on board, all of whom were Americans, save a boy who joined when William did. The captain’s name was Janns; he was of Dutch extraction, but had himself been bora in the States. He was not a prepossessing man in features; truth to say, William did not like the look of him at all; but he strove to admire him as a bluff sea-captain.
There was one thing, however, that did strike on his heart with somewhat of a chill. Whenever William had thought of a ship — and it had been pretty frequently, as you know — the picture that rose up in his imagination was of a trim, elegantly-built vessel, her white sails set, and her colours waving, gliding majestically over a wide expanse of tra
nsparent waters, deep and beautiful in colour as a painter’s ultramarine. Just the ship, in fact, that you see exposed for sale under a glass case, or in the paintings of some of the first masters. Gruff Jones, you may remember, had cherished the same ideas. But what did William see when he first reached Liverpool? It was a dull, rainy day; so that may have made the aspect of things worse; but he saw a heap of dirty, ugly, black-looking vessels huddled together, — a heterogeneous mass of sides, decks, spars, masts, ropes, pitch, tar, dirt, and confusion, all floating in the muddy, turbid, yellowish-tinted water of the docks. The sight struck coldly and oddly upon William, leaving its natural impression. He was not like Harry Vane. The latter’s heart yearned to a ship, no matter how unfavourably viewed; William’s heart already recoiled from them, as they looked there; though he would not have admitted the fact for the world, even to himself. “But this will soon be changed,” reasoned William. “Let us get a day’s sail, or so, from port; leave this thick, unpleasant-looking water behind; and give the fair ship range on her pure native element. That will be the time o’ day!”
The “Prosperous” was ready for sea when William joined her. She was about returning to New York, and it was expected would thence be sent to California — at that time far from being deemed a desirable country to visit. What a scene it was to William when the vessel made preparations for getting under weigh! Hurrying, screaming, shouting, swearing! Innumerable orders were given. Some to him: orders which he could not obey, simply from being at a loss to know what was meant, and how he was to execute them. Many a hard word was given him, and harder blow; pushed hither, knocked thither; contemptuously thrust aside, and called a lazy, sneaking land-lubber! Yards had to be braced, sails loosed, the craft around cleared.
It appeared a maze of confusion, and William was in a maze with it. But the start was effected at last; the moorings were loosened, the docks and the river were left behind, the ship commenced her course on the sea, rolling from side to side with the ground swell: and William Allair was fairly launched on his perilous voyage, and had bid adieu to England and to ease and happiness for ever.
Had William Allair wished to be treated to the ills of a sailor’s life in their worst bearings, he could not have fixed upon a better ship than this identical one, the “Prosperous.” Life on board her was not a favourable specimen of the American service. Hardships are found in their ships, as they are in ours.
And, as the days passed on, he became slowly but surely aware how widely different was the reality from the fabled romance he had conjured up. And then came repentance: that terrible, unavailing repentance, which saddens the brain, and turns the heart to sickness. What a life was his? How could he so madly, so blindly, have rushed upon it? He, who had not known what it was to soil his hands, who had never so much as cleaned the boots he walked in, or brushed the clothes he wore, had now to pass his days in toil that was totally unfitted for him. He, who had often said to Harry Vane that a sailor’s must be a deliciously lazy life, who had laughed in derision when told the contrary, had now to find that a sailor’s work is never done. From the rising of the sun to its going down, it was toil, toil, toil; added to which, there were the midnight watches, and broken rest.
Thousands like William Allair have fallen, and are falling, into the same error. “What can there be to do at sea?” they cry. If you, my inexperienced boys, feel inclined to stand upon the dispute, and make the same inquiry, take what I now tell you as an answer. The hardest, the most laborious life you can possibly fix upon, I may say the most cruel life, is that of a sailor’s on board these merchant ships; and it is, of all others, the most comfortless. It is of no use to go into details of the labour; you would find the description tedious, and not understand at last; but rely upon it, it has broken many and many a spirit, many a heart, many a life. Gruff Jones’s expression, “It is a worse life than a dog’s,” was not an inapt one.
No unhappy criminal at the galleys labours half so hard in his chains as did William Allair, now he was a common seaman: neither are the transports kept under more strict discipline than was he. The forecastle where he lived, in common with some dozen or fifteen others, was a dark, damp, wretched hole, so full of chests and lumber of some sort or other, that there was no room to sit or move in it. The everlasting salt junk was their food: at home he would have gone without meat for a month, rather than have touched it. The mode of taking their meals reminded him of Mr Jenniker’s pigs taking theirs. A large, hard, red lump of this junk was put in a small tub in the forecastle, and each man, with his own sheath knife, cut off what he wanted. It was eaten with equally hard, unpalatable biscuit. This was the living; it was rarely varied; and the drink was water. Night and morning they had a tin jug full of tea. It was made in a furnace, some treacle stirred into it with a rolling-pin, and served out to them, tea-leaves and all. William would let his leaves settle to the bottom, but most of the sailors swallowed them with the tea. The “Prosperous” was a temperance ship, as it is called; consequently there was no grog. The captain took enough, though, for his own share.
William was not alive at first to the full ills of his position. He never thought that the incessant work was to last; he supposed it to be but what was necessary upon getting out to sea. He lay in his berth, suffering agonies from sea-sickness; too ill to pay attention to the coarse fare eaten around him: but he did gaze upon the wretched place, with its inexpressibly close, nauseous smell, that was henceforth to be his home; he gazed upon the rude, hardened crew, with whom he must fraternize. He, the refined William Allair, so unfitted, both by nature and education, to be forced into the rough companionship of such! He would henceforth have many bitter pills to swallow, but none that would be felt more annoyingly than this.
Bitter pills indeed I and in his obstinate ignorance he had honoured the articles that were to bind him to his father by the same epithet. He would recall the expression now, could he exchange his present life for the one he had then rejected.
And the time went on; and with the exception of one short note, written to his mother, Whittermead heard nothing of him, any more than it had of Dick Jenniker.
It would be nearly an impossible task to describe the sensations of Mrs Allair in the first few days following his departure: quite impossible for you fully to understand them. When convinced that he was actually gone; when Mr Allair returned at length from London bringing no tidings of him; then her hopes turned to letters, to receiving news from him by means of writing. But to say her “hopes” turned to that, is an expression denoting most imperfectly the state of her mind and heart. Fevered in brain, fevered in body, her nights and days were passed in one long, miserable yearning. Ten times a day would she walk to the post-office, in the fond and foolish delusion that the postman, by some unusual oversight, had forgotten to leave the letter at her house. “Is there any letter for me? Is there any letter for me?” was the burthen of her cry. And the old postmistress who dealt out the letters would silently shake her head in sympathy at the sad voice, the sadder face, and whisper a faint hope that there might be one on the morrow. People began to say, that unless news came, it would kill Mrs Allair.
At length news did come, in the shape of a letter from William himself. It was written in Liverpool, but not posted until he had sailed some days: William’s “friends” took care of that. It told her little more than that he was alive and well, and about to embark on the life he had so longed for — the sea. It did not give a clue to the precise ship he had embarked in, or for what particular port he was bound; but he promised to write all these details the instant they made it. And he begged her and his father to pardon the step he had taken, to wish him good luck in his venture, and to look forward to their next joyful meeting.
Alas! even at the very hour that Mrs Allair was reading that most unsatisfactory note, William’s repentance was setting in.
CHAPTER XIV.
A TASTE OF THE SEA.
THE stay of the ship “Prosperous” in New York was limited. It ma
y be asked by many, why William Allair did not make a second run and quit the ship, as he found himself so uncomfortable upon it. Whether he would have attempted the step, I am unable to say; but at any rate he had no opportunity given him, being by far too closely watched. Possibly the captain doubted whether such might not be his intention; for he never allowed him to go on shore but once, and then it was under convoy of the mate. From this port William wrote home more fully, stating where he was, and that they were bound to the coast of California round Cape Horn. Not a word was there in his letter of having realized the pleasure he had so confidently counted on; neither was there mention of his bitter disappointment, or of his cruelly hard life; but there was a vein of sadness running through it, which told too surely its own tale, and the unhappiness of him who wrote it. So, all the tidings conveyed to his anxious relatives, to his mother, were, that he was in the severe trading service, bound upon the hardest known voyage, and that he was unhappy in body and in mind. The “Prosperous” commenced her voyage to California from New York, passing by Cape Horn. Ah!
William had it now. If he had found the passage from England to America bad, what did he think of this, for a change? He wondered whether he could live through its ills. But let us get on at present, and you shall hear a little about it on the homeward voyage. In about five months they arrived at their destination, and anchored at Santa Barbara. After discharging her cargo, the “Prosperous” was to take in another, consisting chiefly of hides; to do which, the captain said would occupy them full two years from the time of arrival.
Neither is there leisure to give to the time spent off California, whether at Santa Barbara, Monterey, San Pedro, San Diego, or San Francisco, all of which bays, or ports, the ship was located in by turns. But, no matter where they were, the work was always hard, though it varied from the monotonous labour at sea. The landing of the cargo was sharp work, very sharp for William Allair, especially the rolling of the weighty casks up the hilly beach. Their whole exerted strength scarcely prevented the barrels rolling back upon them: their naked feet were constantly bleeding; bruised, and cut with the rough stones. The cargo landed, they were employed in getting off hides from the shore to the ship. Who that had known William Allair in England could recognise him now? Dressed in the roughest, lowest, meanest attire, his feet bare, his head covered with hides — the usual mode of carrying them! He had shrunk from a cut finger at home, delicately wrapped up in a piece of linen rag: he had to bear the far sharper pain of his bleeding feet. There was no wrapping up for them; cuts and wounds were left undressed and exposed to the rough beach, to be cut again.