Redburn: Chapter 50

Chapter 50

HARRY BOLTON AT SEA

As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry, got along as a
sailor.

Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted, comes over me,
even now when I think of you. For this voyage that you went, but carried
you part of the way to that ocean grave, which has buried you up with
your secrets, and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.

But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And why should we not be
glad? Is it, that we ever think of them as departed from all joy? Is it,
that we believe that indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the
departed; their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but it
is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not the sap that
every spring renews the green life of the trees.

But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image before me. I see
you, plain and palpable as in life; and can make your existence obvious
to others. Is he, then, dead, of whom this may be said?

But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms, the centaurs of
fancy; half real and human, half wild and grotesque. Divine imaginings,
like gods, come down to the groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the
embrace of wild, dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the
world.

But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the
same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you
show like a zebra, banding with elks.

And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy skin and hair,
Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's crew, looked not unlike the
soft, silken quadruped-creole, that, pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds
through Caffrarian woods.

How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean barbarians, those
unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours! How they pursued you from
bowsprit to mainmast, and started you out of your every retreat!

Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen that the
girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign of the Clipper in
Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound crew. Accordingly,
they cast upon him many a critical glance; but were not long in
concluding that Harry would prove no very great accession to their
strength; that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many
hundred-weight on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they disliked him
before they became acquainted with him; and such dislikes, as every one
knows, are the most inveterate, and liable to increase. But even sailors
are not blind to the sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time,
abstaining from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a cold
and unsympathizing civility.

As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up his mind; and
the thought of being bound for a distant land, carried with it, as with
every one, a buoyant feeling of undefinable expectation. And though his
money was now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.

But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen much of life,
should evince such an incredible ignorance of what was wholly
inadmissible in a person situated as he was. But perhaps his familiarity
with lofty life, only the less qualified him for understanding the other
extreme. Will you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled smoking-cap,
to stand his morning watch.

As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which had previously
crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost vowed to myself that,
spite his protestations, Harry Bolton never could have been at sea
before, even as a Guinea-pig in an Indiaman; for the slightest
acquaintance with the sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him,
it would seem, from enacting this folly.

"Who's that Chinese mandarin?" cried the mate, who had made voyages to
Canton. "Look you, my fine fellow, douse that mainsail now, and furl it
in a trice."

"Sir?" said Harry, starting back. "Is not this the morning watch, and is
not mine a morning gown?"

But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing could be more
appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most monstrous of incongruities;
and the offensive gown and cap were removed.

"It is too bad!" exclaimed Harry to me; "I meant to lounge away the
watch in that gown until coffee time;--and I suppose your Hottentot of a
mate won't permit a gentleman to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning;
but by gad, I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!"

Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry! Incensed at the
want of polite refinement in the mates and crew, Harry, in a pet and
pique, only determined to provoke them the more; and the storm of
indignation he raised very soon overwhelmed him.

The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany one,
which he had had made to order at a furniture warehouse. It was
ornamented with brass screw-heads, and other devices; and was well
filled with those articles of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported
through a London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially lessened
his extensive stock.

It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings thrown out by
the sailors at the occasional glimpses they had of this collection of
silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins. I do not know exactly what they
thought Harry had been; but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by
abandoning his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his browsers, to test
the color of his calves.

It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender made youth, of
easy manners and polite address happens to form one of a ship's company,
the sailors almost invariably impute his sea-going to an irresistible
necessity of decamping from terra-firma in order to evade the
constables.

These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too, they say to
themselves, or they would not be after putting their hands into our tar.
What else can bring them to sea?

Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the very beginning, was
put down for a very equivocal character.

Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance; especially
one evening, when his monkey jacket being wet through, he was obliged to
mount one of his swallow-tailed coats. They said he carried two
mizzen-peaks at his stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver,
or a footman to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same to Harry as
if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant Captain Riga on board. For
to his no small astonishment,--but just as I had predicted,--Captain Riga
never noticed him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into
the little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands of
his officers and crew.

But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was
any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in
coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact
that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands
of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is,
pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard
aloft, Harry would always manage to get near the belaying-pin, so that
when the time came for two of us to spring into the rigging, he would be
inordinately fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so
absorbed in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings round
the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after doing so much, to
mount over the bulwarks before his comrades had got there. However,
after securing the clew-lines beyond a possibility of their getting
loose, Harry would always make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry
for the shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he had been cut off from
the opportunity of signalizing his activity.

At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when the alarming fact
was confessed, that he had made a private trial of it, and it never
would do: he could not go aloft; his nerves would not hear of it.

"Then, Harry," said I, "better you had never been born. Do you know what
it is that you are coming to? Did you not tell me that you made no doubt
you would acquit yourself well in the rigging? Did you not say that you
had been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to ship. But you
only imagine it: try again; and my word for it, you will very soon find
yourself as much at home among the spars as a bird in a tree."

But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact was, his
nerves could not stand it; in the course of his courtly career, he had
drunk too much strong Mocha coffee and gunpowder tea, and had smoked
altogether too many Havannas.

At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled him out one
morning, and commanded him to mount to the main-truck, and unreeve the
short signal halyards.

"Sir?" said Harry, aghast.

"Away you go!" said the mate, snatching a whip's end.

"Don't strike me!" screamed Harry, drawing himself up.

"Take that, and along with you," cried the mate, laying the rope once
across his back, but lightly.

"By heaven!" cried Harry, wincing--not with the blow, but the insult: and
then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him
lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head,
I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.

"Captain Riga!" cried Harry.

"Don't call upon him" said the mate; "he's asleep, and won't wake up
till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!" he added, flourishing
the rope's end.

Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible
indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there
no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he
made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice.
I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for
I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being
lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top.
Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and
clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the
tar out of the ropes. "Up you go, sir." But Harry said nothing.

"You Max," cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, "spring after him, and
help him; you understand?"

Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a
bump against the base of Harry's back. Needs must when the devil drives;
and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my
unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin
signal halyards--, hardly bigger than common twine--were flying in the
wind. "Unreeve!" cried the mate.

I saw Harry's arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging,
even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done.

He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and every limb
quivering. From that moment he never put foot in rattlin; never mounted
above the bulwarks; and for the residue of the voyage, at least, became
an altered person.

At the time, he went to the mate--since he could not get speech of the
captain--and conjured him to intercede with Riga, that his name might be
stricken off from the list of the ship's company, so that he might make
the voyage as a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound
himself to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in New
York, over and above the ordinary passage-money. But the mate gave him a
blunt denial; and a look of wonder at his effrontery. Once a sailor on
board a ship, and always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within
so brief a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about at his
pleasure.

Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased, but
go aloft again he could not, and would not. He would do any thing else
but that.

This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander; the crew now
reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led a
miserable life indeed.

Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you lead,
and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such a
sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would
be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and kicked
without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth of
this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of these
evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional
nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted hare
to the merciless crew.

But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
of a spirit not easily tamed--how was it, that he could now yield himself
up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt? Perhaps
his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to
explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the common
tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of themselves, that
only He who made us can expound them.

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