Redburn: Chapter 57

Chapter 57

ALMOST A FAMINE

"Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs,
just like our pigs at home." Thus exclaimed one of the steerage
children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where
the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the "kids," which,
indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.

"Pigs, is it?" coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding
over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his
appetite by chewing sulphur.--"Pigs, is it?--and the day is close by, ye
spalpeens, when you'll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!"

This malicious prophecy proved true.

As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds
drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and
shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their
outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.

Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing
to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from
the ship's stores, or starve.

This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the
cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was
demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a
sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.

But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger:
hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The
consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of
the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the
public galley. They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and
carried off a promising young shoat: him they devoured raw, not
venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the
cook's caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;
they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the
cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they
beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in
the name of the Church.

At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian,
Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever
emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the
rigging and flogged.

Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost
alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place,
after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular
punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of
their clan, as a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred emigrants
into an insurrection.

A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs--the half of a cask; and
into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of
the tub. The head--divided in the middle, across the diameter of the
orifice--was now fitted round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith
coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
protruded through the holes in the bottom.

It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so
ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself
laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.

"Now, Pat, my boy," said the mate, "fill that big wooden belly of yours,
if you can."

Compassionating his situation, our old "doctor" used to give him alms of
food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the
time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain
have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
voyage.

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