Two Years Before the Mast
whom I then was one.
The next day was Sunday. We worked as usual, washing decks, etc.,
until breakfast-time. After breakfast, we pulled the captain ashore,
and finding some hides there which had been brought down the night
before, he ordered me to stay ashore and watch them, saying that the
boat would come again before night. They left me, and I spent a quiet
day on the hill, eating dinner with the three men at the little house.
Unfortunately, they had no books, and after talking with them and
walking about, I began to grow tired of doing nothing. The little
brig, the home of so much hardship and suffering, lay in the offing,
almost as far as one could see; and the only other thing which broke
the surface of the great bay was a small, desolate-looking island,
steep and conical, of a clayey soil, and without the sign of vegetable
life upon it; yet which had a peculiar and melancholy interest to me,
for on the top of it were buried the remains of an Englishman, the
commander of a small merchant brig, who died while lying in this port.
It was always a solemn and interesting spot to me. There it stood,
desolate, and in the midst of desolation; and there were the remains of
one who died and was buried alone and friendless. Had it been a common
burying-place, it would have been nothing. The single body
corresponded well with the solitary character of everything around. It
was the only thing in California from which I could ever extract
anything like poetry. Then, too, the man died far from home; without a
friend near him; by poison, it was suspected, and no one to inquire
into it; and without proper funeral rites; the mate, (as I was told,)
glad to have him out of the way, hurrying him up the hill and into the
ground, without a word or a prayer.
I looked anxiously for a boat, during the latter part of the afternoon,
but none came; until toward sundown, when I saw a speck on the water,
and as it drew near, I found it was the gig, with the captain. The
hides, then, were not to go off. The captain came up the hill, with a
man, bringing my monkey jacket and a blanket. He looked pretty black,
but inquired whether I had enough to eat; told me to make a house out
of the hides, and keep myself warm, as I should have to sleep there
among them, and to keep good watch over them. I got a moment to speak
to the man who brought my jacket.
"How do things go aboard?" said I.
"Bad enough," said he; "hard work and not a kind word spoken."
"What," said I, "have you been at work all day?"
"Yes! no more Sunday for us. Everything has been moved in the hold,
from stem to stern, and from the waterways to the keelson."
I went up to the house to supper. We had frijoles, (the perpetual food
of the Californians, but which, when well cooked, are the best bean in
the world,) coffee made of burnt wheat, and hard bread. After our meal,
the three men sat down by the light of a tallow candle, with a pack of
greasy Spanish cards, to the favorite game of "treinta uno," a sort of
Spanish "everlasting." I left them and went out to take up my bivouack
among the hides. It was now dark; the vessel was hidden from sight,
and except the three men in the house, there was not a living soul
within a league. The coati (a wild animal of a nature and appearance
between that of the fox and the wolf) set up their sharp, quick bark,
and two owls, at the end of two distant points running out into the
bay, on different sides of the hills where I lay, kept up their
alternate, dismal notes. I had heard the sound before at night, but did
not know what it was, until one of the men, who came down to look at my
quarters, told me it was the owl. Mellowed by the distance, and heard
alone, at night, I thought it was the most melancholy, boding sound I
had ever heard. Through nearly all the night they kept it up,
answering one another slowly, at regular intervals. This was relieved
by the noisy coati, some of which came quite near to my quarters, and
were not very pleasant neighbors. The next morning, before sunrise,
the long-boat came ashore, and the hides were taken off.
We lay at San Pedro about a week, engaged in taking off hides and in
other labors, which had now become our regular duties. I spent one more
day on the hill, watching a quantity of hides and goods, and this time
succeeded in finding a part of a volume of Scott's Pirate, in a corner
of the house; but it failed me at a most interesting moment, and I
betook myself to my acquaintances on shore, and from them learned a
good deal about the customs of the country, the harbors, etc. This,
they told me, was a worse harbor than Santa Barbara, for south-easters;
the bearing of the headland being a point and a half more to windward,
and it being so shallow that the sea broke often as far out as where we
lay at anchor. The gale from which we slipped at Santa Barbara, had
been so bad a one here, that the whole bay, for a league out, was
filled with the foam of the breakers, and seas actually broke over the
Dead Man's island. The Lagoda was lying there, and slipped at the
first alarm, and in such haste that she was obliged to leave her launch
behind her at anchor. The little boat rode it out for several hours,
pitching at her anchor, and standing with her stern up almost
perpendicularly. The men told me that they watched her till towards
night, when she snapped her cable and drove up over the breakers, high
and dry upon the beach.
On board the Pilgrim, everything went on regularly, each one trying to
get along as smoothly as possible; but the comfort of the voyage was
evidently at an end. "That is a long lane which has no
turning"---"Every dog must have his day, and mine will come
by-and-by"--and the like proverbs, were occasionally quoted; but no one
spoke of any probable end to the voyage, or of Boston, or anything of
the kind; or if he did, it was only to draw out the perpetual, surly
reply from his shipmate--"Boston, is it? You may thank your stars if
you ever see that place. You had better have your back sheathed, and
your head coppered, and your feet shod, and make out your log for
California for life!" or else something of this kind--"Before you get
to Boston the hides will wear the hair off your head, and you'll take
up all your wages in clothes, and won't have enough left to buy a wig
with!"
The flogging was seldom if ever alluded to by us, in the forecastle. If
any one was inclined to talk about it, the others, with a delicacy
which I hardly expected to find among them, always stopped him, or
turned the subject. But the behavior of the two men who were flogged
toward one another showed a delicacy and a sense of honor, which would
have been worthy of admiration in the highest walks of life. Sam knew
that the other had suffered solely on his account, and in all his
complaints, he said that if he alone had been flogged, it would have
been nothing; but that he never could see that man without thinking
what had been the means of bringing that disgrace upon him; and John
never, by word or deed, let anything escape him to remind the other
that it was by interfering to save his shipmate, that he had suffered.
Having got all our spare room filled with hides, we hove up our anchor
and made sail for San Diego. In no operation can the disposition of a
crew be discovered better than in getting under weigh.
Where things are "done with a will," every one is like a cat aloft:
sails are loosed in an instant; each one lays out his strength on his
handspike, and the windlass goes briskly round with the loud cry of "Yo
heave ho! Heave and pawl! Heave hearty ho!" But with us, at this time,
it was all dragging work. No one went aloft beyond his ordinary gait,
and the chain came slowly in over the windlass. The mate, between the
knight-heads, exhausted all his official rhetoric, in calls of "Heave
with a will!"--"Heave hearty, men!--heave hearty!"--"Heave and raise
the dead!"--"Heave, and away!" etc., etc.; but it would not do. Nobody
broke his back or his hand-spike by his efforts. And when the
cat-tackle-fall was strung along, and all hands--cook, steward, and
all--laid hold, to cat the anchor, instead of the lively song of
"Cheerily, men!" in which all hands join in the chorus, we pulled a
long, heavy, silent pull, and--as sailors say a song is as good as ten
men--the anchor came to the cat-head pretty slowly. "Give us
'Cheerily!'" said the mate; but there was no "cheerily" for us, and we
did without it. The captain walked the quarterdeck, and said not a
word. He must have seen the change, but there was nothing which he
could notice officially.
We sailed leisurely down the coast before a light fair wind, keeping
the land well aboard, and saw two other missions, looking like blocks
of white plaster, shining in the distance; one of which, situated on
the top of a high hill, was San Juan Campestrano, under which vessels
sometimes come to anchor, in the summer season, and take off hides. The
most distant one was St. Louis Rey, which the third mate said was only
fifteen miles from San Diego. At sunset on the second day, we had a
large and well wooded headland directly before us, behind which lay the
little harbor of San Diego. We were becalmed off this point all night,
but the next morning, which was Saturday, the 14th of March, having a
good breeze, we stood round the point, and hauling our wind, brought
the little harbor, which is rather the outlet of a small river, right
before us. Every one was anxious to get a view of the new place. A
chain of high hills, beginning at the point, (which was on our larboard
hand, coming in,) protected the harbor on the north and west, and ran
off into the interior as far as the eye could reach. On the other
sides, the land was low, and green, but without trees. The entrance is
so narrow as to admit but one vessel at a time, the current swift, and
the channel runs so near to a low stony point that the ship's sides
appeared almost to touch it. There was no town in sight, but on the
smooth sand beach, abreast, and within a cable's length of which three
vessels lay moored, were four large houses, built of rough boards, and
looking like the great barns in which ice is stored on the borders of
the large ponds near Boston; with piles of hides standing round them,
and men in red shirts and large straw hats, walking in and out of the
doors. These were the hide-houses. Of the vessels: one, a short,
clumsy, little hermaphrodite brig, we recognized as our old
acquaintance, the Loriotte; another, with sharp bows and raking masts,
newly painted and tarred, and glittering in the morning sun, with the
blood-red banner and cross of St. George at her peak, was the handsome
Ayacucho. The third was a large ship, with top-gallant-masts housed,
and sails unbent, and looking as rusty and worn as two years'
"hide-droghing" could make her. This was the Lagoda. As we drew near,
carried rapidly along by the current, we overhauled our chain, and
clewed up the topsails. "Let go the anchor!" said the captain but
either there was not chain enough forward of the windlass, or the
anchor went down foul, or we had too much headway on, for it did not
bring us up. "Pay out chain!" shouted the captain; and we gave it to
her; but it would not do. Before the other anchor could be let go, we
drifted down, broadside on, and went smash into the Lagoda. Her crew
were at breakfast in the forecastle, and the cook, seeing us coming,
rushed out of his galley, and called up the officers and men.
Fortunately no great harm was done. Her jib-boom ran between our fore
and main masts, carrying away some of our rigging, and breaking down
the rail. She lost her martingale. This brought us up, and as they
paid out chain, we swung clear of them, and let go the other anchor;