Two Years Before the Mast
After leaving home, he had spent nearly twenty years, sailing upon all
sorts of voyages, generally out of the ports of New York and Boston.
Twenty years of vice! Every sin that a sailor knows, he had gone to
the bottom of. Several times he had been hauled up in the hospitals,
and as often, the great strength of his constitution had brought him
out again in health. Several times, too, from his known capacity, he
had been promoted to the office of chief mate, and as often, his
conduct when in port, especially his drunkenness, which neither fear
nor ambition could induce him to abandon, put him back into the
forecastle. One night, when giving me an account of his life, and
lamenting the years of manhood he had thrown away, he said that there,
in the forecastle, at the foot of the steps--a chest of old
clothes--was the result of twenty-two years of hard labor and
exposure--worked like a horse, and treated like a dog. As he grew
older, he began to feel the necessity of some provision for his later
years, and came gradually to the conviction that rum had been his worst
enemy. One night, in Havana, a young shipmate of his was brought
aboard drunk, with a dangerous gash in his head, and his money and new
clothes stripped from him. Harris had seen and been in hundreds of
such scenes as these, but in his then state of mind, it fixed his
determination, and he resolved never to taste another drop of strong
drink, of any kind. He signed no pledge, and made no vow, but relied
on his own strength of purpose. The first thing with him was a reason,
and then a resolution, and the thing was done. The date of his
resolution he knew, of course, to the very hour. It was three years
before I knew him, and during all that time, nothing stronger than
cider or coffee had passed his lips. The sailors never thought of
enticing Tom to take a glass, any more than they would of talking to
the ship's compass. He was now a temperate man for life, and capable
of filling any berth in a ship, and many a high station there is on
shore which is held by a meaner man.
He understood the management of a ship upon scientific principles, and
could give the reason for hauling every rope; and a long experience,
added to careful observation at the time, and a perfect memory, gave
him a knowledge of the expedients and resorts in times of hazard, which
was remarkable, and for which I became much indebted to him, as he took
the greatest pleasure in opening his stores of information to me, in
return for what I was able to do for him. Stories of tyranny and
hardship which had driven men to piracy;--of the incredible ignorance
of masters and mates, and of horrid brutality to the sick, dead, and
dying; as well as of the secret knavery and impositions practised upon
seamen by connivance of the owners, landlords, and officers; all these
he had, and I could not but believe them; for men who had known him for
fifteen years had never taken him even in an exaggeration, and, as I
have said, his statements were never disputed. I remember, among other
things, his speaking of a captain whom I had known by report, who never
handed a thing to a sailor, but put it on deck and kicked it to him;
and of another, who was of the best connections in Boston, who
absolutely murdered a lad from Boston that went out with him before the
mast to Sumatra, by keeping him hard at work while ill of the coast
fever, and obliging him to sleep in the close steerage. (The same
captain has since died of the same fever on the same coast.)
In fact, taking together all that I learned from him of seamanship, of
the history of sailors' lives, of practical wisdom, and of human nature
under new circumstances,--a great history from which many are shut
out,--I would not part with the hours I spent in the watch with that
man for any given hours of my life passed in study and social
intercourse.
CHAPTER XXIV
SAN DIEGO AGAIN--A DESCENT--HURRIED DEPARTURE--A NEW SHIPMATE
Sunday, Oct. 11th. Set sail this morning for the leeward; passed
within sight of San Pedro, and, to our great joy, did not come to
anchor, but kept directly on to San Diego, where we arrived and moored
ship on.
Thursday, Oct. 15th. Found here the Italian ship La Rosa, from the
windward, which reported the brig Pilgrim at San Francisco, all well.
Everything was as quiet here as usual. We discharged our hides, horns,
and tallow, and were ready to sail again on the following Sunday. I
went ashore to my old quarters, and found the gang at the hide-house
going on in the even tenor of their way, and spent an hour or two,
after dark, at the oven, taking a whiff with my old Kanaka friends, who
really seemed glad to see me again, and saluted me as the Aikane of the
Kanakas. I was grieved to find that my poor dog Bravo was dead. He
had sickened and died suddenly, the very day after I sailed in the
Alert.
Sunday was again, as usual, our sailing day, and we got under weigh
with a stiff breeze, which reminded us that it was the latter part of
the autumn, and time to expect south-easters once more. We beat up
against a strong head wind, under reefed top-sails, as far as San Juan,
where we came to anchor nearly three miles from the shore, with
slip-ropes on our cables, in the old south-easter style of last winter.
On the passage up, we had an old sea captain on board, who had married
and settled in California, and had not been on salt water for more than
fifteen years. He was astonished at the changes and improvements that
had been made in ships, and still more at the manner in which we
carried sail; for he was really a little frightened; and said that
while we had top-gallant sails on, he should have been under reefed
topsails. The working of the ship, and her progress to windward, seemed
to delight him, for he said she went to windward as though she were
kedging.
Tuesday, Oct. 20th. Having got everything ready, we set the agent
ashore, who went up to the mission to hasten down the hides for the
next morning. This night we had the strictest orders to look out for
south-easters; and the long, low clouds seemed rather threatening. But
the night passed over without any trouble, and early the next morning,
we hove out the long-boat and pinnace, lowered away the quarter-boats,
and went ashore to bring off our hides. Here we were again, in this
romantic spot; a perpendicular hill, twice the height of the ship's
mast-head, with a single circuitous path to the top, and long sand
beach at its base, with the swell of the whole Pacific breaking high
upon it, and our hides ranged in piles on the overhanging summit. The
captain sent me, who was the only one of the crew that had ever been
there before, to the top, to count the hides and pitch them down.
There I stood again, as six months before, throwing off the hides, and
watching them, pitching and scaling, to the bottom, while the men,
dwarfed by the distance, were walking to and fro on the beach, carrying
the hides, as they picked them up, to the distant boats, upon the tops
of their heads. Two or three boat-loads were sent off, until, at last,
all were thrown down, and the boats nearly loaded again; when we were
delayed by a dozen or twenty hides which had lodged in the recesses of
the hill, and which we could not reach by any missiles, as the general
line of the side was exactly perpendicular, and these places were caved
in, and could not be seen or reached from the top. As hides are worth
in Boston twelve and a half cents a pound, and the captain's commission
was two per cent, he determined not to give them up; and sent on board
for a pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards, and requested some
one of the crew to go to the top, and come down by the halyards. The
older sailors said the boys, who were light and active, ought to go,
while the boys thought that strength and experience were necessary.
Seeing the dilemma, and feeling myself to be near the medium of these
requisites, I offered my services, and went up, with one man to tend
the rope, and prepared for the descent.
We found a stake fastened strongly into the ground, and apparently
capable of holding my weight, to which we made one end of the halyards
well fast, and taking the coil, threw it over the brink. The end, we
saw, just reached to a landing-place, from which the descent to the
beach was easy. Having nothing on but shirt, trowsers, and hat, the
common sea-rig of warm weather, I had no stripping to do, and began my
descent, by taking hold of the rope in each hand, and slipping down,
sometimes with hands and feet round the rope, and sometimes breasting
off with one hand and foot against the precipice, and holding on to the
rope with the other. In this way I descended until I came to a place
which shelved in, and in which the hides were lodged. Keeping hold of
the rope with one hand, I scrambled in, and by the other hand and feet
succeeded in dislodging all the hides, and continued on my way. Just
below this place, the precipice projected again, and going over the
projection, I could see nothing below me but the sea and the rocks upon
which it broke, and a few gulls flying in mid-air. I got down in
safety, pretty well covered with dirt; and for my pains was told, "What
a d--d fool you were to risk your life for a half a dozen hides!"
While we were carrying the hides to the boat, I perceived, what I had
been too busy to observe before, that heavy black clouds were rolling
up from seaward, a strong swell heaving in, and every sign of a
south-easter. The captain hurried everything. The hides were pitched
into the boats; and, with some difficulty, and by wading nearly up to
our armpits, we got the boats through the surf, and began pulling
aboard. Our gig's crew towed the pinnace astern of the gig, and the
launch was towed by six men in the jolly-boat. The ship was lying
three miles off, pitching at her anchor, and the farther we pulled, the
heavier grew the swell. Our boat stood nearly up and down several
times; the pinnace parted her towline, and we expected every moment to
see the launch swamped. We at length got alongside, our boats half
full of water; and now came the greatest difficulty of all,--unloading
the boats, in a heavy sea, which pitched them about so that it was
almost impossible to stand in them; raising them sometimes even with
the rail, and again dropping them below the bends. With great
difficulty, we got all the hides aboard and stowed under hatches, the
yard and stay tackles hooked on, and the launch and pinnace hoisted,
checked, and griped. The quarter-boats were then hoisted up, and we
began heaving in on the chain. Getting the anchor was no easy work in
such a sea, but as we were not coming back to this port, the captain
determined not to slip. The ship's head pitched into the sea, and the
water rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain surged so as almost
to unship the barrel of the windlass. "Hove short, sir!" said the
mate. "Aye, aye! Weather-bit your chain and loose the topsails! Make
sail on her, men--with a will!" A few moments served to loose the
topsails, which were furled with reefs, to sheet them home, and hoist
them up. "Bear a hand!" was the order of the day; and every one saw
the necessity of it, for the gale was already upon us. The ship broke
out her own anchor, which we catted and fished, after a fashion, and
stood off from the lee-shore against a heavy head sea, under reefed
topsails, fore-topmast staysail and spanker. The fore course was given
to her, which helped her a little; but as she hardly held her own
against the sea which was settling her leeward--"Board the main tack!"
shouted the captain; when the tack was carried forward and taken to the
windlass, and all hands called to the handspikes. The great sail