HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
The second day out of port, the decks being washed down and breakfast
over, the watch was called, and the mate set us to work.
It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both of the same deep
hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so that we threw off our jackets.
I could hardly believe that I was sailing in the same ship I had been in
during the night, when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I
could hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful and
blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled along so black and
forbidding.
There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens; and
little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship made a strange,
musical noise under her bows, as she glided along, with her sails all
still. It seemed a pity to go to work at such a time; and if we could
only have sat in the windlass again; or if they would have let me go out
on the bowsprit, and lay down between the manropes there, and look over
at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should have been almost
happy for a time.
I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt very well; at
least in my body, though my heart was far from feeling right; so that I
could now look around me, and make observations.
And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder
at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight
of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round
us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen
but water-water--water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the
smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till
now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and
boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of
squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could
I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be
lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.
As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my
little brother's face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It
had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little
wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless Little kid in a pasture;
and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be
patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them,
that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them,
scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most
strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the
sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and
swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very
well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me.
It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes
off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.
I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could shut the ship
out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy world, and expected to hear
myself called to, out of the clear blue air, or from the depths of the
deep blue sea. But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such
thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist
aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these
stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out
beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like
the wings of a great bird.
For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest, not knowing the
name of any thing, or the proper way to go about aught. Besides, I felt
very dreamy, as I said before; and did not exactly know where, or what I
was; every thing was so strange and new.
While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the
sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist,
the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which
could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing
me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and
call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to
each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate,
who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and keep from dreaming
with my eyes open; and being, at bottom, a smart, apt lad, at last I
managed to learn a thing or two, so that I did not appear so much like a
fool as at first.
People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors, can not
imagine how puzzling and confounding it is. It must be like going into a
barbarous country, where they speak a strange dialect, arid dress in
strange clothes, and live in strange houses. For sailors have their own
names, even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a thing
by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus and a landlubber.
This first day I speak of, the mate having ordered me to draw some
water, I asked him where I was to get the pail; when I thought I had
committed some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that they were
always called buckets. And once I was talking about sticking a little
wooden peg into a bucket to stop a leak, when he flew out again, and
said there were no pegs at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with
every thing else.
But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of totally new
names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me
to master them all. If you have ever seen a ship, you must have remarked
what a thicket of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the very smallest of
these ropes has its own proper name, and many of them are very lengthy,
like the names of young royal princes, such as the starboard-main-top-
gallant-bow-line, or the larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.
I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new naming of a
ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a simplifying of the classes
of plants in Botany. It is really wonderful how many names there are in
the world. There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists
give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something
like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews
the small running ropes, that manage all the motions.
I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names,
which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at last the
very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be
breathing each other's breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they
use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But people
seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names,
seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be
surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the
world. But I must quit this rambling, and return to my story.
At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon
as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the
breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the
foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber
seemed to have a pulse in it that was beating with Me and joy; and I
felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would be glad to
bound along so round the world.
Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me, that responded to
all the wild commotion of the outer world; and went reeling on and on
with the planets in their orbits, and was lost in one delirious throb at
the center of the All. A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as
if a hidden spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran tingling
along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring freshets.
Yes I yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this
briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the
very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe,
let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an
eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!
But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief idle interval, we
were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the
chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat.
Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set
to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men lording it over me, as if I
were an African in Alabama. Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a
speedy end to this abominable voyage!