there is no sentiment at sea, and if you come off with your life no matter how narrowly, that is enough for you. you are not expected to speak of the close shave, unless with a grin of indifference. let your shipmates believe that you view it seriously, and they will set you down for a swab, a lady sailor, a longshoreman. this arises from an overstrained sense of manliness; yet it is true, nevertheless, that no genuine seaman will ever care to make anything of an accident, though no more than an inch of space or a single moment of time stand between him and a horrible end. however, that night, when i was in my bunk, and my messmates asleep, i got upon my knees in my bed, and, with tears and sobs, thanked my heavenly father for his preservation of me. i was very heavy when i first laid me down, but i kept myself[89] awake that i might lift up my young heart in gratitude, and pray for a continuance of god’s mercy; and when i put my head again on the bolster, there was just such a sense of peace and happiness in me as would have come had my mother stood by my bedside and kissed me.
for four days the mate was off duty, and it was feared that he would lose his sight, but to the general satisfaction of all hands—for he was an excellent seaman, a kind-hearted man, and popular fore and aft—he made his appearance on deck on the morning of the fifth day with a shade over his eyes, and by the end of the week his old power of vision was perfectly restored to him.
we took the trade wind, and swept down the broad atlantic ocean, making run after run in the twenty-four hours that was almost equal to steam, as steam then went. i was now as nimble aloft as need be, knew all the ropes of the ship, had learnt to make most of the principal knots, could polish a length of brass-work with the best of them, and, in other ways, was winning recognition as being of some use aft, small as i was. mr. cock was very kind to me, he showed me how to use the sextant, and took much trouble in explaining points of navigation.
once during a quiet middle watch—that is, from midnight until four in the morning—i was standing near the wheel, looking at the compass,[90] and thinking how like a live thing it was, as sentient as though it were informed by a human spirit, marvellously and beautifully faithful as a finger pointing the way to the mariner over the trackless breast of the deep. i was standing, i say, with my little head full of fancies coming into it out of the luminous circle of card, when mr. johnson, coming up, asked me if i would like to steer.
“ay, sir,” i answered, “i should, very much.”
“you’re but a little one for that big wheel,” said he, and i could see him smiling by the starlight, “but the helm don’t kick, and you’re here to learn. give him hold of the spokes, hunt,” said he, addressing the man, “and show him what to do;” and so saying, he fell to patrolling the deck afresh, softly whistling, as if for more wind.
the breeze was abeam, a pleasant air that held the sails motionless, and we were quietly going along at about four and a half knots. i grasped the wheel, and the man stood behind me.
[91]
“i grasped the wheel.”
[92]
“now, young gen’man,” said he, “you see that there mark? we calls that the lubber’s point. it’s on a line with the ship’s head, and when you know your course, you’ve got to keep the p’int of it dead on end with that there mark, if so be as she don’t break off, or if so be as[93] there ain’t no sea on. but if her head swings, then you’ve got to hit what’s called the mean of the oscillations of the card. can you tell how her head is now?”
“sou’, sou’-west,” i answered.
“you look again,” said he.
“south by west, three-quarters west,” said i after a prolonged squint at the compass.
“right!” said he; “now you keep her to that.”
she needed no steering, however. at long intervals a very small movement of the helm sufficed; but my enjoyment was very great. i was not yet fourteen, but had i been forty i could not have felt more fully a man. i cannot express how great was the sense of importance which possessed me when i considered that the big ship, with her costly freight and the many souls who were sleeping under my feet, was being directed by my young hands through the great enveloping shadow of the night. at first i could scarcely realize my power, and asked permission of the somewhat hoarse salt who leaned upon the grating behind me to move the wheel, that i might make sure that the ship would respond to the helm in my hands.
“well,” he answered, “i dunno that half a p’int off ’ll sinnify for a minute. try her if you like, my lad.”
[94]
so i put my small weight upon the spokes, and brought the wheel over, till the sailor in muffled accents (that the mate might not hear) cried “so!” great was my delight on observing the card to swing.
“there, young gen’men,” exclaimed my companion, “she’s a willing old mare, ye see. now bring her to her course again.”
i thrust the spokes over the other way, intently staring at the card.
“stead-dee!” came a hoarse whisper from behind me: “meet her, my lad, or she’ll be a p’int too high afore you know where you are.”
but he had to show me what he meant by slightly reversing the helm, as the ship came back to her course. i was highly delighted, and should have been glad to steer for the remainder of the night. however, the mate broke into my enjoyment by ordering me to trim the binnacle lamp; but always afterwards i was on the look-out for an opportunity to take the wheel, my experiences creeping cautiously from light airs into smart breezes, until it came to my being as well qualified as any man on board, having regard to my strength, of course, to stand a “trick.”
this reference to my first standing at the wheel of the lady violet recalls to my mind another incident of the middle watch a week or[95] two later on. we were nearing the equator, and had already penetrated that glassy belt of baffling airs and sneaking cats-paws extending a degree or two on either hand the line, and universally spoken of by sailors as the “doldrums.” i turned out at midnight and went on deck. the sky was very full of large rich trembling stars, yet they seemed to diffuse no light, saving one planet in the south under which there lay in the black breast of the deep a little icy gleam of wake, or reflection; otherwise the ocean stretched as black as thunder to its horizon. there was a gentle wind blowing off the quarter, just enough to give us steerage way, with a long light swell from the westwards, upon which the ship rolled as regularly as the tick of a clock, her topsail sometimes coming in to the mast with a clap that made one think a gun had been fired up aloft.
it was a very hot night; now and again there was a delicate winking of violet lightning in the far north-east. it was about twenty minutes after midnight, and i was walking up and down the poop to leeward with kennet, hearing him tell of a donkey race that he once rode in, when he suddenly came to a stand holding his breath as it were, and then exclaimed in a mysterious voice, “i thay, rockafellar, what’th that?”
“what do you mean?” i asked; “anything to see or listen to?”
[96]
“to liththen to,” he said.
i strained my ear.
“there!” he cried.
“a bell,” i explained. “there must be a ship near us. the sound is off abeam here,” and we stepped to the lee rail on the port side of the vessel.
the chimes of a bell tolling very slowly, as though for a funeral, could be heard with curious distinctness, so delicate a vehicle for the transmission of sound is smooth water.
“therth a bell ringing out to port here, thir,” called out kennet to the mate.
mr. johnson crossed over to our side, and listened.
“yes, a bell sure enough,” said he presently, after peering earnestly into the gloom in the direction of the noise, “but i see nothing of a shadow to resemble a ship. do you, young gentlemen? your eyes should be keener than mine.”
we stared our hardest, and answered, “nothing, sir.”
“fetch my binocular glass, rockafellar.”
he searched the sea narrowly through it, but there was no distinguishable smudge of any sort.
black as the ocean was, there were stars hanging low over the horizon, and had there been a ship within five miles of us, the eclipse[97] of those stars by her sails would have revealed her. but the tolling assured us that the bell could not be half-a-mile distant. it swung in long floating chimes across the water, and i cannot express the quality of mystery and awe which the strange noise put into the darkness of the night. it made one think of a church ashore, and a graveyard with its mouldering stones glimmering to the starlight.
“fo’k’sle there!” shouted mr. johnson, “do you hear the sound of a bell off the sea?”
“ay, ay, sir,” came a growling answer out of the deep gloom of the fore part of the ship.
“can you make out anything like a sail?”
there was a pause, and then came the reply, “no, sir; there’s nothing in sight.”
“this beats all my going a-fishing,” said the mate, going to the rail to listen again.
the watch on deck uncoiled themselves from the secret nooks in which they had been dozing, and went to the bulwarks, which they overhung listening, and then broke into exclamations as the ghostly tolling met their ears. some of the fellows who were off duty, disturbed by the noise on deck, came out of the forecastle; then the captain arrived through the companion-hatch, and was presently followed by some passengers, so that it seemed as if the bell had woke the whole ship up; for here were we with a tolerably[98] crowded deck, and the hour one o’clock in the morning.
the growing clearness of the chimes showed that we were approaching the bell. the helm was shifted, so as to head the vessel in the direction of the sound, but very shortly after this had been done the wind failed, and a clock-calm fell; the long light swell rolled in folds of polished ebony, and we lay without an inch of way upon us.
the chiming of the bell, that did not now seem two cables’ length away from us ahead, broke with startling clearness through the dull flapping of the canvas as the lady violet swayed. yet there was nothing to be seen. maybe there were now some eighty pairs of eyes staring from poop, main-deck, and forecastle, but there was nothing between us and the stars of the horizon. what could it be? i remember that my own little heart beat fast when kennet, in a voice of awe, said that he reckoned it was some spirit of the sea ringing the ship’s funeral bell, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if by this time to-morrow night we were all dead men. you could hear a murmur of superstitious whispers and talk rolling along the line of sailors and steerage passengers at the rail. the captain poop-poohed, and i heard him say—
“pshaw, gentlemen, there are no flying dutchmen in this age. it is a bell, i grant, and where[99] the noise comes from i don’t know, but there is nothing in a little conundrum of this kind to alarm us.”
but all the same, even to my youthful ears, the secret superstitious dismay and wonder which were upon him sounded so clear in his voice that one did not want to see his face to know how he felt. all night long the bell continued to toll just off the bow, and not a sigh of wind was to be felt, so dead was the calm that had come down. never a man or a boy of us all turned in. i went on to the forecastle with others, and followed kennet on to the flying jibboom, at the extremity of which long spar we were nearer to the object that produced the noise than any person who remained inboard was, but there was nothing to be seen, though i stared into the quarter whence the chimes were issuing in a regular tolling, rhythmic as the heave of the swell, until my eyes reeled in my head.
the puzzle was not to be solved till daybreak, and then, when the swift tropic dawn had brightened out the sea from line to line, a cry half of laughter, half of indignation, seemed to break from all hands, as though they could now scorn themselves for the emotions of the night. in fact, within a quarter of a mile ahead of us there rose and fell upon the swell, that was still polished as quicksilver, a small wooden frame of an elliptical[100] form, supported on a somewhat broad platform, portions of the planking of which were split, as though it had at one time formed a solid body which had been wrenched and mutilated by a blow of the sea. under the frame, amidships of it, dangled a large ship’s bell, the tongue of which, vibrating regularly as the heave of the sea swayed the whole fabric, struck the metal sides, and produced the dismal and melancholy tolling which had kept us awake and filled us with consternation throughout the night! little wonder that the keenest eyes amongst us should not have perceived it; even by daylight, and at a short distance from us, it showed but as a very little object—so small indeed, that had it passed us within a biscuit-toss in the darkness, it must have slipped by unperceived.
it was no doubt a part of a wreck, and had probably belonged to some foreign ship. we could afford to laugh at our fears now, and certainly we deserved the relief of a little merriment, for our superstitious alarm throughout the long hours of the darkness had been very considerable.
