the jung vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times told. she hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep-living, german romanticism into her wooden head, and is try
[pg 289]
ing, plunge after plunge, to drown herself, and to make me commit wilful suicide along with her, whether i will or not. after that, there is no hope; but oh! yet oh, my fates, let me die upon land. i have a horror of shipboard! the idea of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonising. why, the very table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snuffers to the candlestick, the extinguisher to the snuffers. only the burning candle is unattached, and there—there it jumps into bed! no matter; it could as soon set fire to the thames. another squall! how she groans, creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in neptune’s crackers? accursed jung vrouw! thou wilt be the widowing of my poor dear old one! accursed peter stuckey, thou wilt be the murdering of my poor deaf old self!
i know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is quaking and shaking, but i suspect i am trembling like an aspen. it is impossible to hear, in the midst of this universal hubbub, but methinks, i am wailing and weeping aloud. but one may as well make a manly exit. like other men, in such sea extremities, i would fain betake me to the rum-cask; but either hans vandergroot sails on temperance principles, or i have looked in the wrong place. i will try a stave or two instead.
“full fathom five—”
the best bower anchor.
alas! it will not go down. i am too much out of sorts for even the “delicate ariel.” it was one thing for shakspeare, sailing, hugging the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of bohemia, to compose such a sea song for the wood and canvas tempests of the stage; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as i do, howled through hoarse ship-ropes, by boreas himself, in a real storm. what comfort to me that everything about me shall suffer a sea-change?—that my bones shall turn, forsooth, into coral? i would not give a bad
[pg 290]
doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing the gums of the royal infant of spain. i am not so blindly ambitious as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into pearls, should shine in the british crown itself, or, what is more tempting, in the hair of the beautiful countess of b. what if some economical jeweller—i think i feel him at it—should take it into his head to split them, for setting in a ring? as for the syren’s knell, i would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain prosaic old sexton of st. sepulchre’s. i have no depraved yearning to be first wet-nursed to death, and then “lapped in elysium,” by mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever invented to give any human fancy the ague—half-and-half monsters, neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. a whole cargo of them, nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving
[pg 291]
or eating, is not worth one loveable real woman at billingsgate, or one of the eatable maids on her stall. i could never imagine the boldest and gallantest boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach—combing the shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or trying to put it into her pocket, forgetting that she has no pockets, as a shy man in company does not know what to do with his hands—i could never fancy him looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a slight variation of a line of dibdin’s,
“avert yon ’oman, gracious heaven!”
for other sea-temptations, i would not give my old white pony, that stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out of it, to ride like that lord godolphin arion over the seas on the fairest fish that was ever foaled. speaking under fear of death, i would rather, waving all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. on my solemn word, i would far liefer bestride even a pond perch with his dorsal fin erect. but hark! what means that dreadful cry? our death-bell is tolling in dutch—“del, del, is verlooren!”
i must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up unto the deck how i may. next best unto witnessing our own funeral is the seeing how we are done to death.
what a sight! here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as hard as they can tie it. further back is the skipper himself, entangled dismally by some cord or other to the stern-rails; and yonder is his mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. the gunner, as i take him to be, with a preposterous superfluity of breeching, is made fast to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to a cannon; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a
[pg 292]
stout rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the lamb of the order of the golden fleece. the cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced, as if for life, unto the capstan. adam vaart is double-turned and double-knotted to the main-mast, and hendrick his brother is belayed down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat. should the anchor be dropped, jan bart is sure, even from head to foot, to go along with it. poor little yacob yops, the apprentice, hath been turned over, and re-bound into a ring-bolt, by articles which are called rope-yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the rattlines, hangs diedrick dumm-kopf, head downwards, like a split cod left there to dry, in the main shrouds!
oh! that i were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis, i burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. the skipper, honest hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes, and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole secret. considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance, they had been all fastened, at their own special wish and agreement, to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by diedrick dumm-kopf, who was afterwards to provide for his safety as he judged surest, in order that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over. that accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was able, the said diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. that the jung vrouw driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were to navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes
[pg 293]
or thereby, when all of a sudden they saw diedrick, being seized with a vertigo, let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could never recover himself; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted the universal outcry that i heard.
i am sicker of the sea than ever! is the safety of a christian man’s life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by such a set of dutch bottoms with asses’ heads on their shoulders! oh! that the worthy chairman and all the underwriters of lloyd’s were here present on this deck—the mere sight of the skipper’s countenance there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig’s face, for that means to be eaten, would scare them from all sea-risks for ever!
thanks be to heaven! yonder’s a sail. it makes straight towards us—they come aboard. a pilot?—well said! oh, honest, good, dear pilot, as you love a distressed poor countryman—as you understand the compass and how rudders are turned—if you know what a rope’s end is,—take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder dutch sea-calves a round dozen a piece; ’twill cost you no great pains, seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. pish! never mind their offence; they have mutinied against themselves. smite, and spare not. i will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. hollo there! help me down. take heed to my footing. catch me, all of you, in your arms. now i am in. no, i an’t! i an’t! i an’t!
if ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, i was drown’d. my shoulder bleeds for it, but i forgive. never heed me: look to your helms and sails. ’tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. i am used to it, indeed i am. pray, what is the name of this blessed boat? the lively nancy. lively indeed! the jung vrouw was a quakeress to her! at every
[pg 294]
jump she takes, my heart leaps also. pray, pray, pray take in some canvas. you think you be sailing, but you are committing suicide. they mind me no more than stones. oh! oh! i am out of danger’s frying-pan into its fire! peter stuckey will be a murtherer after all!
what a set of dare-devils! they grin like baboons whilst she is driving with half her deck under water! i will shut mine eyes and hold fast by something. i am worse than ever. i give myself up. oh! oh! what an awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into! the bottom of the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat! hah! help! help! i am heels upward! why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she was going to stop short on the beach? stand all aside, and let me leap upon the sand. ah! i have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to kiss my native land!
