CHAPTER III.
The Bay of Biscay well merits its turbulent character; of this we soon had ample demonstration, for theRottenbeam Castlehad scarcely entered within its stormy bounds, when the wind, hitherto moderate, became rough and boisterous, and in a little time freshened almost to a gale; the vessel began to pitch and roll—the shrouds cracked—the few sails set were strained almost to splitting—and mountain seas with wild, foamy crests ever and anon burst over us, clearing the waistand forecastle, and making the “good ship” quiver through every plank and timber. Thesesublimitieswere quite new to me, and produced their usual effects on the unseasoned—an involuntary tribute to Old Ocean—not a metrical outpouring, but one of a less spiritual quality, on which it would be superfluous to dilate.
Our first day’s dinner on board, with things in the state I have described—i.e.theRottenbeam Castlereeling and staggering like a drunken man—was a most comical affair, and I should have enjoyed it extremely had my nausea been less. It is true, with some variations, the scene was afterwards frequently repeated (except when sea-pie was the order of the day); but then, though I was no longer qualmish, it in turn had lost the master-charm of novelty. We were summoned to dinner as usual, on the day in question, by the drummers and fifers—or rather, to be more respectful, the “Captains Band;” but, from the difficulty of preserving an equilibrium, these worthies mangled the “Roast Beef of Old England” most unmercifully. The dapper little steward, with his train of subordinates, had some difficulty in traversing the deck with their savoury burthens; unable to march as before, heads erect, like a squad of recruits, the grand purveyor, with his silver tureen in the van, they now emerged theatrically from the culinary regions—advancing with slides and side-steps, like acorps de ballet—now a halt, then a simultaneous run—then balancing on one leg—and finally (hitting the moment of an equipoise) a dart into the cuddy, where, with some little difficulty, each contrived to deposit his dish. The passengers, emerging from various doors and openings, tottering and holding on as best they might, now made their way to seats, and amidst the most abominable creaking and groaning that ever saluted my ears the operation of dinner began. In spite of sand-bags, however, and all other appliances, there was no restraining the ambulatory freaks of the dishes, and we were scarcely seated when a tremendous lee-lurch sent a tureen of peasoupsouse over the doctor s kerseymere waistcoat and Brummel tie; and a roast pig, as if suddenly resuscitated and endued with a spirit of frenzy, darted from its dish, and, cantering furiously down the whole length of the table, finally effected a lodgment in Miss Dobbikins’ lap, to the infinite dismay of that young lady, who uttering a faint shriek, hastily essayed, with Ensign O’Shaughnessy’s assistance, to divest herself of the intrusive porker. I, for my part, was nearly overwhelmed by an involuntary embrace from the charming Miss Olivia; whilst, to add to the confusion, at this particular moment, Mr. Cadet Grundy, governed rather by sight than a due consideration of circumstances and the laws of gravitation, made a desperate lunge at one of the swinging tables, which he thought was making a most dangerous approach to the perpendicular, in order to steady it, and the immediate result was, a fearful crash of glasses and decanters, and a plentiful libation of port and sherry.
“Are ye mod, sir, to do that?” exclaimed the captain, with ill-suppressed vexation at the destruction of his glasses, and forgetting his usual urbanity.
“I thought they were slipping off, sir,” said Grundy, with great humility.
“Ye ha’ slupped them off in gude airnest yeersel, sir,” rejoined Captain McGuffin, unable, however, to repress a smile, in which all joined, at the idea of Grundy’s extreme simplicity. “Dinna ye ken, sir, that it’s the ship, and not the swing-table, that loses its pairpendicular? Here, steward,” continued he, “clare away these frogments, and put mair glasses on the table.”
The colloquy ended, there was a further lull, when, heave yo ho! away went the ship on the other side; purser jammed up against the bulk-head—rolls—legs and wings—boiled beef, carrots, and potatoes, all racing, as if to see which would first reach the other side of the table. At this instant snap went a chair-lashing,and the ex-resident of Paugulabad was whirled out of the cuddy door, like a thunder-bolt.
“There she goes again!” exclaimed the second mate; “hold on, gentlemen.” The caution was well-timed, for down she went on the opposite tack; once more, the recoil brought the colonel back again, with the force of a battering-ram, attended by an awful smash of the butlers plate-basket, and other deafening symptoms of reaction. Oh, ’tis brave sport, a cuddy-dinner in an Indiaman, and your ship rolling gunwales under.
“By the powers, now, but this hates everything entirely,” exclaimed Ensign Gorman, who, like myself, was a griff, and had never witnessed anything of the sort before.
“Oh, its nothing at all this—mere child’s play, to what you’ll have round the Cape,” observed the second mate, grinning with malice prepense.
“The deuce take you, now, Grinnerson, for aJove’scomforter,” rejoined the ensign, laughing; “sure if it’s worse than this, it is we’ll be sailing bottom upwards, and ateing our males with our heels in the air.”
“Oh, I assure you, it’s a mere trifle this to the rolling and pitching I myself have experienced,” said the little colonel, who having recovered his seat and composure, now put in his oar, unwilling to be silent when anything wonderful was on thetapis. “I remember,” continued the ex-resident, picking his teethnonchalamment(he generally picked his teeth when delivered of a bouncer), “that was—let me see, about the year 1810—shortly after I resigned the residency of Paugulabad—we were off Cape Lagullas, when our vessel rolled incessantly for a fortnight in the heaviest sea I ever remember to have seen; we were half our time under water—a shark actually swam through the cuddy—everything went by the board—live stock all washed away—couldn’t cook the whole time, but lived on biscuit, Bologna sausages, Bombay ducks, and so forth. To give you an idea of it—ladieswill excuse me—I actually wore out the seats of two pair of inexpressibles from the constant friction to which they were subjected—a sort of perpetual motion—no preserving the same centre of gravity for a single moment.”
This sally of the colonel’s had an equally disturbing effect on the gravity of the cuddy party, and all laughed heartily at it.
“You were badly enough off, certainly, colonel,” said our wag, the second officer (with a sly wink at one of his confederates); “but I think I can mention a circumstance of the kind still more extraordinary. When I was last in the China seas, in theJohn Tomkins, she rolled so prodigiously after a tuffoon, that she actually wore off all the copper sheathing, and very nearly set the sea on fire by this same friction you speak of. It’s strange, but as true as what you have just mentioned, colonel.”
“Sir,” said the colonel, bristling up, for he did not at all relish the drift of this story, “you are disposed to be pleasant, sir; facetious, sir; but let me beg in future that you will reserve your jokes for some one else, and not exhibit your humour at my expense, or it may be unpleasant to both of us.”
All looked grave—the affair was becoming serious—the colonel was a known fire-eater, and Grinnerson, who saw he had overshot the mark, seemed a little disconcerted, but struggled to preserve his composure—it was a juncture well calculated to test all the powers of impudence and tact of that very forward gentleman; but, somehow or other, he did back cleverly out of the scrape, without any additional offence to the colonel’s dignity, or a farther compromise of his own, and before the cloth was removed, a magnanimous challenge to Mr. Grinnerson, “to take wine,” came from the colonel (who at bottom was a very worthy little man, though addicted, unfortunately, to the Ferdinand Mendez Pinto vein), and convinced us that happily no other sort of challengewas to be apprehended. And so ended my first day’s dinner in a high sea in the Bay of Biscay.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
In plain prose, it was past seven bells, and I (like Mahomet’s coffin) was swinging in the steerage, forgetful of all my cares; whether in my dreams I was wandering once more, as in childhood’s days, by the flowery margin of the silver Avon, listening to the blackbird’s mellow note from the hawthorn dell—lightly footing the Spanish dance in Mangeon’s ball-room at Clifton—or comfortably sipping a cup of bohea in the family circle at home—I do not now well remember: but whatever was the nature of those sweet illusions, they were suddenly dispelled, in the dead of the night, by one of the most fearful agglomerations of stunning sounds that ever broke the slumbers of a cadet: groaning timbers—hoarse shouts—smashing crockery—falling knife-boxes—and the loud gurgling bubble of invading waters—all at once, and with terrible discord, burst upon my astonished ear. Thinking the ship was scuttling, or, that some other (to me unknown) marine disaster was befalling her, I sprung up in a state between sleeping and waking, overbalanced my cot, and was pitched out head-foremost on the deck. Here a body of water, ancle-deep, and washing to and fro, lent a startling confirmation to my apprehensions that the ship was actuallyin articulo immersionis. I struggled to gain my feet, knocked my naked shins against a box of saddlery of the major’s, slipped and slid about on the wet and slimy deck, and finally, my feet flying from under me, came bump down on the broadest side of my person, with stunning emphasis and effect. Another effort to gain the erect position was successful, and, determined to visit the “glimpses of the moon” once more before I became food for fishes, I hurriedly and instinctively scrambled my way towards the companion ladder. Scarcely was I in its vicinity, andholding on by a staunchion, when the vessel gave another profound roll, so deep that the said ladder, being ill-secured, fell over backwards, saluting the deck with a tremendous bang, followed by a second crash, and bubbling of waters effecting a forcible entry. Paralyzed and confounded by this succession of sounds and disasters, I turned, still groping in the darkness, to seek some information touching this uproar, from some one of the neighbouring sleepers. I soon lighted on a hammock, and tracing the mummy-case affair from the feet upwards my hands rested on a cold nose, then a rough curly pate surmounting it, whose owner, snoring with a ten-pig power, would, I verily believe, have slept on had the crash of doom been around him. “Hollo! here,” said I, giving him a shake. A grunt and a mumbled execration were all it elicited. I repeated the experiment, and having produced some symptoms of consciousness, begged earnestly to know if all I had described was an ordinary occurrence, or if we were really going to the bottom. I had now fairly roused the sleeping lion; up he started in a terrible passion; asked me what the deuce made me bother him with my nonsense at that time of night, and then, consigning me to a place whence no visitor is permitted to return, once more addressed himself to his slumbers. This refreshing sample of nautical philosophy, though rather startling, convinced me that I had mistaken the extent of the danger; in fact, there was none at all; so feeling my way back to my cot, I once more, though with becoming caution, got into it, determined, sink or swim, to have my sleep out. On rising, disorder and misery, in various shapes, a wet deck and boxes displaced, met my view; I found my coat and pantaloons pleasantly saturated with sea-water, which it appeared had entered by an open port or scuttle, and that my boots had sailed away to some unknown region on a voyage of discovery. “Oh! why did I ‘list?’” I exclaimed, in the bitterness of my discomfort; “why did I ever ‘list?’” Ye cadets, attend tothe moral which this narrative conveys, and learn, by my unhappy example, always to secure your toggery, high and dry, before you turn in, and to study well the infirmities of that curious pendulum balance, the cot, lest, like me, ye be suddenly decanted therefrom on the any-thing-but-downy surface of an oaken deck!
With what feelings of delight does the youth first enter upon the fairy region of the tropics, a region which Cook and Anson, and the immortal fictions of St. Pierre and De Foe, have invested in his estimation with a sweet and imperishable charm! The very air to him is redolent of a spicy aroma, of a balmy and tranquillizing influence, whilst delicious but indefinable visions of the scenes he is about to visit—of palmy groves, and painted birds, and coral isles “in the deep sea set,” float before him in all those roseate hues with which the young and excited fancy loves to paint them. Paul and Virgina—Robinson—Friday—goats—savages and monkeys—ye are all for ever bound to my heart by the golden links of early association and acquaintanceship. Happy Juan Fernandez, too! Atalantis of the wave—Utopia of the roving imagination—how oft have I longed to abide in ye, and envied Robinson his fate—honest man of goatskins and unrivalled resources! But one ingredient, a wife, was wanting to complete your felicity; had you but rescued one of the Miss Fridays from the culinary fate designed for her brother, and made her your companion, you would have been the most comfortable fellow on record.
Griffin as I was I partook strongly of these common but delightful feelings I have attempted to describe, and in the change of climate and objects which every week’s sail brought forth, found much to interest and excite me—the shoal of flying-fish, shooting like a silver shower from the ocean, and skimming lightly over the crested waves; the gambols of the porpoise; the capture of a shark; fishing for bonetta off the bowsprit; a waterspout; speculations on a distant sail; her approach; the friendly greeting; the first and last!—were all objectsand events pleasing in themselves, but doubly so when viewed in relation to the general monotony of a life at sea. Nothing, I think, delighted me more than contemplating the gorgeous sunsets, as we approached the equator. Here, in England, that luminary is a sickly affair, but particularly so when viewed through our commonly murky atmosphere, and there may be some truth in the Italian’s splenetic remark in favour of the superior warmth of the moon of his own country. But in the fervid regions of the tropics it is that we see the glorious emblem of creative power in all his pride and majesty, whether rising in his strength, “robed in flames and amber light,” ruling in meridian splendour, or sinking slowly to rest on his ocean couch of gold and crimson, in softened but ineffable refulgence; it is (but particularly in its parting aspect) an object eminently calculated to awaken the most elevated thoughts of the Creator’s power, mingled with a boundless admiration for the beauty of His works. Yes, neither language, painting, nor poetry, can adequately portray that most glorious of spectacles—a tropical sunset.
Ensign O’Shaughnessy having sworn “by all the bogs in Kerry,” that he would put a brace of pistol-balls through Neptune, or Juno, or any “sa God” of them all, that should dare to lay hands upon him; and a determination to resist the initiatory process of ducking in bilge-water, and shaving with a rusty hoop, having manifested itself in other quarters, Captain McGuffin, glad of a pretext, and really apprehensive of mischief, had it intimated to the son of Saturn and his spouse, that their visit in crossing the line would be dispensed with. In so doing, it appears to me that he exercised a wise discretion; Neptune’s tomfooleries, at least when carried to their usual extent, being one of those ridiculous customs “more honoured in the breach than in the observance;” one which may well be allowed to sleep with “Maid Marian,” “the Lord of Misrule” and other samples of the “wisdom of our ancestors,” who wereemphatically but “children of a larger growth,” to whom horse play and “tinsel” were most attractive. On crossing the equator, however, the old but more harmless joke of exhibiting thelinethrough a telescope was played off on one greenhorn, sufficiently soft to admit of its taking effect.
“Do you make it out, Jones?” said Grinnerson, who had got up the scene, to one of the middys, a youngster intently engaged in reconnoitering through a glass half as long as himself.
“I think I do, sir,” said Jones, with a difficultly-suppressed grin.
“What is he looking for?” asked the simple victim.
“The Line, to be sure; didn’t I tell you we were to cross it to-day?”
“Oh yes, I remember; I should like amazingly to see it, if you would oblige me with the telescope.”
“Oh, certainly; Jones, give Mr. Brown the glass.”
The soft man took it, looked, but declared that he saw nought but sky and sea.
“Here, try mine,” continued the second mate; “’tis a better one than that you have,” handing him one with a hair or wire across the large end of it. “Now do you see it?”
“I think I do; oh, yes, most distinctly. And that really is the line? Bless me, how small it is!”
This was the climax; the middys held their mouths, and sputtering, tumbled in a body down the ladder to have their laugh out, whilst a general side-shaking at the griff’s expense took place amongst the remaining group on the poop.
Well, the stormy dangers of the Cape safely passed, the pleasant isles of Johanna, sweet as those which Waller sung, duly visited—Dondra Head—Adam’s Peak—the woody shores of Ceylon here skirted and admired, those beautiful shores, where
Partout on voit mûrir, partout on voit éclore,Et les fruits de Pomone et les présents de Flore;
Partout on voit mûrir, partout on voit éclore,Et les fruits de Pomone et les présents de Flore;
Partout on voit mûrir, partout on voit éclore,Et les fruits de Pomone et les présents de Flore;
Partout on voit mûrir, partout on voit éclore,
Et les fruits de Pomone et les présents de Flore;
and the “spicy gales” from cinnamon groves duly snuffed up and appreciated (entre nous, a burnt pastile of Mr. Grinnerson’s, and not Ceylon, furnished the “spicy gales” on this occasion), we found ourselves at last off the far-famed coast of Coromandel, and fast approaching our destination.
It is pleasant at certain seasons to glide over the summer seas of these delightful latitudes, whilst the vessel spreads abroad all her snowy canvas to arrest every light and vagrant zephyr, to hang over the side, and whilst the ear is soothed by the lapping ripple of small, crisp waves, idly breaking on the vessel’s bows as she moves scarce perceptibly through them, to gaze on the sky and ocean, and indulge in that half-dreamy listlessness when gentle thoughts unbidden come and go. How beautiful is the dark blue main, relieved by the milk-white flash of the seabird’s wing! how picturesque the Indian craft, with their striped latteen sails, as they creep along those palm-covered coasts, studded with temples and pagodas! and seaward resting on the far-off horizon, how lovely the fleecy piles of rose-tinted clouds, seeming to the fancy the ethereal abodes of pure and happy spirits! There is in the thoughts to which such scenes give birth a rationality as improving to the heart as it is remote from a forced and mawkish sentimentality. Such were my sensations as we crept along the Indian coast, till in a few days theRottenbeam Castlecame to anchor in the roads of Madras, amidst a number of men-of-war, Indiamen, Arab grabs, and country coasters.
The first thing we saw, on dropping anchor, was a man-of-war’s boat pulling for us, which created a considerable sensation amongst the crew, to whom the prospect of impressment was anything but agreeable. The boat, manned by a stout crew of slashing young fellows, in straw hats, and with tattooed arms, was soon alongside, and the lieutenant, with the air of a monarch, mounted the deck. He was a tall, strapping man, with a hanger banging against his heels, loose trousers, atarnishedswab(epaulette) on his shoulder, and a glazed cocked-hat stuck rakishly fore and aft on his head: in my idea, the verybeau idéalof a “first leftenant.”