FITTING OUTThe Vineyard boat went curving out in a wide sweep, another came in; a tugboat pursued its leisurely way across the harbor, and I held my breath in fear lest it should be bound for the Clearchus—with her crew of two; a lightship began to warp into the next dock above, preparatory to heaving down for repairs; the Custom House boat started out with an inspector to meet a ship that had been sighted down the bay; two catboats started from Al Soule’s for the same purpose; riggers andstevedores were busy on a whaleship in the dock next below, getting her spars up and bending on sails; the leisurely activities of New Bedford Harbor of nearly fifty years ago went on; the sun was warm and the wind light, and the smell of tar and sperm oil was heavy on the air, but in the lee of the hill the oil smell overpowered everything else. I liked that sickish smell of crude sperm oil. I like it yet. With that smell in my nostrils I have but to close my eyes and I see the warm, sunny harbor, some whaler lying in the stream ready to sail, the fluorescent green of the water in the dock—its peculiar color due to a mixture of oil and sewage—some other whaler lying at the wharf with her sails hanging limp from her yards, perhaps a vessel hove down at the other side of the wharf, and I heard the sound of mallets and the laughter and the talk of men on the still air.Fifty years ago I was actually hearing these things, waiting impatiently for twelve o’clock. But I waited, for I wanted to speak to my father alone. At last I heard the bell in the Stone Church tower sound noon, but the sound of the mauls did not stop at once, but one after another; then a few strokes of a single beetle, and I heard it laid down. The men had already begun to come up. My father was the last, and I watched him with some pride, a big, brawny, smiling man. I wished I were big and brawny and smiling, like him. And he saw me standing there, and smiled more than ever, a personal smile and tender in a way.He put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, Timmie,” he said. “You here yet? I thought you would have gone home long ago. Dinner ’ll be waiting. What is it, boy? Walk along with me and tell me. I can see it ’s something bothering you.”My brother Tom had started walking with us, but we were too slow for him, and he had run ahead. It was Big Tim and Little Tim. My father was always known as Big Tim.I did not know how to begin, so I said nothing, but I struggled.My father saw the struggle. He smiled again. “Out with it, Timmie,” he said.I raised my eyes slowly, and I am afraid that tears were in them.“I want to go whaling, father,” I blurted out.His smile faded swiftly. “Do you?” he said. “Do you? I hoped it would n’t be that. It begins to look—or it has been looking for some time as if the whaling business would die out. It won’t be a good business for some time, if it does n’t go from bad to worse. Have you thought of that, Timmie?”I shook my head. “I want to go whaling,” I said again.He laughed, and then he sighed. “It ’s a bad business for your mother and me,” he said, “to have our boy starting out on a voyage at fifteen for three or four years. But if you will you will, and I ’d better see about getting you a berth.” He turned and looked at the ship in the dock below. “There ’s a vessel the riggers should be through with soon. She should sail in a couple o’ weeks or thereabouts. I might get you in there. What do you say, Timmie?”“Where is she going, father?”“Well,” he answered slowly, “it ’s always hard to tell where a whaler ’s going. Wherever whales promise. But we braced and strengthened her for Ar’tic work. She ’s a good vessel now, Timmie, and thoroughly braced. I think likely she ’ll round the Horn, and make the Ar’tic next season. If she has luck in the South Seas she may hang over there another winter, and not try the Ar’tic until the next year. But the Ar’tic ’s where she ’s going sooner or later.”“I don’t want to go to the Ar’tic, father. Where ’s the Clearchus going?”My father looked around in surprise.“The Clearchus!” he exclaimed. “Why she ’s in the stream. Her crew ’ll be aboard in an hour or two. Cap’n Nelson expects to sail to-day.”“But where ’s shegoing?”“Going sperm whaling, Hatteras, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, probably, and South Seas. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose Cap’n Nelson knows. She is n’t going to the Ar’tic, that ’s sure.”“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail to-day.”“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always wanted to see the South Seas.”My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of course I hate to leave you and mother—”My father laughed at that.“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of somekind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might have had.We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my father with an ecstatic smile.My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you going?”“Custom House,” I called back. “Cap’n Nelson might get away.”So I ran, leaving my father laughing, and I waited impatiently for a few seconds beside one of the huge Doric columns supporting the roof of the portico of that ancient pile of granite. It always seemed to me as old as the Pyramids. The Post-office then occupied the first floor, but there was nobody passing either in or out at that time, and my father joined me beside the Doric column. I remember that the broad stone steps seemed not a whit too solid and strong for his massive frame as he came up.He said nothing, but chuckled as he and I entered together that empty, echoing room, and made for the stairs. It was—and is yet, I suppose—a curved staircase of stone, and never failed to excite my wonder that it stood and performed its function, for the granite steps were without visible means of support at their outer ends. I always mounted it with trepidation, half expecting that it would give way beneath me and precipitate me into the echoing abyss below. The stone steps were somewhat worn by the feet of many captains, and my own feet had contributed.We entered, and saw a long mahogany counter surmounted by a glass fence, behind which a man was writing, standing at the counter. He had a long, pointed beard, sprinkled with gray. He seemed to be alone in that spacious room. He was the Deputy Collector.We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain Nelson’s eyes.“Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping.But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than Captain Nelson.“I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?”“A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?”“Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if you ’re going to the South Seas.”Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?”I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing.Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me go.“Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him, I suppose?”“I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help than try to hinder him.”Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?”“Tim, sir.”“Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning, anyway.”He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared stupidly after him.My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late for dinner. Come along.”And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out atmy finger-tips. I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately for them and the world.I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely as she stood in my doorway.“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you. I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy, and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face. We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me hard, and whispering to me.
FITTING OUT
FITTING OUT
The Vineyard boat went curving out in a wide sweep, another came in; a tugboat pursued its leisurely way across the harbor, and I held my breath in fear lest it should be bound for the Clearchus—with her crew of two; a lightship began to warp into the next dock above, preparatory to heaving down for repairs; the Custom House boat started out with an inspector to meet a ship that had been sighted down the bay; two catboats started from Al Soule’s for the same purpose; riggers andstevedores were busy on a whaleship in the dock next below, getting her spars up and bending on sails; the leisurely activities of New Bedford Harbor of nearly fifty years ago went on; the sun was warm and the wind light, and the smell of tar and sperm oil was heavy on the air, but in the lee of the hill the oil smell overpowered everything else. I liked that sickish smell of crude sperm oil. I like it yet. With that smell in my nostrils I have but to close my eyes and I see the warm, sunny harbor, some whaler lying in the stream ready to sail, the fluorescent green of the water in the dock—its peculiar color due to a mixture of oil and sewage—some other whaler lying at the wharf with her sails hanging limp from her yards, perhaps a vessel hove down at the other side of the wharf, and I heard the sound of mallets and the laughter and the talk of men on the still air.
Fifty years ago I was actually hearing these things, waiting impatiently for twelve o’clock. But I waited, for I wanted to speak to my father alone. At last I heard the bell in the Stone Church tower sound noon, but the sound of the mauls did not stop at once, but one after another; then a few strokes of a single beetle, and I heard it laid down. The men had already begun to come up. My father was the last, and I watched him with some pride, a big, brawny, smiling man. I wished I were big and brawny and smiling, like him. And he saw me standing there, and smiled more than ever, a personal smile and tender in a way.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, Timmie,” he said. “You here yet? I thought you would have gone home long ago. Dinner ’ll be waiting. What is it, boy? Walk along with me and tell me. I can see it ’s something bothering you.”
My brother Tom had started walking with us, but we were too slow for him, and he had run ahead. It was Big Tim and Little Tim. My father was always known as Big Tim.
I did not know how to begin, so I said nothing, but I struggled.
My father saw the struggle. He smiled again. “Out with it, Timmie,” he said.
I raised my eyes slowly, and I am afraid that tears were in them.
“I want to go whaling, father,” I blurted out.
His smile faded swiftly. “Do you?” he said. “Do you? I hoped it would n’t be that. It begins to look—or it has been looking for some time as if the whaling business would die out. It won’t be a good business for some time, if it does n’t go from bad to worse. Have you thought of that, Timmie?”
I shook my head. “I want to go whaling,” I said again.
He laughed, and then he sighed. “It ’s a bad business for your mother and me,” he said, “to have our boy starting out on a voyage at fifteen for three or four years. But if you will you will, and I ’d better see about getting you a berth.” He turned and looked at the ship in the dock below. “There ’s a vessel the riggers should be through with soon. She should sail in a couple o’ weeks or thereabouts. I might get you in there. What do you say, Timmie?”
“Where is she going, father?”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “it ’s always hard to tell where a whaler ’s going. Wherever whales promise. But we braced and strengthened her for Ar’tic work. She ’s a good vessel now, Timmie, and thoroughly braced. I think likely she ’ll round the Horn, and make the Ar’tic next season. If she has luck in the South Seas she may hang over there another winter, and not try the Ar’tic until the next year. But the Ar’tic ’s where she ’s going sooner or later.”
“I don’t want to go to the Ar’tic, father. Where ’s the Clearchus going?”
My father looked around in surprise.
“The Clearchus!” he exclaimed. “Why she ’s in the stream. Her crew ’ll be aboard in an hour or two. Cap’n Nelson expects to sail to-day.”
“But where ’s shegoing?”
“Going sperm whaling, Hatteras, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, probably, and South Seas. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose Cap’n Nelson knows. She is n’t going to the Ar’tic, that ’s sure.”
“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail to-day.”
“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.
“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always wanted to see the South Seas.”
My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”
“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of course I hate to leave you and mother—”
My father laughed at that.
“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of somekind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”
I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might have had.
We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my father with an ecstatic smile.
My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you going?”
“Custom House,” I called back. “Cap’n Nelson might get away.”
So I ran, leaving my father laughing, and I waited impatiently for a few seconds beside one of the huge Doric columns supporting the roof of the portico of that ancient pile of granite. It always seemed to me as old as the Pyramids. The Post-office then occupied the first floor, but there was nobody passing either in or out at that time, and my father joined me beside the Doric column. I remember that the broad stone steps seemed not a whit too solid and strong for his massive frame as he came up.
He said nothing, but chuckled as he and I entered together that empty, echoing room, and made for the stairs. It was—and is yet, I suppose—a curved staircase of stone, and never failed to excite my wonder that it stood and performed its function, for the granite steps were without visible means of support at their outer ends. I always mounted it with trepidation, half expecting that it would give way beneath me and precipitate me into the echoing abyss below. The stone steps were somewhat worn by the feet of many captains, and my own feet had contributed.
We entered, and saw a long mahogany counter surmounted by a glass fence, behind which a man was writing, standing at the counter. He had a long, pointed beard, sprinkled with gray. He seemed to be alone in that spacious room. He was the Deputy Collector.
We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain Nelson’s eyes.
“Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping.
But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than Captain Nelson.
“I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?”
“A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?”
“Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if you ’re going to the South Seas.”
Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?”
I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing.
Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me go.
“Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him, I suppose?”
“I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help than try to hinder him.”
Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?”
“Tim, sir.”
“Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning, anyway.”
He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared stupidly after him.
My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late for dinner. Come along.”
And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out atmy finger-tips. I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately for them and the world.
I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely as she stood in my doorway.
“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you. I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy, and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”
So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face. We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me hard, and whispering to me.