This Was Sufficient
To Account For The Leak, And For Our Not Having Been Able To Discover
And Stop It.
- - - - - - - -
All this, however, was but anticipation. We were still in fine
weather in the North Pacific, running down the north-east trades,
which we took on the second day after leaving San Diego.
Sunday, May 15th, one week out, we were in latitude 14° 56' N.,
long. 116° 14' W., having gone, by reckoning, over thirteen hundred
miles in seven days. In fact, ever since leaving San Diego, we had
had a fair wind, and as much as we wanted of it. For seven days,
our lower and topmast studding-sails were set all the time, and our
royals and top-gallant studding-sails, whenever she could stagger
under them. Indeed, the captain had shown, from the moment we got
to sea, that he was to have no boy's play, but that the ship had
got to carry all she could, and that he was going to make up, by
"cracking on" to her, what she wanted in lightness. In this way,
we frequently made three degrees of latitude, besides something
in longitude, in the course of twenty-four hours. - Our days were
spent in the usual ship's work. The rigging which had become slack
from being long in port was to be set up; breast backstays got up;
studding-sail booms rigged upon the main yard; and the royal studding-
sails got ready for the light trades; ring-tail set; and new rigging
fitted and sails got ready for Cape Horn. For, with a ship's gear,
as well as a sailor's wardrobe, fine weather must be improved to
get ready for the bad to come. Our forenoon watch below, as I
have said, was given to our own work, and our night watches were
spent in the usual manner: - a trick at the wheel, a look-out on
the forecastle, a nap on a coil of rigging under the lee of the
rail; a yarn round the windlass-end; or, as was generally my way,
a solitary walk fore and aft, in the weather waist, between the
windlass-end and the main tack. Every wave that she threw aside
brought us nearer home, and every day's observation at noon showed
a progress which, if it continued, would in less than five months,
take us into Boston Bay. This is the pleasure of life at sea,
- fine weather, day after day, without interruption, - fair wind,
and a plenty of it, - and homeward bound. Every one was in good
humor; things went right; and all was done with a will. At the
dog watch, all hands came on deck, and stood round the weather
side of the forecastle, or sat upon the windlass, and sung sea
songs, and those ballads of pirates and highwaymen, which sailors
delight in. Home, too, and what we should do when we got there,
and when and how we should arrive, was no infrequent topic.
Every night, after the kids and pots were put away, and we had
lighted our pipes and cigars at the galley, and gathered about
the windlass, the first question was, -
"Well, Tom, what was the latitude to-day?"
"Why fourteen, north, and she has been going seven knots ever since."
"Well, this will bring us up to the line in five days."
"Yes, but these trades won't last twenty-four hours longer,"
says an old salt, pointing with the sharp of his hand to leeward,
- "I know that by the look of the clouds."
Then came all manner of calculations and conjectures as to the
continuance of the wind, the weather under the line, the south-east
trades, etc., and rough guesses as to the time the ship would be up
with the Horn; and some, more venturous, gave her so many days
to Boston light, and offered to bet that she would not exceed it.
"You'd better wait till you get round Cape Horn," says an old
croaker.
"Yes," says another, "you may see Boston, but you've got to
'smell hell' before that good day."
Rumors also of what had been said in the cabin, as usual, found
their way forward. The steward had heard the captain say something
about the straits of Magellan, and the man at the wheel fancied
he had heard him tell the "passenger" that, if he found the wind
ahead and the weather very bad off the Cape, he should stick her
off for New Holland, and come home round the Cape of Good Hope.
This passenger - the first and only one we had had, except to go
from port to port, on the coast, was no one else than a gentleman
whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should
have expected to have seen on the coast of California - Professor
N - - -, of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair
of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I
saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's
pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his
trowsers roiled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells.
He had travelled overland to the North-west Coast, and come down
in a small vessel to Monterey. There he learned that there was a
ship at the leeward, about to sail for Boston; and, taking passage
in the Pilgrim, which was then at Monterey, he came slowly down,
visiting the intermediate ports, and examining the trees, plants,
earths, birds, etc., and joined us at San Diego shortly before
we sailed. The second mate of the Pilgrim told me that they had
an old gentleman on board who knew me, and came from the college
that I had been in.
He could not recollect his name, but said he was a "sort of an
oldish man," with white hair, and spent all his time in the bush,
and along the beach, picking up flowers and shells, and such truck,
and had a dozen boxes and barrels, full of them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 114 of 167
Words from 115676 to 116693
of 170236
