He Began A "Yarn" When He Came On Board,
Which Lasted, With But Little Intermission, For Four Hours.
It Was All About Himself, And The Peruvian Government, And The
Dublin Frigate, And Lord James Townshend, And President Jackson,
And The Ship Ann M'Kim Of Baltimore.
It would probably never have
come to an end, had not a good breeze sprung up, which sent him off
to his own vessel.
One of the lads who came in his boat, a thoroughly
countrified-looking fellow, seemed to care very little about the vessel,
rigging, or anything else, but went round looking at the live stock,
and leaned over the pig-sty, and said he wished he was back again
tending his father's pigs.
At eight o'clock we altered our course to the northward, bound for
Juan Fernandez.
This day we saw the last of the albatrosses, which had been our
companions a great part of the time off the Cape. I had been
interested in the bird from descriptions which I had read of it,
and was not at all disappointed. We caught one or two with a
baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long,
flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a
very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing; but one
of the finest sights that I have ever seen, was an albatross
asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy
sea was running. There being no breeze, the surface of the water
was unbroken, but a long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the
fellow, all white, directly ahead of us, asleep upon the waves,
with his head under his wing; now rising on the top of a huge billow,
and then falling slowly until he was lost in the hollow between.
He was undisturbed for some time, until the noise of our bows,
gradually approaching, roused him, when, lifting his head, he stared
upon us for a moment, and then spread his wide wings and took his flight.
CHAPTER VI
LOSS OF A MAN - SUPERSTITION
Monday, Nov. 19th. This was a black day in our calendar. At seven
o'clock in the morning, it being our watch below, we were aroused
from a sound sleep by the cry of "All hands ahoy! a man overboard!"
This unwonted cry sent a thrill through the heart of every one,
and hurrying on deck we found the vessel hove flat aback, with all
her studding-sails set; for the boy who was at the helm left it to
throw something overboard, and the carpenter, who was an old sailor,
knowing that the wind was light, put the helm down and hove her aback.
The watch on deck were lowering away the quarter-boat, and I got on
deck just in time to heave myself into her as she was leaving the side;
but it was not until out upon the wide Pacific, in our little boat,
that I knew whom we had lost. It was George Ballmer, a young English
sailor, who was prized by the officers as an active lad and willing
seaman, and by the crew as a lively, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate.
He was going aloft to fit a strap round the main top-mast-head,
for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards
and a marline-spike about his neck. He fell from the starboard futtock
shrouds, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all
those things round his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled
astern, in the direction in which he fell, and though we knew that there
was no hope of saving him, yet no one wished to speak of returning, and we
rowed about for nearly an hour, without the hope of doing anything,
but unwilling to acknowledge to ourselves that we must give him up.
At length we turned the boat's head and made towards the vessel.
Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man
dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go
about the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost,
there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it,
which give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore - you
follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are
often prepared for the event. There is always something which helps
you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed.
A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains
an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you -
at your side - you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and
nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea - to use
a homely but expressive phrase - you miss a man so much. A dozen
men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea,
and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their
own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him
at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces
or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth
in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch
is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to
lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound
of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and
each of your senses feels the loss.
All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect
of it remains upon the crew for some time.
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