The officers are more watchful, and the crew go
more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is
dismissed with a sailor's rude eulogy - "Well, poor George is gone!
His cruise is up soon! He knew his work, and did his duty, and was
a good shipmate." Then usually follows some allusion to another world,
for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions
are unfixed and at loose ends. They say, - "God won't be hard upon
the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems
to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will excuse
them hereafter, - "To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell
after all, would be hard indeed!" Our cook, a simple-hearted old
African, who had been through a good deal in his day, and was rather
seriously inclined, always going to church twice a day when on shore,
and reading his Bible on a Sunday in the galley, talked to the crew
about spending their Sabbaths badly, and told them that they might
go as suddenly as George had, and be as little prepared.
Yet a sailor's life is at best, but a mixture of a little good with
much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is
linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the
solemn with the ludicrous.
We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an
auction was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first,
however, called all hands aft and asked them if they were satisfied
that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought
there was any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that
it was in vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very
heavily dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course.
The laws regulating navigation make the captain answerable for the
effects of a sailor who dies during the voyage, and it is either a law
or a universal custom, established for convenience, that the captain
should immediately hold an auction of his things, in which they are
bid off by the sailors, and the sums which they give are deducted from
their wages at the end of the voyage. In this way the trouble and
risk of keeping his things through the voyage are avoided, and the
clothes are usually sold for more than they would be worth on shore.
Accordingly, we had no sooner got the ship before the wind, than
his chest was brought up upon the forecastle, and the sale began.
The jackets and trowsers in which we had seen him dressed but a few
days before, were exposed and bid off while the life was hardly out
of his body, and his chest was taken aft and used as a store-chest,
so that there was nothing left which could be called his. Sailors have
an unwillingness to wear a dead man's clothes during the same voyage,
and they seldom do so unless they are in absolute want.
As is usual after a death, many stories were told about George.
Some had heard him say that he repented never having learned to swim,
and that he knew that he should meet his death by drowning. Another
said that he never knew any good to come of a voyage made against
the will, and the deceased man shipped and spent his advance and
was afterwards very unwilling to go, but not being able to refund,
was obliged to sail with us. A boy, too, who had become quite
attached to him, said that George talked to him during most of
the watch on the night before, about his mother and family at home,
and this was the first time that he had mentioned the subject during
the voyage.
The night after this event, when I went to the galley to get a light,
I found the cook inclined to be talkative, so I sat down on the spars,
and gave him an opportunity to hold a yarn. I was the more inclined
to do so, as I found that he was full of the superstitions once more
common among seamen, and which the recent death had waked up in his mind.
He talked about George's having spoken of his friends, and said he
believed few men died without having a warning of it, which he supported
by a great many stories of dreams, and the unusual behavior of men before
death. From this he went on to other superstitions, the Flying Dutchman,
etc., and talked rather mysteriously, having something evidently on his mind.
At length he put his head out of the galley and looked carefully about to
see if any one was within hearing, and being satisfied on that point, asked
me in a low tone -
"I say! you know what countryman 'e carpenter be?"
"Yes," said I; "he's a German."
"What kind of a German?" said the cook.
"He belongs to Bremen," said I.
"Are you sure o' dat?" said he.
I satisfied him on that point by saying that he could speak no
language but the German and English.
"I'm plaguy glad o' dat," said the cook. "I was mighty 'fraid he was a
Fin. I tell you what, I been plaguy civil to that man all the voyage."
I asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possessed
with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over
winds and storms. I tried to reason with him about it, but he had the
best of all arguments, that from experience, at hand, and was not to
be moved. He had been in a vessel at the Sandwich Islands, in which
the sail-maker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to.
This sail-maker kept a junk bottle in his berth, which was always just
half full of rum, though he got drunk upon it nearly every day.
