Notwithstanding His Advice
And Consolation To "Chips," In The Steerage Of The Alert, And His
Story Of His Runaway Wife And The Flag-Bottomed Chairs (Ante, P.
249), He Confessed To Me That He Had Tried Marriage Again, And Had
A Little Tenement Just Outside The Gate Of The Yard.
Harry Bennett, the man who had the palsy, and was unfeelingly left
on shore when the Alert sailed, came home in the Pilgrim, and I had
the pleasure of helping to get him into the Massachusetts General
Hospital.
When he had been there about a week, I went to see him
in his ward, and asked him how he got along. "Oh! first-rate
usage, sir; not a hand's turn to do, and all your grub brought
to you, sir." This is a sailor's paradise, - not a hand's turn
to do, and all your grub brought to you. But an earthly paradise
may pall. Bennett got tired of in-doors and stillness, and was soon
out again, and set up a stall, covered with canvas, at the end of one
of the bridges, where he could see all the passers-by, and turn
a penny by cakes and ale. The stall in time disappeared, and I
could learn nothing of his last end, if it has come.
Of the lads who, beside myself, composed the gig's crew, I know
something of all but one. Our bright-eyed, quick-witted little
cockswain, from the Boston public schools, Harry May, or Harry Bluff,
as he was called, with all his songs and gibes, went the road to ruin
as fast as the usual means could carry him. Nat, the "bucket-maker,"
grave and sober, left the seas, and, I believe, is a hack-driver in
his native town, although I have not had the luck to see him since
the Alert hauled into her berth at the North End.
One cold winter evening, a pull at the bell, and a woman in distress
wished to see me. Her poor son George, - George Somerby, - "you
remember him, sir; he was a boy in the Alert; he always talks
of you, - he is dying in my poor house." I went with her, and in
a small room, with the most scanty furniture, upon a mattress on
the floor, - emaciated, ashy pale, with hollow voice and sunken
eyes, - lay the boy George, whom we took out a small, bright boy
of fourteen from a Boston public school, who fought himself into
a position on board ship (ante, p. 231), and whom we brought home
a tall, athletic youth, that might have been the pride and support
of his widowed mother. There he lay, not over nineteen years of
age, ruined by every vice a sailor's life absorbs. He took my
hand in his wasted feeble fingers, and talked a little with his
hollow, death-smitten voice. I was to leave town the next day
for a fortnight's absence, and whom had they to see to them?
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