Chapter 10

HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES

MISERABLE AND FORLORN

While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a

horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one

came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his

hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that

I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.

But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,

and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over

the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great

uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran

forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders

about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the

ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they

loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,

but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the

sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into his

bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have

suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as

the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place,

and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so, in a

fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.

This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn and

almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world, and the

sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I

been safe back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the Hudson

River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at the folly which

had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best friends, that is

to say, my mother and sisters.

Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any

more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had

expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the

suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to

myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of

lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it worse,

was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they

took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked Me I had entered

upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea, and they were

used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the suicide came

rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as frightened as I

did; and besides that, and what makes their being frightened still

plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they

could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by

them. However, they lay in then-bunks smoking, and kept talking on some

time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin

my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into

the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far

off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of

sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.

This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true

and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and

insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it

made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as

a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the

hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that

I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.

And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,

but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from

their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the

suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to

desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might

better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked

me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread

out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and

asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a

gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like

nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And

one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal

more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,

for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the

death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he

would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with

an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and

then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they

could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that

the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first

night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I

loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting

heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable

wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a

boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked

within me, but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared

them to do their worst.

At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,

seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And

there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship's bows,

and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.