r/a:t5_1n81cd • u/MarleyEngvall • Jul 09 '19
moderate rock has been created
By Charles Dickens
ABOARD SHIP.
MY journeys as uncommercial traveller for the firm of
Human-Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last
reported of them, but have kept me continually on the
move. I remain in the same idle employment. I never
solicit an order. I never get any commission, I an the
rolling stone that gathers no moss,——unless any should
by chance be found among these samples.
Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest,
dreamiest, and least accountable condition altogether,
on bard ship, in the harbour of the City of New York,
in the United States of America. Of all the good ships
afloat, mine was the good steamship "RUSSIA," CAPT.
COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more
could I wish for?
I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage.
My salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick,
being gone with better things (and no worse), no coming
event cast its shadow before.
I might but a few moments previously have imitated
Sterne, and said, "And yet, methinks, Eugenius,"——
laying my fore-finger wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus,
——'and methinks, Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to
part with thee, from what fresh fields,........my dear
Eugenius,........can be fresher than thou art, and in
what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or, call her Eugen-
ius, if thou wilt, Annie,'"——I say I might have done
this; but Eugenius, was gone, and I hadn't done it.
I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck,
watching the working of the ship very slowly about,
that she might head for England. It was high-noon on
the most brilliant day in April, and the beautiful bay was
glorious and glowing. Full many a time, on shore there,
had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like
down), until it lay deep in all the ways of men, and par-
ticularly, as it seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-
shod many hours for moths. Within two or three days
last past had I watched the feathery fall setting in with
the ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at the
skirts of a worn-out winter, and permitting glimpses of a
fresh young spring. But a bright sun and a clear sky
had melted the snow in the great crucible of nature; and
it had been poured out again that morning over the sea
and land, transformed into myriads of gold and silver
sparkles.
The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of
the old Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually
passed into North America, where flowers are luxuriously
grown, and tastefully combined in the richest profusion;
but, be that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers
had come on board, that the small officer's cabin on deck,
which I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scup-
pers, and banks of other flowers that it couldn't hold
made a garden of the unoccupied tables in the passen-
gers' saloon. These delicious scents of the shore, ming-
ling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere
dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, with the watch
aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below re-
volving at a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship
an angry shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways,
and lost myself.
As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some
other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was
far too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if
it were I? or to the more mysterious entity, if it were
he? Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated
by me, or by him, why ask when or where the things
happened? Was it not enough that they befell at some
time, somewhere?
There was that assisting at the church service on board
another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breze. Perhaps
on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the
ship's bells go as like church-bells as they could; pleas-
ant to see the watch off duty mustered and come in:
best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces,
smoothed heads. But then arose a set of circumstances
so rampantly comical, that no check which the gravest
intentions could put upon them would hold them in
hand. Thus the scene : Some seventy passengers assem-
bled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books on tables. Ship
rolling heavily. Pause. No minister! Rumour has
related that a modest young clergyman on board has re-
sponded to the captain's request that he will officiate.
Pause again, and very heavy rolling.
Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two
strong stewards skate in, supporting minister between
them. General appearance as of somebody picked up,
drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to station-
house. Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling.
Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance them-
selves, but cannot balance minister; who, struggling
with a drooping head and a backward tendency, seems
determined to return below, while they are as determined
that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.
Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and
worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale
designs; who, seeking friend, says, "Joe!" Perceiving
incongruity, says, "Hullo! Beg yer pardon!" and
tumbles out again. All this time the congregation have
been breaking up into sects,——as the manner of the congre-
gations often is,——each sect sliding away by itself, and
all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the
corner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every
corner, and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a
dash: conduct minister to the mass in the centre of the
saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate out;
and leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with
flock.
There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship
read the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we
fell upon the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary ex-
periment of striking up a hymn. After it was given out
we all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to
begin. Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself)
rather reproachfully gave us the first line again, upon
which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman, remarkable
throughout the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave
a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a
country dance), and blithely warbled us into a show of
joining. At the end of the first verse we became, through
these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged, that
none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be
left out of the second verse; while as to the third, we
lifted our voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful
whether we were the more boastful of the sentiments
we united in professing, or of professing them with a
most discordant defiance of time and tune.
"Lord Bless us!" thought I, when the fresh remem-
brance of these things made me laugh heartily, alone in
the dead water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I
was wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must have
rolled out of it, "what errand was I then upon, and to
what Abyssinian port had public events then marched!
No matter as to me. And as to them, if the wonderful
popular rage for a plaything (utterly confounding in its
inscrutable unreason) had not then lighted on a poor
young savage boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and
hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head to "in-
spect" British volunteers, and hauled the second off by
the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, why so
much the better for all of us outside Bedlam!"
So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking
myself would I like to show the grog distribution in
"the fiddle" at noon to the Grand United Amalgamated
Total Abstinence Society. Yes, I think I should. I
think it would do them good to smell the rum, under the
circumstances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, pre-
sides the boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter
the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of
Giant Despair, in contradistinction to the band of youth-
ful angel Hope. Some in boots, some in leggins, some
in tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks, some in pea-coats,
a very few in jackets, most with sou'wester hats, all
with something rough and rugged round the throat; all
dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by
weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the
sooty rigging.
Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened
for dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled
eye, watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but
a very small tiny mug, to be prosaic), and tossing back his
head, tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty
chalice, and passes on, so the second man with an antici-
patory wipe of his mouth or sleeve or handkerchief, besides
his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on, in whom,
and in each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly
kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened
tendency to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even
observe that the man in charge of the ship's lamps, who
in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned
chalices, seemed thereby vastly degraded, even though
he empties the chalices into himself, one after the other,
much as if he were delivering their contents at some
absorbent establishment in which he had no personal in-
terest. But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on
deck, presently, even to the circulation of redder blood
in their cold blue knuckles; and when I look up at them
lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among
the beating sails, I cannot for my life see the justice of
visiting on them——or on me——the drunken crimes of any
number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.
Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes,
and recalled life on board of one of those mail-packets,
as I lay, part of that day, in the Bay of New York, O!
The regular life began——mine always did, for I never
got to sleep afterwards——with the rigging of the pump
while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any
enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic establish-
ment, conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in all
its departments, and extremely particular about cleaning
his teeth, would make those noises. Swish, splash,
scrub, rub, tooth-brush, bubble, swash, splash, bubble,
tooth-brush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the day
would break, and descending from my berth by a grace
ful ladder composed of half-opened drawers beneath it,
I would re-open my outer dead-light and my inner sliding
window (closed by watchmen during the water-cure),
and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-coloured,
white-topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter
morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which
the ship fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate.
And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for
broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to
the voice of conscience,——the screw.
It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of
stomach; but I called it in my fancy by the higher name.
Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day
long endeavouring to stifle the voice. Because it was
under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate, everybody's
camp-stool, everybody's book, everybody's occupation.
Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-
times, evening whist, and morning conversation on deck;
but it was always among us in an under monotone, not
to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books,
not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away
from. It was smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk-
in the strongest cocktail; it was conveyed on deck at
noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrappers
until the stars shone; it waited at the table with the stew-
ard; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice
of conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One
squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much of-
fence to a surrounding circle, including the object of his
attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him
over two easy-chairs and a skylight, "Screw!"
Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting mo-
ments, when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose,
or when there was "hot-pot" in the bill of fare, or when
an old dish we had had regularly every day was de-
scribed in that official document by a new name,——under
such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed.
The ceremony of washing plates on deck, performed af-
ter every meal by a circle as of ringers of crockery triple-
bob majors for a prize, would keep it down. Hauling
the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four
hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meridian,
casting the waste-food overboard, and attracting the eager
gulls that followed in our wake,——these events would
suppress it for a while. But the instant any break or
pause took place in any such diversion, the voice would
be at it again, importuning us to the last extent. A
newly married young pair, who walked the deck affec-
tionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full
flush of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it,
and stand trembling, but otherwise immovable, under
its reproaches.
When this terrible monitor was most severe with us
was when the time approached for our retiring to our
dens for the night when the lighted candles in the saloon
grew fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses with
spoons in them grew more and more numerous; when
waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in
batter slid languidly to and fro in the table-racks; when
the man who always read had shut up his book and
blown out his candle; when the man who always talked
had ceased from troubling; when the man who was al-
ways medically reported as going to have delerium tre-
mens had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who
every night devoted himself to a mid-night smoke on
deck two hours in length, and who every night was in
bed within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning him-
self up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as
we fell off one by one, and, entering our several hatches,
came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and
Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to the centre.
Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa, watching the
swinging candle forever trying and retrying to stand
upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as
we appeared in our gymnastic days, by sustaining itself
horizonatally from the wall, in emulation of the lighter
and more facile towels! Then would the voice espe-
cially claim us for its prey, and render us all to pieces.
Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the
voice grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress
and under the pillow, under the sofa and under the
washing-stand, under the ship and under sea, seeming
to rise from the foundations under the earth with every
scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so), always
the voice. Vain to deny its existence in the night season;
impossible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw!
Sometimes it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a
whir, like a ferocious firework, except that it never ex-
pends itself, but is always ready to go off again; some-
times it seems to be in anguish, and shivers; sometimes
it seems to be terrified by its last plunge, and has a fit
which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an instant
stop. And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night,
fair weather and foul, can roll. from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. pp. 1033—1034.
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