The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,

Bounding between the two moist elements,

Like Perseus' horse.

 

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

 

It was on a fine Sunday morning, in the month of December, 179-, that the oblique beams of the sun were reflected back by the snow white canvass of a stately ship of about six hundred tons, that with a fair wind, a good breeze, and all sail set, was steadily pursuing her course, somewhat east of north. She was in, or about, the latitude of eighteen north, and one hundred and fifteen degrees west of Greenwich; consequently, she was in the Pacific Ocean, and not far from the west coast of Mexico. The north-east trade-wind, which is generally almost due east, was sufficiently free to allow her to carry her starboard studding-sails, under which she flew gracefully and swiftly on her appointed course.

 

The weather, as usual within the limits of either trade-wind, was extremely beautiful and mild; the heat, that on shore in the same latitude would have been excessive, was moderated by the refreshing breeze. Indeed, it has never been my lot to find such lovely weather in any other part of this round world, as we meet with through the whole course of the trade winds. The long, regular swell, so peculiar to that part of the ocean, gave the noble ship a peculiarly easy, rolling motion, extremely grateful to a seaman, as the regularity and length of the swell is a certain indication of a continuance of good weather. As she lifted her huge bows above the foaming, sparkling wave, her bright copper, polished by dashing so long and so fast through the water, flashed in the sunbeams like burnished gold; at the same time, her temporary and partial elevation above the surface, revealed a sharpness of model below the water's edge, that at once accounted for the graceful and majestic swiftness of her motion. The whiteness of her canvass, and her bright-varnished sides, sufficiently indicated her to be a Yankee, without the trouble of hoisting the "gridiron."

 

Her stern "flared" a great deal; that is, its outline formed a very acute angle with the horizon, which was the fashion of building ships forty years since. It was ornamented with a great profusion of carved work, some of which was hieroglyphical, to a degree that would have puzzled Champollion; but over the centre were two figures in bas-relief, that could not well be mistaken, inasmuch as the sword and scales plainly indicated that the one on the starboard side was Justice, while the cap on the point of a lance "seemed to fructify" that her companion was no other than Miss Liberty.

 

Liberty goes bare-headed now--our rulers, wisely reflecting that she is upwards of fifty years old, and has arrived at years of discretion, have ordered her to leave off her child's cap. There are among us those who think that the stripping will go further, and that, in a short time, she will be as bare as Eve.

 

The noses of both goddesses had been knocked off shortly after they condescended to mount guard on the stern of the good ship Albatross, in consequence of coming into frequent collision with the gunwale of the jolly-boat, as she ascended and descended to and from her station at the stern davits. At her quarter davits, on each side, hung one of those light, swift, and somewhat singularly shaped boats, called whale-boats. Eight iron nine-pounders on each side, thrust their black muzzles through their respective ports, and gave her, in spite of her bright-varnished sides, a warlike appearance.

 

The upper part of her cut-water was fashioned into a scroll, like the volute of an Ionic pillar, forming what is called, by naval architects, a "billet head;" and which, for its neatness and beauty, is very generally adopted, both in national vessels and merchantmen. Nor was the bow without its share of hieroglyphics; on one side were displayed a bee-hive, a bale of cotton, and a crate of crockery; and on the other, a globe, an anchor, a quadrant, and a chart partly unrolled.

 

Her royals were set flying, a technicality that I shall not attempt to explain; she had no flying-jib, nor any of those pipe-stem spars that are got aloft only in port, to make a ship look more like the devil than she otherwise would, and are always sent down and stored away when she goes to sea. Ships, forty years since, carried no spars aloft but such as were stout enough to carry sail upon, in fair weather or foul--sliding-gunter sky-sail masts, and other useless sticks, were as much unknown to ship-builders and riggers, as railroads and steam-boats.

 

Sitting upon the weather hen-coop, attached to the companion, or entrance to the cabin, with spectacles on nose, and a well-worn bible on his knees, sat an elderly man, the commander of the ship. He was tall, and very strongly built; long exposure to the weather, in every variety of climate, had bronzed his countenance, and given him an older look than his real years would have done under other circumstances; but at the same time, long exposure to the weather had hardened his frame, and strengthened his constitution, points of some importance forty years since; so that his chances for a long life were much better than those of a man of forty, especially one of modern date, who had never allowed "the winds of heaven to visit his face too roughly." His age was, in short, about sixty. His countenance, notwithstanding the rude and ungenteel manner with which the winds and the weather had treated it, was indicative of much good-nature and benevolence of disposition. He raised his head from time to time, looked aloft at the sails, occasionally addressed a word or two to the mate of the watch, who was walking fore and aft the quarter-deck, and then resumed his reading.

 

In the weather mizen-shrouds was a remarkably handsome young man, of four or five and twenty, busily engaged in hanging out to air his "go-ashore" clothes; a very common Sunday morning occupation at sea, when the weather is fine. Apparently the sight of his gay garments had called up a train of ideas of a very varied and checkered hue, to judge from the different expressions that flitted across his fine manly countenance, at one moment shaded with anxiety and doubt, at another bright with hope and joy. In height he was about five feet eight or nine inches, strongly and compactly built, but far too stout and athletic, too broad-shouldered and thin-flanked, to pass muster as an exquisite in Broadway; as his form, though anatomically perfect, a model for a statuary, and considered very fine by the ladies of his acquaintance forty years since, would be altogether out of date at the present day. His countenance, of an oval form, and shaded by rich, curling, chesnut hair, from exposure to the weather, had acquired that healthy brown that ladies do not dislike in a young man's face, though they carefully eschew any thing that will in reality or imagination produce it in their own lovely physiognomies.

 

It may be a mere old bachelor's whim of mine, but it always has appeared to me that ladies who have had the advantage of mixing much in society, and seeing something of human nature, are not peculiarly partial to that effeminate fairness of complexion that many fashionable gentlemen are so careful to preserve, when they have it by nature, or, when nature has been unkind, to obtain by artificial means; so that Dogberry's axiom, that "to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune," is not altogether absurd. At any rate, I have seen many a "cherry ripe" lip curled with an expression of irrepressible scorn when the owner of the lip was accosted by one of these very fair, delicate-skinned gentlemen. Girls just let out of a boarding-school generally run mad after these animals; but ladies who have gone through one or two husband-hunting campaigns, are not to be taken in by such painted butterflies: they very wisely conclude that a man who takes such a reverend care of his complexion worships none but himself, and of course he will have no devotion to spare to his wife.

 

But to return to the gentleman we have left dangling in the starboard mizzen-rigging of the ship Albatross: his countenance was indeed somewhat tanned, but his forehead was as clear and white as ivory; its breadth and openness gave an expression of frankness and candor to his face,--so that, taken altogether, his physiognomy, though not regularly perfect, was exceedingly prepossessing.

 

The second officer, who was walking the deck, being the officer of the watch, was also a very good-looking young man, with large black whiskers, and was two or three years younger than his messmate in the rigging. His frequent stoppages at the caboose-house, to confer with the cooks, indicated the second mate, who is always, for some reason or other, a sort of "Betty," or "cot-quean," as Shakspeare calls it, continually quiddling about the galley, to the annoyance of the doctor, as the ship's cook is generally called.

 

About the after-hatchway were seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,--while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,--and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, or in sea language "skylarking," with a huge Newfoundland dog. I might as well complete the role d'equipage of the good ship Albatross, by observing that Mr. Jonathan Bolton, M.D., the surgeon of the ship, and Mr. Elnathan Bangs, the supercargo, were neither of them on deck. Perhaps they were engaged with their breakfasts, or their toilets, or their devotions, or their studies, or--in short they were below.

 

Just forward of the mainmast were what a painter would call the deeper shades of the picture, for there the black cook and his equally sable adjunct, the cook's mate, held their vaporous and dish-washing levee; while forth from the cloudy sanctuary occasionally pealed a burst of obstreporous laughter, that the most unpractised hearer might swear came from the lungs of a negro, without the trouble of invading their premises for further evidence. Upon either of these culinary worthies, to use the somewhat hyperbolical language of sailors, "lampblack would make a white mark."

 

I cannot avoid taking occasion to remark here, that sailors, like the orientals, are exceedingly addicted to the use of tropes and figures of speech, to similes and metaphors. In fact, if any gentleman was about compiling a treatise on elocution, I would recommend to him to pass a year or two on board one of our men of war, where he would daily hear specimens of eloquence, known and unknown to exclusively terrestrial orators, whether in the halls of Congress, at a public dinner-table, or on a stump. There is the narratio, or anecdote, or sometimes the long yarn; the aprosiopesis, or sudden pause, very powerful when in good hands; the apostrophe, or addressing an absent person as though he was present; the obtestatio and invocatio, two different modes of invoking the gods celestial or infernal; and lastly, the simile, or comparison, in which sailors are a thousand times more fruitful than Homer himself. The steward--who came up with the breakfast-dishes, &c., or "dog-basket," as it is called by them of the forecastle--was a thought lighter skinned than the cooks.

 

The crew were lounging about the forecastle and weather gangway; some walking fore and aft, with their hands in their jacket pockets, some washing or mending their clothes, and some stretched out in the sun, chatting and laughing in utter disregard and carelessness of what to-morrow might bring forth, and most literally obeying the divine command, to "take no thought of what they should eat, or what they should drink, or wherewithal they should be clothed."

 

The crew mustered forty-four in number; for forty years since, ships that traded to the coast of California, or any part of His Catholic Majesty's American possessions, or to the North West Coast, calculated upon a brush, either with the guarda-costas or the savages, before their voyage was up, and accordingly went well manned and armed.

 

A group of ten or a dozen were collected around the fore-hatch, where one of their number sat reading to them the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of Acts--two favorite chapters with seamen generally, not that they contain any peculiarly glad tidings of great joy, but because they give a sort of log-book account of almost the only nautical transactions of moment recorded in holy writ.

 

The reader, like all who are so unfortunate as to be persuaded to read to a company, was perpetually interrupted by some one of his auditors to ask a question, or make a comment. He had, however, this advantage over the ill-starred wight who essays to read to a party of ladies, that he stopped and asked as many questions, and made as many remarks and comments, as any of his auditors.

 

The reader, after a few verses, describing St. Paul's voyage, came to the eighth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter: "And hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called the Fair Havens," &c.; when old Tom Jones, the boatswain, an old English man-of-war's man, who was lying on his breast across the weather end of the windlass, interrupted:

 

"Now, as to all them places you've been reading about, I never heard of none on 'em before, except Cyprus, and I've been cruising off there in a frigate; but your Sea lashes and Pump fill ye (Cilicia and Pamphylia), I never heard on in all my born days; and as for Fairhaven, why every body knows that's right acrost the river from New Bedford; though how the ............