p276-136 CHAPTER XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN.

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The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding
chapter was the bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who
hitherto had been quite silent and reserved, as if from some
conscious inferiority, though he had shipped as an ordinary
seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed his duty very
well.

When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind
of whales they were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively,
and after garnering in their ignorance, all at once
broke out, and astonished every body by his intimate acquaintance
with the monsters.

“They ar'n't sperm whales,” said Larry, “their spouts
ar'n't bushy enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they
wouldn't stay up so long; they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they
ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't Fin-backs, for you won't
catch a Fin-back so near a ship; they ar'n't Greenland
whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell
ye, men, them's Crinkum-crankum whales.”

“And what are them?” said a sailor.

“Why, them is whales that can't be cotched.”

Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to
the sea in a whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many
times; no one but Jackson ventured to dispute his opinion;
and even Jackson did not press him very hard. And ever
after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage;

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for whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the
deep than any other class of seamen.

This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service,
and that was the reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved;
since he well knew that merchant seamen generally
affect a certain superiority to “blubber-boilers,” as they contemptuously
style those who hunt the leviathan. But Larry
turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well understood
his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump
to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he
might otherwise have encountered.

He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat
slanting forward over the bridge of his nose, with his eyes
cast down, and seemed always examining your boots, when
speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk about the wild
places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of Madagascar,
where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people
in that remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with
a sentimental distaste for civilized society. When opportunity
offered, he never omitted extolling the delights of the
free and easy Indian Ocean.

“Why,” said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual,
“in Madagasky there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing
but a bowline round the midships; they don't have no
dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat pigs and dogs; they
don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all the time;
and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I
tell ye. Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!”

To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
against civilization.

“And what's the use of bein' snivelized?” said he to
me one night during our watch on deck; “snivelized chaps
only learns the way to take on 'bout life, and snivel. You
don't see any Methodist chaps feelin' dreadful about their

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souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky constables
in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say.”

Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.

“Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?”
coming close up to me and eying the wreck of my
gaff-topsail-boots very steadfastly. “No; you a'rn't a bit—
but you're a good deal worse for it, Buttons. I tell ye, ye
wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this dog's life, if you
hadn't been snivelized—that's the cause why, now. Snivelization
has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete;
I might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too
darned bad! Blast Ameriky, I say.” And in bitter grief
at the social blight upon his whole past present, and future,
Larry turned away, pulling his hat still lower down over the
bridge of his nose.

In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's
man we had, who went by the name of “Gun-Deck,” from
his always talking of sailor life in the navy. He was a
little fellow with a small face and a prodigious mop of brown
hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he
particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite
small; and when we washed down decks of a morning,
never mind how chilly it might be, he always took off his
boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
pretty toes to show his charming feet.

He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole
War in Florida, and had a good deal to say about sailing
up the rivers there, through the everglades, and popping off
Indians on the banks. I remember his telling a story about
a party being discovered at quite a distance from them; but
one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in
the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to
Gun-Deck, he himself shot it through the middle, and the

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ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing war,
he said.

Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibralter;
and ashore at Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the
Bay of Naples: eaten figs and oranges in Messina; and
cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta, among the ladies
there. And about all these things, he talked like a romantic
man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and
loved it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in.
So he and Larry never could agree in their respective views
of civilization, and of savagery, of the Mediterranean and
Madagasky.

p276-140 CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK.

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We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came
down upon us, the like of which I had never before beheld,
or imagined. The rain poured down in sheets and cascades;
the scupper holes could hardly carry it off the decks; and
in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our
knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.

This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for
which we duly prepared, taking in our canvas to doublereefed-top-sails.

The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of
wild horse before the flaming rush of a burning prairie.
But after bowing and cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander
was put off before it; and with her nose in the
water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white waves, and
leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.

It was an awful scene. It made me catch my breath as
I gazed. I could hardly stand on my feet, so violent was
the motion of the ship. But while I reeled to and fro, the
sailors only laughed at me; and bade me look out that the
ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a handspike,
and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to
steady her wild motions. But I was now getting a little
too wise for this foolish kind of talk; though all through the
voyage, they never gave it over.

This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into
the Irish Sea.

The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky
had become blue again, the man aloft sung out that there

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was a wreck on the lee-beam. We bore away for it, all
hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain in the
mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed
alongside of it.

It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal
sight, that must have been drifting about for several
long weeks. The bulwarks were pretty much gone; and
here and there the bare stanchions, or posts, were left standing,
splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the
deck, lying almost even with the sea. The foremast was
snapt off less than four feet from its base; and the shattered
and splintered remnant looked like the stump of a pine tree
thrown over in the woods. Every time she rolled in the trough
of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned into view; but
was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a rushing,
gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.

At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten
feet above the deck, something like a sleeve seemed nailed;
it was supposed to be the relic of a jacket, which must have
been fastened there by the crew for a signal, and been frayed
out and blown away by the wind.

Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail,
were three dark, green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed
with every roll, but otherwise were motionless. I saw the
captain's glass directed toward them, and heard him say at
last, “They must have been dead a long time.” These
were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail
for safety; but must have famished.

Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought
the captain would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find
out something about the schooner. But we did not stop at
all; passing on our course, without so much as learning the
schooner's name, though every one supposed her to be a New
Brunswick lumberman.

On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our
captain did not send off a boat to the wreck; but the

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steerage passengers were indignant at what they called his barbarity.
For me, I could not but feel amazed and shocked
at his indifference; but my subsequent sea experiences have
shown me, that such conduct as this is very common, though
not, of course, when human life can be saved.

So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a
garden spot for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.

“Look there,” said Jackson, hanging over the rail and
coughing—“look there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha!
Buttons,” turning round to me—“how do you like that,
Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with them 'ere
dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?” And then he tried to
laugh, but only coughed again.

“Don't laugh at dem poor fellows,” said Max, looking
grave; “do' you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan
de Cape of Dood Hope.”

“Dood Hope, Dood Hope,” shrieked Jackson, with a horrid
grin, mimicking the Dutchman, “dare is no dood hope
for dem, old boy; dey are drowned and d.... d, as you and
I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights.”

“No, no,” said Blunt, “all sailors are saved; they have
plenty of squalls here below, but fair weather aloft.”

“And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you
Greek?” howled Jackson through a cough. “Don't talk of
heaven to me—it's a lie—I know it—and they are all fools
that believe in it. Do you think, you Greek, that there's
any heaven for you? Will they let you in there, with that
tarry hand, and that oily head of hair? Avast! when some
shark gulps you down his hatchway one of these days, you'll
find, that by dying, you'll only go from one gale of wind to
another; mind that, you Irish cockney! Yes, you'll be bolted
down like one of your own pills: and I should like to see
the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom,
like a box on 'em. That would be a dose of salts for ye!”
And so saying, he went off, holding his hands to his chest,
and coughing, as if his last hour was come.

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Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse,
both in body and mind. He seldom spoke, but to contradict,
deride, or curse; and all the time, though his face grew
thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to kindle more and more,
as if he were going to die out at last, and leave them burning
like tapers before a corpse.

Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing
about Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though
he could not read a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist
and an infidel; and during the long night watches, would
enter into arguments, to prove that there was nothing to be
believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth living for;
but every thing to be hated, in the wide world. He was a
horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled
in his tawny skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run
a muck at heaven and earth. He was a Cain afloat;
branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable curse;
and going about corrupting and searing every heart that
beat near him.

But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about
the man; and his wickedness seemed to spring from his
woe; and for all his hideousness, there was that in his eye
at times, that was ineffably pitiable and touching; and
though there were moments when I almost hated this Jackson,
yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.

p276-144 CHAPTER XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY.

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As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers
we carried out. But before making what little mention I
shall of them, you must know that the Highlander was not
a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in connection with
a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between the two
ports. No: she was only what is called a regular trader
to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very
much as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any
kind: though in all her voyages, ever having New York or
Liverpool for her destination. Merchant vessels which are
neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come under the
general head of transient ships; which implies that they are
here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins's dog.

But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was
not a liner; for aboard of those liners, from all I could gather
from those who had sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard
work, owing to their carrying such a press of sail, in order
to make as rapid passages as possible, and sustain the ship's
reputation for speed. Hence it is, that although they are
the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the best possible
manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years
of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs
their constitutions—like robust young men, who live too fast
in their teens—and they are soon sold out for a song; generally
to the people of Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag
Harbor, who repair and fit them out for the whaling business.

Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies

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and gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now
carries a crew of harpooneers round Cape Horn into the
Pacific. And the mahogany and bird's-eye maple cabin,
which once held rosewood card-tables and brilliant coffeeurns,
and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many
a bright eye sparkled, now accommodates a bluff Quaker
captain from Martha's Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying
with his ship in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand,
entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages at dinner, in
place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the literati,
theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure and
fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense
across the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad quarter-deck,
too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often choked
up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses
of unctuous blubber; and every where reeks with oil during
the prosecution of the fishery. Sic transit gloria mundi!
Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships! It is like
a broken down importer of French silks embarking in the
soap-boiling business.

So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not
have very ample accommodations for cabin passengers. I
believe there were not more than five or six state-rooms,
with two or three berths in each. At any rate, on this
particular voyage she only carried out one regular cabin-passenger;
that is, a person previously unacquainted with
the captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board
soberly, and in a business-like manner with his baggage.

He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger—
the passenger who came on board in a business-like
manner with his baggage; never spoke to any one, and
the captain seldom spoke to him.

Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb
Institution in New York, going over to London to address
the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall concerning the
signs of the times.

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He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on
the quarter-deck with arms folded, and head hanging upon
his chest. Then he would rise, and gaze out to windward,
as if he had suddenly discovered a friend. But looking disappointed,
would retire slowly into his state-room, where you
could see him through the little window, in an irregular
sitting position, with the back part of him inserted into his
berth, and his head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in
profound meditation, with his forefinger aside of his nose.
He never was seen reading; never took a hand at cards;
never smoked; never drank wine; never conversed; and
never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.

He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself:
standing in no need of levying contributions upon the surrounding
universe. Conjecture was lost in speculating as
to who he was, and what was his business. The sailors,
who are always curious with regard to such matters, and
criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps
aware at the time, completely exhausted themselves in
suppositions, some of which were characteristically curious.

One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret
dispatches to the English court; others opined that he was
a traveling surgeon and bonesetter, but for what reason they
thought so, I never could learn; and others declared that
he must either be an unprincipled bigamist, flying from his
last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly forger,
bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his
beloved country with his ill-gotten booty. One observing
sailor was of opinion that he was an English murderer,
overwhelmed with speechless remorse, and returning home
to make a full confession and be hanged.

But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and
sometimes confident opinings, not one charitable one was
made; no! they were all sadly to the prejudice of his moral
and religious character. But this is the way all the world
over. Miserable man! could you have had an inkling of

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what they thought of you, I know not what you would have
done.

However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings
and suspicions, this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his
way, calm, cool, and collected; never troubled any body, and
nobody troubled him. Sometimes, of a moonlight night, he
glided about the deck, like the ghost of a hospital attendant;
flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the skylight,
now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the
Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an
extra dose of salts, by way of precaution against his spells.

When we were but a few days from port, a comical
adventure befell this cabin-passenger. There is an old custom,
still in vogue among some merchant sailors, of tying
fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of a passenger
who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however moderate
the flight of the awkward fowl. This is called “making
a spread eagle” of the man; and before he is liberated,
a promise is exacted, that before arriving in port, he shall
furnish the ship's company with money enough for a treat
all round.

Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are
always on the keen look-out for an opportunity of levying
such contributions upon incautious strangers; though they
never attempt it in presence of the captain; as for the mates,
they purposely avert their eyes, and are earnestly engaged
about something else, whenever they get an inkling of this
proceeding going on. But, with only one poor fellow of a
cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and he such a
quiet, unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little
chance for levying contributions.

One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should
be seen, half way up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of
our cabin-passenger, holding on with might and main by all
four limbs, and with his head fearfully turned round, gazing
off to the horizon. He looked as if he had the nightmare;

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and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he
must have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous
position.

“Good heavens!” said the mate, who was a bit of a
wag, “you will surely fall, sir! Steward, spread a mattress
on deck, under the gentleman!”

But no sooner was our Greenland sailor's attention called
to the sight, than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly
up behind the passenger, and without speaking a word, began
binding him hand and foot. The stranger was more dumb
than ever with amazement; at last violently remonstrated;
but in vain; for as his fearfulness of falling made him keep
his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any
effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome spreadeagle
of, to the great satisfaction of the crew.

It was now discovered for the first, that this singular
passenger stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps,
was the cause of his reservedness.

“Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?”

“Spread-eagle, sir,” said the Greenlander, thinking that
those few words would at once make the matter plain.

“Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?”

“Treats all round, sir,” said the Greenlander, wondering
at the other's obtusity, who, however, had never so much as
heard of the thing before.

At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands
of the sailor, and handing him two half-crown pieces, the
unfortunate passenger was suffered to descend.

The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a
cab at Prince's Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off
alone to parts unknown. He had nothing but a valise with
him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked stuffed out;
perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.

I must now give some account of another and still more
mysterious, though very different, sort of an occupant of the
cabin, of whom I have previously hinted. What say you

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to a charming young girl?—just the girl to sing the Dashing
White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl; her
father must have been a general. Her hair was auburn;
her eyes were blue; her cheeks were white and red; and
Captain Riga was her most devoted.

To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who
she was, the steward used to answer, that she was the
daughter of one of the Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the
benefit of her health and the improvement of her mind, had
sent her out to America in the Highlander, under the captain's
charge, who was his particular friend; and that now
the young lady was returning home from her tour.

And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her,
and often promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the
forlorn bearer of secret dispatches, who would look up now
and then out of his reveries, and cast a furtive glance of
wonder, as if he thought the captain was audacious.

Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved
ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the
opportunity of her charming society, to wear out his remaining
old clothes; for no gentleman ever pretends to save his
best coat when a lady is in the case; indeed, he generally
thirsts for a chance to abase it, by converting it into a
pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh, that the
ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers. But
this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of
a true gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared.
Yet, perhaps, he might have worn his old clothes in this instance,
for the express purpose of proving, by his disdain for
the toilet, that he was nothing but the young lady's guardian;
for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby they
look.

But for all this, the passage out was one long paternal
sort of a shabby flirtation between this hoydenish nymph and
the ill-dressed captain. And surely, if her good mother,
were she living, could have seen this young lady, she would

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have given her an endless lecture for her conduct, and a
copy of Mrs. Ellis's Daughters of England to read and
digest.

I shall say no more of this anonymous nymph; only, that
when we arrived at Liverpool, she issued from her cabin in
a richly embroidered silk dress, and lace hat and vail, and
a sort of Chinese umbrella or parasol, which one of the sailors
declared “spandangalous;” and the captain followed after
in his best broadcloth and beaver, with a gold-headed cane;
and away they went in a carriage, and that was the last
of her; I hope she is well and happy now; but I have some
misgivings.

It now remains to speak of the steerage passengers. There
were not more than twenty or thirty of them, mostly mechanics,
returning home, after a prosperous stay in America,
to escort their wives and families back. These were the
only occupants of the steerage that I ever knew of; till
early one morning, in the gray dawn, when we made Cape
Clear, the south point of Ireland, the apparition of a tall
Irishman, in a shabby shirt of bed-ticking, emerged from
the fore hatchway, and stood leaning on the rail, looking
landward with a fixed, reminiscent expression, and diligently
scratching its back with both hands. We all started at the
sight, for no one had ever seen the apparition before; and
when we remembered that it must have been burrowing all
the passage down in its bunk, the only probable reason of its
so manipulating its back became shockingly obvious.

I had almost forgotten another passenger of ours, a little
boy not four feet high, an English lad, who, when we were
about forty-eight hours from New York, suddenly appeared
on deck, asking for something to eat.

It seems he was the son of a carpenter, a widower, with
this only child, who had gone out to America in the Highlander
some six months previous, where he fell to drinking,
and soon died, leaving the boy a friendless orphan in a
foreign land.

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For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves,
picking up a precarious livelihood by sucking molasses out
of the casks discharged from West India ships, and occasionally
regaling himself upon stray oranges and lemons found
floating in the docks. He passed his nights sometimes in a
stall in the markets, sometimes in an empty hogshead on
the piers, sometimes in a doorway, and once in the watch-house,
from which he escaped the next morning, running, as
he told me, right between the door-keeper's legs, when he
was taking another vagrant to task for repeatedly throwing
himself upon the public charities.

At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to
catch sight of the Highlander, and immediately recognized
her as the very ship which brought him and his father out
from England. He at once resolved to return in her; and,
accosting the captain, stated his case, and begged a passage.
The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous
to the ship's sailing; which he did, stowing himself
away in the between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in
a narrow space between two large casks of water, from
which he now and then thrust out his head for air. And
once a steerage passenger rose in the night and poked in
and rattled about a stick where he was, thinking him an
uncommon large rat, who was after stealing a passage
across the Atlantic. There are plenty of passengers of
that kind continually plying between Liverpool and New
York.

As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board,
which he took care should not happen till he thought the
ship must be out of sight of land; the captain had him
called aft, and after giving him a thorough shaking, and
threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-bit for John
Shark, he told the mate to send him forward among the
sailors, and let him live there. The sailors received him with
open arms; but before caressing him much, they gave him

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a thorough washing in the lee-scuppers, when he turned out
to be quite a handsome lad, though thin and pale with the
hardships he had suffered. However, by good nursing and
plenty to eat, he soon improved and grew fat; and before
many days was as fine a looking little fellow, as you might
pick out of Queen Victoria's nursery.

The sailors took the warmest interest in him. One
made him a little hat with a long ribbon; another a little
jacket; a third a comical little pair of man-of-war's-man's
trowsers; so that in the end, he looked like a juvenile boat-swain's-mate.
Then the cook furnished him with a little
tin pot and pan; and the steward made him a present of a
pewter tea-spoon; and a steerage passenger gave him a jack-knife.
And thus provided, he used to sit at meal times half
way up on the forecastle ladder, making a great racket with
his pot and pan, and merry as a cricket. He was an uncommonly
fine, cheerful, clever, arch little fellow, only six
years old, and it was a thousand pities that he should be
abandoned, as he was. Who can say, whether he is fated
to be a convict in New South Wales, or a member of Parliament
for Liverpool? When we got to that port, by the
way, a purse was made up for him; the captain, officers,
and the mysterious cabin passenger contributing their best
wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers something
like fifteen dollars in cash and tobacco. But I had
almost forgot to add that the daughter of the dock-master
gave him a fine lace pocket-handkerchief and a card-case to
remember her by; very valuable, but somewhat inappropriate
presents. Thus supplied, the little hero went ashore by
himself; and I lost sight of him in the vast crowds throng
ing the docks of Liverpool.

I must here mention, as some relief to the impression
which Jackson's character must have made upon the reader,
that in several ways he at first befriended this boy; but the
boy always shrunk from him; till, at last, stung by his
conduct, Jackson spoke to him no more; and seemed to

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

hate him, harmless as he was, along with all the rest of
the world.

As for the Lancashire lad, he was a stupid sort of fellow,
as I have before hinted. So, little interest was taken in
him, that he was permitted to go ashore at last, without a
good-by from any person but one.

p276-154 CHAPTER XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO'S MONKEY.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there
is little more to be said concerning the passage out, the
Highlander may as well make sail and get there as soon as
possible. The brief interval will perhaps be profitably employed
in relating what progress I made in learning the
duties of a sailor.

After my heroic feat in loosing the main-skysail, the mate
entertained good hopes of my becoming a rare mariner. In
the fullness of his heart, he ordered me to turn over the
superintendence of the chicken-coop to the Lancashire boy;
which I did, very willingly. After that, I took care to
show the utmost alacrity in running aloft, which by this
time became mere fun for me; and nothing delighted me
more than to sit on one of the topsail-yards, for hours together,
helping Max or the Greenlander as they worked at
the rigging.

At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in “parcelling,”
“serving,” and in a thousand ways ornamenting and
repairing the numberless shrouds and stays; mending sails,
or turning one side of the deck into a rope-walk, where they
manufacture a clumsy sort of twine, called spun-yarn.
This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancashire
boy had to play the part of an engine, and contribute
the motive power. For material, they use odds and ends
of old rigging called “junk,” the yarns of which are picked
to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something
as most books are manufactured.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

This “junk” is bought at the junk shops along the
wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean,
full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated
tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in
tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They
look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for
sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with
keels and cordage, swept ashore in a gale.

Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging,
and at the cry of “tumble up there, my hearties, and take
in sail,” I was among the first ground-and-lofty tumblers,
that sprang aloft at the word.

But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and
I found myself hanging over the yard with eleven others,
the ship plunging and rearing like a mad horse, till I felt
like being jerked off the spar; then, indeed, I thought of a
feather-bed at home, and hung on with tooth and nail; with
no chance for snoring. But a few repetitions, soon made
me used to it; and before long, I tied my reef-point as
quickly and expertly as the best of them; never making
what they call a “granny-knot,” and slipt down on deck
by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds. It is surprising,
how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft.
For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth's
diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam
Patch on the cliff of Niagara. To my amazement, also, I
found, that running up the rigging at sea, especially during
a squall, was much easier than while lying in port. For as
you always go up on the windward side, and the ship leans
over, it makes more of a stairs of the rigging; whereas, in
harbor, it is almost straight up and down.

Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant
sort of vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being
aloft in a ship at sea, and a ship in harbor, is pretty much
the same, as riding a real live horse and a wooden one.
And even if the live charger should pitch you over his head,

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

that would be much more satisfactory, than an inglorious
fall from the other.

I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and
royals in a hard blow; which duty required two hands on
the yard.

There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing of
the blood about the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing
of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every
pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a
judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands free,
with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you
in the air. The sail would fill out like a balloon, with a
report like a small cannon, and then collapse and sink away
into a handful. And the feeling of mastering the rebellious
canvas, and tying it down like a slave to the spar, and
binding it over and over with the gasket, had a touch of
pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must
have felt, when he trampled down the insurgents of Wat
Tyler.

As for steering, they never would let me go to the helm,
except during a calm, when I and the figure-head on the
bow were about equally employed.

By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to
make mention of before.

He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander “in full fig,”
with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue
bonnet and the most vermilion of cheeks. He was game to
his wooden marrow, and stood up to it through thick and
thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm stretched
forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and
plunging up and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands,
as the ship went foaming on her way. He was a veteran
with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when he got to
Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say,

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if he
limped. Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another
nose, and touched up one eye, and repaired a rent in his
tartans. After that the painter came and made his toilet
all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a
plaid of a beautiful pattern.

I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I
hope he is safe and snug with a handsome pension in the
“Sailors'-Snug-Harbor” on Staten Island.

The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of
learning to steer was this. I was quite young and raw, and
steering a ship is a great art, upon which much depends;
especially the making a short passage; for if the helmsman
be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he keeps
the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to
its precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it
may be pointing one while for Gibralter, then for Rotterdam,
and now for John o' Groat's; all of which is worse than
wasted time. Whereas, a true steersman keeps her to her
work night and day; and tries to make a bee-line from port
to port.

Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness
at the helm, might make the ship “lurch to”—or “bring
her by the lee.” And what those things are, the cabin passengers
would never find out, when they found themselves
going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
moon and stars.

And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and
ladies that they are, what an important personage, and how
much to be had in reverence, is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket,
whom they see standing at the wheel, now cocking
his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or looking
out to windward.

Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his
hand; and with one small and almost imperceptible motion
of a spoke, in a gale of wind, might give a vast deal of work

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

to surrogates and lawyers, in proving last wills and testaments.

Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look
much like a man who might play into the hands of an heir--at-law,
does he? Yet such is the case. Watch him close,
therefore; take him down into your state-room occasionally
after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass
of cordial will do it.

And if you or your heirs are interested with the under-writers,
then also have an eye on him. And if you remark,
that of the crew, all the men who come to the helm are
careless, or inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding
them often, and crying out: “Luff, you rascal; she's
falling off!” or, “Keep her steady, you scoundrel, you're
boxing the compass!” then hurry down to your state-room,
and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery
and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle,
like Columbus' log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when
you are drowned in the next gale of wind.

p276-159 CHAPTER XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITUER.

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let
me steer, I contented myself with learning the compass, a
graphic fac-simile of which I drew on a blank leaf of the
“Wealth of Nations,” and studied it every morning, like
the multiplication table.

I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle;
and I wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather
than south or west; for I do not know that any reason
can be given why it points in the precise direction it
does. One would think, too, that, as since the beginning
of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting
west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever
pointing its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there
are few inducements to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty
of ice for mint-juleps.

Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship's
compasses, deserves a word of mention. It was a little house,
about the bigness of a common bird-cage, with sliding panel
doors, and two drawing-rooms within, and constantly perched
upon a stand, right in front of the helm. It had two chimney
stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned
in it by night. It was painted green, and on two sides had
Venetian blinds; and on one side two glazed sashes; so that
it looked like a cool little summer retreat, a snug bit of an
arbor at the end of a shady garden lane. Had I been the
captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed
them so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put
canary-birds within; and so made an aviary of it. It is

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

surprising what a different air may be imparted to the
meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste.

Nor must I omit the helm itself, which was one of a new
construction, and a particular favorite of the captain. It
was a complex system of cogs and wheels and spindles, all
of polished brass, and looked something like a printing-press,
or power-loom. The sailors, however, did not like it much,
owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent
fingers, by catching in among the cogs and other intricate
contrivances. Then, sometimes in a calm, when the sudden
swells would lift the ship, the helm would fetch a lurch, and
send the helmsman revolving round like Ixion, often seriously
hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.

The harness-cask, also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather
meat-safe, in which a week's allowance of salt pork and
beef is kept, deserves being chronicled. It formed part of
the standing furniture of the quarter-deck. Of an oval
shape, it was banded round with hoops all silver-gilt, with
gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded padlock,
richly chased. This formed the captain's smoking-seat,
where he would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled
Chinese cap upon his head, and a fragrant Havanna
between his white and canine-looking teeth. He took much
solid comfort, Captain Riga.

Then the magnificent capstan! The pride and glory of
the whole ship's company, the constant care and dandled
darling of the cook, whose duty it was to keep it polished
like a tea-pot; and it was an object of distant admiration to
the steerage passengers. Like a parlor center-table, it stood
full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with brazen
stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of
mahogany and satin wood. This was the captain's lounge,
and the chief mate's secretary, in the bar-holes keeping
paper and pencil for memorandums.

I might proceed and speak of the boody-hatch, used as a
sort of settee by the officers, and the fife-rail round the

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

mainmast, inclosing a little park of canvas, painted green,
where a small white dog with a blue ribbon round his neck,
belonging to the dock-master's daughter, used to take his
morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the
New York Bowling-Green.

p276-162 CHAPTER XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES.

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity
in running aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a
little more consideration, though not at all relaxing in a certain
air of professional superiority. For the mere knowing
of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing yourself with
their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the darkest
night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course
forming an indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and
the business in which he is principally engaged; yet these
are things which a beginner of ordinary capacity soon masters,
and which are far inferior to many other matters
familiar to an “able seaman.”

What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast,
and sending it down on deck in a gale of
wind? Could I have turned in a dead-eye, or in the
approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the main-stay?
What did I know of “passing a gammoning,”
“reiving a Burton,” “strapping a shoe-block,” “clearing
a foul hawse,” and innumerable other intricacies?

The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling,
as much of a regular trade as a carpenter's or lock-smith's.
Indeed, it requires considerably more adroitness,
and far more versatility of talent.

In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship
to the sea, of seven years. Most of them first
enter the Newcastle colliers, where they see a great deal of
severe coasting service. In an old copy of the Letters of
Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading, that

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Black-heath,
and sold for one half the price that the people of
London then paid for it; but the Government would not
suffer the mines to be opened, as it would destroy the great
nursery for British seamen.

A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations.
He must be a bit of an embroiderer, to work
fanciful collars of hempen lace about the shrouds; he must
be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns for
lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so
as to tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's
roses, and Turk's heads; he must be a bit of a musician,
in order to sing out at the halyards; he must be a sort of
jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing rigging; he must
be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jury-mast out of
a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to
darn and mend the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline
and Spanish foxes; a blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles
for the blocks: in short, he must be a sort of Jack of
all trades, in order to master his own. And this, perhaps,
in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which
is the reason we never know any thing.

A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools
peculiar to his calling—fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers,
marlingspikes, palms, heavers, and many more. The
smaller sort he generally carries with him from ship to ship
in a sort of canvas reticule.

The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge
of such accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase
they apply to one who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish
such a mariner from those who merely “hand, reef,
and steer,” that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul ropes, and
stand at the wheel, they say he is “a sailor-man;” which
means that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is
an artist in the rigging.

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated
in this art and mystery; no further, at least, than by looking
on, and watching how that these things might be done as
well as others. The reason was, that I had only shipped
for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit
of which instructions could be only reaped by the next ship
I might belong to. All they wanted of me was the good-will
of my muscles, and the use of my backbone—comparatively
small though it was at that time—by way of a lever,
for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging,
I was set to the most inglorious avocations; as in the
merchant service it is a religious maxim to keep the hands
always employed at something or other, never mind what,
during their watch on deck.

Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over
the bows in a bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a
most monotonous, and to me a most uncongenial and irksome
business. There was a remarkable fatality attending the
various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they
would drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply
of reserved hammers seemed unlimited: also the blessings
and benedictions I received from the chief mate for my
clumsiness.

At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict,
which hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts
of halters and the gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like
a Down-Easter.

However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher,
and whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through
a port-hole while my hands were plying, and repeating Lord
Byron's Address to the Ocean, which I had often spouted on
the stage at the High School at home.

Yes, I got used to all these matters, and took most things
coolly, in the spirit of Seneca and the stoics.

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

All but the “turning out,” or rising from your berth
when the watch was called at night—that I never fancied.
It was a sort of acquaintance, which the more I cultivated,
the more I shrunk from; a thankless, miserable business,
truly.

Consider that after walking the deck for four full hours,
you go below to sleep: and while thus innocently employed
in reposing your wearied limbs, you are started up—it seems
but the next instant after closing your lids—and hurried on
deck again, into the same disagreeably dark and, perhaps,
stormy night, from which you descended into the forecastle.

The previous interval of slumber was almost wholly lost
to me; at least the golden opportunity could not be appreciated:
for though it is usually deemed a comfortable thing
to be asleep, yet at the time no one is conscious that he
is so enjoying himself. Therefore I made a little private
arrangement with the Lancashire lad, who was in the other
watch, just to step below occasionally, and shake me, and
whisper in my ear—“Watch below, Buttons; watch below”—
which pleasantly reminded me of the delightful fact.
Then I would turn over on my side, and take another nap;
and in this manner I enjoyed several complete watches in
my bunk to the other sailors' one. I recommend the plan
to all landsmen contemplating a voyage to sea.

But notwithstanding all these contrivances, the dreadful
sequel could not be avoided. Eight bells would at last be
struck, and the men on deck, exhilarated by the prospect of
changing places with us, would call the watch in a most
provokingly mirthful and facetious style.

As thus:—

“Starboard watch, ahoy! eight bells there, below! Tumble
up, my lively hearties; steamboat alongside waiting for
your trunks: bear a hand, bear a hand with your knee-buckles,
my sweet and pleasant fellows! fine shower-bath
here on deck. Hurrah, hurrah! your ice-cream is getting
cold!”

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

Whereupon some of the old croakers who were getting
into their trowsers would reply with—“Oh, stop your gabble,
will you? don't be in such a hurry, now. You feel sweet,
don't you?” with other exclamations, some of which were
full of fury.

And it was not a little curious to remark, that at the
expiration of the ensuing watch, the tables would be turned;
and we on deck became the wits and jokers, and those below
the grizzly bears and growlers.

p276-167 CHAPTER XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL.

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast
sailer; and so, the passage, which some of the packet ships
make in fifteen or sixteen days, employed us about thirty.

At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me
that Ireland was in sight.

Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I
peered hard, but could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like
spot to the northeast. Was that Ireland? Why, there
was nothing remarkable about that; nothing startling. If
that's the way a foreign country looks, I might as well have
staid at home.

Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look
like, I can not say; but I had a vague idea that it would
be something strange and wonderful. However, there it
was; and as the light increased and the ship sailed nearer
and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed at it
with increasing interest.

Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech
of his before Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore,
and his amatory verses; I thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket,
and O'Connell; I thought of my uncle's ostler, Patrick
Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the gallant
Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I
thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit
Dublin and the Giant's Causeway.

Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a
view of it; but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

up and down, as any other boat would have done; yet, when
I considered that the solitary man in it was actually a born
native of the land in sight; that in all probability he had
never been in America, and knew nothing about my friends
at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat
strange.

He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were
within hailing distance, cried out—“Ah, my fine sailors,
from Ameriky, ain't ye, my beautiful sailors?” And concluded
by calling upon us to stop and heave a rope. Thinking
he might have something important to communicate, the
mate accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being
thrown, the stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it
down, crying, “pay out! pay out, my honeys; ah! but
you're noble fellows!” Till at last the mate asked him why
he did not come alongside, adding, “Haven't you enough
rope yet?”

“Sure and I have,” replied the fisherman, “and it's time
for Pat to cut and run!” and so saying, his knife severed
the rope, and with a Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller,
put his little craft before the wind, and bowled away from
us, with some fifteen fathoms of our tow-line.

“And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you
in your stolen hemp, you Irish blackguard!” cried the mate,
shaking his fist at the receding boat, after recovering from
his first fit of amazement.

Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern
hemisphere; fairly robbed before striking soundings. This
trick upon experienced travelers certainly beat all I had ever
heard about the wooden nutmegs and bass-wood pumpkin
seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were any
more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers
might as well give it up.

The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon,
and a long line of purple mountains lay like banks of clouds
against the east.

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

Could this be really Wales?—Wales?—and I thought
of the Prince of Wales.

And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very
land I was looking at, with the identical eyes in my own
head?—And then I thought of a grandfather of mine, who
had fought against the ancestor of this queen at Bunker's Hill.

But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was
mortifyingly like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains
on the Hudson River.

With a light breeze, we sailed on till next day, when we
made Holyhead and Anglesea. Then it fell almost calm,
and what little wind we had, was ahead; so we kept tacking
to and fro, just gliding through the water, and always
hovering in sight of a snow-white tower in the distance,
which might have been a fort, or a light-house. I lost myself
in conjectures as to what sort of people might be tenanting
that lonely edifice, and whether they knew any thing
about us.

The third day, with a good wind over the taffrail, we
arrived so near our destination, that we took a pilot at dusk.

He, and every thing connected with him were very
different from our New York pilot. In the first place, the
pilot boat that brought him was a plethoric looking sloop-rigged
boat, with flat bows, that went wheezing through the
water; quite in contrast to the little gull of a schooner, that
bade us adieu off Sandy Hook.

Aboard of her were ten or twelve other pilots, fellows
with shaggy brows, and muffled in shaggy coats, who sat
grouped together on deck like a fire-side of bears, wintering
in Aroostook. They must have had fine sociable times,
though, together; cruising about the Irish Sea in quest of
Liverpool-bound vessels; smoking cigars, drinking brandy-and-water,
and spinning yarns; till at last, one by one, they
are all scattered on board of different ships, and meet again
by the side of a blazing sea-coal fire in some Liverpool tap-room,
and prepare for another yachting.

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

Now, when this English pilot boarded us, I stared at him
as if he had been some wild animal just escaped from the
Zoological Gardens; for here was a real live Englishman,
just from England. Nevertheless, as he soon fell to ordering
us here and there, and swearing vociferously in a
language quite familiar to me; I began to think him very
common-place, and considerable of a bore after all.

After running till about midnight, we “hove-to” near the
mouth of the Mersey; and next morning, before day-break,
took the first of the flood; and with a fair wind, stood into
the river; which, at its mouth, is quite an arm of the sea.
Presently, in the misty twilight, we passed immense buoys,
and caught sight of distant objects on shore, vague and
shadowy shapes, like Ossian's ghosts.

As I stood leaning over the side, and trying to summon
up some image of Liverpool, to see how the reality would
answer to my conceit; and while the fog, and mist, and
gray dawn were investing every thing with a mysterious
interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a
great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison
with the solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never
heard so boding a sound; a sound that seemed to speak of
judgment and the resurrection, like belfry-mouthed Paul of
Tarsus.

It was not in the direction of the shore; but seemed to
come out of the vaults of the sea, and out of the mist and fog.

Who was dead, and what could it be?

I soon learned from my ship-mates, that this was the
famous Bell-Buoy, which is precisely what its name implies;
and tolls fast or slow, according to the agitation of
the waves. In a calm, it is dumb; in a moderate breeze,
it tolls gently; but in a gale, it is an alarum like the
tocsin, warning all mariners to flee. But it seemed fuller
of dirges for the past, than of monitions for the future; and
no one can give ear to it, without thinking of the sailors
who sleep far beneath it at the bottom of the deep.

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

As we sailed ahead the river contracted. The day came,
and soon, passing two lofty land-marks on the Lancashire
shore, we rapidly drew near the town, and at last, came to
anchor in the stream.

Looking shoreward, I beheld lofty ranges of dingy warehouses,
which seemed very deficient in the elements of the
marvelous; and bore a most unexpected resemblance to the
ware-houses along South-street in New York. There was
nothing strange; nothing extraordinary about them. There
they stood; a row of calm and collected ware-houses; very
good and substantial edifices, doubtless, and admirably adapted
to the ends had in view by the builders; but plain, matter-of-fact
ware-houses, nevertheless, and that was all that could
be said of them.

To be sure, I did not expect that every house in Liverpool
must be a Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Strasbourg Cathedral;
but yet, these edifices I must confess, were a sad and
bitter disappointment to me.

But it was different with Larry the whaleman; who to
my surprise, looking about him delighted, exclaimed, “Why,
this 'ere is a considerable place—I'm dummed if it ain't
quite a place.—Why, them 'ere houses is considerable houses.
It beats the coast of Afriky, all hollow; nothing like this
in Madagasky, I tell you;—I'm dummed, boys, if Liverpool
ain't a city!”

Upon this occasion, indeed, Larry altogether forgot his
hostility to civilization. Having been so long accustomed
to associate foreign lands with the savage places of the Indian
Ocean, he had been under the impression, that Liverpool
must be a town of bamboos, situated in some swamp,
and whose inhabitants turned their attention principally to
the cultivation of log-wood and curing of flying-fish. For
that any great commercial city existed three thousand miles
from home, was a thing, of which Larry had never before
had a “realizing sense.” He was accordingly astonished
and delighted; and began to feel a sort of consideration for

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

the country which could boast so extensive a town. Instead
of holding Queen Victoria on a par with the Queen
of Madagascar, as he had been accustomed to do; he ever
after alluded to that lady with feeling and respect.

As for the other seamen, the sight of a foreign country
seemed to kindle no enthusiasm in them at all: no emotion
in the least. They looked round them with great presence
of mind, and acted precisely as you or I would, if, after a
morning's absence round the corner, we found ourselves returning
home. Nearly all of them had made frequent voyages
to Liverpool.

Not long after anchoring, several boats came off; and
from one of them stept a neatly-dressed and very respectable-looking
woman, some thirty years of age, I should
think, carrying a bundle. Coming forward among the sailors,
she inquired for Max the Dutchman, who immediately
was forthcoming, and saluted her by the mellifluous appellation
of Sally.

Now during the passage, Max in discoursing to me of
Liverpool, had often assured me, that that city had the
honor of containing a spouse of his; and that in all probability,
I would have the pleasure of seeing her. But having
heard a good many stories about the bigamies of seamen,
and their having wives and sweethearts in every port, the
round world over; and having been an eye-witness to a
nuptial parting between this very Max and a lady in New
York; I put down this relation of his, for what I thought
it might reasonably be worth. What was my astonishment,
therefore, to see this really decent, civil woman coming
with a neat parcel of Max's shore clothes, all washed, plaited,
and ironed, and ready to put on at a moment's warning.

They stood apart a few moments giving loose to those
transports of pleasure, which always take place, I suppose,
between man and wife after long separations.

At last, after many earnest inquiries as to how he had
behaved himself in New York; and concerning the state

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

of his wardrobe; and going down into the forecastle, and
inspecting it in person, Sally departed; having exchanged
her bundle of clean clothes for a bundle of soiled ones, and
this was precisely what the New York wife had done for
Max, not thirty days previous.

So long as we laid in port, Sally visited the Highlander
daily; and approved herself a neat and expeditious getterup
of duck frocks and trowsers, a capital tailoress, and as
far as I could see, a very well-behaved, discreet, and reputable
woman.

But from all I had seen of her, I should suppose Meg,
the New York wife, to have been equally well-behaved, discreet,
and reputable; and equally devoted to the keeping in
good order Max's wardrobe.

And when we left England at last, Sally bade Max good-by,
just as Meg had done; and when we arrived at New
York, Meg greeted Max precisely as Sally had greeted him
in Liverpool. Indeed, a pair of more amiable wives never
belonged to one man; they never quarreled, or had so much
as a difference of any kind; the whole broad Atlantic being
between them; and Max was equally polite and civil to
both. For many years, he had been going Liverpool and
New York voyages, plying between wife and wife with
great regularity, and sure of receiving a hearty domestic
welcome on either side of the ocean.

Thinking this conduct of his, however, altogether wrong
and every way immoral, I once ventured to express to him
my opinion on the subject. But I never did so again. He
turned round on me, very savagely; and after rating me
soundly for meddling in concerns not my own, concluded by
asking me triumphantly, whether old King Sol, as he called
the son of David, did not have a whole frigate-full of
wives; and that being the case, whether he, a poor sailor,
did not have just as good a right to have two? “What
was not wrong then, is right now,” said Max; “so, mind
your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!”

p276-174 CHAPTER XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER.

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

In the afternoon our pilot was all alive with his orders;
we hove up the anchor, and after a deal of pulling, and
hauling, and jamming against other ships, we wedged our
way through a lock at high tide; and about dark, succeeded
in working up to a berth in Prince's Dock. The hawsers
and tow-lines being then coiled away, the crew were told to
go ashore, select their boarding-house, and sit down to supper.

Here it must be mentioned, that owing to the strict but
necessary regulations of the Liverpool docks, no fires of any
kind are allowed on board the vessels within them; and
hence, though the sailors are supposed to sleep in the forecastle,
yet they must get their meals ashore, or live upon
cold potatoes. To a ship, the American merchantmen
adopt the former plan; the owners, of course, paying the
landlord's bill; which, in a large crew remaining at Liverpool
more than six weeks, as we of the Highlander did,
forms no inconsiderable item in the expenses of the voyage.
Other ships, however—the economical Dutch and Danish,
for instance, and sometimes the prudent Scotch—feed their
luckless tars in dock, with precisely the same fare which they
give them at sea; taking their salt junk ashore to be cooked,
which, indeed, is but scurvy sort of treatment, since it is
very apt to induce the scurvy. A parsimonious proceeding
like this is regarded with immeasurable disdain by the crews
of the New York vessels, who, if their captains treated them
after that fashion, would soon bolt and run.

It was quite dark, when we all sprang ashore; and, for
the first time, I felt dusty particles of the renowned British

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

soil penetrating into my eyes and lungs. As for stepping
on it, that was out of the question, in the well-paved and
flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have an opportunity
to do so till some time afterward, when I got out
into the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and
snuffed its immortal loam—but not till then.

Jackson led the van; and after stopping at a tavern, took
us up this street, and down that, till at last he brought us to
a narrow lane, filled with boarding-houses, spirit-vaults, and
sailors. Here we stopped before the sign of a Baltimore
Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded bunch of grapes and
a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn and American
Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and
lamb in the millenium.—A very judicious and tasty device,
showing a delicate apprehension of the propriety of conciliating
American sailors in an English boarding-house; and yet
in no way derogating from the honor and dignity of England,
but placing the two nations, indeed, upon a footing of perfect
equality.

Near the unicorn was a very small animal, which at first
I took for a young unicorn; but it looked more like a yearling
lion. It was holding up one paw, as if it had a splinter
in it; and on its head was a sort of basket-hilted, low-crowned
hat, without a rim. I asked a sailor standing
by, what this animal meant, when, looking at me with
a grin, he answered, “Why, youngster, don't you know
what that means? It's a young jackass, limping off with
a kedgeree pot of rice out of the cuddy.”

Though it was an English boarding-house, it was kept by
a broken-down American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute,
idle fellow, who had married a buxom English wife, and
now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and not the sailor,
proved to be the head of the establishment.

She was a hale, good-looking woman, about forty years
old, and among the seamen went by the name of “Handsome
Mary.” But though, from the dissipated character of

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

her spouse, Mary had become the business personage of the
house, bought the marketing, overlooked the tables, and conducted
all the more important arrangements, yet she was
by no means an Amazon to her husband, if she did play a
masculine part in other matters. No; and the more is the
pity, poor Mary seemed too much attached to Danby, to
seek to rule him as a termagant. Often she went about her
household concerns with the tears in her eyes, when, after a
fit of intoxication, this brutal husband of hers had been beating
her. The sailors took her part, and many a time volunteered
to give him a thorough thrashing before her eyes; but
Mary would beg them not to do so, as Danby would, no
doubt, be a better boy next time.

But there seemed no likelihood of this, so long as that
abominable bar of his stood upon the premises. As you
entered the passage, it stared upon you on one side, ready to
entrap all guests.

It was a grotesque, old-fashioned, castellated sort of a
sentry-box, made of a smoky-colored wood, and with a grating
in front, that lifted up like a portcullis. And here
would this Danby sit all the day long; and when customers
grew thin, would patronize his own ale himself, pouring
down mug after mug, as if he took himself for one of his own
quarter-casks.

Sometimes an old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come
in; and then they would occupy the sentry-box together, and
swill their beer in concert. This pot-friend of Danby was
portly as a dray-horse, and had a round, sleek, oily head,
twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a lusty
troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would
lean his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing:


“No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I wold,
I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt
In jolly good ale and old,—
I stuff my skin so full within,
Of jolly good ale and old.”

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

Or this,—

Alas! Handsome Mary. What avail all thy private
tears and remonstrances with the incorrigible Danby, so long
as that brewery of a toper, Bob Still, daily eclipses thy
threshhold with the vast diameter of his paunch, and enthrones
himself in the sentry-box, holding divided rule with
thy spouse?

The more he drinks, the fatter and rounder waxes Bob;
and the songs pour out as the ale pours in, on the well-known
principle, that the air in a vessel is displaced and
expelled, as the liquid rises higher and higher in it.

But as for Danby, the miserable Yankee grows sour on
good cheer, and dries up the thinner for every drop of fat
ale he imbibes. It is plain and demonstrable, that much
ale is not good for Yankees, and operates differently upon
them from what it does upon a Briton: ale must be drank
in a fog and a drizzle.

Entering the sign of the Clipper, Jackson ushered us into
a small room on one side, and shortly after, Handsome Mary
waited upon us with a courtesy, and received the compliments
of several old guests among our crew. She then disappeared
to provide our supper. While my shipmates were now engaged
in tippling, and talking with numerous old acquaintances
of theirs in the neighborhood, who thronged about the
door, I remained alone in the little room, meditating profoundly
upon the fact, that I was now seated upon an English
bench, under an English roof, in an English tavern,
forming an integral part of the English empire. It was a
staggering fact, but none the less true.

I examined the place attentively; it was a long, narrow,

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

little room, with one small arched window with red curtains,
looking out upon a smoky, untidy yard, bounded by a dingy
brick-wall, the top of which was horrible with pieces of
broken old bottles, stuck into mortar.

A dull lamp swung overhead, placed in a wooden ship
suspended from the ceiling. The walls were covered with
a paper, representing an endless succession of vessels of all
nations continually circumnavigating the apartment. By
way of a pictorial mainsail to one of these ships, a map was
hung against it, representing in faded colors the flags of all
nations. From the street came a confused uproar of ballad-singers,
bawling women, babies, and drunken sailors.

And this is England?

But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters,
and the lord mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles,
and fox-hunters, and Derby races, and the dukes and duchesses,
and the Count d'Orsays, which, from all my reading,
I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not
the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen.

Alas! Wellingborough, thought I, I fear you stand but
a poor chance to see the sights. You are nothing but a
poor sailor boy; and the Queen is not going to send a deputation
of noblemen to invite you to St. James's.

It was then, I began to see, that my prospects of seeing
the world as a sailor were, after all, but very doubtful; for
sailors only go round the world, without going into it; and
their reminiscences of travel are only a dim recollection of
a chain of tap-rooms surrounding the globe, parallel with the
Equator. They but touch the perimeter of the circle; hover
about the edges of terra-firma; and only land upon wharves
and pier-heads. They would dream as little of traveling inland
to see Kenilworth, or Blenheim Castle, as they would of sending
a card overland to the Pope, when they touched at Naples.

From these reveries I was soon roused, by a servant girl
hurrying from room to room, in shrill tones exclaiming,
“Supper, supper ready.”

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

Mounting a rickety staircase, we entered a room on the
second floor. Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky
light upon smoky walls, of what had once been sea-blue,
covered with sailor-scrawls of foul anchors, lovers' sonnets,
and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against the wainscot
in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting his
best foot foremost as usual. What these signified I never heard.

But such ample cheer! Such a groaning table! Such
a superabundance of solids and substantials! Was it possible
that sailors fared thus?—the sailors, who at sea live
upon salt beef and biscuit?

First and foremost, was a mighty pewter dish, big as
Achilles' shield, sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages.
This stood at one end; midway was a similar dish, heavily
laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese; and at the opposite
end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over tier.
Scattered at intervals between, were side dishes of boiled
potatoes, eggs by the score, bread, and pickles; and on a
stand adjoining, was an ample reserve of every thing on the
supper table.

We fell to with all our hearts; wrapt ourselves in hot
jackets of beef-steaks; curtailed the sausages with great
celerity; and sitting down before the head-cheese, soon razed
it to its foundations.

Toward the close of the entertainment, I suggested to
Peggy, one of the girls who had waited upon us, that a cup
of tea would be a nice thing to take; and I would thank
her for one. She replied that it was too late for tea; but
she would get me a cup of “swipes” if I wanted it.

Not knowing what “swipes” might be, I thought I would
run the risk and try it; but it proved a miserable beverage,
with a musty, sour flavor, as if it had been a decoction of
spoiled pickles. I never patronized swipes again; but gave
it a wide berth; though, at dinner afterward, it was furnished
to an unlimited extent, and drunk by most of my
shipmates, who pronounced it good.

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

But Bob Still would not have pronounced it so; for this
swipes, as I learned, was a sort of cheap substitute for beer;
or a bastard kind of beer; or the washings and rinsings of
old beer-barrels. But I do not remember now what they
said it was, precisely. I only know, that swipes was my
abomination. As for the taste of it, I can only describe it
as answering to the name itself; which is certainly significant
of something vile. But it is drunk in large quantities
by the poor people about Liverpool, which, perhaps, in some
degree, accounts for their poverty.

p276-181 CHAPTER XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

The ship remained in Prince's Dock over six weeks; but
as I do not mean to present a diary of my stay there, I shall
here simply record the general tenor of the life led by our
crew during that interval; and will then proceed to note
down, at random, my own wanderings about town, and impressions
of things as they are recalled to me now, after the
lapse of so many years.

But first, I must mention that we saw little of the captain
during our stay in the dock. Sometimes, cane in hand, he
sauntered down of a pleasant morning from the Arms Hotel,
I believe it was, where he boarded; and after lounging about
the ship, giving orders to his Prime Minister and Grand
Vizier, the chief mate, he would saunter back to his drawing-rooms.

From the glimpse of a play-bill, which I detected peeping
out of his pocket, I inferred that he patronized the theaters;
and from the flush of his cheeks, that he patronized the fine
old Port wine, for which Liverpool is famous.

Occasionally, however, he spent his nights on board; and
mad, roystering nights they were, such as rare Ben Jonson
would have delighted in. For company over the cabin-table,
he would have four or five whiskered sea-captains, who kept
the steward drawing corks and filling glasses all the time.
And once, the whole company were found under the table
at four o'clock in the morning, and were put to bed and
tucked in by the two mates. Upon this occasion, I agreed
with our woolly Doctor of Divinity, the black cook, that they

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

should have been ashamed of themselves; but there is no
shame in some sea-captains, who only blush after the third
bottle.

During the many visits of Captain Riga to the ship, he
always said something courteous to a gentlemanly, friendless
custom-house officer, who staid on board of us nearly all the
time we lay in the dock.

And weary days they must have been to this friendless
custom-house officer; trying to kill time in the cabin with
a newspaper; and rapping on the transom with his knuckles.
He was kept on board to prevent smuggling; but he used
to smuggle himself ashore very often, when, according to
law, he should have been at his post on board ship. But
no wonder; he seemed to be a man of fine feelings, altogether
above his situation; a most inglorious one, indeed;
worse than driving geese to water.

And now, to proceed with the crew.

At daylight, all hands were called, and the decks were
washed down; then we had an hour to go ashore to breakfast;
after which we worked at the rigging, or picked oakum,
or were set to some employment or other, never mind
how trivial, till twelve o'clock, when we went to dinner. At
half-past one we resumed work; and finally knocked off at
four o'clock in the afternoon, unless something particular
was in hand. And after four o'clock, we could go where we
pleased, and were not required to be on board again till next
morning at daylight.

As we had nothing to do with the cargo, of course, our
duties were light enough; and the chief mate was often put
to it to devise some employment for us.

We had no watches to stand, a ship-keeper, hired from shore,
relieving us from that; and all the while the men's wages ran
on, as at sea. Sundays we had to ourselves.

Thus, it will be seen, that the life led by sailors of American
ships in Liverpool, is an exceedingly easy one, and abounding
in leisure. They live ashore on the fat of the land; and

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

after a little wholesome exercise in the morning, have the rest
of the day to themselves.

Nevertheless, these Liverpool voyages, likewise those to
London and Havre, are the least profitable that an improvident
seaman can take. Because, in New York he receives
his month's advance; in Liverpool, another; both of which,
in most cases, quickly disappear; so that by the time his
voyage terminates, he generally has but little coming to him;
sometimes not a cent. Whereas, upon a long voyage, say to
India or China, his wages accumulate; he has more inducements
to economize, and far fewer motives to extravagance;
and when he is paid off at last, he goes away jingling a
quart measure of dollars.

Besides, of all sea-ports in the world, Liverpool, perhaps,
most abounds in all the variety of land-sharks, land-rats,
and other vermin, which make the hapless mariner their
prey. In the shape of landlords, bar-keepers, clothiers, crimps,
and boarding-house loungers, the land-sharks devour him, limb
by limb; while the land-rats and mice constantly nibble at
his purse.

Other perils he runs, also, far worse; from the denizens
of notorious Corinthian haunts in the vicinity of the docks,
which in depravity are not to be matched by any thing this
side of the pit that is bottomless.

And yet, sailors love this Liverpool; and upon long voyages
to distant parts of the globe, will be continually dilating upon
its charms and attractions, and extolling it above all other
sea-ports in the world. For in Liverpool they find their
Paradise—not the well known street of that name—and
one of them told me he would be content to lie in Prince's
Dock till he hove up anchor for the world to come.

Much is said of ameliorating the condition of sailors; but
it must ever prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the
antidote is given before the bane is removed.

Consider, that, with the majority of them, the very fact
of their being sailors, argues a certain recklessness and

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

sensualism of character, ignorance, and depravity; consider that
they are generally friendless and alone in the world; or if
they have friends and relatives, they are almost constantly
beyond the reach of their good influences; consider that
after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations
of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and
exposed to a thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances,
would be hard even for virtue itself to withstand, unless
virtue went about on crutches; consider that by their
very vocation they are shunned by the better classes of
people, and cut off from all access to respectable and improving
society; consider all this, and the reflecting mind
must very soon perceive that the case of sailors, as a class,
is not a very promising one.

Indeed, the bad things of their condition come under the
head of those chronic evils which can only be ameliorated, it
would seem, by ameliorating the moral organization of all
civilization.

Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted
into chapels, and launched into the docks; though the
“Boatswain's Mate” and other clever religious tracts in the
nautical dialect are distributed among them; though clergymen
harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains in
the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though
evangelical boarding-houses are provided for them; though
the parsimony of ship-owners has seconded the really sincere
and pious efforts of Temperance Societies, to take away
from seamen their old rations of grog while at sea:—notwithstanding
all these things, and many more, the relative
condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind,
seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century
ago.

It is too much the custom, perhaps, to regard as a special
advance, that unavoidable, and merely participative progress,
which any one class makes in sharing the general movement
of the race. Thus, because the sailor, who to-day steers the

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the Atlantic, is a
somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of
Smollett, and the men who fought with Nelson at Copenhagen,
and survived to riot themselves away at North
Corner in Plymouth;—because the modern tar is not quite
so gross as heretofore, and has shaken off some of his shaggy
jackets, and docked his Lord Rodney queue:—therefore, in
the estimation of some observers, he has begun to see the
evils of his condition, and has voluntarily improved. But
upon a closer scrutiny, it will be seen that he has but drifted
along with that great tide, which, perhaps, has two flows
for one ebb; he has made no individual advance of his
own.

There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same
relation to society at large, that the wheels do to a coach:
and are just as indispensable. But however easy and delectable
the springs upon which the insiders pleasantly
vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and glossy
the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve
in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity
can lift them out of the mire; for upon something the coach
must be bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.

Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come
round the globe; they are the true importers, and exporters
of spices and silks; of fruits and wines and marbles; they
carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies, merchants,
tourists, scholars to their destination: they are a
bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are the primum
mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate
in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing
would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis,
and the orators in the American Congress.

And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you
think of that fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not
give him a wide berth, shun him, and account him but little
above the brutes that perish? Will you throw open your

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a season
ticket to your pew in church?—No. You will do no such
thing; but at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar
or two for the building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors
already broken down; or for the distribution of excellent
books among tars who can not read. And the very mode
and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more
than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held.
It is useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the
refuse and offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view
of them is principally had through romances.

But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly
lifted up from the mire? There seems not much chance for
it, in the old systems and programmes of the future, however
well-intentioned and sincere; for with such systems, the
thought of lifting them up seems almost as hopeless as that
of growing the grape in Nova Zembla.

But we must not altogether despair for the sailor; nor
need those who toil for his good be at bottom disheartened.
For Time must prove his friend in the end; and though
sometimes he would almost seem as a neglected step-son of
heaven, permitted to run on and riot out his days with no
hand to restrain him, while others are watched over and
tenderly cared for; yet we feel and we know that God is
the true Father of all, and that none of his children are
without the pale of his care.

p276-187 CHAPTER XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS.

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a
collection of old European and English guide-books, which
he had bought on his travels, a great many years ago. In
my childhood, I went through many courses of studying
them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages,
some of which I thought resembled the mustached
faces of foreigners.

Among others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered
pamphlet, the rouge here and there effaced upon its now
thin and attenuated cheeks, entitled, “Voyage Descriptif et
Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau Paris: Miroir
Fidèle;” also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in marbleized
binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, “Itinéraire
Instructif de Rome, ou Description Générale des Monumens
Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables
de Peinteur, de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette
Célébre Ville;” on the russet title-page is a vignette representing
a barren rock, partly shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn
bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock and the
shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless foster-mother
of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground,
with locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation;
a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough,
and the wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed
of barn-yard cows; the work is published “Avec privilege

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

du Souverain Pontife.” There was also a velvet-bound
old volume, in brass clasps, entitled, “The Conductor through
Holland,” with a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable
“Picture of London,” abounding in representations of St.
Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar, Hyde-Park-Corner, the
Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall
Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and
bearing an elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in
emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in
part, “The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout
England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by
order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate
Towns, and those at which the Assizes are held, and gives
the time of the Mails' arrival and departure from each:
Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which the stages
go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses
and carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's
Seats situate near the Road, with Maps of the Environs
of London, Bath, Brighton, and Margate.” It is dedicated
“To the Right Honorable the Earls of Chesterfield and
Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient, and
Obsequious Servant, John Cary, 1798.” Also a green
pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat
of arms on the cover, looking like a diagram of the Labyrinth
of Crete, entitled, “A Description of York, its Antiquities
and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled
with great pains from the most authentic records.”
Also a small scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum
binding, and with a frontispiece bringing together at one
view the towers and turrets of King's College and the magnificent
Cathedral of Ely, though geographically sixteen miles
apart, entitled, “The Cambridge Guide: its Colleges, Halls,
Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.”

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

Also a pamphlet, with a japaned sort of cover, stamped with
a disorderly higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures,
claiming to be an accurate representation of the “North
or Grand Front of Blenheim,” and entitled, “A Description
of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings,
Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the
Gardens and Parks, and a General Description of the
Famous China Gallery, &c.; with an Essay on Landscape
Gardening; and embellished with a View of the
Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great
Park.” And lastly, and to the purpose, there was a volume
called “THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.”

It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the
many fond associations connected with it, I should like to
immortalize it, if I could.

But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I
may, from the life.

As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the
pages so dear to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years
and years ago, my father turned over amid the very scenes
that are here described; what a soft, pleasing sadness steals
over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!

Dear book! I will sell my Shakspeare, and even sacrifice
my old quarto Hogarth, before I will part with you.
Yes, I will go to the hammer myself, ere I send you to be
knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles. I will, my beloved,—
old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf
from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.

In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is
bound in green morocco, which from my earliest recollection
has been spotted and tarnished with time; the corners are
marked with triangular patches of red, like little cocked
hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an incurable
wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

that he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams
of opening the anonymous little book in green. There it
stands; day after day, week after week, year after year;
and no one but myself regards it. But I make up for all
neglects, with my own abounding love for it.

But let us open the volume.

What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible
pupil of a writing-master has been here? what crayon
sketcher of wild animals and falling air-castles? Ah, no!—
these are all part and parcel of the precious book, which
go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.

Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with
their juvenile sonnets, I might write under this horse,
“Drawn at the age of three years,” and under this autograph,
“Executed at the age of eight.”

Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters,
and cousins; and the hands that sketched some of them are
now moldered away.

But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this
sea-ditty of Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the
hands of some tarry captain of a forecastle. No: that
anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine; this hand drew
them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.

Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely
surrounded indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and
in my father's hand-writing, the following:—

Walter Redburn.

Riddough's Royal Hotel,
Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.

Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced
miscellaneous memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a
methodical mind, and therefore indubitably my father's,
which he must have made at various times during his stay
in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

effacements, it is much like cross-reading to make them out;
yet, I must here copy a few at random:—

	£	s.	d.
Guide-Book		3	6
Dinner at the Star and Garter		10
Trip to Preston (distance 31m.)	2	6	3
Gratuities		4
Hack		4	6
Thompson's Seasons		5
Library		1
Boat on the river		6
Port wine and cigars		4

And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:

Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.

Call upon Mr. Morille same day.

Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.

Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce.

Present letter at Miss L—'s on Tuesday.

Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.

Get my draft on London cashed.

Write home by the Princess.

Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.

Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the
midst of the British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy
text, that this is “A Plan of the Town of Liverpool.” But
there seems little plan in the confined and crooked looking
marks for the streets, and the docks irregularly scattered
along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a peaceful
stream of shaded line engraving.

On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara
of yellowish white: a desert, which still bears marks of my
zeal in endeavoring to populate it with all manner of uncouth
monsters in crayons. The space designated by that spot is
now, doubtless, completely built up in Liverpool.

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines,
radiating in all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where
stands marked “Riddough's Hotel,” the house my father
stopped at.

These marks delineate his various excursions in the town;
and I follow the lines on, through street and lane; and
across broad squares; and penetrate with them into the
narrowest courts.

By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his
religion in a foreign land; but attended St. John's Church
near the Hay-market, and other places of public worship: I
see that he visited the News Room in Duke-street, the
Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the
historian, poet, and banker.

Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the
Town Hall, and come upon the Title Page, which, in the
middle, is ornamented with a piece of landscape, representing
a loosely clad lady in sandals, pensively seated upon a bleak
rock on the sea shore, supporting her head with one hand,
and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval sort
of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
motto elastically stretched for a border—“Deus nobis hæc
otia fecit.”

The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
representation of a now extinct fowl, called the “Liver,”
said to have inhabited a “pool,” which antiquarians assert
once covered a good part of the ground where Liverpool now
stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool derives
its name.

At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship
under full sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small
man, vainly essaying to roll over a huge bale of goods.

Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is
the following title complete; but I fear the printer will not
be able to give a fac-simile:—

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

The
Picture
of
Liverpool:
or,
Stranger's Guide
and
Gentleman's Pocket Companion
FOR THE TOWN.

Embellished
With Engravings
By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.

Liverpool:
Printed in Swift's Court,
And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St.

1803.

A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all
the time bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception
accorded to previous editions of the work; and quotes
“testimonies of respect which had lately appeared in various
quarters—the British Critic, Review, and the seventh volume
of the Beauties of England and Wales”—and concludes
by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and
illustrated edition might “render it less unworthy of the
public notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is
intended to illustrate.”

A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time
and place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end—
Hope Place, 1st Sept. 1803.

But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

over this circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded
the precise hour of the day, and by what time-piece;
and if he had but mentioned his age, occupation, and name.

But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this
estimable author must needs share the oblivious fate of all
literary incognitos.

He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated
ideas of true fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a
solitary initial. Could I find him out now, sleeping neglected
in some churchyard, I would buy him a head-stone, and record
upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that his
noblest epitaph.

After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a
prologue written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of
Mrs. Barbauld, upon the opening of the Theater Royal,
Liverpool, in 1772:—

Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical
quotations, and old-fashioned classical allusions to the æneid
and Falconer's Shipwreck.

And the anonymous author must have been not only a
scholar and a gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness,
combined with true city patriotism; for in his “Survey
of the Town” are nine thickly printed pages of a neglected
poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.

By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion
upon the public of so long an episode, he courteously and
feelingly introduces it by saying, that “the poem has now
for several years been scarce, and is at present but little
known; and hence a very small portion of it will no doubt

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as
this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression
and the sweetest delicacy of feeling.”

Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my
mind, that the author of the Guide-Book might have been the
author of the epic. But that was years ago; and I have
never since permitted so uncharitable a reflection to insinuate
itself into my mind.

This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in
the old stately style, and rolls along commanding as a coach
and four. It sings of Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks,
and ships, and warehouses, and bales, and anchors; and after
descanting upon the abject times, when “his noble waves,
inglorious, Mersey rolled,” the poet breaks forth like all
Parnassus with:—

It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr.
Roscoe:—

Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book,
and the gifted bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished
the warmest appreciation of the fact, that to their beloved
town Roscoe imparted a reputation which gracefully
embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence,
and his histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken
of with classical admiration.

The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like
way, by informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude
and longitude of Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there
may be no misunderstanding on that head. It then goes on
to give an account of the history and antiquities of the town,
beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of William
the Conqueror.

Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding
his numerous other merits, my favorite author
betrays a want of the uttermost antiquarian and penetrating
spirit, which would have scorned to stop in its researches at
the reign of the Norman monarch, but would have pushed
on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man
of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a
doubt, that the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.

But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the
chapter of antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing
reflections upon an interesting fact he records: to wit,
that in A.D. 1571, the inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen
Elizabeth, praying relief under a subsidy, wherein they style
themselves “her majesty's poor decayed town of Liverpool.”

As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated
old guide-book, bearing every token of the ravages of near
half a century, and read how this piece of antiquity enlarges
like a modern upon previous antiquities, I am forcibly reminded
that the world is indeed growing old. And when I
turn to the second chapter, “On the increase of the town, and
number of inhabitants,” and then skim over page after page
throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense
grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than
quadrupled in population, opulence, and splendor, and whose
present inhabitants must look back upon the period here

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable superiority
and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the
corner-stone of to-morrow; and as St. Peter's church was
built in great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our
erections, however imposing, we but form quarries and supply
ignoble materials for the grander domes of posterity.

And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guide-books
are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose
future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach,
and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless
avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways
and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh.
From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the
young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their
lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may
send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and
smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric
Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and
mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.

As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the
dignified style of this “Picture of Liverpool,” so different
from the brief, pert, and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara
and Buffalo of the present day, I shall now insert the chapter
of antiquarian researches; especially as it is entertaining
in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous
town, to which I made my first voyage. And I think
that with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself am
wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote my old friend
verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it
off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book
its due.

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down
the pages into a soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye,
shed over the type all the pleasant associations which the
original carries to me!

No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies
of fond family reminiscences, I will not! I will not
quote thee, old Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted
world; for your antiquities would only be skipped
and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I
should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing
from a guide-book—the most vulgar and ignominious
of thefts!

p276-199 CHAPTER XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN.

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book
along, supposing that from the great number of ships going
to Liverpool, I would most probably ship on board of one of
them, as the event itself proved.

Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a
place, the infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my
hand.

On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In
the first place, I grounded myself thoroughly in the history
and antiquities of the town, as set forth in the chapter I
intended to quote. Then I mastered the columns of statistics,
touching the advance of population; and pored over them, as
I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was determined
to make the whole subject my own; and not be content
with a mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the
custom with most students of guide-books. Then I perused
one by one the elaborate descriptions of public edifices, and
scrupulously compared the text with the corresponding engraving,
to see whether they corroborated each other. For
be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them,
I had so impressed every column and cornice in my mind,
that I had no doubt of recognizing the originals in a moment.

In short, when I considered that my own father had used
this very guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly
tested, and its fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could
not but think that I was building myself up in an unerring

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

knowledge of Liverpool; especially as I had familiarized
myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on it,
with marvelous confidence and celerity.

In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I
used to take pleasant afternoon rambles through the town;
down St. James-street and up Great George's, stopping at
various places of interest and attraction. I began to think
I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar seemed all the
features of the map. And though some of the streets there
depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked,
like the map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no
doubt, that I could march through them in the darkest
night, and even run for the most distant dock upon a pressing
emergency.

Dear delusion!

It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a
guide-book, fifty years old, might have done good service in
its day, yet it would prove but a miserable cicerone to a
modern. I little imagined that the Liverpool my father
saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his son
Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded;
so accustomed had I been to associate my old morocco
guide-book with the town it described, that the bare
thought of there being any discrepancy, never entered my
mind.

While we lay in the Mersey, before entering the doek, I
got out my guide-book to see how the map would compare
with the identical place itself. But they bore not the slightest
resemblance. However, thinks I, this is owing to my
taking a horizontal view, instead of a bird's-eye survey. So,
never mind old guide-book, you, at least, are all right.

But my faith received a severe shock that same evening,
when the crew went ashore to supper, as I have previously
related.

The men stopped at a curious old tavern, near the Prince's
Dock's walls; and having my guide-book in my pocket, I

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

drew it forth to compare notes, when I found, that precisely
upon the spot where I and my shipmates were standing, and
a cherry-cheeked bar-maid was filling their glasses, my infallible
old Morocco, in that very place, located a fort; adding,
that it was well worth the intelligent stranger's while
to visit it for the purpose of beholding the guard relieved in
the evening.

This was a staggerer; for how could a tavern be mistaken
for a castle? and this was about the hour mentioned
for the guard to turn out; yet not a red coat was to be seen.
But for all this, I could not, for one small discrepancy, condemn
the old family servant who had so faithfully served my
own father before me; and when I learned that this tavern
went by the name of “The Old Fort Tavern;” and when
I was told that many of the old stones were yet in the walls,
I almost completely exonerated my guide-book from the half-insinuated
charge of misleading me.

The next day was Sunday, and I had it all to myself;
and now, thought I, my guide-book and I shall have a famous
ramble up street and down lane, even unto the furthest
limits of this Liverpool.

I rose bright and early; from head to foot performed my
ablutions “with Eastern scrupulosity,” and I arrayed myself
in my red shirt and shooting-jacket, and the sportsman's
pantaloons; and crowned my entire man with the tarpaulin;
so that from this curious combination of clothing, and particularly
from my red shirt, I must have looked like a very
strange compound indeed: three parts sportsman, and two
soldier, to one of the sailor.

My shipmates, of course, made merry at my appearance;
but I heeded them not; and after breakfast, jumped ashore,
full of brilliant anticipations.

My gait was erect, and I was rather tall of my age; and
that may have been the reason why, as I was rapidly walking
along the dock, a drunken sailor passing, exclaimed,
“Eyes right! quick step there!”

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

Another fellow stopped me to know whether I was going
fox-hunting; and one of the dock-police, stationed at the
gates, after peeping out upon me from his sentry box, a snug
little den, furnished with benches and newspapers, and hung
round with storm jackets and oiled capes, issued forth in a
great hurry, crossed my path as I was emerging into the street,
and commanded me to halt! I obeyed; when scanning
my appearance pertinaciously, he desired to know where I
got that tarpaulin hat, not being able to account for the
phenomenon of its roofing the head of a broken-down fox-hunter.
But I pointed to my ship, which lay at no great
distance; when remarking from my voice that I was
a Yankee, this faithful functionary permitted me to pass.

It must be known that the police stationed at the gates
of the docks are extremely observant of strangers going out;
as many thefts are perpetrated on board the ships; and if
they chance to see any thing suspicious, they probe into it
without mercy. Thus, the old men who buy “shakings,”
and rubbish from vessels, must turn their bags wrong side
out before the police, ere they are allowed to go outside the
walls. And often they will search a suspicious looking fellow's
clothes, even if he be a very thin man, with attenuated
and almost imperceptible pockets.

But where was I going?

I will tell. My intention was in the first place, to visit
Riddough's Hotel, where my father had stopped, more than
thirty years before: and then, with the map in my hand,
follow him through all the town, according to the dotted
lines in the diagram. For thus would I be performing a
filial pilgrimage to spots which would be hallowed in my eyes.

At last, when I found myself going down Old Hall-street
toward Lord-street, where the hotel was situated, according
to my authority; and when, taking out my map, I found
that Old Hall-street was marked there, through its whole
extent with my father's pen; a thousand fond, affectionate
emotions rushed around my heart.

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

Yes, in this very street, thought I, nay, on this very flagging
my father walked. Then I almost wept, when I
looked down on my sorry apparel, and marked how the
people regarded me; the men staring at so grotesque a young
stranger, and the old ladies, in beaver hats and ruffles,
crossing the walk a little to shun me.

How differently my father must have appeared; perhaps
in a blue coat, buff vest, and Hessian boots. And little did
he think, that a son of his would ever visit Liverpool as a
poor friendless sailor-boy. But I was not born then: no,
when he walked this flagging, I was not so much as thought
of; I was not included in the census of the universe. My
own father did not know me then; and had never seen, or
heard, or so much as dreamed of me. And that thought
had a touch of sadness to me; for if it had certainly been,
that my own parent, at one time, never cast a thought upon
me, how might it be with me hereafter? Poor, poor
Wellingborough! thought I, miserable boy! you are indeed
friendless and forlorn. Here you wander a stranger in a
strange town, and the very thought of your father's having
been here before you, but carries with it the reflection that,
he then knew you not, nor cared for you one whit.