The departure - The sea - My companions - Some account of the wonderful sights we saw on the great deep - A dreadful storm and a frightful wreck.
IT was a bright, beautiful, warm day when our ship spread her canvass to the breeze, and sailed for the regions of the south.
Oh, how my heart bounded with delight as I listened to the merry chorus of the sailors, while they hauled at the ropes and got in the anchor! The captain shouted - the men ran to obey - the noble ship bent over to the breeze, and the shore gradually faded from my view, while I stood looking on with a kind of feeling that the whole was a delightful dream.
The first thing that struck me as being different from anything Ihad yet seen during my short career on the sea, was the hoisting of the anchor on deck, and lashing it firmly down with ropes, as if we had now bid adieu to the land for ever, and would require its services no more.
"There, lass," cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was completed - "there, lass, take a good nap now, for we shan't ask you to kiss the mud again for many a long day to come!"And so it was.That anchor did not "kiss the mud" for many long days afterwards; and when at last it did, it was for the last time!
There were a number of boys in the ship, but two of them were my special favourites.Jack Martin was a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered youth of eighteen, with a handsome, good-humoured, firm face.He had had a good education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild and quiet in disposition.Jack was a general favourite, and had a peculiar fondness for me.My other companion was Peterkin Gay.He was little, quick, funny, decidedly mischievous, and about fourteen years old.But Peterkin's mischief was almost always harmless, else he could not have been so much beloved as he was.
"Hallo! youngster," cried Jack Martin, giving me a slap on the shoulder, the day I joined the ship, "come below and I'll show you your berth.You and I are to be mess-mates, and I think we shall be good friends, for I like the look o' you."Jack was right.He and I and Peterkin afterwards became the best and stanchest friends that ever tossed together on the stormy waves.
I shall say little about the first part of our voyage.We had the usual amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange fish rolling in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by seeing a shoal of flying fish dart out of the water and skim through the air about a foot above the surface.They were pursued by dolphins, which feed on them, and one flying-fish in its terror flew over the ship, struck on the rigging, and fell upon the deck.
Its wings were just fins elongated, and we found that they could never fly far at a time, and never mounted into the air like birds, but skimmed along the surface of the sea.Jack and I had it for dinner, and found it remarkably good.
When we approached Cape Horn, at the southern extremity of America, the weather became very cold and stormy, and the sailors began to tell stories about the furious gales and the dangers of that terrible cape.
"Cape Horn," said one, "is the most horrible headland I ever doubled.I've sailed round it twice already, and both times the ship was a'most blow'd out o' the water.""An' I've been round it once," said another, "an' that time the sails were split, and the ropes frozen in the blocks, so that they wouldn't work, and we wos all but lost.""An' I've been round it five times," cried a third, "an' every time wos wuss than another, the gales wos so tree-mendous!""And I've been round it no times at all," cried Peterkin, with an impudent wink of his eye, "an' THAT time I wos blow'd inside out!"Nevertheless, we passed the dreaded cape without much rough weather, and, in the course of a few weeks afterwards, were sailing gently, before a warm tropical breeze, over the Pacific Ocean.
