Occasionally a wave comes with a thump against your ear, as if a great hammer were knocking on your barrel, to see that all within was safe and sound. Then you begin to think of krakens, and sharks, and porpoises, and sea serpents, and all the monstrous, slimy, cold, hobgoblin brood, who, perhaps, are your next door neighbors; and the old blue-haired Ocean whispers through the planks, "Here you are; I've got you. Your grand ship is my plaything. I can do what I like with it."
Then you hear every kind of odd noise in the ship—creaking, straining, crunching, scraping, pounding, whistling, blowing off steam, each of which to your unpractised ear is significant of some impending catastrophe; you lie wide awake, listening with all your might, as if your watching did any good, till at last sleep overcomes you, and the morning light convinces you that nothing very particular has been the matter, and that all these frightful noises are only the necessary attendants of what is called a good run.
Our voyage out was called "a good run." It was voted, unanimously, to be "an extraordinarily good passage," "a pleasant voyage;" yet the ship rocked the whole time from side to side with a steady, dizzy, continuous motion, like a great cradle. I had a new sympathy for babies, poor little things, who are rocked hours at a time without so much as a "by your leave" in the case. No wonder there are so many stupid people in the world.
There is no place where killing time is so much of a systematic and avowed object as in one of these short runs. In a six months' voyage people give up to their situation, and make arrangements to live a regular life; but the ten days that now divide England and America are not long enough for any thing. The great question is how to get them off; they are set up, like tenpins, to be bowled at; and happy he whose ball prospers. People with strong heads, who can stand the incessant swing of the boat, may read or write. Then there is one's berth, a never-failing resort, where one may analyze at one's leisure the life and emotions of an oyster in the mud. Walking the deck is a means of getting off some half hours more. If a ship heaves in sight, or a porpoise tumbles up, or, better still, a whale spouts, it makes an immense sensation.
Our favorite resort is by the old red smoke pipe of the steamer, which rises warm and luminous as a sort of tower of defence. The wind must blow an uncommon variety of ways at once when you cannot find a sheltered side, as well as a place to warm your feet. In fact, the old smoke pipe is the domestic hearth of the ship; there, with the double convenience of warmth and fresh air, you can sit by the railing, and, looking down, command the prospect of the cook's offices, the cow house, pantries, &c.
Our cook has specially interested me—a tall, slender, melancholy man, with a watery-blue eye, a patient, dejected visage, like an individual weary of the storms and commotions of life, and thoroughly impressed with the vanity of human wishes. I sit there hour after hour watching him, and it is evident that he performs all his duties in this frame of sad composure. Now I see him resignedly stuffing a turkey, anon compounding a sauce, or mournfully making little ripples in the crust of a tart; but all is done under an evident sense that it is of no use trying.
Many complaints have been made of our coffee since we have been on board, which, to say the truth, has been as unsettled as most of the social questions of our day, and, perhaps, for that reason quite as generally unpalatable; but since I have seen our cook, I am quite persuaded that the coffee, like other works of great artists, has borrowed the hues of its maker's mind. I think I hear him soliloquize over it—"To what purpose is coffee?—of what avail tea?—thick or clear?—all is passing away—a little egg, or fish skin, more or less, what are they?" and so we get melancholy coffee and tea, owing to our philosophic cook.
After dinner I watch him as he washes dishes: he hangs up a whole row of tin; the ship gives a lurch, and knocks them all down. He looks as if it was just what he expected. "Such is life!" he says, as he pursues a frisky tin pan in one direction, and arrests the gambols of the ladle in another; while the wicked sea, meanwhile, with another lurch, is upsetting all his dishwater. I can see how these daily trials, this performing of most delicate and complicated gastronomic operations in the midst of such unsteady, unsettled circumstances, have gradually given this poor soul a despair of living, and brought him into this state of philosophic melancholy. Just as Xantippe made a sage of Socrates, this whisky, frisky, stormy ship life has made a sage of our cook. Meanwhile, not to do him injustice, let it be recorded, that in all dishes which require grave conviction and steady perseverance, rather than hope and inspiration, he is eminently successful. Our table excels in viands of a reflective and solemn character; mighty rounds of beef, vast saddles of mutton, and the whole tribe of meats in general, come on in a superior style. English plum pudding, a weighty and serious performance, is exhibited in first-rate order. The jellies want lightness,—but that is to be expected.
I admire the thorough order and system with which every thing is done on these ships. One day, when the servants came round, as they do at a certain time after dinner, and screwed up the shelf of decanters and bottles out of our reach, a German gentleman remarked, "Ah, that's always the way on English ships; every thing done at such a time, without saying 'by your leave,' If it had been on an American ship now, he would have said, 'Gentlemen, are you ready to have this shelf raised?'"
No doubt this remark is true and extends to a good many other things; but in a ship in the middle of the ocean, when the least confusion or irregularity in certain cases might be destruction to all on board, it does inspire confidence to see that there is even in the minutest things a strong and steady system, that goes on without saying "by your leave." Even the rigidness with which lights are all extinguished at twelve o'clock, though it is very hard in some cases, still gives you confidence in the watchfulness and care with which all on board is conducted.
On Sunday there was a service. We went into the cabin, and saw prayer books arranged at regular intervals, and soon a procession of the sailors neatly dressed filed in and took their places, together with such passengers as felt disposed, and the order of morning prayer was read. The sailors all looked serious and attentive. I could not but think that this feature of the management of her majesty's ships was a good one, and worthy of imitation. To be sure, one can say it is only a form. Granted; but is not a serious, respectful form of religion better than nothing? Besides, I am not willing to think that these intelligent-looking sailors could listen to all those devout sentiments expressed in the prayers, and the holy truths embodied in the passages of Scripture, and not gain something from it. It is bad to have only the form of religion, but not so bad as to have neither the form nor the fact.
When the ship has been out about eight days, an evident bettering of spirits and condition obtains among the passengers. Many of the sick ones take heart, and appear again among the walks and ways of men; the ladies assemble in little knots, and talk of getting on shore. The more knowing ones, who have travelled before, embrace this opportunity to show their knowledge of life by telling the new hands all sorts of hobgoblin stories about the custom house officers and the difficulties of getting landed in England. It is a curious fact, that old travellers generally seem to take this particular delight in striking consternation into younger ones.
"You'll have all your daguerreotypes taken away," says one lady, who, in right of having crossed the ocean nine times, is entitled to speak ex cathedra on the subject.
"All our daguerreotypes!" shriek four or five at once. "Pray tell, what for?"
"They will do it," says the knowing lady, with an awful nod; "unless you hide them, and all your books, they'll burn up—"
"Burn our books!" exclaim the circle. "O, dreadful! What do they do that for?"
"They're very particular always to burn up all your books. I knew a lady who had a dozen burned," says the wise one.
"Dear me! will they take our dresses?" says a young lady, with increasing alarm.
"No, but they'll pull every thing out, and tumble them well over, I can tell you."
"How horrid!"
An old lady, who has been very sick all the way, is revived by this appalling intelligence.
"I