The day was now drawing to a close, and, as the land faded from my sight, I was all alive to the change in my condition. But how far short of our expectations is oftentimes the fulfillment of the most ardent hopes. Safe aboard of a ship—so long my earnest prayer—with home and friends once more in prospect, I nevertheless felt weighed down by a melancholy that could not be shaken off. It was the thought of never more seeing those, who, notwithstanding their desire to retain me a captive, had, upon the whole, treated me so kindly. I was leaving them forever.

  So unforeseen and sudden had been my escape, so excited had I been through it all, and so great the contrast between the luxurious repose of the valley, and the wild noise and motion of a ship at sea, that at times my recent adventures had all the strangeness of a dream; and I could scarcely believe that the same sun now setting over a waste of waters, had that very morning risen above the mountains and peered in upon me as I lay on my mat in Typee.

  Going below into the forecastle11 just after dark, I was inducted into a wretched “bunk” or sleeping-box built over another. The rickety bottoms of both were spread with several pieces of a blanket. A battered tin can was then handed me, containing about half a pint of “tea”—so called by courtesy, though whether the juice of such stalks as one finds floating therein deserves that title, is a matter all ship-owners must settle with their consciences. A cube of salt beef,12 on a hard round biscuit13 by way of platter, was also handed up; and without more ado, I made a meal, the salt flavor of which, after the Nebuchadnezzar14 fare of the valley, was positively delicious.

  While thus engaged, an old sailor on a chest just under me was puffing out volumes of tobacco smoke. My supper finished, he brushed the stem of his sooty pipe against the sleeve of his frock, and politely waved it toward me. The attention was sailor-like; as for the nicety of the thing, no man who has lived in forecastles is at all fastidious; and so, after a few vigorous whiffs to induce repose, I turned over and tried my best to forget myself. But in vain. My crib, instead of extending fore and aft, as it should have done, was placed athwartships, that is, at right angles to the keel; and the vessel going before the wind, rolled to such a degree, that every time my heels went up and my head went down, I thought I was on the point of turning a somerset. Beside this, there were still more annoying causes of inquietude; and, every once in a while, a splash of water came down the open scuttle, and flung the spray in my face.

  At last, after a sleepless night, broken twice by the merciless call of the watch, a peep of daylight struggled into view from above, and some one came below. It was my old friend with the pipe.

  “Here, shipmate,” said I, “help me out of this place, and let me go on deck.”

  “Halloa, who’s that croaking?” was the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. “Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you! But I say, my lad, how’s that spar of your’n? the mate says it’s in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won’t have the carving of ye.”

  Long before daylight we arrived off the bay of Nukuheva, and making short tacks until morning, we then ran in, and sent a boat ashore with the natives who had brought me to the ship. Upon its return, we made sail again, and stood off from the land. There was a fine breeze; and, notwithstanding my bad night’s rest, the cool, fresh air of a morning at sea was so bracing, that, as soon as I breathed it, my spirits rose at once.

  Seated upon the windlass the greater portion of the day, and chatting freely with the men, I learned the history of the voyage thus far, and every thing respecting the ship and its present condition.

  These matters I will now throw together in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 2

  SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SHIP

  First and foremost, I must give some account of the Julia1 herself; or “Little Jule,” as the sailors familiarly styled her.

  She was a small barque2 of a beautiful model, something more than two hundred tons, Yankee-built and very old. Fitted for a privateer3 out of a New England port during the war of 1812, she had been captured at sea by a British cruiser, and, after seeing all sorts of service, was at last employed as a government packet in the Australian seas. Being condemned, however, about two years previous, she was purchased at auction by a house in Sydney, who, after some slight repairs, dispatched her on the present voyage.

  Notwithstanding the repairs, she was still in a miserable plight. The lower masts were said to be unsound; the standing rigging4 was much worn; and, in some places, even the bulwarks were quite rotten. Still, she was tolerably tight, and but little more than the ordinary pumping5 of a morning served to keep her free.

  But all this had nothing to do with her sailing; at that, brave Little Jule, plump Little Jule, was a witch. Blow high, or blow low, she was always ready for the breeze; and when she dashed the waves from her prow, and pranced, and pawed the sea, you never thought of her patched sails and blistered hull. How the fleet creature would fly before the wind! rolling, now and then, to be sure, but in very playfulness. Sailing to windward, no gale could bow her over: with spars erect, she looked right up into the wind’s eye, and so she went.

  But after all, Little Jule was not to be confided in. Lively enough, and playful she was, but on that very account the more to be distrusted. Who knew, but that like some vivacious old mortal all at once sinking into a decline, she might, some dark night, spring a leak and carry us all to the bottom. However, she played us no such ugly trick, and therefore, I wrong Little Jule in supposing it.

  She had a free, roving commission. According to her papers she might go whither she pleased—whaling, sealing, or any thing else. Sperm whaling, however, was what she relied upon; though, as yet, only two fish had been brought alongside.

  The day they sailed out of Sydney Heads, the ship’s company, all told, numbered some thirty-two souls; now, they mustered about twenty; the rest had deserted. Even the three junior mates who had headed the whale boats were gone; and of the four harpooners,6 only one was left, a wild New Zealander, or “Mowree,” as his countrymen are more commonly called in the Pacific. But this was not all. More than half the seamen remaining were more or less unwell from a long sojourn in a dissipated port; some of them wholly unfit for duty, one or two dangerously ill, and the rest managing to stand their watch though they could do but little.

  The captain was a young cockney,7 who, a few years before, had emigrated to Australia, and, by some favoritism or other, had procured the command of the vessel, though in no wise competent. He was essentially a landsman, and though a man of education, no more meant for the sea than a hair-dresser. Hence every body made fun of him. They called him “The Cabin Boy,” “Paper Jack,” and half a dozen other undignified names. In truth, the men made no secret of the derision in which they held him; and as for the slender gentleman himself, he knew it all very well, and bore himself with becoming meekness. Holding as little intercourse with them as possible, he left every thing to the chief mate, who, as the story went, had been given his captain in charge. Yet, despite his apparent unobtrusiveness, the silent captain had more to do with the men than they thought. In short, although one of your sheepish-looking fellows, he had a sort of still, timid cunning, which no one would have suspected, and which, for that very reason, was all the more active. So the bluff mate, who always thought he did what he pleased, was occasionally made a tool of; and some obnoxious measures which he carried out, in spite of all growlings, were little thought to originate with the dapper little fellow in nankeen8 jacket and white canvas pumps.9 But, to all appearance, at least, the mate had every thing his own way; indeed, in most things this was actually the case; and it was quite plain that the captain stood in awe of him.

  So far as courage, seamanship, and a natural aptitude for keeping riotous spirits in subjection were concerned, no man was better qualified for his vocation than John Jermin. He was the very beau-ideal of the efficient race of short, thick-set men. His hair curled in little rings of iron gray all over his round, bullet head. As for his countenance, it was strongly marked, deeply pitted with the small-pox. For the rest, there was a fierce little squint out of one eye; the nose had a rakish twist to one side; while his large mouth, and great white teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry if it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock’s; that you saw at a glance.

  Such was our mate; but he had one failing: he abhorred all weak infusions,10 and cleaved manfully to strong drink. At all times he was more or less under the influence of it. Taken in moderate quantities, I believe, in my soul, it did a man like him good; brightened his eyes, swept the cobwebs out of his brain, and regulated his pulse. But the worst of it was, that sometimes he drank too much, and a more obstreperous fellow than Jermin in his cups, you seldom came across. He was always for having a fight; but the very men he flogged loved him as a brother, for he had such an irresistibly good-natured way of knocking them down, that no one could find it in his heart to bear malice against him. So much for stout little Jermin.

  All English whalemen are bound by law to carry a physician, who, of course, is rated a gentleman,11 and lives in the cabin, with nothing but his professional duties to attend to; but incidentally he drinks “flip”12 and plays cards with the captain. There was such a worthy aboard of the Julia; but, curious to tell, he lived in the forecastle with the men. And this was the way it happened.

  In the early part of the voyage the doctor and the captain lived together as pleasantly as could be. To say nothing of many a can they drank over the cabin transom,13 both of them had read books, and one of them had traveled; so their stories never flagged. But once on a time they got into a dispute about politics, and the doctor, moreover, getting into a rage, drove home an argument with his fist, and left the captain on the floor literally silenced. This was carrying it with a high hand; so he was shut up in his state-room for ten days, and left to meditate on bread and water, and the impropriety of flying into a passion. Smarting under his disgrace, he undertook, a short time after his liberation, to leave the vessel clandestinely at one of the islands, but was brought back ignominiously, and again shut up. Being set at large for the second time, he vowed he would not live any longer with the captain, and went forward with his chests among the sailors, where he was received with open arms, as a good fellow and an injured man.

  I must give some further account of him, for he figures largely in the narrative. His early history, like that of many other heroes, was enveloped in the profoundest obscurity; though he threw out hints of a patrimonial estate, a nabob uncle, and an unfortunate affair which sent him a-roving. All that was known, however, was this. He had gone out to Sydney as assistant-surgeon of an emigrant ship. On his arrival there, he went back into the country, and after a few months’ wanderings, returned to Sydney penniless, and entered as doctor aboard of the Julia.

  His personal appearance was remarkable. He was over six feet high—a tower of bones, with a complexion absolutely colorless, fair hair, and a light, unscrupulous gray eye, twinkling occasionally with the very devil of mischief. Among the crew, he went by the name of the Long Doctor, or, more frequently still, Doctor Long Ghost. And from whatever high estate Doctor Long Ghost might have fallen, he had certainly at some time or other spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with gentlemen.

  As for his learning, he quoted Virgil,14 and talked of Hobbes of Malmsbury,15 beside repeating poetry by the canto, especially Hudibras.16 He was, moreover, a man who had seen the world. In the easiest way imaginable, he could refer to an amour he had in Palermo,17 his lion hunting before breakfast among the Caffres,18 and the quality of the coffee to be drunk in Muscat;19 and about these places, and a hundred others, he had more anecdotes than I can tell of. Then such mellow old songs as he sang, in a voice so round and racy, the real juice of sound. How such notes came forth from his lank body was a constant marvel.

  Upon the whole, Long Ghost was as entertaining a companion as one could wish; and to me in the Julia, an absolute godsend.

  CHAPTER 3

  FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE JULIA

  Owing to the absence of any thing like regular discipline, the vessel was in a state of the greatest uproar. The captain, having for some time past been more or less confined to the cabin from sickness, was seldom seen. The mate, however, was as hearty as a young lion, and ran about the decks making himself heard at all hours. Bembo, the New Zealand1 harpooner, held little intercourse with any body but the mate, who could talk to him freely in his own lingo. Part of his time he spent out on the bowsprit, fishing for albicores with a bone hook; and occasionally he waked all hands up of a dark night dancing some cannibal fandango all by himself on the forecastle. But, upon the whole, he was remarkably quiet, though something in his eye showed he was far from being harmless.

  Doctor Long Ghost, having sent in a written resignation as the ship’s doctor, gave himself out as a passenger for Sydney, and took the world quite easy. As for the crew, those who were sick seemed marvelously contented for men in their condition; and the rest, not displeased with the general license, gave themselves little thought of the morrow.

  The Julia’s provisions were very poor. When opened, the barrels of pork looked as if preserved in iron rust, and diffused an odor like a stale ragout. The beef was worse yet; a mahogany-colored fibrous substance, so tough and tasteless, that I almost believed the cook’s story of a horse’s hoof with the shoe on having been fished up out of the pickle of one of the casks. Nor was the biscuit much better; nearly all of it was broken into hard, little gunflints, honey-combed through and through, as if the worms2 usually infesting this article in long tropical voyages, had, in boring after nutriment, come out at the antipodes3 without finding any thing.

  Of what sailors call “small stores,” we had but little. “Tea,” however, we had in abundance; though, I dare say, the Hong merchants4 never had the shipping of it. Beside this, every other day we had what English seamen call “shot soup”—great round peas, polishing themselves like pebbles by rolling about in tepid water.

  It was afterward told me, that all our provisions had been purchased by the owners at an auction sale of condemned navy stores5 in Sydney.

  But notwithstanding the wateriness of the first course of soup, and the saline flavor of the beef and pork, a sailor might have made a satisfactory meal aboard of the Julia had there been any side dishes—a potato or two, a yam, or a plantain. But there was nothing of the kind. Still, there was something else, which, in the estimation of the men, made up for all deficiencies; and that was the regular allowance of Pisco.

  It may seem strange, that in such a state of affairs the captain should be willing to keep the sea with his ship. But the truth was, that by lying in harbor, he ran the risk of losing the remainder of his men by desertion; and as it was, he still feared that, in some outlandish bay or other, he might one day find his anchor down, and no crew to weigh it.

  With judicious officers the most unruly seamen can at sea be kept in some sort of subjection; but once get them within a cable’s length6 of the land, and it is hard restraining them. It is for this reason, that many South Sea whalemen do not come to an anchor for eighteen or twenty months on a stretch. When fresh provisions are needed, they run for the nearest land—heave to eight or ten miles off, and send a boat ashore to trade. The crews manning vessels like these are for the most part villains of all nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless ports of the Spanish Main,7 and among the savages of the islands. Like galley-slaves,8 they are only to be governed by scourges and chains. Their officers go among them with dirk and pistol—concealed, but ready at a grasp.

  Not a few of our own crew were men of this stamp; but, riotous at times as they were, the bluff, drunken energies of Jermin were just the thing to hold them in some sort of noisy subjection. Upon an emergency, he flew in among them, showering his kicks and cuffs right and left, and “creating a sensation” in every direction. And as hinted before, they bore this knock-down authority with great good-humor. A sober, discreet, dignified officer could have done nothing with them; such a set would have thrown him and his dignity overboard.

  Matters being thus, there was nothing for the ship but to keep the sea. Nor was the captain without hope that the invalid portion of his crew, as well as himself, would soon recover; and then there was no telling what luck in the fishery might yet be in store for us. At any rate, at the time of my coming aboard, the report was, that Captain Guy was resolved upon retrieving the past, and filling the vessel with oil in the shortest space possible.

  With this intention, we were now shaping our course for Hytyhoo,9 a village on the island of St. Christina10—one of the Marquesas, and so named by Mendanna11—for the purpose of obtaining eight seamen, who, some weeks before, had stepped ashore there from the Julia. It was supposed that, by this time, they must have recreated themselves sufficiently, and would be glad to return to their duty.

  So to Hytyhoo, with all our canvas spread, and coquetting with the warm, breezy Trades12 we bowled along; gliding up and down the long, slow swells, the bonettas13 and albicores frolicking round us.

  CHAPTER 4

  A SCENE IN THE FORECASTLE

  I had scarcely been aboard of the ship twenty-four hours, when a circumstance occurred, which, although noways picturesque, is so significant of the state of affairs, that I can not forbear relating it.

  In the first place, however, it must be known, that among the crew was a man so excessively ugly, that he went by the ironical appellation of “Beauty.” He was the ship’s carpenter; and for that reason was sometimes known by his nautical cognomen of “Chips.” There was no absolute deformity about the man; he was symmetrically ugly. But ill favored as he was in person, Beauty was none the less ugly in temper; but no one could blame him; his countenance had soured his heart. Now Jermin and Beauty were always at sword’s points. The truth was, the latter was the only man in the ship whom the mate had never decidedly got the better of; and hence the grudge he bore him. As for Beauty, he prided himself upon talking up to the mate, as we shall soon see.