up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the ship. They must then be hauled taut again, and belayed, or secured, in order to keep the sails in their place and to prevent them from shaking. When the ship's head comes up in the wind, the sail is for a moment or two edgewise to it, and then is the nice moment, as soon as the head-sails fairly fill, when the main-yard and the yards above it can be swung readily, and the tacks and sheets hauled in. If the crew are too few in number, or too slow at their work, and the sails get fairly filled on the new tack, it is a fatiguing piece of work enough to "board" the tacks and sheets, as it is called. You are pulling at one end of the rope, but the gale is tugging at the other. The advantages of lungs are all against you, and perhaps the only thing to be done is to put the helm down a little, and set the sails shaking again before they can be trimmed properly.—It was just at such a time that I came on deck, as above mentioned. Being near eight bells, the watch on deck had been not over spry; and the consequence was that our big main-course was slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English second-mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his ills misplaced, storming at the men:—"'An'somely the weather main- brace,—'an'somely, I tell you!—'Alf a dozen of you clap on to the main sheet here,—down with 'im!—D'y'see 'ere's hall like a midshipman's bag,—heverythink huppermost and nothing 'andy.—'Aul 'im in, Hi say!" —But the sail wouldn't come, though. All the most forcible expressions of the Commination-Service were liberally bestowed on the watch. "Give us the song, men!" sang out the mate, at last,—"pull with a will! —together, men!—haltogether now!"—And then a cracked, melancholy voice struck up this chant:
"Oh, the bowline, bully bully bowline,
Oh, the bowline, bowline, HAUL!"
At the last word every man threw his whole strength into the pull,—all singing it in chorus, with a quick, explosive sound. And so, jump by jump, the sheet was at last hauled taut.—I dare say this will seem very much spun out to a seafarer, but landsmen like to hear of the sea and its ways; and as more landsmen than seamen, probably, read the "Atlantic Monthly," I have told them of one genuine sea-song, and its time and place.
Then there are pumping-songs. "The dismal sound of the pumps is heard," says Mr. Webster's Plymouth-Rock Oration; but being a part of the daily morning duty of a well-disciplined merchant-vessel,—just a few minutes' spell to keep the vessel free and cargo unharmed by bilge-water,—it is not a dismal sound at all, but rather a lively one. It was a favorite amusement with us passengers on board the – to go forward about pumping-time to the break of the deck and listen. Any quick tune to which you might work a fire-engine will serve for the music, and the words were varied with every fancy. "Pay me the money down," was one favorite chorus, and the verse ran thus:—
Solo. Your money, young man, is no object to me.
Chorus. Pay me the money down!
Solo. Half a crown's no great amount.
Chorus. Pay me the money down!
Solo and Chorus. (Bis) Money down, money down, pay me the money down!
Not much sense in all this, but it served to man and move the brakes merrily. Then there were other choruses, which were heard from time to time,—"And the young gals goes a-weepin',"—"O long storm, storm along stormy"; but the favorite tune was "Money down," at least with our crew. They were not an avaricious set, either; for their parting ceremony, on embarking, was to pitch the last half-dollars of their advance on to the wharf, to be scrambled for by the land-sharks. But "Money down" was the standing chorus. I once heard, though not on board that ship, the lively chorus of "Off she goes, and off she must go,"—
"Highland day and off she goes,
Off she goes with a flying fore-topsail,
Highland day and off she goes."
It is one of the most spirited things imaginable, when well sung, and, when applied to the topsail-halyards, brings the yards up in grand style.
These are some of the working-songs of the sea. They are not chosen for their sense, but for their sound. They must contain good mouth-filling words, with the vowels in the right place, and the rhythmic ictus at proper distances for chest and hand to keep true time. And this is why the seaman beats the wind in a trial of strength. The wind may whistle, but it cannot sing. The sailor does not whistle, on shipboard at least, but does sing.
Besides the working-day songs, there are others for the forecastle and dog-watches, which have been already described. But they are seldom of the parlor pattern. I remember one lovely moonlight evening, off the Irish coast, when our ship was slipping along before a light westerly air,—just enough of it for everything to draw, and the ship as steady as Ailsa Crag, so that everybody got on deck, even the chronically sea-sick passengers of the steerage. There was a boy on board, a steerage passenger, who had been back and forth several times on this Liverpool line of packets. He was set to singing, and his sweet, clear voice rang out with song after song,– almost all of them sad ones. At last one of the crew called on him for a song which he made some demur at singing. I remember the refrain well (for he did sing it at last); it ran thus:—
"My crew are tried, my bark's my pride,
I'm the Pirate of the Isles."
It was no rose-water piracy that the boy sang of; it was the genuine pirate of the Isle of Pines,—the gentleman who before the days of California and steamers was the terror of the Spanish Main. He was depicted as falling in deadly combat with a naval cruiser, after many desperate deeds. What was most striking to us of the cabin was, that the sympathy of the song, and evidently of the hearers, was all on the side of the defier of law and order. There was no nonsense in it about "islands on the face of the deep where the winds never blow and the skies never weep," which to the parlor pirate are the indications of a capital station for wood and water, and for spending his honeymoon. It was downright cutting of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy.
There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches. Such is the rhyme of "Uncle Peleg," or "Pillick," as it is pronounced,—probably an historical ballad concerning some departed worthy of the Folger family of Nantucket. It begins—
"Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat
On the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int;
He rolled up his trowsers and set her afloat
From the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int."
Like "Christabel," this remains a fragment. Not so the legend of "Captain Cottington," (or Coddington,) which perhaps is still traditionally known to the young gentlemen at Harvard. It is marked by a bold and ingenious metrical novelty.
"Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea-e-e,
Captain Cottington he went to sea."
The third verse of the next stanza announces that he didn't go to sea in a schoo-oo-ooner,—of the next that he went to sea in a bri-i-ig,—and so on. We learn that he got wrecked on the "Ba-ha-ha-hamys," that he swam ashore
