crack and seam after the boys’ labors, in search of atomic particles of dirt, and called them back with all the dignity of command, and a small amount of commanding personality behind it, whenever he deemed he had discovered any. When this labor was finished I was generally so exhausted as to have no appetite for breakfast. But a sailor’s stomach is not presumed to be at all sensitive under any conditions. And above all a “boy”—a boy belonging to a squad of boys who about once a day were encouraged and enthused to exertion and maritime ambition by the assurance conveyed them by one of the mates that they weren’t “worth their salt”—what business had a boy’s stomach to put on airs at sea? Most landsmen if called up at 4 o’clock on a muggy morning and worked like mules for a couple of hours on a digestive vacuum, would probably at the breakfast hour feel more the need of food than the appetite to partake of it.
Though I followed the sea nearly two years, I am no sailor. The net result of my maritime experience is a capacity for tying a bow-line or a square knot and a positive knowledge and conviction concerning which end of the ship goes first. I also know enough not throw hot ashes to windward.
But on a yard I could never do much else but hold on. The foolhardy men about me would lie out flat on their stomachs amid the darkness and storm, and expose themselves to the risk of pitching headlong into the sea in the most reckless manner while trying to “spill the wind” out of a t’gallant sail. But I never emulated them. I never lived up to the maritime maxim of “one hand for yourself and the other for the owners.” I kept both hands for myself, and that kept me from going overboard. What would the owners have cared had I gone overboard? Nothing. Such an occurrence twenty-five odd years ago would, weeks afterward, have been reported in the marine news this way: “Common sailor, very common sailor, fell from t’gallant yard off Cape Horn and lost.” The owner would have secretly rejoiced, as he bought his Christmas toys for his children, that the t’gallant yard had not gone with the sailor. No; on a yard in a storm I believed and lived up to the maxim: “Hold fast to that which is good.” The yard was good. Yet I was ambitious when a boy before the mast on the clipper which brought me to California. I was quick to get into the rigging when there was anything to do aloft. But once in the rigging I was of little utility.
The first time I went up at night to loose one of the royals, I thought I should never stop climbing. The deck soon vanished in the darkness of a very black tropical night, the mastheads were likewise lost in a Cimmerian obscurity—whatever that is. At last I found the yard. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the right one or not. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I knew I had to untie something somewhere. But where? Meantime the savage Scotch second mate was bellowing, as it then seemed, a mile below me. I knew the bellow was for me. I had to do something and I commenced doing. I did know, or rather guessed, enough to cast-off the lee and weather gaskets, or lines which bind the sail when furled to the yard, and then I made them up into a most slovenly knot. But the bunt-gasket (the line binding the middle and most bulky portion of the sail), bothered me. I couldn’t untie it. I picked away at it desperately, tore my nails and skinning my knuckles. The bellowing from below continued as fiercely as ever, which, though not intelligible as to words, was certainly exhorting me, and me only, to vigilance. Then the watch got tired waiting for me. Thinking the sail loosed, they began hoisting. They hoisted the yard to its proper place and me with it. I clung on and went up higher. That, by the way, always comes of holding fast to that which is good. Then a man’s head came bobbing up out of the darkness. It was that of a good natured Nantucket boy, whose name of course was Coffin. He asked me the trouble. I went into a lengthy explanation about the unmanageable knot. “Oh the knot!” said he. “Cut it!” and he cut it. I would never have cut it. In my then and even present nautical ignorance I should have expected the mast or yard to have fallen from cutting anything aloft. Only a few days previous I had seen the Captain on the quarter-deck jumping up and down in his tracks with rage because a common seamen had, by mistake, cut a mizzen brace, and the second mate, as usual, had jumped up and down on the seaman when he reached the deck. I feared to set a similar jumping process in operation. Coming on deck after my lengthy and blundering sojourn loosing a royal, I expected to be mauled to a pulp for my stupidity. But both watch and bellowing mate had gone below and I heard no more of it.
CHAPTER V.
SAN FRANCISCO IN 1856.
The Wizard sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first land we had seen for four months. We sailed into the harbor, anchored, and the San Francisco of 1856 lay before us.
The ship was tied up to the wharf. All but the officers and “boys” left her. She seemed deserted, almost dead. We missed the ocean life of the set sails, the ship bowing to the waves and all the stir of the elements in the open ocean.
The captain called me one day into the cabin, paid me my scanty wages and told me he did not think I “was cut out for a sailor,” I was not handy enough about decks.
Considering that for two months I had been crippled by a felon on the middle finger of my right hand, which on healing had left that finger curved inward, with no power to straighten it, I thought the charge of awkwardness somewhat unjust.
However, I accepted the Captain’s opinion regarding my maritime capacities, as well as the hint that I was a superfluity on board.
I left the Wizard—left her for sixteen years of varied life in California.
I had no plans, nor aims, nor purpose, save to exist from day to-day and take what the day might give me.
Let me say here never accept any person’s opinion of your qualifications or capacities for any calling. If you feel that you are “cut out” for any calling or that you desire to follow it, abide by that feeling, and trust to it. It will carry you through in time.
I believe that thousands on thousands of lives have been blasted and crippled through the discouragement thrown on them by relation, friend, parent, or employer’s saying continually (or if not saying it verbally, thinking it) “You are a dunce. You are stupid. You can’t do this or that. It’s ridiculous for you to think of becoming this or that.”
The boy or girl goes off with this thought thrown on them by others. It remains with them, becomes a part of them and chokes off aspiration and effort.
Years afterward, I determined to find out for myself whether I was “cut out for a sailor” or not. As a result I made myself master of a small craft in all winds and weathers and proved to myself that if occasion required, I could manage a bigger one.
San Francisco seemed to me then mostly fog in the morning, dust and wind in the afternoon, and Vigilance Committee the remainder of the time.
San Francisco was then in the throes of the great “Vigilanteeism” of 1856. Companies of armed men were drilling in the streets at night. In the city’s commercial centre stood “Fort Gunnybags”—the strong hold of the Vigilantes—made, as its name implied, of sand-filled gunny sacks. Carronades protruded from its port holes, sentinels paced the ramparts. There was a constant surging of men in and out of the building behind the fort,—the headquarters and barracks of the Vigilantes. From its windows a few days before our arrival they had hung Casey for the killing of James King—one of the editors of the Bulletin. I saw two others hung there on the sixth of August. Vigilanteeism was then the business and talk of the town. The jail had just been captured from the “Law and Order” men, who were not “orderly” at all, but who had captured the city’s entire governmental and legal machinery and ran it to suit their own purposes.
The local Munchausens of that era were busy; one day the U. S. ship of war,
