Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882; Sailors; Seafaring life; Voyages and travels
The flogging was seldom if ever alluded to by us, in the forecastle. If
any one was inclined to talk about it, the others, with a delicacy
which I hardly expected to find among them, always stopped him, or
turned the subject. But the behavior of the two men who were flogged
toward one another showed a delicacy and a sense of honor, which would
have been worthy of admiration in the highest walks of life. Sam knew
that the other had suffered solely on his account, and in all his
complaints, he said that if he alone had been flogged, it would have
been nothing; but that he never could see that man without thinking
what had been the means of bringing that disgrace upon him; and John
never, by word or deed, let anything escape him to remind the other
that it was by interfering to save his shipmate, that he had suffered.
Having got all our spare room filled with hides, we hove up our anchor
and made sail for San Diego. In no operation can the disposition of a
crew be discovered better than in getting under weigh.
Where things are "done with a will," every one is like a cat aloft:
sails are loosed in an instant; each one lays out his strength on his
handspike, and the windlass goes briskly round with the loud cry of "Yo
heave ho! Heave and pawl! Heave hearty ho!" But with us, at this time,
it was all dragging work. No one went aloft beyond his ordinary gait,
and the chain came slowly in over the windlass. The mate, between the
knight-heads, exhausted all his official rhetoric, in calls of "Heave
with a will!"--"Heave hearty, men!--heave hearty!"--"Heave and raise
the dead!"--"Heave, and away!" etc., etc.; but it would not do. Nobody
broke his back or his hand-spike by his efforts. And when the
cat-tackle-fall was strung along, and all hands--cook, steward, and
all--laid hold, to cat the anchor, instead of the lively song of
"Cheerily, men!" in which all hands join in the chorus, we pulled a
long, heavy, silent pull, and--as sailors say a song is as good as ten
men--the anchor came to the cat-head pretty slowly. "Give us
'Cheerily!'" said the mate; but there was no "cheerily" for us, and we
did without it. The captain walked the quarterdeck, and said not a
word. He must have seen the change, but there was nothing which he
could notice officially.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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