The Story of a Bad Boy

I do not remember much about the voyage to Boston, for after the first few hours at sea I was dreadfully unwell.

The name of our ship was the “A No. 1, fast-sailing packet Typhoon.”  I learned afterwards that she sailed fast only in the newspaper advertisements.  My father owned one quarter of the Typhoon, and that is why we happened to go in her.  I tried to guess which quarter of the ship he owned, and finally concluded it must be the hind quarter—­the cabin, in which we had the cosiest of state-rooms, with one round window in the roof, and two shelves or boxes nailed up against the wall to sleep in.

There was a good deal of confusion on deck while we were getting under way.  The captain shouted orders (to which nobody seemed to pay any attention) through a battered tin trumpet, and grew so red in the face that he reminded me of a scooped-out pumpkin with a lighted candle inside.  He swore right and left at the sailors without the slightest regard for their feelings.  They didn’t mind it a bit, however, but went on singing—­

     “Heave ho! 
     With the rum below,
     And hurrah for the Spanish Main O!”

I will not be positive about “the Spanish Main,” but it was hurrah for something O. I considered them very jolly fellows, and so indeed they were.  One weather-beaten tar in particular struck my fancy—­a thick-set, jovial man, about fifty years of age, with twinkling blue eyes and a fringe of gray hair circling his head like a crown.  As he took off his tarpaulin I observed that the top of his head was quite smooth and flat, as if somebody had sat down on him when he was very young.

There was something noticeably hearty in this man’s bronzed face, a heartiness that seemed to extend to his loosely knotted neckerchief.  But what completely won my good-will was a picture of enviable loveliness painted on his left arm.  It was the head of a woman with the body of a fish.  Her flowing hair was of livid green, and she held a pink comb in one hand.  I never saw anything so beautiful.  I determined to know that man.  I think I would have given my brass pistol to have had such a picture painted on my arm.

While I stood admiring this work of art, a fat wheezy steamtug, with the word AJAX in staring black letters on the paddlebox, came puffing up alongside the Typhoon.  It was ridiculously small and conceited, compared with our stately ship.  I speculated as to what it was going to do.  In a few minutes we were lashed to the little monster, which gave a snort and a shriek, and commenced backing us out from the levee (wharf) with the greatest ease.

I once saw an ant running away with a piece of cheese eight or ten times larger than itself.  I could not help thinking of it, when I found the chubby, smoky-nosed tug-boat towing the Typhoon out into the Mississippi River.

In the middle of the stream we swung round, the current caught us, and away we flew like a great winged bird.  Only it didn’t seem as if we were moving.  The shore, with the countless steamboats, the tangled rigging of the ships, and the long lines of warehouses, appeared to be gliding away from us.

It was grand sport to stand on the quarter-deck and watch all this.  Before long there was nothing to be seen on other side but stretches of low swampy land, covered with stunted cypress trees, from which drooped delicate streamers of Spanish moss—­a fine place for alligators and Congo snakes.  Here and there we passed a yellow sand-bar, and here and there a snag lifted its nose out of the water like a shark.

“This is your last chance to see the city, To see the city, Tom,” said my father, as we swept round a bend of the river.

I turned and looked.  New Orleans was just a colorless mass of something in the distance, and the dome of the St. Charles Hotel, upon which the sun shimmered for a moment, was no bigger than the top of old Aunt Chloe’s thimble.

What do I remember next?  The gray sky and the fretful blue waters of the Gulf.  The steam-tug had long since let slip her hawsers and gone panting away with a derisive scream, as much as to say, “I’ve done my duty, now look out for yourself, old Typhoon!”

The ship seemed quite proud of being left to take care of itself, and, with its huge white sails bulged out, strutted off like a vain turkey.  I had been standing by my father near the wheel-house all this while, observing things with that nicety of perception which belongs only to children; but now the dew began falling, and we went below to have supper.

The fresh fruit and milk, and the slices of cold chicken, looked very nice; yet somehow I had no appetite There was a general smell of tar about everything.  Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork to his mouth or into his eye.  The tumblers and wineglasses, stuck in a rack over the table, kept clinking and clinking; and the cabin lamp, suspended by four gilt chains from the ceiling, swayed to and fro crazily.  Now the floor seemed to rise, and now it seemed to sink under one’s feet like a feather-bed.

There were not more than a dozen passengers on board, including ourselves; and all of these, excepting a bald-headed old gentleman—­a retired sea-captain—­disappeared into their staterooms at an early hour of the evening.

After supper was cleared away, my father and the elderly gentleman, whose name was Captain Truck, played at checkers; and I amused myself for a while by watching the trouble they had in keeping the men in the proper places.  Just at the most exciting point of the game, the ship would careen, and down would go the white checkers pell-mell among the black.  Then my father laughed, but Captain Truck would grow very angry, and vow that he would have won the game in a move or two more, if the confounded old chicken-coop—­that’s what he called the ship—­hadn’t lurched.

“I—­I think I will go to bed now, please,” I said, laying my band on my father’s knee, and feeling exceedingly queer.

It was high time, for the Typhoon was plunging about in the most alarming fashion.  I was speedily tucked away in the upper berth, where I felt a trifle more easy at first.  My clothes were placed on a narrow shelf at my feet, and it was a great comfort to me to know that my pistol was so handy, for I made no doubt we should fall in with Pirates before many hours.  This is the last thing I remember with any distinctness.  At midnight, as I was afterwards told, we were struck by a gale which never left us until we came in sight of the Massachusetts coast.

For days and days I had no sensible idea of what was going on around me.  That we were being hurled somewhere upside-down, and that I didn’t like it, was about all I knew.  I have, indeed, a vague impression that my father used to climb up to the berth and call me his “Ancient Mariner,” bidding me cheer up.  But the Ancient Mariner was far from cheering up, if I recollect rightly; and I don’t believe that venerable navigator would have cared much if it had been announced to him, through a speaking-trumpet, that “a low, black, suspicious craft, with raking masts, was rapidly bearing down upon us!”

In fact, one morning, I thought that such was the case, for bang! went the big cannon I had noticed in the bow of the ship when we came on board, and which had suggested to me the idea of Pirates.  Bang! went the gun again in a few seconds.  I made a feeble effort to get at my trousers-pocket!  But the Typhoon was only saluting Cape Cod—­the first land sighted by vessels approaching the coast from a southerly direction.

The vessel had ceased to roll, and my sea-sickness passed away as rapidly as it came.  I was all right now, “only a little shaky in my timbers and a little blue about the gills,” as Captain Truck remarked to my mother, who, like myself, had been confined to the state-room during the passage.

At Cape Cod the wind parted company with us without saying as much as “Excuse me”; so we were nearly two days in making the run which in favorable weather is usually accomplished in seven hours.  That’s what the pilot said.

I was able to go about the ship now, and I lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of the sailor with the green-haired lady on his arm.  I found him in the forecastle—­a sort of cellar in the front part of the vessel.  He was an agreeable sailor, as I had expected, and we became the best of friends in five minutes.

He had been all over the world two or three times, and knew no end of stories.  According to his own account, he must have been shipwrecked at least twice a year ever since his birth.  He had served under Decatur when that gallant officer peppered the Algerines and made them promise not to sell their prisoners of war into slavery; he had worked a gun at the bombardment of Vera Cruz in the Mexican War, and he had been on Alexander Selkirk’s Island more than once.  There were very few things he hadn’t done in a seafaring way.

“I suppose, sir,” I remarked, “that your name isn’t Typhoon?”

“Why, Lord love ye, lad, my name’s Benjamin Watson, of Nantucket.  But I’m a true blue Typhooner,” he added, which increased my respect for him; I don’t know why, and I didn’t know then whether Typhoon was the name of a vegetable or a profession.

Not wishing to be outdone in frankness, I disclosed to him that my name was Tom Bailey, upon which he said he was very glad to hear it.

When we got more intimate, I discovered that Sailor Ben, as he wished me to call him, was a perfect walking picturebook.  He had two anchors, a star, and a frigate in full sail on his right arm; a pair of lovely blue hands clasped on his breast, and I’ve no doubt that other parts of his body were illustrated in the same agreeable manner.  I imagine he was fond of drawings, and took this means of gratifying his artistic taste.  It was certainly very ingenious and convenient.  A portfolio might be misplaced, or dropped overboard; but Sailor Ben had his pictures wherever he went, just as that eminent person in the poem,

“With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes”—­was accompanied by music on all occasions.

The two bands on his breast, he informed me, were a tribute to the memory of a dead messmate from whom he had parted years ago—­and surely a more touching tribute was never engraved on a tombstone.  This caused me to think of my parting with old Aunt Chloe, and I told him I should take it as a great favor indeed if he would paint a pink hand and a black hand on my chest.  He said the colors were pricked into the skin with needles, and that the operation was somewhat painful.  I assured him, in an off-hand manner, that I didn’t mind pain, and begged him to set to work at once.

The simple-hearted fellow, who was probably not a little vain of his skill, took me into the forecastle, and was on the point of complying with my request, when my father happened to own the gangway—­a circumstance that rather interfered with the decorative art.

I didn’t have another opportunity of conferring alone with Sailor Ben, for the next morning, bright and early, we came in sight of the cupola of the Boston State House.