- end_line
- 181
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.149Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 108
- text
- CHAPTER I.
MY RECEPTION ABOARD
It was the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our
escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail
aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke
the broad expanse of the ocean.
On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft,
her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly
white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four
boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning
carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking
fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks
of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich
berry-brown of a seaman’s complexion in the tropics.
On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a
broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we
advanced.
When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and
everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say
nothing of the savage boat’s crew, panting with excitement, all gesture
and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity.
A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and
beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent
adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides
with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly
were they put.
As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the
sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were
familiar. One was that of an old man-of-war’s-man, whose acquaintance I
had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I
sailed from home. The other was a young man whom, four years previous,
I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I
remembered parting with him at Prince’s Dock Gates, in the midst of a
swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like.
And here we were again:—years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had
been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which
almost made me doubt my own existence.
But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the
captain.
He was quite a young man, pale and slender, more like a sickly
counting-house clerk than a bluff sea-captain. Bidding me be seated, he
ordered the steward to hand me a glass of Pisco. In the state I was,
this stimulus almost made me delirious; so that of all I then went on
to relate concerning my residence on the island I can scarcely remember
a word. After this I was asked whether I desired to “ship”; of course I
said yes; that is, if he would allow me to enter for one cruise,
engaging to discharge me, if I so desired, at the next port. In this
way men are frequently shipped on board whalemen in the South Seas. My
stipulation was acceded to, and the ship’s articles handed me to sign.
The mate was now called below, and charged to make a “well man” of me;
not, let it be borne in mind, that the captain felt any great
compassion for me, he only desired to have the benefit of my services
as soon as possible.
Helping me on deck, the mate stretched me out on the windlass and
commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with
something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old
sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on the
windlass, I might have been taken for a sailor with the gout. While
this was going on, someone removing my tappa cloak slipped on a blue
frock in its place, and another, actuated by the same desire to make a
civilized mortal of me, flourished about my head a great pair lie
imminent jeopardy of both ears, and the certain destruction of hair and
beard.
- title
- Chunk 1