- end_line
- 2047
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1991
- text
- CHAPTER X.
HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
MISERABLE AND FORLORN
While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of
the sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into
his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent
place, and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so,
in a fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn
and almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world,
and the sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been
mine, had I been safe back at Mr. Jones’, or still better, in my home
on the Hudson River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at
the folly which had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best
friends, that is to say, my mother and sisters.
Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it
worse, was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened.
And they took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I
had entered upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea,
and they were used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the
suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as
frightened as I did; and besides that, and what makes their being
frightened still plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any
presence of mind, they could have prevented his plunging overboard,
since he brushed right by them. However, they lay in their bunks
smoking, and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising me
as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as not to hold the
wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and
never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running
brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest
puddle of rainwater.
- title
- Chunk 1