CHAPTER XII

ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR

“Oh, give me the rover’s life--the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let

me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into the saddle once more.

I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and

reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs. Let

me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it,

sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that

no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed

up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he

sleeps in the sea.”

--HERMAN MELVILLE: _White-Jacket_.

In 1898, there appeared the _Memories of a Rear-Admiral Who Has Served

for More Than Half a Century in the Navy of the United States_. S.

R. Franklin, the author of this volume, had lived a long and useful

life, with no design during his years of activity, it would seem,

of bowing himself out of the world as a man-of-letters. But in the

leisure of elderly retirement, he was persuaded by his friends to

get rid of his reminiscences once for all by putting them into a

book. Rear-Admiral Franklin took an inventory of his rich life, and

accepted the challenge. Had he not roamed about the globe since he

was sixteen years of age? And he had known a dozen famous Admirals,

three Presidents, three Emperors, two Popes, five Christian Kings and

a properly corresponding number of Queens, not to mention a whole army

of lesser notables.

In 1842, as midshipman aboard the _United States_ frigate, Franklin

cruised the Pacific. The _United States_ stopped at Honolulu, touched

at the Marquesas. Franklin reports that the Bay of Nukuheva “makes one

of the most beautiful harbours I have ever seen.” But upon the natives

he bestowed the contempt of a civilised man: “for the Marquesans were

cannibals of the worst kind, and no one who desired to escape roasting

ever ventured away from the coast.” The _United States_ did not remain

long in these waters, “where there was nothing to do but look at a lot

of half-naked savages.” So off sailed the frigate to Tahiti, where a

queen came aboard. But Franklin cannot remember whether it was Pomare

or some other queen: “Ladies of that rank were not uncommon in those

days in the South Seas.”

Franklin had then been cruising among the islands of the Pacific for

some months, and he was “not sorry when the time came to get under way

for the coast.” Men of Franklin’s type are a credit to civilisation:

men proud of their heritage, but unobtrusive in their pride. Franklin

was unmoved by any sanctimonious hankering to improve the heathen, or

by any romantic anxiety to ease into the mud of barbarism. “Savage and

half-civilised life becomes very irksome,” he says, “when the novelty

is worn off.”

“At Tahiti,” he goes on to state, “we picked up some seamen who were

on the Consul’s hands. They were entered on the books of the ship, and

became a portion of the crew. One of the number was Herman Melville,

who became famous afterwards as a writer and an admiralty lawyer. He

had gone to sea for his health, and found himself stranded in the

South Pacific. I do not remember what the trouble was, but he and his

comrades had left the ship of which they were a portion of the crew.

Melville wrote a book, well known in its day, called _White-Jacket_,

which had more influence in abolishing corporal punishment in the Navy

than anything else. This book was placed on the desk of every member of

Congress, and was a most eloquent appeal to the humane sentiment of the

country. As an evidence of the good it did, a law was passed soon after

the book appeared abolishing flogging in the Navy absolutely, without

substituting any other mode of punishment in its stead; and this was

exactly in accord with Melville’s appeal.”

“I do not think that I remember Melville at all,” Franklin goes on to

say; “occasionally will flash across my memory a maintop-man flitting

across about the starboard gangway with a white jacket on, but there

is not much reality in the picture which it presents to my mind. In

his book he speaks of a certain seaman, Jack Chase, who was Captain

of the maintop, of whom I have a very distinct recollection. He was

about as fine a specimen of seaman as I have ever seen in all my

cruising. He was not only that, but he was a man of intelligence, and

a born leader. His top-mates adored him, although he kept them up to

the mark, and made every man do his share of work. Melville has given

him considerable space in his book, and seems to have had intense

admiration for him. He mentions also a number of officers whom it is

not difficult to recognise. The Commanding Officer, who had a very red

face, he called Captain Claret; a small but very energetic Midshipman,

who made himself felt and heard about the decks, he called Mr. Pert;

the Gunner was ‘Old Combustibles.’ He gives no names, but to any one

who served in the Frigate _United States_ it was easy to recognise

the men by their sobriquets. Melville certainly did a grand work in

bringing his ability as a writer and his experience as a seaman to bear

upon the important matter--I mean corporal punishment--which had been

the subject of so much discussion in and out of Congress.”

The essential accuracy of Melville’s account of life on board the

Frigate _United States_ is thus, in the above as in other passages,

vouched for by a Rear-Admiral. Franklin, himself, however, is not

exhaustively familiar with the life and works of Melville, making him

an “admiralty lawyer” who went to sea for his health. And according to

Franklin’s account, Melville shipped on board the _United States_ from

Tahiti. According to Melville’s own account, he left Eimeo--from the

harbour of Tamai--not on board a man-of-war, but on board an American

whaler bound for the fishing grounds off Japan.

The itinerary of Melville’s rovings in the Pacific after he left Tahiti

cannot be stated with any detailed precision. In an Appendix to the

American edition of _Typee_, Melville says: “During a residence of four

months at Honolulu, the author was in the confidence of an Englishman

who was much employed by his lordship”--Sir George Paulet. In both

_Typee_ and _Omoo_ he speaks of conditions in the Sandwich Islands with

the familiarity of first-hand observation. The Frigate _United States_

sailed from Hampton Roads early in January, 1842. It doubled the Horn

late in February, and joined the Pacific squadron at Valparaiso.

After spending the winter of 1842-3 off Monterey, the _United States_

returned to Callao in the spring, and sailed for Honolulu, arriving in

the early summer of 1843. According to his own account, Melville left

Tahiti in the autumn of 1842. The _United States_ left Tahiti in the

summer of 1843. Melville speaks of revisiting the Marquesas and Tahiti

after the experiences recorded in _Typee_ and _Omoo_. In _Typee_ he

says: “Between two and three years after the adventures recorded in

this volume, I chanced, while aboard a man-of-war, to touch at these

islands”--the Marquesas. Though in this statement Melville is patently

careless in his chronology, there is no reason to doubt his geography.

According to the hypothesis that offers fewest difficulties--and none

of these at all serious--it would appear that Melville left the Society

Islands in the autumn of 1842, on board a whaler bound for the coast

of Japan, to arrive in Honolulu some time in the early part of 1843,

where, according to Arthur Stedman, he was “employed as a clerk.” In

the Introductory Note to _White-Jacket_ he says: “In the year 1843 I

shipped as ‘ordinary seaman’ on board a United States frigate, then

lying in a harbour of the Pacific Ocean. After remaining in the frigate

for more than a year, I was discharged from the service upon the

vessel’s arrival home.” Melville was discharged in Boston, in October,

1844. It would appear that Melville shipped on board the _United

States_, from Honolulu, in the summer of 1843, touching again at the

Marquesas and at Tahiti, and returning home by way of the Peruvian

ports.

Of Melville’s experiences between the time of his leaving the Society

Islands and that of his homeward cruise as a sailor in the United

States Navy, nothing is known beyond the meagre details already stated.

In _White-Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War_ (1850) Melville has

left a fuller account, however, of his experiences on board the _United

States_. The opening of _White-Jacket_ finds Melville at Callao, on

the coast of Peru--the last harbour he touched in the Pacific. In

_Typee_ and _Omoo_ he had already recounted his adventures in the South

Seas, with all the crispness and lucidity of fresh discovery. While on

board the _United States_ he returned to old harbours, and sailed past

familiar islands. But _White-Jacket_ is not a _Yarrow Revisited_.

On the showing of _White-Jacket_, Melville’s life in the navy

was, perhaps, the happiest period in his life. It is true that in

_Typee_ he wrote: “I will frankly confess that after passing a few

weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of

human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since

then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up

wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous

theories.” And in _White-Jacket_ he has many a very dark word to say

for the navy. Sailors, as a class, do, of course, entertain liberal

notions concerning the Decalogue; but in this they resemble landsmen,

both Christian and cannibal. And in Melville’s day--as before and

after--from a frigate’s crew might be culled out men of all callings

and vocations, from a backslidden parson to a broken-down comedian. It

is an old saying that “the sea and the gallows refuse nothing.” But

withal, more than one good man has been hanged. “The Navy,” Melville

says, “is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate.

Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here

the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.” According to

this version, a typical man-of-war was a sort of State Prison afloat.

“Wrecked on a desert shore,” Melville says, “a man-of-war’s crew could

quickly found an Alexandria by themselves, and fill it with all the

things which go to make up a capital.” The _United States_, surely,

lacked in none of the contradictions that go to make up a metropolis:

“though boasting some fine fellows here and there, yet, on the whole,

charged to the combings of hatchways with the spirit of Belial and

unrighteousness.” Or it was like a Parisian lodging house, turned

upside down: the first floor, or deck, being rented by a lord; the

second by a select club of gentlemen; the third, by crowds of artisans;

and the fourth--on a man-of-war a basement of indefinite depth, with

ugly-looking fellows gazing out at the windows--by a whole rabble of

common people.

The good or bad temper, the vices and virtues of men-of-war’s men were

in a great degree attributable, Melville states, to their particular

stations and duties aboard ship. Melville congratulated himself upon

enjoying one of the most enviable posts aboard the frigate. It was

Melville’s office to loose the main-royal when all hands were called

to make sail: besides his special offices in tacking ship, coming to

anchor, and such like, he permanently belonged to the starboard watch,

one of the two primary grand divisions of the ship’s company. And in

this watch he was a main-top-man; that is, he was stationed in the

main-top, with a number of other seamen, always in readiness to execute

any orders pertaining to the main-mast, from above the main-yard. In

Melville’s time, the tops of a frigate were spacious and cosy. They

were railed in behind so as to form a kind of balcony, that looked

airily down upon the blue, boundless, dimpled, laughing, sunny sea,

and upon the landlopers below on the deck, sneaking about among the

guns. It was a place, too, to test one’s manhood in rough weather. From

twenty to thirty loungers could agreeably recline there, cushioning

themselves on old sails and jackets. In being a main-top-man,

Melville prided himself that he belonged to a fraternity of the most

liberal-hearted, lofty-minded, gay, elastic, and adventurous men on

board ship. “The reason for their liberal-heartedness was, that they

were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over the rigging.

The reason for their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted

above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of the decks

below.” And Melville attributed it to his having been a main-top-man,

and that in the loftiest yard of the frigate, the main-royal-yard,

“that I am now enabled to give such a free, broad, off-hand,

bird’s-eye, and more than all, impartial account of our man-of-war

world; withholding nothing; inventing nothing; nor flattering, nor

scandalising any; but meting out to all--commodore and messenger boy

alike--their precise descriptions and deserts.”

Melville says that the main-top-men, with amiable vanity, accounted

themselves the best seamen in the ship; brothers one and all, held

together by a strong feeling of _esprit de corps_. Their loyalty was

especially centred in their captain, Jack Chase--a prime favourite

and an oracle among the men. Upon Jack Chase’s instigation they

all wore their hats at a peculiar angle; he instructed them in the

tie of their neck handkerchiefs; he protested against their wearing

vulgar _dungaree_ trousers; he gave them lessons in seamanship. And he

solemnly conjured them, with unmitigated detestation, to eschew the

company of any sailor suspected of having served in a whaler. On board

the _United States_, Melville wisely held his peace “concerning stove

boats on the coast of Japan.”

Melville’s admiration for Jack Chase was perhaps the happiest

wholehearted surrender he ever gave to any human being. Jack Chase was

“a Briton and a true-blue; tall and well-knit, with a clear open eye,

a fine broad brow, and an abounding nut-brown beard. No man ever had

a better heart or a bolder. He was loved by the seamen and admired by

the officers; and even when the captain spoke to him, it was with a

slight air of respect. No man told such stories, sang such songs, or

with greater alacrity sprang to his duty. The main-top, over which

he presided, was a sort of oracle of Delphi; to which many pilgrims

ascended, to have their perplexities or difficulties settled.” Jack

was a gentleman. His manners were free and easy, but never boisterous;

“he had a polite, courteous way of saluting you, if it were only to

borrow a knife. He had read all the verses of Byron, all the romances

of Scott; he talked of Macbeth and Ulysses; but above all things was he

an ardent admirer of Camoen’s _Lusiad_, part of which he could recite

in the original.” He spoke a variety of tongues, and was master of an

incredible richness of Byronic adventure. “There was such an abounding

air of good sense and good feeling about the man that he who could not

love him, would thereby pronounce himself a knave. I thanked my sweet

stars that kind fortune had placed me near him, though under him,

in the frigate; and from the outset, Jack and I were fast friends.

Wherever you may be now rolling over the blue billows, dear Jack, take

my best love along with you,” Melville wrote; “and God bless you,

wherever you go.” And this sentiment Melville cherished throughout his

life. Almost the last thing Melville ever wrote was the dedication

of his last novel, _Billy Budd_--existing only in manuscript, and

completed three months before his death to “Jack Chase, Englishman,

wherever that great heart may now be, Here on earth or harboured in

Paradise, Captain in the war-ship in the year 1843, In the U. S.

Frigate _United States_.”

In _White-Jacket_, Melville glows with the same superlative admiration

for Jack Chase that Ouida, or the Duchess, exhibit in portraying

their most irresistible cavaliers; an enthusiasm similar to that of

Nietzsche’s for his Übermensch. So contagious is Melville’s love

for his ship-mate that strange infections seem to have been caught

therefrom. Though it is certainly not true that “all the world loves a

lover,” Melville’s affection for Jack Chase won him at least one rather

startling proof that Shakespeare’s dictum is not absolutely false. The

proof came in the following form:

“No 2, Guthuee Port, Arbrooth 13 May 1857

“_Herman Melville Esquire_

“Author of the white Jacket Mardi and others, Honour’d Sir Let it

not displease you to be addressed by a stranger to your person not

so to your merits, I have read the white jacket with much pleasure

and delight ‘I found it rich in wisdom and brilliant with beauty,

ships and the sea and those who plow it with their belongings on

shore--those subjects are idintified with Herman Melvil’s name for

he has most unquestioneably made them his own,, No writer not even

Marryat himself has observed them more closely or pictured them more

impressively, a delightful book it is. I long exceedingly to read

Mardi, but how or where to obtain it is the task? I have just now

received an invitation to cross the Atlantic from a Mr and Mrs Weed

Malta between Bolston springs and saratoga Countie, ,, as also from

Mr Alexer Muler my own Cousin, Rose bank Louistown

“I have for this many a day been wishing to see you ‘to hear you

speak to breath the same air in which you dwell’ Are you the picture

of him you so powerfully represent as the Master piece of all Gods

works Jack Chase?--

“write me dear sir and say where Omidi ’sto be gote, I do much admire

the American Authors Washington Irver Mrs Stowe Allan Edgar Po the

Late James Abbott and last though not least your good self--Did you

ever read the history of Jeffery Rudel he was a young Noble man of

Provence and reconed one of the handsomest and polite persons of his

age. he lived in the time of Richard the first sir named cour de Lion

who invited Jeffery to his court and it was there he first heard

of the beauty wit, learning and virtue of the Countess of Tripoly

by which he became so enamoured that he resolved upon seeing her

purchased a vesel and in opesition to the King and the luxury of a

Court set sail for Tripoly the obgect of his affections realised his

most sanguine expectations.

“were you to cross the atlantic you should receive a cordeial

reception from Mr George Gordon my-beloved & only brother & I’d

bid you welcome to old s’’t Thomas a Becket famed for kindness to

strangers.--

“permite me Dear Sir to subskribe myself your friend although unseen

and at a Distance

“ELIZA GORDON

“Heaven first sent letters,

For some wretches aid,

Some banished Lover

Or some Captive maid

“POPE.”

Besides the “Master piece of all Gods works Jack Chase” and his

comrades of the main-top, Melville was fortunate in finding a few

other ship-mates to admire. There was Lemsford, “a gentlemanly young

member of the after-guard,” a poet, to whose effusions Melville was

happy to listen. “At the most unseasonable hours you would behold

him, seated apart, in some corner among the guns--a shot-box before

him, pen in hand, and eyes ‘in a fine frenzy rolling.’ Some deemed

him a conjurer; others a lunatic. The knowing ones said that he must

be a crazy Methodist.” Another of Melville’s friends was Nord. Before

Melville knew him, he “saw in his eye that the man had been a reader

of good books; I would have staked my life on it, that he had seized

the right meaning of Montaigne.” With Nord, Melville “scoured all the

prairies of reading; dived into the bosoms of authors, and tore out

their hearts.” Melville’s friend Williams “was a thorough-going Yankee

from Maine, who had been both a pedlar and a pedagogue in his day. He

was honest, acute, witty, full of mirth and good humour--a laughing

philosopher.” Beyond these, Melville was chary of his friendship,

despite the personal intimacies imposed by the crowded conditions on

shipboard. For living on board a man-of-war is like living in a market,

where you dress on the doorsteps and sleep in the cellar.

Yet even on board the _United States_ Melville did find it possible to

get some solitude. “I am of a meditative humour,” he says, “and at sea

used often to mount aloft at night, and, seating myself on one of the

upper yards, tuck my jacket about me and give loose to reflection. In

some ships in which I have done this, the sailors used to fancy that

I must be studying astronomy--which, indeed, to some extent, was the

case. For to study the stars upon the wide, boundless ocean, is divine

as it was to the Chaldean Magi, who observed their revolutions from the

plain.”

Melville was not only fortunate in his friends on the top, and

above, but also in the mess to which he belonged: “a glorious set of

fellows--Mess No. 1!--numbering, among the rest, my noble Captain Jack

Chase. Out of a pardonable self-conceit they called themselves the

_Forty-two-pounder Club_; meaning that they were, one and all, fellows

of large intellectual and corporeal calibre.”

In _White-Jacket_, Melville’s purpose was to present the variegated

life aboard a man-of-war; to give a vivid sense of the complexity of

the typical daily existence aboard a floating armed city inhabited by

five hundred male human beings. And no one else has ever done this so

successfully as has Melville. “I let nothing slip, however small,” he

says; “and feel myself actuated by the same motive which has prompted

many worthy old chroniclers to set down the merest trifles concerning

things that are destined to pass entirely from the earth, and which,

if not preserved in the nick of time, must infallibly perish from the

memories of man. Who knows that this humble narrative may not hereafter

prove the history of an obsolete barbarism?” For _White-Jacket_ is,

certainly, written with no intent to glorify war. It is a book that

a militaristic country would do well to suppress. “Courage,” Melville

teaches therein, “is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.” Of a

celebrated and dauntless fighter he says: “a hero in this world;--but

what would they have called him in the next?” “As the whole matter of

war is a thing that smites common sense and Christianity in the face,”

he contends, “so everything connected with it is utterly foolish,

unchristian, barbarous, brutal, and savouring of the Feejee Islands,

cannibalism, saltpetre, and the devil.”

But Melville’s anti-militaristic convictions in no sense perverted his

astonishingly vital presentation of life on board the _United States_.

Though in contemplation he despised war, and was open-eyed to the

abuses and iniquity on all sides of him on board the frigate; in actual

fact he seems to have been unusually happy as a sailor in the navy,

among his comrades of the top. The predominant mood of the book is the

rollicking good-humour of high animal spirits.

There were black moments in his pleasant routine, however: the terrible

nipping cold, and blasting gales, and hurricanes of sleet and hail

in which he furled the main-sail in rounding Cape Horn; the flogging

he witnessed; his watches at the cot of his mess-mate Shenley in the

subterranean sick-bay, and Shenley’s death and burial at sea; the

barbarous amputation he witnessed, and the death of the sick man at

the hands of the ship’s surgeon--a scene that Flaubert might well have

been proud to have written. And there were ugly experiences during the

cruise that were among the most lurid in his life.

Throughout the cruise, it seems, for upward of a year he had been an

efficient sailor, alert in duties, circumspect in his pleasures, liked

and respected by his comrades. The ship homeward bound, and he within

a few weeks of being a freeman, he heard the boatswain’s mate bawling

his name at all the hatchways and along the furtherest recesses of the

ship: the Captain wanted him at the mast. Melville’s heart jumped to

his throat at the summons, as he hurriedly asked Fluke, the boatswain’s

mate at the fore-hatchway, what was wanted of him.

“Captain wants you at the mast,” Fluke replied. “Going to flog ye, I

guess.”

“For what?”

“My eyes! you’ve been chalking your face, hain’t ye?”

Swallowing down his heart, he saw, as he passed through the gangway

to the dread tribunal of the frigate, the quartermaster rigging

the gratings; the boatswain with his green bag of scourges; the

master-at-arms ready to help off some one’s shirt. On the charge of a

Lieutenant, Melville was accused by the Captain of failure in his duty

at his station in the starboard main-lift: a post to which Melville had

never known he was assigned. His solemn disclaimer was thrown in his

teeth, and for a thing utterly unforeseen, and for a crime of which he

was utterly innocent, he was about to be flogged.

“There are times when wild thoughts enter a man’s breast, when he seems

almost irresponsible for his act and his deed,” writes the grandson of

General Peter Gansevoort. “The Captain stood on the weather-side of the

deck. Sideways, on an unobstructed line with him, was the opening of

the lee-gangway, where the side-ladders are suspended in port. Nothing

but a slight bit of sinnate-stuff served to rail in this opening,

which was cut right to the level of the Captain’s feet, showing the

far sea beyond. I stood a little to windward of him, and, though he

was a large, powerful man, it was certain that a sudden rush against

him, along the slanting deck, would infallibly pitch him headforemost

into the ocean, though he who so rushed must needs go over with him.

My blood seemed clotting in my veins; I felt icy cold at the tips of

my fingers, and a dimness was before my eyes. But through that dimness

the boatswain’s mate, scourge in hand, loomed like a giant, and Captain

Claret, and the blue sea seen through the opening at the gangway,

showed with an awful vividness. I cannot analyse my heart, though it

then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose

was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade

me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I

felt my man’s manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow,

no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I

but swung to an instinct within me--the instinct diffused through all

animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the

heel. The privilege, inborn and inalienable, that every man has of

dying himself, and inflicting death upon another, was not given to us

without a purpose.”

Captain Claret ordered Melville to the grating. The ghost of Peter

Gansevoort, awakening in Melville, measured the distance between

Captain Claret and the sea.

“Captain Claret,” said a voice advancing from the crowd. Melville

turned to see who this might be that audaciously interrupted at a

juncture like this. It was a corporal of marines, who speaking in a

mild, firm, but extremely deferential manner, said: “I know that man,

and I know that he would not be found absent from his station if he

knew where it was.” This almost unprecedented speech inspired Jack

Chase also to intercede in Melville’s behalf. But for these timely

intercessions, it is very likely that Melville would have ended that

day as a suicide and a murderer. There is no lack of evidence, both in

his writings and in the personal recollections of him that survive,

that the headlong violence of his passion, when deeply stirred, balked

at no extremity. And that day as the scourge hung over him for an

offence he had not committed, he seems to have been as murderously

roused as at any other known moment in his life. Though hating war, he

boasted “the inalienable right to kill”: and the ghost of Mow-Mow, at

the day of final reckoning, can attest that this boast was not lightly

given. Like the whaling Quakers that he so much admired, he was “a

pacifist with a vengeance.”

This scene happened during the run of the _United States_ from Rio

to the Line. At Rio, Melville had gone ashore with Jack Chase and

a few other discreet and gentlemanly top-men. But of the dashing

adventures--if any--that they had on land, Melville is silent: “my

man-of-war alone must supply me with the staple of my matter,” he

says; “I have taken an oath to keep afloat to the last letter of my

narrative.”

In so far as fine weather and the ship’s sailing were concerned, the

whole run from Rio to the Line was one delightful yachting. Especially

pleasant to Melville during this run were his quarter watches in

the main-top. Removed from the immediate presence of the officers,

he and his companions could there enjoy themselves more than in any

other part of the ship. By day, many of them were industrious making

hats or mending clothes. But by night they became more romantically

inclined. Seen from this lofty perch, of moonlight nights, the frigate

must have been a glorious sight. “She was going large before the

wind, her stun’-sails set on both sides, so that the canvases on the

main-mast and fore-mast presented the appearance of two majestic,

tapering pyramids, more than a hundred feet broad at the base, and

terminating in the clouds with the light cope-stone of the royals. That

immense area of snow-white canvas sliding along the sea was indeed

a magnificent spectacle. The three shrouded masts looked like the

apparition of three gigantic Turkish Emirs striding over the ocean.”

From there, too, the band, playing on the poop, would tempt them to

dance; Jack Chase would well up into song during silent intervals:

songs varied by sundry yarns and twisters of the top-men.

One pleasant midnight, after the _United States_ had crossed the

Line and was running on bravely somewhere off the coast of Virginia,

the breeze gradually died, and an order was given to set the

main-top-gallant-stun’-sail. The halyards not being rove, Jack Chase

assigned to Melville that eminently difficult task. That this was a

business demanding unusual sharp-sightedness, skill, and celerity is

evident when it is remembered that the end of a line, some two hundred

feet long, was to be carried aloft in one’s teeth and dragged far out

on the giddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about

through all sorts of intricacies, was to be dropped, clear of all

obstructions, in a straight plumb-line right down to the deck.

“Having reeved the line through all the inferior blocks,” Melville

says, “I went out to the end of the weather-top-gallant-yard-arm, and

was in the act of leaning over and passing it through the suspended

jewel-block there, when the ship gave a plunge in the sudden swells

of the calm sea, and pitching me still further over the yard, threw

the heavy skirts of my jacket right over my head, completely muffling

me. Somehow I thought it was the sail that had flapped, and under that

impulse threw up my hands to drag it from my head, relying upon the

sail itself to support me meanwhile. Just then the ship gave another

jerk, and head foremost I pitched over the yard. I knew where I was,

from the rush of air by my ears, but all else was a nightmare. A bloody

film was before my eyes, through which, ghost-like, passed and repassed

my father, mother, and sisters. An unutterable nausea oppressed me; I

was conscious of groping; there seemed no breath in my body. It was

over one hundred feet that I fell--down, down, with lungs collapsed as

in death. Ten thousand pounds of shot seemed tied to my head, as the

irresistible law of gravitation dragged me, head foremost and straight

as a die, towards the infallible centre of the terrequeous globe. All

I had seen, and read, and heard, and all that I had thought and felt

in my life--seemed intensified in one fixed idea in my soul. But dense

as this idea was, it was made up of atoms. Having fallen from the

projecting yard-arm end, I was conscious of a collected satisfaction in

feeling, that I should not be dashed on the deck, but would sink into

the speechless profound of the sea.

“With the bloody, blind film before my eyes, there was a still stranger

hum in my head, as if a hornet were there; and I thought to myself,

Great God! this is Death! Yet these thoughts were unmixed with alarm.

Like frost-work that flashes and shifts its scared hues in the sun, all

my braided, blended emotions were in themselves icy cold and calm.

“So protracted did my fall seem, that I can even now recall the feeling

of wondering how much longer it would be, ere all was over and I

struck. Time seemed to stand still, and all the worlds seemed poised on

their poles, as I fell, soul-becalmed, through the eddying whirl and

swirl of the Maelstrom air.

“At first, as I have said, I must have been precipitated head foremost;

but I was conscious, at length, of a swift, flinging motion of my

limbs, which involuntarily threw themselves out, so that at last I must

have fallen in a heap. This is more likely, from the circumstance that

when I struck the sea, I felt as if some one had smote me slantingly

across the shoulder and along part of my right side.

“As I gushed into the sea, a thunder-boom sounded in my ear; my soul

seemed flying from my mouth. The feeling of death flooded over me

with the billows. The blow from the sea must have turned me, so that

I sank almost feet foremost through a soft, seething, foamy lull.

Some current seemed hurrying me away; in a trance I yielded, and sank

deeper and deeper into the glide. Purple and pathless was the deep

calm now around me, flecked by summer lightnings in an azure afar. The

horrible nausea was gone; the bloody, blind film turned a pale green; I

wondered whether I was yet dead, or still dying. But of a sudden some

fashionless form brushed my side--some inert, coiled fish of the sea;

the thrill of being alive again tingled in my nerves, and the strong

shunning of death shocked me through.

“For one instant an agonising revulsion came over me as I found myself

utterly sinking. Next moment the force of my fall was expended; and

there I hung, vibrating in the mid-deep. What wild sounds then rang

in my ear! One was a soft moaning, as of low waves on the beach; the

other wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a

tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands

upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Ægean waves.

The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly

ascending, and caught a dim glimmering of light. Quicker and quicker I

mounted; till at last I bounded up like a buoy, and my whole head was

bathed in the blessed air.”

With his knife, Melville ripped off his jacket, struck out boldly

towards the elevated pole of one of the life-buoys which had been cut

away, and was soon after picked up by one of the cutters from the

frigate.

“Ten minutes after, I was safe on board, and, springing aloft, was

ordered to reeve anew the stun’-sail-halyards, which, slipping through

the blocks when I had let go the end, had unrove and fallen to the

deck.” Amphitrite had, indeed, interceded with Neptune, and the

sea-gods strove to answer Melville’s prayer. But Melville always, even

in the lowest abyss of despair, clung passionately to life. And the

night he was hurled from the mast he was hurled from among friends, and

into waters that washed the neighbouring shores of his birth.

Melville’s long wanderings were nearly at an end. With the home port

believed to be broad on their bow, under the stars and a meagre moon in

her last quarter, the main-top-men gathered aloft in the top, and round

the mast they circled, “hand in hand, all spliced together. We had

reefed the last top-sail; trained the last gun; blown the last match;

bowed to the last blast; been tranced in the last calm. We had mustered

our last round the capstan; been rolled to grog the last time; for the

last time swung in our hammocks; for the last time turned out at the

sea-gull call of the watch. We had seen our last man scourged at the

gangway; our last man gasp out the ghost in the stifling sick-bay; our

last man tossed to the sharks.”

And there Melville has left this brother band--with the anchor still

hanging from the bow--with the land still out of sight. “I love an

indefinite infinite background,” he says,--“a vast, heaving, rolling,

mysterious rear!”