Two Years Before the Mast

a saying which sailors very often have occasion to use. An escape is always a joke on board ship. A man would be ridiculed who should make a serious matter of it. A sailor knows too well that his life hangs upon a thread, to wish to be always reminded of it; so, if a man has an escape, he keeps it to himself, or makes a joke of it. I have often known a man’s life to be saved by an instant of time, or by the merest chance⁠—the swinging of a rope⁠—and no notice taken of it. One of our boys, when off Cape Horn, reefing topsails of a dark night, and when there were no boats to be lowered away, and where, if a man fell overboard he must be left behind⁠—lost his hold of the reef point, slipped from the footrope, and would have been in the water in a moment, when the man who was next to him on the yard caught him by the collar of his jacket, and hauled him up upon the yard, with⁠—“Hold on, another time, you young monkey, and be d⁠⸺⁠d to you!”⁠—and that was all that was heard about it.

Sunday, August 7th. Lat. 25° 59′ S., long. 27° 0′ W Spoke the English bark Mary-Catherine, from Bahia, bound to Calcutta. This was the first sail we had fallen in with, and the first time we had seen a human form or heard the human voice, except of our own number, for nearly a hundred days. The very yo-ho-ing of the sailors at the ropes sounded sociably upon the ear. She was an old, damaged-looking craft, with a high poop and topgallant forecastle, and sawed off square, stem and stern, like a true English “tea wagon,” and with a run like a sugar box. She had studding sails out alow and aloft, with a light but steady breeze, and her captain said he could not get more than four knots out of her and thought he should have a long passage. We were going six on an easy bowline.

The next day, about three p.m., passed a large corvette-built ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore and aft, under English colors. She was standing south-by-east, probably bound round Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black mastheads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a T, and other marks of a man-of-war. She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance; the proud, aristocratic-looking banner of St. George, the cross in a blood-red field, waving from the mizen. We probably were as fine a sight, with our studding sails spread far out beyond the ship on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding sails and skysails, burying the hull in canvas, and looking like what the whalemen on the Banks, under their stump topgallant masts, call “a Cape Horner under a cloud of sail.”

Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad, situated in lat. 20° 28′ S., long. 29° 08′ W. At twelve p.m., it bore N. W. ½ N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades, and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from a field of glass.

Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical seas.

Thursday, August 18th. At three p.m., made the island of Fernando Naronha, lying in lat. 3° 55′ S., long. 32° 35′ W.; and between twelve o’clock Friday night and one o’clock Saturday morning, crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston, in long. 35° W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten Land⁠—a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than four thousand miles.

We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to our latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of South latitude, were sunk in the horizon, and the north star, the Great Bear,266 and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in the heavens.

Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens, under which he was born, shining at night over his head. The weather was extremely hot, with the usual tropical alternations of a scorching sun and squalls of rain; yet not a word was said in complaint of the heat, for we all remembered that only three or four weeks before we would have given nearly our all to have been where we now were. We had plenty of water, too, which we caught by spreading an awning, with shot thrown in to make hollows. These rain squalls came up in the manner usual between the tropics.⁠—A clear sky; burning, vertical sun; work going lazily on, and men about decks with nothing but duck trousers, checked shirts, and straw hats; the ship moving as lazily through the water; the man at the helm resting against the wheel, with his hat drawn over his eyes; the captain below, taking an afternoon nap; the passenger leaning over the taffrail, watching a dolphin following slowly in our wake; the sailmaker mending an old topsail on the lee side of the quarterdeck; the carpenter working at his bench, in the waist; the boys making sinnet; the spun yarn winch whizzing round and round, and the men walking slowly fore and aft with their yarns.⁠—A cloud rises to windward, looking a little black; the skysails are brailed down; the captain puts his head out of the companionway, looks at the cloud, comes up, and begins to walk the deck.⁠—The cloud spreads and comes on;⁠—the tub of yarns, the sail, and other matters, are thrown below, and the skylight and booby-hatch put on, and the slide drawn over the forecastle.⁠—“Stand by the