Part 19

Although glad to escape from Nukuheva, where he had been held in a sort of honourable captivity, Typee--the _alias_ bestowed upon the rover by his new shipmates, after the valley whence they rescued him--was but indifferently pleased with the vessel on which he left it, and whose articles he signed as a seaman for one cruise. The Julia was of a beautiful model, and on or before a wind she sailed like a witch; but that was all that could be said in her praise. She was rotten to the core, incommodious, and ill-provided, badly manned, and worse commanded. American-built, she dated from the Short war, had served as a privateer, been taken by the British, passed through many vicissitudes, and was in no condition for a long cruise in the Pacific. So mouldering was her fabric, that the reckless sailors, when seated in the forecastle, dug their knives into the dank boards between them and eternity as easily as into the moist sides of some old pollard oak. She was much dilapidated and rapidly becoming more so; for Black Baltimore, the ship's cook, when in want of firewood, did not scruple to hack splinters from the bits and beams. Lugubrious indeed was the aspect of the forecastle. Landsmen, whose ideas of a sailor's sleeping-place are taken from the snow-white hammocks and exquisitely clean berth-deck of a man of war, or from the rough, but substantial comfort of a well-appointed merchantman, can form no conception of the surpassing and countless abominations of a South-Sea whaler. The "Little Jule," as her crew affectionately styled her, was a craft of two hundred tons or thereabouts; she had sailed with thirty-two hands, whom desertion had reduced to twenty, but these were too many for the cramped and putrid nook in which they slept, ate, and smoked, and alternately desponded or were jovial, as sickness and discomfort, or a Saturday night's bottle and hopes of better luck, got the upper hand. Want of room, however, was one of the least grievances of which the Julia's crew complained. It was a mere trifle, not worth the naming. They could have submitted to close stowage had the dunnage been decent. But instead of swinging in cosy hammocks, they slept in _bunks_ or wretched pigeon-holes, on fragments of sails, unclean rags, blanket-shreds, and the like. Such unenviable accommodations ought hardly to have been disputed with their luckless possessors, who nevertheless were not allowed to occupy in peace their broken-down bunks and scanty bedding. Two races of creatures, time out of mind the curse of old ships in warm latitudes, infested the Julia's forecastle, resisting all efforts to dislodge or exterminate them, sometimes even getting the upper hand, dispossessing the tortured mariners, and driving them on deck in terror and despair. The sick only, hapless martyrs unable to leave their cribs, lay passive, if not resigned, and were trampled under foot by their ferocious and unfragrant foes. These were rats and cockroaches. Typee--we use the name he bore during his Julian tribulations--records a singular phenomenon in the nocturnal habits of the last-named vermin. "Every night they had a jubilee. The first symptom was an unusual clustering and humming amongst the swarms lining the beams overhead, and the inside of the sleeping-places. This was succeeded by a prodigious coming and going on the part of those living out of sight. Presently they all came forth; the larger sort racing over the chests and planks; winged monsters darting to and fro in the air; and the small fry buzzing in heaps almost in a state of fusion. On the first alarm, all who were able darted on deck; while some of the sick, who were too feeble, lay perfectly quiet, the distracted vermin running over them at pleasure. The performance lasted some ten minutes." Persons there are, weak enough to view with loathing and aversion certain sable insects that stray at night in kitchen or in pantry, and barbarous enough to circumvent and destroy the odoriferous coleopterae by artful devices of glass traps and scarlet wafers. Such persons will probably form their ideas of Typee's cockroaches from their own domestic opportunities of observation. That were unjust to the crew of the Julia, and would give no adequate idea of their sufferings. As a purring tabby to a roaring jaguar, so is a British black-beetle to a cock-roach of the Southern Seas. We back our assertion by a quotation from our lamented friend Captain Cringle, who in his especially graphic and attractive style thus hits off the peculiarities of this graceful insect. "When full grown," saith Thomas, "it is a large dingy brown-coloured beetle, about two inches long, with six legs, and two feelers as long as its body. It has a strong anti-hysterical flavour, something between rotten cheese and asafoetida, and seldom stirs abroad when the sun is up, but lies concealed in the most obscure and obscene crevices it can creep into; so that, when it is seen, its wings and body are thickly covered with dust and dirt of various shades, which any culprit who chances to fall asleep with his mouth open, is sure to reap the benefit of, as it has a great propensity to walk into it, partly for the sake of the crumbs adhering to the masticators, and also, apparently, with a scientific desire to inspect, by accurate admeasurement with the aforesaid antennae, the state and condition of the whole potato-trap." A description worthy of Buffon. Such were the delicate monsters, the savoury sexipedes, with whom Typee and his comrades had to wage incessant war. They were worse even than the rats, which were certainly bad enough. "Tame as Trenck's mouse, they stood in their holes, peering at you like old grandfathers in a doorway;" watching for their prey, and disputing with the sailors the weevil-biscuit, rancid pork, and horse-beef, composing the Julia's stores; or smothering themselves, the luscious vermin, in molasses, which thereby acquired a rich wood-cock flavour, whose cause became manifest when the treacle-jar ran low, greatly to the disgust and consternation of the biped consumers. There were no delicate feeders on board, but this saccharine essence of rat was too much even for the unscrupulous stomachs of South-Sea whalers. A queer set they were on board that Sydney barque. Paper Jack, the captain, was a feeble Cockney, of meek spirit and puny frame, who glided about the vessel in a nankeen jacket and canvass pumps, a laughing-stock to his crew. The real command devolved upon the chief mate, John Jermin--a good sailor and brave fellow, but violent, and given to drink. The junior mate had deserted; of the four harpooners only one was left, a fierce barbarian of a New Zealander--an excellent mariner, whose stock of English was limited to nautical phrases and a frightful power of oath, but who, in spite of his cannibal origin, ranked as a sort of officer, in virtue of his harpoon, and took command of the ship when mate and captain were absent. What a capital story, by the bye, Typee tells us of one of this Bembo's whaling exploits! New Zealanders are brave and bloodthirsty, and excellent harpooners, and they act up to the South-Seaman's war-cry, "A dead whale or a stove boat!" There is a world of wild romance and thrilling adventure in the occasional glimpses of the whale fishery afforded us in Omoo; a strange picturesqueness and piratical mystery about the lawless class of seamen engaged in it. Such a portrait gallery as Typee makes out of the Julia's crew, beginning with Chips and Bungs, the carpenter and cooper, the "Cods," or leaders of the forecastle, and descending until he arrives at poor Rope Yarn, or Ropey, as he was called, a stunted journeyman baker from Holborn, the most helpless and forlorn of all land-lubbers, the butt and drudge of the ship's company! A Dane, a Portuguese, a Finlander, a savage from Hivarhoo, sundry English, Irish, and Americans, a daring Yankee _beach-comber_, called Salem, and Sydney Ben, a runaway ticket-of-leave-man, made up a crew much too weak to do any good in the whaling way. But the best fellow on board, and by far the most remarkable, was a disciple of Esculapius, known as Doctor Long-Ghost. Jermin is a good portrait; so is Captain Guy; but Long-Ghost is a jewel of a boy, a complete original, hit off with uncommon felicity. Nothing is told us of his early life. Typee takes him up on board the Julia, shakes hands with him in the last page of the book, and informs us that he has never since seen or heard of him. So we become acquainted with but a small section of the doctor's life; his subsequent adventures are unknown, and, save a chance hint or two, his previous career is a mystery, unfathomable as the Tahitian coast, where, within a biscuit's toss of the coral shore, soundings there are none. Now and then he would obscurely refer to days more palmy and prosperous than those spent on board the Julia. But however great the contrast between his former fortunes and his then lowly position, he exhibited much calm philosophy and cheerful resignation. He was even merry and facetious, a practical wag of the very first order, and as such a great favourite with the whole ship's company, the captain excepted. He had arrived at Sydney in an emigrant ship, had expended his resources, and entered as doctor on board the Julia. All British whalers are bound to carry a medico, who is treated as a gentleman, so long as he behaves as such, and has nothing to do but to drug the men and play drafts with the captain. At first Long-Ghost and Captain Guy hit it off very well; until, in an unlucky hour, a dispute about politics destroyed their harmonious association. The captain got a thrashing; the mutinous doctor was put in confinement and on bread and water, ran away from the ship, was pursued, captured, and again imprisoned. Released at last, he resigned his office, refused to do duty, and went forward amongst the men. This was more magnanimous than wise. Long-Ghost was a sort of medical Tom Coffin, a raw-boned giant, upwards of two yards high, one of those men to whom the between-decks of a small craft is a residence little less afflicting than one of Cardinal Balue's iron cages. And to one who "had certainly, at some time or other, spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with gentlemen," the Julia's forecastle must have contained a host of disagreeables, irrespective of rats and cockroaches, of its low roof, evil odours, damp timbers, and dungeon-like aspect. The captain's table, if less luxurious than that of a royal yacht or New York liner, surely offered something better than the biscuits, hard as gun-flints and thoroughly honeycombed, and the shot-soup, "great round peas polishing themselves like pebbles by rolling about in tepid water," on which the restive man of medicine was fain to exercise his grinders during his abode forward. As regarded society, he lost little by relinquishing that of Guy the Cockney, since he obtained in exchange the intimacy of Melville the Yankee, who, to judge from his book, must be exceeding good company, and to whom he was a great resource. The doctor was a man of learning and accomplishments, who had made the most of his time whilst the sun shone on his side the hedge, and had rolled his ungainly carcass over half the world. "He quoted Virgil, and talked of Hobbes of Malmsbury, besides repeating poetry by the canto, especially Hudibras. In the easiest way imaginable, he could refer to an amour he had in Palermo, his lion-hunting before breakfast among the Caffres, and the quality of the coffee to be drunk in Muscat." Strangely must such reminiscences have sounded in a whaler's forecastle, with Dunks the Dane, Finland Van, and Wymontoo the Savage, for auditors.

The Julia had hitherto had little luck in her cruise, and could scarcely hope for better in the state in which Typee found her. Besides the losses by desertion, her crew was weakened by disease. Several of the men lay sick in their berths, wholly unfit for duty. The captain himself was ill, and all would have derived benefit from a short sojourn in port; but this could not be thought of. The discipline of the ship was bad, and the sailors, desperate and unruly fellows, discontented, as well they might be, with their wretched provisions and uncomfortable state, were not to be trusted on or near shore. Three-fourths of them, had they once set foot on dry land, would have absconded, taken refuge in the woods or amongst the savages, and have submitted to any amount of tattoo, paint, and nose-ringing, rather than return to the ship. Already, at St Christina, one of the Marquesas, a large party had made their escape in two of the four whale-boats, scuttling the third, and cutting the tackles of the fourth nearly through, so that when Bembo jumped in to clear it away, man and boat went souse into the water. By the assistance of a French corvette, and by bribing the king of the country with a musket and ammunition, the fugitives were captured. But it was more than probable that they and others would renew the attempt should opportunity offer; so there was no alternative but to keep the sea, and hope for better days and for the convalescence of the invalids. Two of these died. Neither Bible nor Prayer-book were on board the godless craft, and like dogs, without form of Christian burial, the dead were launched into the deep. The situation of the survivors inspired with considerable uneasiness the few amongst them capable of reflection. The captain was ignorant of navigation; it was the mate who, from the commencement of the voyage, had kept the ship's reckoning, and kept it all to himself. He had only to get washed overboard in a gale, or to walk over in a drunken fit, to leave his shipmates in a fix of the most unpleasant description, ignorant of latitude, longitude, and of everything else necessary to be known to guide the vessel on her course. And as to the sperm whales, which Jermin had promised them in such abundance that they would only have to strike and take, not a single fin showed itself. At last the captain was reported dying, and the mate took counsel with Long-Ghost, Typee, and others of the crew. He would gladly have continued the cruise, but his wish was overruled, and the whaler's stern was turned towards the Society Islands.

The first glimpse of the peaks of Tahiti was hailed with transport by the Julia's weary mariners. They had got a notion that if the captain left the ship, their articles were no longer binding, and they should be free to follow his example. And, at any rate, the sickness on board and the shaky condition of the barque, guaranteed them, as they thought, long and blissful leisure amongst the waving palm-groves and soft-eyed Neuhas of Polynesia. Their arrival in sight of Papeetee, the Tahitian capital, was welcomed by the boom of cannon. The frigate Reine Blanche, at whose fore flew the flag of Admiral Du Petit Thouars, thus celebrated the compulsory treaty, concluded that morning, by which the island was ceded to the French.

Captain Guy and his baggage were now set on shore, and it was soon apparent to his men that whilst he nursed himself in the pure climate and pleasant shades of Tahiti, they were to put to sea under the mate's orders, and after a certain time to touch again at the island, and take off their commander. The vessel was not even allowed to go into port, although needing repairs, and in fact unseaworthy; and as to healing the sick, selfish Paper Jack thought only of solacing his own infirmities. The fury of the ill-fed, reckless, discontented crew, on discovering the project of their superiors, passed all bounds. Chips and Bungs volunteered to head a mutiny, and a round-robin was drawn up and signed. But when Wilson, an old acquaintance of Guy's, and acting consul in the absence of missionary Pritchard, came on board, the gallant cooper, who derived much of his courage from the grog-kid, was cowed and craven. The grievances brought forward, amongst others that of the _salt-horse_, (a horse's hoof with the shoe on, so swore the cook, had been found in the pickle,) were treated as trifles and pooh-poohed by the functionary, "a minute gentleman with a viciously pugged nose, and a decidedly thin pair of legs." But if Bungs allowed himself to be brow-beaten, so did not his comrades. Yankee Salem flourished a bowie-knife, and such alarming demonstrations were made, that the _counsellor_, as the sailors persisted in calling the consul, thought it wise to beat a retreat. Jermin now tried his hand, holding out brilliant prospects of a rich cargo of sperm oil, and a pocket-full of dollars for every man on his return to Sydney. The mutineers were proof alike against menace and blandishment, and, at the secret instigation of Long Ghost and Typee, resolutely refused to do duty. The consul, who had promised to return, did not show; and at last the mate, having now but a few invalids and landsmen to work the ship and keep her off shore, was compelled to enter the harbour. The Julia came to an anchor within cable's length of the French frigate, on board which consul Wilson repaired to obtain assistance. The Reine Blanche was to sail in a few days for Valparaiso, and the mutineers expected to go with her and be delivered up to a British man-of-war. Undismayed by this prospect, they continued stanch in their contumacy, and presently an armed cutter, "painted a 'pirate black,' its crew a dark, grim-looking set, and the officers uncommonly fierce-looking little Frenchmen," conveyed them on board the frigate, where they were duly handcuffed, and secured by the ankle to a great iron bar bolted down to the berth-deck.

Touching the proceedings on board the French man-of-war, its imperfect discipline, and the strange, un-nautical way of carrying on the duty, Typee is jocular and satirical. American though he be--and, but for occasional slight yankeeisms in his style, we might have doubted even that fact--he has evidently much more sympathy with his cousin John Bull than with his country's old allies, the French, whom he freely admits to be a clever and gallant nation, whilst he broadly hints that their valour is not likely to be displayed to advantage on the water. He finds too much of the military style about their marine institutions. Sailors should be fighting men, but not soldiers or musket-carriers, as they all are in turn in the French navy. He laughs at or objects to every thing; the mustaches of the officers, the system of punishment, the sour wine that replaces rum and water, the soup instead of junk, the pitiful little rolls baked on board, and distributed in lieu of hard biscuit. And whilst praising the build of their ships--the only thing about them he does praise--he ejaculates a hope, which sounds like a doubt, that they will not some day fall into the hands of the people across the Channel. "In case of war," he says, "what a fluttering of French ensigns there would be! for the Frenchman makes but an indifferent seaman, and though for the most part he fights well enough, somehow or other, he seldom fights well enough to beat:"--at sea, be it understood. We are rather at a loss to comprehend the familiarity shown by Typee with the internal arrangements and architecture of the Reine Blanche. His time on board was passed in fetters; at nightfall on the fifth day he left the ship. How, we are curious to know, did he become acquainted with the minute details of "the crack craft in the French navy," with the disposition of her guns and decks, the complicated machinery by which certain exceedingly simple things were done, and even with the rich hangings, mirrors, and mahogany of the commodore's cabin? Surely the ragged and disreputable mutineer of the Julia, whose foot had scarcely touched the gangway, when he was hurried into confinement below, could have had scanty opportunity for such observations: unless, indeed, Herman Melville, or Typee, or the Rover, or by whatever other _alias_ he be known, instead of creeping in at the hawse-holes, was welcomed on the quarter-deck and admitted to the gun-room, or to the commodore's cabin, an honoured guest in broad-cloth, not a despised merchant seaman in canvass frock and hat of tarpaulin. We shall not dwell on these small inconsistencies and oversights in an amusing book. We prefer accompanying the Julia's crew to Tahiti, where they were put on shore contrary to their expectations, and not altogether to their satisfaction, since they had anticipated a rapid run to Valparaiso, the fag-end of a cruise in an English man-of-war, and a speedy discharge at Portsmouth. Paper Jack and Consul Wilson had other designs, and still hoped to reclaim them to their duty on board the crazy Julia. On their stubborn refusal, they were given in charge to a fat, good-humoured, old Tahitian, called Captain Bob, who, at the head of an escort of natives, conveyed them up the country to a sort of shed, known as the Calabooza Beretanee or English jail, used as a prison for refractory sailors. This commences Typee's shore-going adventures, not less pleasant and original than his sea-faring ones; although it is with some regret that we lose sight of the vermin-haunted barque, on whose board such strange and exciting scenes occurred.

Throughout the book, however, fun and incident abound, and we are consoled for our separation from poor little Jule, by the curious insight we obtain into the manners, morals, and condition of the gentle savages, on whom an attempted civilisation has brought far more curses than blessings.

"How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai,"