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Updated: June 22, 2025
It could not be an illusion. Either a talking mermaid, or a little girl, was within earshot of the raft. There was no help for it: Ben must be aroused. "Ben! Ben!" "Ho hah ow aw what's the row? seven bells, I bean't on the dog-watch. Hi, hi, oh! it's you, little Will'm. What is't, lad?" "Ben, I hear something." "Hear somethin'! Well, what o' that, boy?
It was in the second dog-watch that evening, a dark night, and the watch was pulling away on the main deck. I had just come out of the chart-house door and seen Captain West pace by me, hands in pockets, toward the break of the poop. Abruptly, from the mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage and crash of fabric. At the same instant the men fell backward and sprawled over the deck.
The old ship-keeper, sitting alone smoking on the hatchway in the evening before unloading begins, will affront one with his presence. Where are the men, rough, honest, coarse, or even bad, that used to sit there so often in the twilight of the dog-watch? There is a strange yearning to see them again.
"What of this marvel of the Italian seas?" "A marvel truly, as your Honor will confess, when I read you the affair, much in the words I had it logged, for the knowledge of all concerned. It was the last hour of the second dog-watch, on Easter-Sunday, with the wind here at south-east, easterly. A light air filled the upper canvas, and just gave us command of the ship.
The cockswain turned his solemn visage, with an extraordinary meaning, towards his commander, before he replied: "For as long a time as I have followed the waters, sir, and that has been ever since I've drawn my rations, seeing that I was born while the boat was crossing Nantucket shoals, I've never known a pilot come off in greater need, than the one we fell in with, when we made that stretch of two on the land, in the dog-watch of yesterday."
"My next condition is that no man shall have more than two gills of rum per day half to be served out at midday, and the remainder at four bells of the first dog-watch. In the event of bad weather, or other especial circumstances, the allowance may be increased at my discretion, and by so much as I may consider necessary.
For instance, if one watch had to be on deck every night from twelve until four in the morning, it would mean that the other watch would be on deck from four to eight, and consequently would have to do all the washing down of decks and other work which occurs upon every regulated ship before breakfast. So the dog-watch divides a four-hour watch and is served alternately.
But oh, it was weary work to attempt to turn to windward in a light breeze in the deep, bluff-bowed, squat-sterned, Dutch-built Haarlem, after my experience of the smart, lively, swift-sailing British frigate; it was, therefore, with a feeling of the utmost satisfaction that shortly before the end of the second dog-watch I heard the Europa once more booming out her summons to surrender, and saw the mainyard of the Schelde swing slowly aback in response.
She continued on this tack all day; and went about at the end of the second dog-watch, George's object being to work his way back to the spot, as nearly as possible, where the fleet had separated, and there wait two or three days if need be, in the hope of falling in with the bulk of them again.
They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as they hie to the land of the stranger. And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and valuable of her foreign population.
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