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Updated: June 21, 2025
We still had a big pay-day coming to us, and for thirty-seven days, without a drink to addle our mental processes, we incessantly planned the spending of our money. The first statement of each man ever an ancient one in homeward-bound forecastles was: "No boarding-house sharks in mine." Next, in parentheses, was regret at having spent so much money in Yokohama.
Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth and here they come!
"I don't know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playing for tobacco in forecastles of ships, you know common sailor games. We used to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under a slush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt horse neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!"
The masters and officers who handled these ships with such magnificent success were true-blue American seamen, inspired by the finest traditions, successors of the privateersmen of 1812. The forecastles, however, were filled with English, Irish, and Scandinavians.
We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. Not even the last view could bring out one feeling of regret.
My bedroom at home was not large, yet it could have contained a dozen similar forecastles, and taking into consideration the height of the ceiling, a score at least. It smelled sour and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging sea-lamp I saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with sea-boots, oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various sorts.
For example, perhaps one Gentleman's metaphorical knack of preaching comes of the sea; and then we shall hear of nothing but "starboard" and "larboard," of "stems," "sterns," and "forecastles," and such salt-water language: so that one had need take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, and very warily attend to all the sailors' terms, before I shall in the least understand my teacher.
And yet he was a really truly sailor fresh from the vasty deep. Which points my moral. A man can sail in the forecastles of big ships all his life and never know what real sailing is. From the time I was twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I was fifteen I was captain and owner of an oyster-pirate sloop.
A few of these had been killed by the broadsides; but the guns had been aimed at the poops and forecastles, where the corsairs were clustered together, and consequently the number of galley slaves who had fallen was comparatively small.
In short space the inevitable came upon us: punts put in for the doctor at unseasonable hours, desperately reckless of weather; schooners beat up with men lying ill or injured in the forecastles; the folk of the neighbouring ports brought their afflicted to be miraculously restored, and ingenuously quartered their dying upon us. A wretched multitude emerged from the hovels crying, "Heal us!"
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