THE CHIEF MATE
by James Russell Lowell
My first glimpse of Europe was the shore of
Spain. Since we got into the Mediterranean, we
have been becalmed for some days within easy
view of it. All along are fine mountains, brown
all day, and with a bloom on them at sunset like
that of a ripe plum. Here and there at their feet
little white towns are sprinkled along the edge
of the water, like the grains of rice dropped
by the princess in the story. Sometimes we see
larger buildings on the mountain slopes, probably
convents. I sit and wonder whether the farther
peaks may not be the Sierra Morena (the rusty saw)
of Don Quixote. I resolve that they shall be, and
am content. Surely latitude and longitude never
showed me any particular respect, that I should
be over-scrupulous with them.
But after all, Nature, though she may be more
beautiful, is nowhere so entertaining as in
man, and the best thing I have seen and learned
at sea is our Chief Mate. My first acquaintance
with him was made over my knife, which he asked
to look at, and, after a critical examination,
handed back to me, saying, "I shouldn't wonder
if that 'ere was a good piece o' stuff." Since
then he has transferred a part of his regard
for my knife to its owner. I like folks who
like an honest bit of steel, and take no interest
whatever in "your Raphaels, Correggios, and
stuff." There is always more than the average
human nature in the man who has a hearty sympathy
with iron. It is a manly metal, with no sordid
associations like gold and silver. My sailor
fully came up to my expectation on further
acquaintance. He might well be called an old
salt who had been wrecked on Spitzbergen before
I was born. He was not an American, but I should
never have guessed it by his speech, which was
the purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good
taster of dialects. Nor was he less Americanized
in all his thoughts and feelings, a singular
proof of the ease with which our omnivorous
country assimilates foreign matter, provided it
be Protestant, for he was a man ere he became
an American citizen. He used to walk the deck
with his hands in his pockets, in seeming
abstraction, but nothing escaped his eyes. How
he saw I could never make out, though I had a
theory that it was with his elbows. After he
had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence,
he took care that I should see whatever he
deemed of interest to a landsman. Without
looking up, he would say, suddenly, "There's
a whale blowin' clearn up to win'ard," or,
"Them's porpises to leeward: that means change
o' wind." He is as impervious to cold as a
polar bear, and paces the deck during his watch
much as one of those yellow hummocks goes
slumping up and down his cage. On the Atlantic,
if the wind blew a gale from the northeast, and
it was cold as an English summer, he was sure
to turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his
furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers,
without stockings. But lest you might fancy this
to have chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes
out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the
Mediterranean, when the evening is so hot that
Adam would have been glad to leave off his
fig-leaves. "It's a kind o' damp and unwholesome
in these ere waters," he says, evidently regarding
the Midland Sea as a vile standing pool, in
comparison with the bluff ocean. At meals he
is superb, not only for his strengths, but his
weaknesses. He has somehow or other come to
think me a wag, and if I ask him to pass the
butter, detects an occult joke, and laughs as
much as is proper for a mate. For you must know
that our social hierarchy on shipboard is precise,
and the second mate, were he present, would only
laugh half as much as the first. Mr. X. always
combs his hair, and works himself into a black
frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waist-coat)
before he comes to meals, sacrificing himself
nobly and painfully to the social proprieties.
The second mate, on the other hand, who eats
after us, enjoys the privilege of shirt-sleeves,
and is, I think, the happier man of the two.
We do not have seats above and below the salt,
as in old time, but above and below the white
sugar. Mr. X. always takes brown sugar, and it
is delightful to see how he ignores the existence
of certain delicates which he considers above
his grade, tipping his head on one side with
an air of abstraction so that he may seem not
to deny himself, but to omit helping himself
from inadvertence, or absence of mind. At such
times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar
manner, inscrutable at first as a cuneiform
inscription, but as easily read after you once
get the key. The sense of it is something like
this: "I, X., know my place, a height of wisdom
attained by few. Whatever you may think, I do
not see that currant jelly, nor that
preserved grape. Especially a kind Providence
has made me blind to bowls of white sugar, and
deaf to the pop of champagne corks. It is much
that a merciful compensation gives me a sense
of the dingier hue of Havana, and the muddier
gurgle of beer. Are there potted meats? My
physician has ordered me three pounds of minced
salt-junk at every meal." There is such a
thing, you know, as a ship's husband: X. is
the ship's poor relation.
As I have said, he takes also a below-the-white-sugar
interest in the jokes, laughing by precise
point of compass, just as he would lay the
ship's course, all yawing being out of the
question with his scrupulous decorum at the
helm. Once or twice I have got the better of
him, and touched him off into a kind of compromised
explosion, like that of damp fireworks, that
splutter and simmer a little, and then go out
with painful slowness and occasional relapses.
But his fuse is always of the unwillingest, and
you must blow your match, and touch him off again
and again with the same joke. Or rather, you must
magnetize him many times to get him en rapport
with a jest. This once accomplished, you have
him, and one bit of fun will last the whole voyage.
He prefers those of one syllable, the a-b abs
of humor. The gradual fattening of the steward, a
benevolent mulatto with whiskers and ear-rings,
who looks as if he had been meant for a woman,
and had become a man by accident, as in some of
those stories by the elder physiologists, is an
abiding topic of humorous comment with Mr. X.
"That 'ere stooard," he says, with a brown grin
like what you might fancy on the face of a serious
and aged seal, "'s agittin' as fat's a porpis.
He was as thin's a shingle when he come aboord
last v'yge. Them trousis'll bust yit. He don't
darst take 'em off nights, for the whole ship's
company couldn't git him into 'em agin." And then
he turns aside to enjoy the intensity of his
emotion by himself, and you hear at intervals
low rumblings, an indigestion of laughter. He
tells me of St. Elmo's fires, Marvell's corposants,
though with him the original corpos santos has
suffered a sea change, and turned to comepleasants,
pledges of fine weather. I shall not soon find a
pleasanter companion. It is so delightful to meet
a man who knows just what you do not. Nay, I
think the tired mind finds something in plump
ignorance like what the body feels in cushiony moss.
Talk of the sympathy of kindred pursuits! It is
the sympathy of the upper and nether mill-stones,
both forever grinding the same grist, and wearing
each other smooth. One has not far to seek for
book-nature, artist-nature, every variety of
superinduced nature, in short, but genuine human-nature
is hard to find. And how good it is! Wholesome as
a potato, fit company for any dish. The free
masonry of cultivated men is agreeable, but
artificial, and I like better the natural grip
with which manhood recognizes manhood.
X. has one good story, and with that I leave him,
wishing him with all my heart that little inland
farm at last which is his calenture as he paces
the windy deck. One evening, when the clouds looked
wild and whirling, I asked X. if it was coming on
to blow. "No, I guess not," said he; "bumby the
moon'll be up, and scoff away that 'ere loose
stuff." His intonation set the phrase "scoff away"
in quotation-marks as plain as print. So I put
a query in each eye, and he went on. "Ther' was
a Dutch cappen onct, an' his mate come to him in
the cabin, where he sot takin' his schnapps, an'
says, 'Cappen, it's agittin' thick, an' looks
kin' o' squally, hedn't we's good's shorten sail?'
'Gimmy my alminick,' says the cappen. So he looks
at it a spell, an' says he, 'The moon's due in
less'n half an hour, an' she'll scoff away
ev'ythin' clare agin.' So the mate he goes, an'
bumby down he comes agin, an' says, 'Cappen,
this 'ere's the allfiredest, powerfullest moon
't ever you did see. She's scoffed away the
main-togallants'l, an' she's to work on the
foretops'l now. Guess you'd better look in the
alminick agin, and fin' out when this moon
sets.' So the cappen thought 'twas 'bout time
to go on deck. Dreadful slow them Dutch cappens
be." And X. walked away, rumbling inwardly, like
the rote of the sea heard afar.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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