This Course Soon Restored His
Appetite And Strength; And In Ten Days After We Spoke The Solon,
So Rapid Was His Recovery, That, From Lying Helpless And Almost
Hopeless In His Berth, He Was At The Mast-Head, Furling A Royal.
With a fine south-west wind, we passed inside of the Bermudas;
and notwithstanding the old couplet, which was quoted again and
again by those who thought we should have one more touch of a
storm before our voyage was up, -
"If the Bermudas let you pass,
You must beware of Hatteras - "
we were to the northward of Hatteras, with good weather, and beginning
to count, not the days, but the hours, to the time when we should be
at anchor in Boston harbor.
Our ship was in fine order, all hands having been hard at work
upon her from daylight to dark, every day but Sunday, from the
time we got into warm weather on this side the Cape.
It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest
condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage; and that
she comes home, after a long absence,
"With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails;
Lean, rent and beggared by the strumpet wind."
But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or
comes upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be
done upon the rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of
the voyage. When she sails from port, her rigging is generally
slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and
dirty from taking in cargo; riggers' seizings and overhand knots
in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor's
eye, adrift.
But on the passage home, the fine weather between the tropics is
spent in putting the ship into the neatest order. No merchant vessel
looks better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage;
and many captains and mates will stake their reputation for seamanship
upon the appearance of their ship when she hauls into the dock.
All our standing rigging, fore and aft, was set up and tarred;
the masts stayed; the lower and top-mast rigging rattled down,
(or up, as the fashion now is;) and so careful were our officers
to keep the rattlins taught and straight, that we were obliged
to go aloft upon the ropes and shearpoles with which the rigging
was swifted in; and these were used as jury rattlins until we got
close upon the coast. After this, the ship was scraped, inside and
out, decks, masts, booms and all; a stage being rigged outside,
upon which we scraped her down to the water-line; pounding the
rust off the chains, bolts and fastenings. Then, taking two days
of calm under the line, we painted her on the outside, giving her
open ports in her streak, and finishing off the nice work upon the
stern, where sat Neptune in his car, holding his trident, drawn
by sea-horses; and re-touched the gilding and coloring of the
cornucopia which ornamented her billet-head.
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