219 CHAPTER VII. PASSAGE FROM VALPARAISO TO CALLAO. FLARE UP OF THE PACIFIC.-SONGS OF SEAMEN.-SAILORS ON SHORE-LOSS OF THE SAMSON OF OUR SHIP. THE SETTING SUN AT SEA.-OUR ASTORHOUSE SAILOR. THE MAD POET OF THE CREW.-LAND HO-ASPECT OF CALLAO.-APPEARANCE OF THE NATIVES. THE BURIAL ISLE. "Our pennant glitters in the breeze, Our home is on the sea: Where wind may blow, or billow flow, No limits to the free: No limits to the free, my boys, Let wind and wave waft on, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18. We tripped our anchors this morning and stood out to sea from the bay of Valparaiso. While getting under way, a boat from the British ship Daphne came alongside with dispatches for Admiral Seymour, in command of the Collingwood, on the coast of California. No sooner were these received, and orders given to make sail, than three other boats were seen starting from the shore at the top of their speed. Our ship was hove to till they came up. Two of them had communications to merchants in Callao. The third had in her two of our runaway sailors, who had been picked up by the police, and whom we were very sorry to see again; for they were notoriously the two most worthless fellows on board. But we were not, it seems, to get rid of them in this way. So true is it that a bad penny always comes back. THURSDAY, MARCH 19. Before coming into the Pacific, our imaginations were filled with dreams of its majestic tranquillity. But if the exhibition it made of itself last night be a fair specimen of its character, it is a living libel on its own name. It flared up like an enraged maniac, and stove in our cabin windows, which even Cape Horn had spared. Its rage seemed wholly unprovoked; for the sky was almost free of clouds, and even the few which did darken its face, moved on lazily as those in which the winds have fallen asleep. The moon looked down on the uproar in perfect calmness. Her light fell on the crest of the wave, soft as dew on the death-foam of the savage. One of our boys ran away at Valparaiso. He had but just recovered from the effects of a fall down the main-hatch. He probably thought the best method of escaping the chances of another fall, would be to give the hatch the widest berth possible. But the poor lad will find worse hatches on land than he ever yet stumbled through at sea. Here he broke only a limb, but there he may break his peace of conscience, and his hope of heaven. But sailors are of all beings in the world the most thoughtless. The monitions of the future are lost in the impulses of the present. They have been known, for some temporary gratification, to run from a ship with two years pay due them, and to forfeit the whole by that act of folly. This running commences in rum and ends in ruin. FRIDAY, MARCH 20. We have the wind directly aft. Our fore studding-sails are out like the wings of a bird on the breast of a gale. We have run within the last two days four hundred and forty miles. This is good sailing considering we have six months' provision on board, and lie consequently too deep for the greatest speed. The air is balmy, and the songs of our sailors, at sunset, rose exultingly into its blue depths. A sailor always sings with heart. His music rolls out like a dashing stream from its mountain source. It is never gay; it always has a deep vein of melancholy. If a few more lively notes mingle with the strain, they come only at intervals, like flakes of moonlight between the cypress shadows which mantle the marbles of the dead. He is a gay being when he gets upon shore; but he is then no longer on his own element. Give him a day's liberty, and he will commit more follies than he would in six months at sea. If he charters a hack, he will ride out on the box with the driver and make the hold, as he terms the interior, welcome to any one who may be disposed to use it. If he hires a horse, he will ride him at his utmost speed, though he knows no more than you do where he shall bring up. He goes to church on the Sabbath, and if no one offers him a seat, brings in a huge billet of wood, or a stone, and moors ship in the middle of the aisle. He sits there grave as a deacon, never once nods during the sermon, and when the contribution box comes along for sending missionaries to the heathen, drops in the last dollar which his fiddler has left him. SATURDAY, MARCH 21. We lost at Valparaiso the Samson of our ship. He was from Bremen, and of German extraction. He stood seven feet in his stockings. His arm was as large as the leg of an ordinary man. He could carry a water tank, which any two others among the crew could only lift. He went with the rest upon shore on liberty, fell in with a few of his countrymen, drank too freely, and stayed beyond his time. He would have returned on board, but he shrunk from the disgrace of corporal punishment. He had the finest sensibilities, and looked upon a blow, inflicted in the shape of a chastisement, as a brand of indelible infamy. To escape this he had no resource, as he supposed, but to conceal himself till after our ship should sail. Every effort was made to recover |