Chapter 24 - Page 2

deck by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds.
It is surprising, how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going
aloft. For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth's
diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam Patch on the
cliff of Niagara. To my amazement, also, I found, that running up the
rigging at sea, especially during a squall, was much easier than while
lying in port. For as you always go up on the windward side, and the
ship leans over, it makes more of a stairs of the rigging; whereas, in
harbor, it is almost straight up and down.

Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant sort of
vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being aloft in a ship
at sea, and a ship in harbor, is pretty much the same, as riding a real
live horse and a wooden one. And even if the live charger should pitch
you over his head, that would be much more satisfactory, than an
inglorious fall from the other.

I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in a
hard blow; which duty required two hands on the yard.

There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing of the blood about
the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing of the whole system, to
find yourself tossed up at every pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky,
and hovering like a judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands
free, with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you in the
air. The sail would fill out Eke a balloon, with a report like a small
cannon, and then collapse and sink away into a handful. And the feeling
of mastering the rebellious canvas, and tying it down like a slave to
the spar, and binding it over and over with the gasket, had a touch of
pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must have felt, when
he trampled down the insurgents of Wat Tyler.

As for steering, they never would let me go to the helm, except during a
calm, when I and the figure-head on the bow were about equally employed.

By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of
before.

He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander "in full fig," with bright
tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most
vermilion of cheeks. He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to
it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm
stretched forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up
and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on
her way. He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when
he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
and gave him