Chapter 26 - Page 2

all trades, in order to master his own. And this,
perhaps, in a greater or less degree, is pretty much the case with all
things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason
we never know anything.

A sailor, also, in working at the rigging, uses special tools peculiar
to his calling--fids, serving-mallets, toggles, prickers, marlingspikes,
palms, heavers, and many more. The smaller sort he generally carries
with him from ship to ship in a sort of canvas reticule.

The estimation in which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such
accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one
who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those
who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul
ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means
that he not only knows how to reef a topsail, but is an artist in the
rigging.

Now, alas! I had no chance given me to become initiated in this art and
mystery; no further, at least, than by looking on, and watching how that
these things might be done as well as others, the reason was, that I had
only shipped for this one voyage in the Highlander, a short voyage too;
and it was not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which
instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to.
All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my
backbone--comparatively small though it was at that time--by way of a
lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted.
Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set
to the most inglorious avocations; as in the merchant service it is a
religious maxim to keep the hands always employed at something or other,
never mind what, during their watch on deck.

Often furnished with a club-hammer, they swung me over the bows in a
bowline, to pound the rust off the anchor: a most monotonous, and to me
a most uncongenial and irksome business. There was a remarkable fatality
attending the various hammers I carried over with me. Somehow they would
drop out of my hands into the sea. But the supply of reserved hammers
seemed unlimited: also the blessings and benedictions I received from
the chief mate for my clumsiness.

At other times, they set me to picking oakum, like a convict, which
hempen business disagreeably obtruded thoughts of halters and the
gallows; or whittling belaying-pins, like a Down-Easter.

However, I endeavored to bear it all like a young philosopher, and
whiled away the tedious hours by gazing through a port-hole while my
hands were plying, and repeating Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean,
which I had often spouted on the