Omoo

Omoo

PART I

MY RECEPTION ABOARD

It was the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our

escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail

aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke

the broad expanse of the ocean.

On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft,

her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly

white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four

boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning

carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking

fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks

of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich

berry-brown of a seaman’s complexion in the tropics.

On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a

broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we

advanced.

When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and

everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say

nothing of the savage boat’s crew, panting with excitement, all gesture

and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity.

A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and

beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent

adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides

with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly

were they put.

As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the

sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were

familiar. One was that of an old man-of-war’s-man, whose acquaintance I

had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I

sailed from home. The other was a young man whom, four years previous,

I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I

remembered parting with him at Prince’s Dock Gates, in the midst of a

swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like.

And here we were again:—years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had

been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which

almost made me doubt my own existence.

But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the

captain.

He was quite a young man, pale and slender, more like a sickly

counting-house clerk than a bluff sea-captain. Bidding me be seated, he

ordered the steward to hand me a glass of Pisco. In the state I was,

this stimulus almost made me delirious; so that of all I then went on

to relate concerning my residence on the island I can scarcely remember

a word. After this I was asked whether I desired to “ship”; of course I

said yes; that is, if he would allow me to enter for one cruise,

engaging to discharge me, if I so desired, at the next port. In this

way men are frequently shipped on board whalemen in the South Seas. My

stipulation was acceded to, and the ship’s articles handed me to sign.

The mate was now called below, and charged to make a “well man” of me;

not, let it be borne in mind, that the captain felt any great

compassion for me, he only desired to have the benefit of my services

as soon as possible.

Helping me on deck, the mate stretched me out on the windlass and

commenced examining my limb; and then doctoring it after a fashion with

something from the medicine-chest, rolled it up in a piece of an old

sail, making so big a bundle that, with my feet resting on the

windlass, I might have been taken for a sailor with the gout. While