Jack Mason, the Old Sailor

JACK MASON, THE OLD SAILOR.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

FOR CHILDREN.

BY THEODORE THINKER.

1850.

THE OLD SAILOR.

Jack Mason had been to sea a great many times when I first knew him, and he has been a great many times since. He has sailed in a ship almost all over the world. Such a host of stories as he can tell! Why, I do believe if he could find little boys and girls to talk to, he would begin in the morning as soon as he had got through his breakfast, and do nothing but tell stories about what he has seen, until it was time to go to bed at night. I don't know but he would want to stop once or twice to eat. Jack loves a good dinner as well as anybody.

Jack is the one that you see in the picture, with his pea-jacket on, and a book in his hand. He is in a ship, telling his stories now to that boy sitting on a coil of rope. See, the boy is looking right at the old man, hearing all he says. I wonder what Jack is talking about now. He must be telling one of his best stories, I guess; for the boy lifts his head up, as much as to say, "Dear me! who ever heard of such a thing!"

Jack is a good man. He is not like a great many sailors that I have seen. He does not use bad words. He never drinks rum, or any thing of the kind. Sailors are apt to swear; but Jack Mason never swears. He is a Christian: he loves to pray and read his Bible. The book which he holds in his hand, as he is talking to that boy, is a Bible. He often has a Bible in his jacket pocket, when he is on board of his ship; and once in a while he stops telling stories about what he has seen, and reads some of the stories in that good book.

When I was a little boy, Jack fell from the high mast of the ship, and hurt himself so badly that he had to stay at home a long time after that. Poor fellow! he did not like to be shut up in the house. It was hard work for him. But he could not go out, until his hip got well. When he was able to sit up in a chair, I used to go and see him, and hear him tell his stories. I did not go every day, because my mother thought I had better not go every day. But I went as often as she would let me go, and staid as long as she would let me stay.

Jack was always glad to see me, and glad to tell me stories. I was always glad to hear his stories. Some sailors, who have spent a great deal of time on board of a ship, and have seen a great many places, are not good men. They do not always tell the truth. So, when they tell stories about what they saw where they went, we do not know whether to believe them or not. But Jack Mason was a good man, and I knew he would not tell me what was not true.

Shall I tell you some of the stories that this good old sailor told me when he had to stay at home, because he had broken his hip? I think I can remember some worth telling again.

"O yes, Mr. Thinker, tell us all the stories the old sailor told you."

"No, I cannot do that. I cannot remember them all."

"Well, tell us all you do remember."

"I will see about it. I will tell you some of them, at any rate. Let me see, what story shall I tell first? Shall I tell you his story about what he saw once, when he sailed a great way north? I guess I will."

JACK MASON'S VISIT TO THE NORTH SEA.

If you should go a great way north, you would find it very cold. The further you go north, the colder it is. I went so far that way one time, that I got almost frozen. The ship I sailed in came close to an iceberg once, and we all thought for a while that the ship would strike the iceberg. If it had struck, it would have been broken all in pieces, and we should have been drowned or frozen, every one of us. God was kind and good to us, though. The wind was blowing very hard, and right toward the iceberg. But just as we had got almost up to it, the wind changed, and blew us away from it.

But I forgot that you do not know what an iceberg is. It is a great hill of ice. In the North Sea, these ice-hills are often as high as your church, and sometimes a great deal higher. These hills of ice are floating along the water there, and when it is foggy or dark, the sailors cannot always see them. So sometimes the ship strikes them, and is dashed to pieces. Sometimes it gets between two of these ice-hills, and gets crushed, as if it was a little boat. Then the men in the ship have to get out, and jump upon one of the ice-hills. But they are pretty likely to be frozen to death then.

THE INDIANS.

In that cold country I saw some Indians. They were dressed in skins. I never saw such dirty-looking men and women before in all my life, and I have never seen any such since. They had never seen a ship before, I should think. I thought they did not know much more than the white bears. Why, they would sell almost all the clothes they had on, if we would give them a few pieces of glass, or a nail or two. One of the women who came to the ship had a little girl about four years old, and she said she would give us that girl, if we would let her have a tin pan which she saw.

These Indians tie their children on their backs, when they have to walk a great way. They licked the oil on the outside of our lamps, just as a dog or a cat would have done. Oh, what dirty people! They eat their meat raw. We killed a seal one day, and our captain gave it to one of the young women. She took it, and bit it into pieces with her teeth. Then she passed it round to the rest of the Indians, and they all helped eat it.

THE WHITE BEARS.

There are a great many white bears in that country. Sometimes you can see two or three of them sitting on one of these ice-hills. How they ever got there, I am sure I cannot tell. I guess they went out on the ice only a little way from the shore, to get something which they saw was good to eat; and while they were on the ice, it started off, and they could not get to the shore again.

One of the men who sailed in the same ship with me, told me a story about a white bear, which made me laugh for an hour after I heard it. He said he was in a small boat with another sailor once, about a mile away from the ship. I forget what they went out in the boat for, but I suppose the captain of the ship sent them out for something. They were rowing along in the boat, and they came close to an iceberg. They saw something alive on the iceberg, but they could not make out what it was: they did not know but it was a man. But they came a little nearer to the great ice-hill, and they soon found out what sort of a thing there was on it. Splash something went into the water; and in a minute a great white bear jumped into the boat, as wet as a drowned rat.

Well, the sailors thought they had got to die, sure enough. What could they do? The first thing that they thought of, was to try to kill the bear with their oars. But they soon gave that up. They saw that the bear was too large and strong to be killed in that way. The next thing they thought of doing, was to jump into the water. But they knew they would die if they did that. What should they do? "I wonder which of us the old fellow will take first," one of the men said to the other. Each of them had his oar ready, so that when the bear made a spring at them, he would get his ears boxed pretty sharply. That was all they could do.

Well, the bear did not seem to be at all in a hurry. The first thing he did, after he got into the boat, was to shake himself as hard as he could, to get the water out of his coat. After that, he walked slowly to one end of the boat, just as if he was quite at home there, and lay down upon a coat which one of the men had brought along, and went to sleep.

The sailors saw then that all they had to do was to row the bear to the shore. So they went to work. When they got to the ship, the captain and all the sailors laughed a good deal, you may be sure. The shore was not far off. The sailors rowed until the boat touched the shore, and the bear got out, and walked slowly away. He did not so much as thank the men for the ride he had been taking. But the men were glad to get rid of him, thanks or no thanks.

CATCHING WHALES.

I went in a whale-ship once. I was gone from home that time more than three years. When we came back, we had our large ship all full of oil and whalebone. We got the oil and the whalebone out of the whales which we had caught. Whales, you know, are very large fish. They sometimes get two or three hundred barrels of oil from one single whale.

I never shall forget what a long chase I had with a whale once. Shall I tell you about it, little friend? There was a man in the ship who was looking out for whales. In a whale-ship there is always one man who gets up as high as he can, and keeps a bright look-out all round for whales. Whales do not stay under water all the time. The trout, and the shad, and the eel, and most other kinds of fish can stay under water all the time. They cannot live out of the water only a few minutes, and I suppose they feel almost as bad out of the water as we do in it. But the whale wants to come up to the top of the water. He wants to come up to breathe. Well, all at once, the man who was looking out the day I speak of, when I had such a run, sung out as loud as he could, "There she blows!" We all knew what that meant. That is what they always say when they see a whale. It means, "There is a whale come up to breathe." This whale was a great way off. I should think he was a mile from the ship.

Well, the captain told some of us to get into a boat, and to go out after the whale. We did so. The boats are always kept ready, and it takes only a minute to let the boat down, and start off. We rowed as fast as we could, until we came up near where the whale was lying. Oh, what a large whale! As soon as the boat got near enough, one man threw two harpoons at the whale, and they both stuck fast in his flesh. A harpoon is a long and sharp iron, made like a spear, so that when it strikes the whale, it goes in deep, and you cannot pull it out. The harpoon is fastened to a long rope, and the rope is tied to the boat.

As soon as the whale felt these irons in his side, he began to run. I never knew before that a whale could swim so fast. It took him only a very little while to run out with all the loose rope; and our boat went through the water pretty fast, you may be sure. I was afraid the whale would take it into his head to dive down towards the bottom. If he had gone down, we should have gone with him, unless we could have cut the rope. But he did not go down. Away we went, as fast as if we had been on a railroad. He was all the time taking us further from the ship. "Well," we thought, "what is going to become of us!" The whale did not seem to care any thing about that. I suppose he thought that was our look-out, and not his.

But the fellow got tired out by and by. He had bled so much, that he began to grow faint. At last he went so slow, that we rowed up to him, and stabbed him with a long knife. He died pretty soon after that, and we got more than two hundred barrels of oil out of him.

Catching whales seems a cruel business to you. It is a cruel business. I never liked it. But somebody must do it. The butcher who kills oxen, and sheep, and calves, has to be cruel. But we must have butchers. We must have people to kill whales, though you never will catch me chasing after a whale again, as long as my name is Jack Mason.