Captain's cabin

“ Do he mean to have the captain's cabin, I wonder!" Up the side he scrambles, with the help of a side-ladder, all togged out to the nines in a span-new blue jacket and anchor buttons, a cap with a gould band, and white ducks made to fit—as jemmy-jessamy a looking fellow as you'd see of a cruise along London parks, with the waterman singing out alongside to send down a tackle for the dunnage, which it took a pair of purchase-blocks to hoist them out on board. "What's all this?" says the mate, coming for'ard from the quarter-deck. "'Tis the young gemman's traps, sir," I says. "What the devil!" ”

“ There the wise bird sits free from danger, swinging backwards and forwards in the breeze.
We slept that night at the house of a friend of the captain’s, who had come out with him in the brig. It was a low building of one storey, with steps leading up to it, and built chiefly of wood. A veranda ran all the way round it. The rooms were very large, but not so handsomely furnished, I thought, as the captain’s cabin. People do eat curious food in the West Indies. ”

“ The doctor came out of the captain's stateroom with a grave look on his face. The mate stood in the middle of the cabin floor, nervous and unstrung; he had been fond of Captain Bradley. The afternoon sun streamed through the cabin skylight. For several hours they had been watching the old man struggle for breath. The mate's gaze roved uneasily over the top of the chart table, where, according to his invariable habit, the captain had that morning spread the tablecover that he used in port, and had set out a few pictures and ornaments, to make the cabin look more homelike. ”

“ The cabin of the Broken Heart was large and airy. The stern-windows, a skylight amidships, and the white paint upon the beams and bulkheads, made it lighter than the cabins of most vessels. A locker, heaped with green cushions, so that it made a seat for a dozen persons, ran below the windows. Under the skylight was the table, with revolving chairs about it, clamped to the deck. At both sides of the cabin were lesser cabins opening into it. ”

“ During my stay I inhabited the captain’s ‘fighting cabin,’—and this, by the way, reminds me that I was introduced to a young lieutenant on board, named Firebrand, who says he met you not long ago at Portsmouth, and mortally offended your mother by talking to her about the Thunderer’s crinoline! The ‘fighting cabin’ is so styled because it may be inhabited in safety while the ship is in action, being within the ship’s tremendous armour plating. ”

“ Every berth was full; so much so that our captain, with a chivalry and forgetfulness of self which deserves recording in letters of gold, gave up his own cabin to Richard and myself, that we might not be separated an hour sooner than necessity compelled us to be, and encountered the fatigue of his long duties on deck, and the discomforts and anxieties of ten days' bad weather, with no shelter but a chance berth or the saloon sofa. During that night one tremendous sea stove in the doors of the main cabin, filling the saloon and berths with water. ”

“ Two of these were very well furnished, and in the after cabin there was a large and comfortable state-room, which both the boys decided to have been the captain’s. The furniture was all confused. The carpet was damp. It seemed as though the sea had been careering through these cabins and state-rooms. But the upper parts had been spared; and in the pantry where the boys at length found themselves, they saw, with a pleasure that cannot be described, the contents of the upper shelves as dry as when they were first put there. ”

“ A seaman directed Desmond to the Captain’s cabin. It was built out just behind the bridge, a snug, cheery room with bright chintz curtains over the carefully screened portholes, a couple of comfortable benches with leather seats along the walls, a small bunk, and in the middle of the floor a table set out with a bottle of whiskey, a siphon and some glasses together with a box of cigars. ”

“ The vessel may not be as comfortable as they say the great liners are, but at least your uncle is the captain, and it is his own ship. And that cabin he showed us yesterday, when we went down to Gravesend, is far better than anything you could get in any liner, even the best. I had one once, when I went out to join your father at Halifax, in which there was nowhere but the pockets of my clothes to keep things in, while the other lady above me could open the scuttle as she lay in her berth. And your cabin is as big as a dining-room, with a sofa----'
'You dear, darling mother!' Bella exclaimed. ”

“ Tom, Jim, and I secure the smaller cabin, a single room, with bunks on three sides, a door on the fourth.
"9 p.m.—We have dined and smoked and withdrawn to our respective lodges; the wind moans without, a thin, cold fog envelopes us; the sea breaking furiously, the night gloomy beyond conception, but the captain and his crew on the little schooner are not so comfortable as the egg-pickers whom they have left behind. ”

“ One evening while it was yet very early I told the Captain I would go to my cabin, for the weather being rough I was feeling rather seasick; but after reaching my stateroom I decided that fresh air would do me more good than sleep, so went up on deck and stood at the side of the cabin looking out at the sea, and trying to make out by the stars which direction we were following. ”

“ With a quick, light step, the old seaman made his way within, followed by the awe-struck boys.
But if they had expected to see anything remarkable in the cabin, they were disappointed. It was an entirely ordinary place. In the center, a swinging table covered with a red cloth. A few books on navigation of the Pacific were stuck on a shelf in one corner. Two staterooms opened off it astern, evidently for the occupancy of the captain and mate. But an investigation of these yielded no more results than had their scrutiny of the outer cabin. ”

“ Scene—About nine o’clock of a moonlight night one year later—Captain Bartlett’s “cabin,” a room erected on the top of his house as a lookout post. The interior is fitted up like the cabin of a sailing vessel. On the left, forward, a porthole. Farther back, the stairs of the companionway. Still farther, two more portholes. In the rear, left, a marble-topped sideboard. In the rear, center, a door opening on stairs which lead to the lower house. A cot with a blanket is placed against the wall to the right of door. ”

“ Of course the starboard cabin is the bedroom one, but the poor captain hangs out to port on a couch, so that in case we want him on deck at night, Mrs. Anthony should not be startled. Nervous! Phoo! A woman who marries a sailor and makes up her mind to come to sea should have no blamed jumpiness about her, I say. ”

“ The stair turned upon itself and landed us just forward of a thwart-ship bulkhead that cut the poop in two. The fore part formed a kind of miscellaneous store-room, with a double-bunked division for the cook (as Nares supposed) and second mate. The after part contained, in the midst, the main cabin, running in a kind of bow into the curvature of the stern; on the port side, a pantry opening forward and a stateroom for the mate; and on the starboard, the captain's berth and water-closet. Into these we did but glance: the main cabin holding us. ”

“ I found this said cabin not too large for three of us, as the surgeon’s mate was an inmate as well as myself. Its dimensions were about eight feet by six, and when we were at table the boy who attended us handed everything in we wanted by the door. In a few days I was quite at home with the mids; some of them began spinning tough yarns respecting the hardships of a sea life—what a horrible bore it was to keep night watches, or any watch at all, and you are sure, [pg 9] said one of them, to catch the fever and ague after you have been four hours walking under the draught of the mizzen stay-sail ”

“ All this was addressed to the tasselled seaman who was apparently the mate of the ship.
Captain Lind then conducted Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter below into the cabin—a little interior, rude in comparison with the Mowbray's cabin, yet comfortable and breezy with the panting of the heel of a windsail, as the swing of the barque swelled the mouth of the tube aloft. There were two little cabins aft, and two little cabins forward, and [Pg 102] a little square table amidships. A small black boy arrived.
'Bring tea and biscuit, and tell Mr. Prunes to give you some lump sugar. Don't eat none. ”

“ It was very beautiful. I did not, however, see much of it, for I was overcome with fatigue, and slept both in the steam-boat and in the stage-coach. When we embarked on the Raritan, I had intended lying down in the cabin, and taking my sleep fairly out, but the jolting of those bitter roads had made every one of the women sick, and the cabin was horrible beyond expression. Came up on deck, and worked till within a quarter of a mile of New York, when I went on the upper deck, and walked about with [Pg 134] Colonel ——. I asked Captain Seymour how often the engine would strike in a minute ”

“ With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much like the sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of the horizon, and, apparently, in company with the strange ship entering the harbor—which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike a Lima intriguante’s one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian loop-hole of her dusk saya-y-manta. ”

“ These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an old-fashioned alcove for a bed. It is lighted by little round glasses placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small firmament twinkling with astral radiations. For tall men, nevertheless, the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being indispensable to an occupancy of the premises. Yet small, low, and narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the skipper and his family. ”

“ What, with the trampling of feet as the crew ran about the decks, the increasing motion of the ship, and the cruel uproar the creaking timbers kept up, there was no sleep for the castaways, and till long after the usual hour for going to their cabin they sat up. A certain amount of apprehension mingled with their other feelings. It is one thing to be upon deck, active and alert, in a big storm, and quite another pair of shoes to be confined in a stuffy cabin, not knowing what is happening above and whether at any moment you may not see green water come tumbling down the companionway. ”

“ Under each bunk was a wide chest or locker, and, besides, a row of drawers was built forward, so that each member of the crew had ample room wherein to stow his belongings. A man-o’-warsman would be at a loss to know what to do with so much space.
The cabin was fourteen feet long, nine feet wide at the widest part, and six feet high. Any member of the crew could stand upright without fear of his upper story.
The skipper saw all this in his mind’s eye as he fondled the tiller (a boat’s most sensitive, sympathetic spot) and watched the sails puffing to the breath of the breeze. ”

“ On the sideboard, a woman's sewing basket. Farther forward, a doorway leading to the companion-way, and past the officers' quarters to the main deck.
In the center of the room, a stove. From the middle of the ceiling a hanging lamp is suspended. The walls of the cabin are painted white.
There is no rolling of the ship, and the light which comes through the sky-light is sickly and faint, indicating one of those gray days of calm when ocean and sky are alike dead. The silence is unbroken except for the measured tread of some one walking up and down on the poop deck overhead. ”

“ The passengers, ladies and all, crowded in the companion-hatch in absolute terror, every face aghast, without thinking of the rain and spray; now and then the sulky crest of a bigger wave would be caught sight of beyond the bulwarks, as the sea rose with its green back curling over into white; and you'd have said the shudder ran down into the cabin, at thought of seeing one or other of the lost boat's crew come weltering up from the mist and vanish again. ”

“ Recruiting plantation labourers on a small, narrow yacht, built for harbour sailing, is not any too nice. The decks swarm with recruits and their families. The main cabin is packed with them. At night they sleep there. The only entrance to our tiny cabin is through the main cabin, and we jam our way through them or walk over them. ”

“ Having satisfied myself with examining the interior structure of the “Belle of the West,” I sauntered out in front of the cabin. Here a large open space, usually known as the “awning,” forms an excellent lounging-place for the male passengers. It is simply the continuation of the “cabin-deck,” projected forward and supported by pillars that rest upon the main deck below. The roof, or “hurricane-deck,” also carried forward to the same point, and resting on slight wooden props, screens this part from sun or rain, and a low guard-rail running around it renders it safe. ”

“ Five minutes later I heard her voice suddenly through the open port of my cabin—that horrible deck cabin, where I was surrounded and pressed upon by talking, boot-clumping passengers, who just could not spy in upon me because I had door shut and window curtain down. Doubtless she did it on purpose. She must have known where I was, seeing that I was not on the bridge or sitting out on deck. She was speaking to some man of her acquaintance.
"It is always a mistake," she said, "for captains to have their wives on board. ”