Chapter Fifteen

Martin Chuzzlewit

by Charles Dickens

THE BURDEN WHEREOF, IS HAIL COLUMBIA!

A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or
circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at
the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of
their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment
'One!' The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of
yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral
feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in
deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the
cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to
listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a
savage on the trail.

Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty
spirits, they repair to some dread conference with powers like
themselves, in what wild regions do the elements hold council, or
where unbend in terrible disport?

Here! Free from that cramped prison called the earth, and out
upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling,
all night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on
the coast of that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so
quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush
the blasts from unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the
fury of their unchecked liberty, they storm and buffet with each
other, until the sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up,
in ravings mightier than theirs, and the whole scene is madness.

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the
long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not;
for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling
heap of rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave
on wave, and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up of foam that
whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and
hue; constancy in nothing, but eternal strife; on, on, on, they roll,
and darker grows the night, and louder howls the wind, and more
clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the
wild cry goes forth upon the storm 'A ship!'

Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall
masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she
comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows
of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury; and every
storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, 'A ship!'

Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the
spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads
to look; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on the decks
can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other
down and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful
curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar;
and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to
fragments in their baffled anger. Still she comes onward bravely.
And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the
night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down
upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes,
with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if
no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no
drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in
the unfathomable depths below.

Among these sleeping voyagers were Martin and Mark Tapley, who,
rocked into a heavy drowsiness by the unaccustomed motion, were as
insensible to the foul air in which they lay, as to the uproar
without. It was broad day when the latter awoke with a dim idea that
he was dreaming of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead which
had turned bottom upwards in the course of the night. There was more
reason in this too, than in the roasting of eggs; for the first
objects Mr Tapley recognized when he opened his eyes were his own
heels--looking down to him, as he afterwards observed, from a nearly
perpendicular elevation.

'Well!' said Mark, getting himself into a sitting posture, after
various ineffectual struggles with the rolling of the ship. 'This is
the first time as ever I stood on my head all night.'

'You shouldn't go to sleep upon the ground with your head to
leeward then,' growled a man in one of the berths.

'With my head to where?' asked Mark.

The man repeated his previous sentiment.

'No, I won't another time,' said Mark, 'when I know whereabouts
on the map that country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a better
piece of advice. Don't you nor any other friend of mine never go to
sleep with his head in a ship any more.'

The man gave a grunt of discontented acquiescence, turned over
in his berth, and drew his blanket over his head.

'--For,' said Mr Tapley, pursuing the theme by way of soliloquy
in a low tone of voice; 'the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any
going. It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't got no
employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like
them Polar bears in the wild-beast shows as is constantly a-nodding
their heads from side to side, it never can be quiet. Which is
entirely owing to its uncommon stupidity.'

'Is that you, Mark?' asked a faint voice from another berth.

'It's as much of me as is left, sir, after a fortnight of this
work,' Mr Tapley replied, 'What with leading the life of a fly, ever
since I've been aboard--for I've been perpetually holding-on to
something or other in a upside-down position--what with that, sir,
and putting a very little into myself, and taking a good deal out of
myself, there an't too much of me to swear by. How do you find
yourself this morning, sir?'

'Very miserable,' said Martin, with a peevish groan. 'Ugh.
This is wretched, indeed!'

'Creditable,' muttered Mark, pressing one hand upon his aching
head and looking round him with a rueful grin. 'That's the great
comfort. It is creditable to keep up one's spirits here. Virtue's
its own reward. So's jollity.'

Mark was so far right that unquestionably any man who retained
his cheerfulness among the steerage accommodations of that noble and
fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, 'The Screw,' was solely indebted to
his own resources, and shipped his good humour, like his provisions,
without any contribution or assistance from the owners. A dark, low,
stifling cabin, surrounded by berths all filled to overflowing with
men, women, and children, in various stages of sickness and misery,
is not the liveliest place of assembly at any time; but when it is so
crowded (as the steerage cabin of the Screw was, every passage out),
that mattresses and beds are heaped upon the floor, to the extinction
of everything like comfort, cleanliness, and decency, it is liable to
operate not only as a pretty strong banner against amiability of
temper, but as a positive encourager of selfish and rough humours.
Mark felt this, as he sat looking about him; and his spirits rose
proportionately.

There were English people, Irish people, Welsh people, and
Scotch people there; all with their little store of coarse food and
shabby clothes; and nearly all with their families of children.
There were children of all ages; from the baby at the breast, to the
slattern- girl who was as much a grown woman as her mother. Every
kind of domestic suffering that is bred in poverty, illness,
banishment, sorrow, and long travel in bad weather, was crammed into
the little space; and yet was there infinitely less of complaint and
querulousness, and infinitely more of mutual assistance and general
kindness to be found in that unwholesome ark, than in many brilliant
ballrooms.

Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face brightened as he
looked. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and
rocking it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted than its own young
limbs; here a poor woman with an infant in her lap, mended another
little creature's clothes, and quieted another who was creeping up
about her from their scanty bed upon the floor. Here were old men
awkwardly engaged in little household offices, wherein they would
have been ridiculous but for their good-will and kind purpose; and
here were swarthy fellows--giants in their way--doing such little
acts of tenderness for those about them, as might have belonged to
gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The very idiot in the corner who sat mowing
there, all day, had his faculty of imitation roused by what he saw
about him; and snapped his fingers to amuse a crying child.

'Now, then,' said Mark, nodding to a woman who was dressing her
three children at no great distance from him--and the grin upon his
face had by this time spread from ear to ear--'Hand over one of them
young 'uns according to custom.'

'I wish you'd get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with
people who don't belong to you,' observed Martin, petulantly.

'All right,' said Mark. 'she'll do that. It's a fair division
of labour, sir. I wash her boys, and she makes our tea. I never
could make tea, but any one can wash a boy.'

The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his
kindness, as well she might, for she had been covered every night
with his greatcoat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards and
a rug. But Martin, who seldom got up or looked about him, was quite
incensed by the folly of this speech, and expressed his
dissatisfaction by an impatient groan.

'So it is, certainly,' said Mark, brushing the child's hair as
coolly as if he had been born and bred a barber.

'What are you talking about, now?' asked Martin.

'What you said,' replied Mark; 'or what you meant, when you gave
that there dismal vent to your feelings. I quite go along with it,
sir. It is very hard upon her.'

'What is?'

'Making the voyage by herself along with these young impediments
here, and going such a way at such a time of the year to join her
husband. If you don't want to be driven mad with yellow soap in your
eye, young man,' said Mr Tapley to the second urchin, who was by this
time under his hands at the basin, 'you'd better shut it.'

'Where does she join her husband?' asked Martin, yawning.

'Why, I'm very much afraid,' said Mr Tapley, in a low voice,
'that she don't know. I hope she mayn't miss him. But she sent her
last letter by hand, and it don't seem to have been very clearly
understood between 'em without it, and if she don't see him a-waving
his pocket-handkerchief on the shore, like a pictur out of a song-
book, my opinion is, she'll break her heart.'

'Why, how, in Folly's name, does the woman come to be on board
ship on such a wild-goose venture!' cried Martin.

Mr Tapley glanced at him for a moment as he lay prostrate in his
berth, and then said, very quietly:

'Ah! How indeed! I can't think! He's been away from her for
two year; she's been very poor and lonely in her own country; and has
always been a-looking forward to meeting him. It's very strange she
should be here. Quite amazing! A little mad perhaps! There can't
be no other way of accounting for it.'

Martin was too far gone in the lassitude of sea-sickness to make
any reply to these words, or even to attend to them as they were
spoken. And the subject of their discourse returning at this crisis
with some hot tea, effectually put a stop to any resumption of the
theme by Mr Tapley; who, when the meal was over and he had adjusted
Martin's bed, went up on deck to wash the breakfast service, which
consisted of two half-pint tin mugs, and a shaving-pot of the same
metal.

It is due to Mark Tapley to state that he suffered at least as
much from sea-sickness as any man, woman, or child, on board; and
that he had a peculiar faculty of knocking himself about on the
smallest provocation, and losing his legs at every lurch of the ship.
But resolved, in his usual phrase, to 'come out strong' under
disadvantageous circumstances, he was the life and soul of the
steerage, and made no more of stopping in the middle of a facetious
conversation to go away and be excessively ill by himself, and
afterwards come back in the very best and gayest of tempers to resume
it, than if such a course of proceeding had been the commonest in the
world.

It cannot be said that as his illness wore off, his cheerfulness
and good nature increased, because they would hardly admit of
augmentation; but his usefulness among the weaker members of the
party was much enlarged; and at all times and seasons there he was
exerting it. If a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down Mark
tumbled into the cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman
in his arms, or half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a
saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or inanimate, that he
thought would be the better for the air. If an hour or two of fine
weather in the middle of the day tempted those who seldom or never
came on deck at other times to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down
upon the spare spars, and try to eat, there, in the centre of the
group, was Mr Tapley, handing about salt beef and biscuit, or
dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the children's provisions
with his pocketknife, for their greater ease and comfort, or reading
aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to
a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters to their friends
at home for people who couldn't write, or cracking jokes with the
crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging,
half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or
other; but always doing something for the general entertainment. At
night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on the deck, and the driving
sparks that flew among the rigging, and the clouds of sails, seemed
to menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire, in case the
elements of air and water failed to compass her destruction; there,
again, was Mr Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves turned
up to his elbows, doing all kinds of culinary offices; compounding
the strangest dishes; recognized by every one as an established
authority; and helping all parties to achieve something which, left
to themselves, they never could have done, and never would have
dreamed of. In short, there never was a more popular character than
Mark Tapley became, on board that noble and fast- sailing
line-of-packet ship, the Screw; and he attained at last to such a
pitch of universal admiration, that he began to have grave doubts
within himself whether a man might reasonably claim any credit for
being jolly under such exciting circumstances.

'If this was going to last,' said Tapley, 'there'd be no great
difference as I can perceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I
never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be afraid that the Fates
is determined to make the world easy to me.'

'Well, Mark,' said Martin, near whose berth he had ruminated to
this effect. 'When will this be over?'

'Another week, they say, sir,' returned Mark, 'will most likely
bring us into port. The ship's a-going along at present, as sensible
as a ship can, sir; though I don't mean to say as that's any very
high praise.'

'I don't think it is, indeed,' groaned Martin.

'You'd feel all the better for it, sir, if you was to turn out,'
observed Mark.

'And be seen by the ladies and gentlemen on the after-deck,'
returned Martin, with a scronful emphasis upon the words, 'mingling
with the beggarly crowd that are stowed away in this vile hole. I
should be greatly the better for that, no doubt.'

'I'm thankful that I can't say from my own experience what the
feelings of a gentleman may be,' said Mark, 'but I should have
thought, sir, as a gentleman would feel a deal more uncomfortable
down here than up in the fresh air, especially when the ladies and
gentlemen in the after-cabin know just as much about him as he does
about them, and are likely to trouble their heads about him in the
same proportion. I should have thought that, certainly.'

'I tell you, then,' rejoined Martin, 'you would have thought
wrong, and do think wrong.'

'Very likely, sir,' said Mark, with imperturbable good temper.
'I often do.'

'As to lying here,' cried Martin, raising himself on his elbow,
and looking angrily at his follower. 'Do you suppose it's a pleasure
to lie here?'

'All the madhouses in the world,' said Mr Tapley, 'couldn't
produce such a maniac as the man must be who could think that.'

'Then why are you forever goading and urging me to get up?'
asked Martin, 'I lie here because I don't wish to be recognized, in
the better days to which I aspire, by any purse-proud citizen, as the
man who came over with him among the steerage passengers. I lie here
because I wish to conceal my circumstances and myself, and not to
arrive in a new world badged and ticketed as an utterly poverty-
stricken man. If I could have afforded a passage in the after-cabin
I should have held up my head with the rest. As I couldn't I hide
it. Do you understand that?'

'I am very sorry, sir,' said Mark. 'I didn't know you took it
so much to heart as this comes to.'

'Of course you didn't know,' returned his master. 'How should
you know, unless I told you? It's no trial to you, Mark, to make
yourself comfortable and to bustle about. It's as natural for you to
do so under the circumstances as it is for me not to do so. Why, you
don't suppose there is a living creature in this ship who can by
possibility have half so much to undergo on board of her as I have?
Do you?' he asked, sitting upright in his berth and looking at Mark,
with an expression of great earnestness not unmixed with wonder.

Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and with his head very
much on one side, pondered upon this question as if he felt it an
extremely difficult one to answer. He was relieved from his
embarrassment by Martin himself, who said, as he stretched himself
upon his back again and resumed the book he had been reading:

'But what is the use of my putting such a case to you, when the
very essence of what I have been saying is, that you cannot by
possibility understand it! Make me a little brandy-and-water--cold
and very weak--and give me a biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a
nearer neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and keep her
children a little quieter to-night than she did last night; that's a
good fellow.'

Mr Tapley set himself to obey these orders with great alacrity,
and pending their execution, it may be presumed his flagging spirits
revived; inasmuch as he several times observed, below his breath,
that in respect of its power of imparting a credit to jollity, the
Screw unquestionably had some decided advantages over the Dragon. He
also remarked that it was a high gratification to him to reflect that
he would carry its main excellence ashore with him, and have it
constantly beside him wherever he went; but what he meant by these
consolatory thoughts he did not explain.

And now a general excitement began to prevail on board; and
various predictions relative to the precise day, and even the precise
hour at which they would reach New York, were freely broached. There
was infinitely more crowding on deck and looking over the ship's side
than there had been before; and an epidemic broke out for packing up
things every morning, which required unpacking again every night.
Those who had any letters to deliver, or any friends to meet, or any
settled plans of going anywhere or doing anything, discussed their
prospects a hundred times a day; and as this class of passengers was
very small, and the number of those who had no prospects whatever was
very large, there were plenty of listeners and few talkers. Those who
had been ill all along, got well now, and those who had been well,
got better. An American gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been
wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly
appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and constantly overhauled
a very little valise of pale leather, which contained his clothes,
linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and other
baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and
walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the
air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never
(under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves. An
English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from
a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong box
besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man,
and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great
sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close
before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night
they took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to
until the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the
passengers were to be conveyed ashore.

Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying
alongside an hour or more--during which period her very firemen were
objects of hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been
so many angels, good or bad--took all her living freight aboard.
Among them Mark, who still had his friend and her three children
under his close protection; and Martin, who had once more dressed
himself in his usual attire, but wore a soiled, old cloak above his
ordinary clothes, until such time as he should separate for ever from
his late companions.

The steamer--which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it
worked its long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or
antediluvian monster--dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and
presently they saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat,
straggling city.

'And this,' said Mr Tapley, looking far ahead, 'is the Land of
Liberty, is it? Very well. I'm agreeable. Any land will do for me,
after so much water!'