104 
SCENES IN TI1E PACIFIC. 
This is always a cheering time on ship-board. ££ Heave 
ahoy and the old salt’s eye brightens, his step quickens, and 
his voice rings gladly, as link after link of the ponderous cable 
tumbles aboard, till the flukes of the anchor lie high on the 
bows, and the ship is given to her helm and the breeze. 
The wind, the sea, and good planks between him and the 
bottom, and the stars and stripes at the mizen, are the 
substantial comforts of an American tar. Supplied with these 
and a clear sweep from the headlands, he will leave the 
shore without a feeling that it will ever be his wish to return. 
Indeed, the real sailor, he who has wound every yarn of his 
happy hours around the windlass, despises the land. We had 
in the Don Quixote an example of this kind. He was a tall, 
slabsided Yankee, from the State of Maine ; with a hand like 
a grappling-iron, hung to a mass of shoulder and chest that 
would have been formidable among buffalo. His deck name 
was Tom; to which the adjective long, was sometimes pre¬ 
fixed, as he explained it, “ in order to add a fathom to its 
sound.” 
When sixteen years of age, he had heard that Maine was 
noted far abroad for its long mortals and heavy fists; and 
dreamed that he was not so deficient in these qualities as to 
be excluded from the distinction which might arise from them. 
He therefore determined to avail himself of the first favora¬ 
ble occasion for reaping the harvest of that notoriety to which 
he seemed to be born. Nor did he wait an unpleasant length 
of time for such an opportunity. His father returned home 
one evening with a new axe, purchased for Tom’s especial 
use, in the lumber forest. It was the night previous to “ the 
General Training-day,” at Portland; and he proposed, as the 
morrow would be a leisure day, that Tom should test the 
metal of his axe, in cutting away a dry hemlock tree which 
had fallen across the public road. A mere suggestion from the 
father was the Jaw of his household. Tom, therefore, ate his 
breakfast, next morning, with becoming submissiveness, and 
about seven o’clock struck his new axe into the dry hemlock. 
