Two Years Before the Mast
Whatever your feelings may be, you must make a joke of everything at sea; and if you were to fall from aloft and be caught in the belly of a sail, and thus saved from instant death, it would not do to look at all disturbed, or to make a serious matter of it.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
The gale was now at its height, "blowing like scissors and thumb-screws;" the captain was on deck; the ship, which was light, rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her; and the sail gaping open and splitting, in every direction.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
It was an interesting sight, too, to see our noble ship, dismantled of all her top-hamper of long tapering masts and yards, and boom pointed with spear-head, which ornamented her in port; and all that canvas, which a few days before had covered her like a cloud, from the truck to the water's edge, spreading far out beyond her hull on either side, n
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"You'd better wait till you get round Cape Horn," says an old croaker. "Yes," says another, "you may see Boston, but you've got to 'smell hell' before that good day."
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
I remember an English lad who was always the life of the crew, but whom we afterwards lost overboard, standing for nearly ten minutes at the galley, with this pot of tea in his hand, waiting for a chance to get down into the forecastle; and seeing what he thought was a "smooth spell," started to go forward. He had just got to the end of t
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they sometimes appeared to me to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of everything but their pride, their manners, and their voices.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
His yarns frequently stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were always amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
We did not believe that a French prison would be much worse than "hide-droghing" on the coast of California; and no one who has not been on a long, dull voyage, shut up in one ship, can conceive of the effect of monotony upon one's thoughts and wishes.