Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/316

 porpoise, and the following morning had some porpoise steak for breakfast, instead of our usual mess of lobscouse,  which was made of bread, potatoes, onions, and salt beef  and pork chopped up — the whole stewed together. This mess, with a pot of coffee sweetened with molasses, was generally the standard dish on board of a merchantman for Jack before the mast.

We were so near home now we were taking what Jack calls sailor’s pleasure, that is, overhauling our chests,  monk-bags, ditty-boxes, and the little parcels marked for  brother, sister, or "the girl I left behind me." The small space where our deceased shipmate’s chest had  been lashed remained unoccupied, and any one of the  crew would as soon have thought of jumping overboard  as of sitting or standing there. The old sailors swore that they had seen poor Ambrose standing there, shivering in the wind, and looking as pale as a ghost.

As we neared the Gulf Stream the weather looked squally. The sky-sails and royal yards were sent on deck, and the flying-jib-boom housed. While crossing the stream the lightning was very vivid and the rain  poured down in torrents.

At eight bells, four o’clock, on the morning of September 17th, took pilot. At daylight made the Highlands of Nevisink, off New York harbor. Soon after breakfast a steamboat came alongside and towed us up to the wharf,  when all hands left the ship with chests and bedding. We had made the voyage to China and return in the extraordinarily short space of seven months and seventeen days, the quickest voyage from port to port in a  sailing vessel ever made, I believe, before or since.