PRENTICE MULFORD: Autobiographical Works (Life by Land and Sea, The Californian's Return & More). Prentice Mulford Mulford

in the darkness of a very black tropical night, the mastheads were likewise lost in a Cimmerian obscurity—whatever that is. At last I found the yard. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the right one or not. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I knew I had to untie something somewhere. But where? Meantime the savage Scotch second mate was bellowing, as it then seemed, a mile below me. I knew the bellow was for me. I had to do something and I commenced doing. I did know, or rather guessed, enough to cast-off the lee and weather gaskets, or lines which bind the sail when furled to the yard, and then I made them up into a most slovenly knot. But the bunt-gasket (the line binding the middle and most bulky portion of the sail), bothered me. I couldn’t untie it. I picked away at it desperately, tore my nails and skinning my knuckles. The bellowing from below continued as fiercely as ever, which, though not intelligible as to words, was certainly exhorting me, and me only, to vigilance. Then the watch got tired waiting for me. Thinking the sail loosed, they began hoisting. They hoisted the yard to its proper place and me with it. I clung on and went up higher. That, by the way, always comes of holding fast to that which is good. Then a man’s head came bobbing up out of the darkness. It was that of a good natured Nantucket boy, whose name of course was Coffin. He asked me the trouble. I went into a lengthy explanation about the unmanageable knot. “Oh the knot!” said he. “Cut it!” and he cut it. I would never have cut it. In my then and even present nautical ignorance I should have expected the mast or yard to have fallen from cutting anything aloft. Only a few days previous I had seen the Captain on the quarter-deck jumping up and down in his tracks with rage because a common seamen had, by mistake, cut a mizzen brace, and the second mate, as usual, had jumped up and down on the seaman when he reached the deck. I feared to set a similar jumping process in operation. Coming on deck after my lengthy and blundering sojourn loosing a royal, I expected to be mauled to a pulp for my stupidity. But both watch and bellowing mate had gone below and I heard no more of it.

CHAPTER V.

      SAN FRANCISCO IN 1856.

       Table of Contents

       The Wizard sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first land we had seen for four months. We sailed into the harbor, anchored, and the San Francisco of 1856 lay before us.

      The ship was tied up to the wharf. All but the officers and “boys” left her. She seemed deserted, almost dead. We missed the ocean life of the set sails, the ship bowing to the waves and all the stir of the elements in the open ocean.

      The captain called me one day into the cabin, paid me my scanty wages and told me he did not think I “was cut out for a sailor,” I was not handy enough about decks.

      Considering that for two months I had been crippled by a felon on the middle finger of my right hand, which on healing had left that finger curved inward, with no power to straighten it, I thought the charge of awkwardness somewhat unjust.

      However, I accepted the Captain’s opinion regarding my maritime capacities, as well as the hint that I was a superfluity on board.

      I left the Wizard—left her for sixteen years of varied life in California.

      I had no plans, nor aims, nor purpose, save to exist from day to-day and take what the day might give me.

      Let me say here never accept any person’s opinion of your qualifications or capacities for any calling. If you feel that you are “cut out” for any calling or that you desire to follow it, abide by that feeling, and trust to it. It will carry you through in time.

      I believe that thousands on thousands of lives have been blasted and crippled through the discouragement thrown on them by relation, friend, parent, or employer’s saying continually (or if not saying it verbally, thinking it) “You are a dunce. You are stupid. You can’t do this or that. It’s ridiculous for you to think of becoming this or that.”

      The boy or girl goes off with this thought thrown on them by others. It remains with them, becomes a part of them and chokes off aspiration and effort.

      Years afterward, I determined to find out for myself whether I was “cut out for a sailor” or not. As a result I made myself master of a small craft in all winds and weathers and proved to myself that if occasion required, I could manage a bigger one.

      San Francisco seemed to me then mostly fog in the morning, dust and wind in the afternoon, and Vigilance Committee the remainder of the time.

      San Francisco was then in the throes of the great “Vigilanteeism” of 1856. Companies of armed men were drilling in the streets at night. In the city’s commercial centre stood “Fort Gunnybags”—the strong hold of the Vigilantes—made, as its name implied, of sand-filled gunny sacks. Carronades protruded from its port holes, sentinels paced the ramparts. There was a constant surging of men in and out of the building behind the fort,—the headquarters and barracks of the Vigilantes. From its windows a few days before our arrival they had hung Casey for the killing of James King—one of the editors of the Bulletin. I saw two others hung there on the sixth of August. Vigilanteeism was then the business and talk of the town. The jail had just been captured from the “Law and Order” men, who were not “orderly” at all, but who had captured the city’s entire governmental and legal machinery and ran it to suit their own purposes.

      The local Munchausens of that era were busy; one day the U. S. ship of war, St. Mary’s, was to open fire on Fort Gunnybags; the next, Governor Johnson, backed by twenty thousand stalwart men, was to fall upon the city and crush out the insurrection.

      The up-country counties were arming or thought of arming to put down this “rebellion.” The “Rebellion” was conducted by the respectability and solidity of San Francisco, which had for a few years been so busily engaged in money-making as to allow their city government to drift into rather irresponsible hands; many of the streets were unbridged, many not lighted at night. Cause—lack of money to bridge and light. The money in the hands of the city officials had gone more for private pleasure than public good.

      I speak of the streets being unbridged because at that time a large portion of the streets were virtually bridges. One-fourth of the city at least, was built over the water. You could row a boat far under the town, and for miles in some directions. This amphibious part of the city “bilged” like a ship’s hold, and white paint put on one day would be lead colored the next, from the action on it of the gases let loose from the ooze at low tide.

      There were frequent holes in these bridges into which men frequently tumbled, and occasionally a team and wagon. They were large enough for either, and their only use was to show what the city officials had not done with the city’s money.

      Then Commercial street between Leidesdorff and Battery was full of Cheap John auction stores, with all their clamor and attendant crowds at night. Then the old Railroad Restaurant was in its prime, and the St. Nicholas, on Sansome, was the crack hotel. Then, one saw sand-hills at the further end of Montgomery street. To go to Long Bridge was a weary, body-exhausting tramp. The Mission was reached by omnibus. Rows of old hulks were moored off Market street wharf, maritime relics of “’49.” That was “Rotten Row” One by one they fell victims to Hare. Hare purchased them, set Chinamen to picking their bones, broke them up, put the shattered timbers in one pile, the iron bolts in another, the copper in another, the cordage in another, and so in a short all time that remained of these bluff bowed, old-fashioned ships and brigs, that had so often doubled the stormy corner of Cape Horn or smoked their try-pots in the Arctic ocean was so many ghastly heaps of marine debris.

      I had seen the Niantic, now entombed just below Clay street, leave my native seaport, bound for the South Pacific to cruise for whale, years ere the bars and gulches of California were turned up by pick and shovel. The Cadmus, the vessel which brought Lafayette over in 1824, was another of our “blubber hunters,” and afterward made her last voyage with the rest to San Francisco.

      Manners and customs still retained much of the old “’49” flavor. Women were still scarce. Every river boat brought a shoal of miners in gray