DAYY JONES’S LOOKER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1698, 30 July 1879, Page 3

DAYY JONES’S LOOKER.

Everybody (say the “Detroit Free Press ” ) has heard the phrase, “Davy Jones’s looker,” but I don’t think everybody is familiar with the origin. In the grimy recesses of the fo’castle it runneth thus : —Once upon a time there was a captain, and he was a Tartar, if ever there was a nautical Tartar. He thought no more of tricing up a poor devil of a tar and giving him a couple of dozen than he did of knocking a man down because the wind was ahead, or his corns bothered him, or any other good cause. His mates were of the same kidney with himself, and made it pretty warm for the crew, or such of them as the captain had not loft hors de combat. Well, the ship—she was a whaler—came into port short-handed, half of the crew having deserted at Maderia, and three of them having died, whom the captain also entered in the log as deserters, for that gave him the right to collar their wages and “kits.” Then he shipped a new crow, mostly “Dagos,” apd such trash, for no white man would go with him, except one, a Welshman, called Davy Jones, who didn’t see any other way of getting home to Europe. The ship was bound for Cardiff, where the captain wes to get a good charter to the East Indies, and, being chief owner of the vessel, ho didn’t want to miss it; but, as it happened, the winds were against him, and he was three weeks out before he had passed the banks of Newfoundland, and that put him in a precious rage. He took it out of the crew all he could, but licking a Dago was tamo fun to him, and ho wanted to refresh himself with a taste of white blood, while, as it happened, the only candidate of that complexion on board was Jones, whom he could never get a fair excuse tor tricing up. Jones was such a prompt and obedient sailor that his captain fairly hated the sight of him. At last, one day, as Jonas was taking his trick at the wheel, the captain came up and gave an order which couldn’t be obeyed without throwing the ship on her beam-ends, and Jones mildly explained as much ; whereupon the captain put him in irons for mutiny. That got the Welshman’s hot blood up, and he talked back. So the captain had him up, and went for his cat. “Strip,” says the captain, and “I’ll be, &o„ if I do,” says Jones. There was a tussle and a fight, and the long and short of it was that the captain got the worst of it, until his officers came to his rescue, and tied down the mutineer. Then the captain get* up with a very wicked light in his eyes, and says, “Bring out that lubber’s luggage,” and they bring Davy’s box on deck. “ Pitch out his gory traps,” said the captain, and the sailors empty Jones’s traps on the deck. “ Sew him up in a canvas sack and put him nto hi* gory chost," says the captain, and you may be sure ho didn’t have to give the order twice. Poor Davy Jones was thrust neck and crop into his own chest. “ Throw •pen the lee gangway,” *ays the captain, and it was done. “ Pipe all hands for the funeral service,” »ays the captain, and nil hands were duly summoned, and the captain says, “ I’m a-going to have a funeral service,” says he, and he slams down the cover of the box and gives It a shove overboard. Jones hadn’t said a word all the while, except once, when they were swinging him up, when he gays to the captain, in words which time and

the poetic atmosphere of the fo’castle have crystallised into the following heroic conpiet:— ” While seas is salt and timbers float, You'll never beat me into port.” And,) sure enough, they never did; for no matter how the wind blew or the sea rose, it was always head wind and bad sea for the captain; and when the gale was at its fiercest and the seas running mountains high, then they used to see Davy Jones sitting on the weather quarter of his locker to keep it trimmed, and a-holding on to the sheet of the canvas, which he had hoisted as a storm sail, and a-riding the waves as free as a dory. And it is a fact vouched by scores of truthful sailors and confided to countless marines, that whenever a vessel crosses the Grand Banks and the weather is particularly bad, you can see by the help of a good glass, or a glass and a half, an old-fashioned barque riding in the teeth of the gale, with every sail set, but without an inch of way on ; and if you look a little windward, and with an eye of faith, you will see what looks like a coffin riding free on the billows, and never shipping a sea, though the waves be high cnongh to swamp a Cunarder. Then you will know that you have seen Davy Jones and his locker, and if yon be a wise man you will not want to see any more of him or it, for it will be time for you to go below.