THE 'LADY EMMA'
On the morning of a day for ever memorable to me as the date of my
departure from my home--namely, March 31, 1860--my father and I went to
London, there to stay till April 2, when it was arranged that I should
go on board the ship at Gravesend. My grief worked like a passion in
me; yet I was quiet; my resolution to be calm whitened my cheeks, but
again and again my eyes brimmed in spite of my efforts.
Oh, I so feared this going away alone! Even though I was to be in the
company of my faithful, dear Mrs. Burke, my very heart so shrank up
in me at the idea of saying farewell to my lover, with the chance of
never seeing him more, that sometimes when I said my prayers I would
ask God to make me too ill to leave home.
It was a melancholy grey day when I drove with my father to the
station; the east wind sang like the surf in the naked, iron-hard
boughs, and the sea streamed in lines of snow into the black desolate
distance, unbroken by a gleam of sail, save, as we turned the corner
which gave me a view of the ocean, I caught sight of a lonely black and
red carcass of a steamer staggering along, tall and naked as though
plucked, with a hill of foam under her counter; the melancholy and
desolation of the day was in her, and no picture of shipwreck could
have made that scene of waters sadder.
I had bidden good-bye to all I knew during the week: there were no more
farewells to be said. We entered the train, and when we ran out of the
station I felt that my long voyage had truly commenced. I'll not linger
over my brief stay in London. Mr. Moore was constantly with me: indeed
we were seldom apart during those two days of my waiting to join the
ship at Gravesend. His father and sister called to say good-bye; I was
too poorly and low-spirited to visit them. In truth I never once left
the hotel until I drove with my father and Mr. Moore to the station to
take the train to Gravesend.
Before embarking, however, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Owen, the
surgeon of the ship. He had occasion to be in the West End of London,
and Mrs. Burke asked him to call. I viewed him with considerable
curiosity, for it was not only he was to be my medical adviser--I could
not but reflect that I was to be locked up in a small ship with this
man for very many months, with no other change of society than Captain
and Mrs. Burke. I was pleasantly disappointed in him. I had figured
a yellow, long-faced, melancholy man, with a countenance ploughed by
frequent secret weeping, and furrowed by pitiful memories and night
thoughts black as Dr. Young's. Instead there entered the room briskly,
with a sideways bow cleverly executed whilst in motion, the right arm
advanced, a short, plump figure of a man in a coat cut in something
of a clerical style, short legs, and a face that would have been
reasonably full but for its long aquiline nose, and contraction of
lineaments due to a big bush of hair standing out stiff in minute curls
over either ear. Otherwise he was bald.
My father was extremely polite to him. He stayed an hour and partook
of some slight refreshment. He stared at me very earnestly, felt my
pulse, considered me generally with polite professional attention, and,
after he had put certain questions, said to my father with significant
gravity:
'You may console yourself, sir, for the temporary loss of your
daughter; I do not scruple to say that in sending her on this voyage
you will be saving her life. I believe I can recognise her case, and
strongly share the opinion of those who prescribe a long residence on
board ship upon the ocean.'
My father's face lighted up: nothing I believe could have heartened him
more at the moment than this assurance. Mr. Moore took Mr. Owen by the
hand and said:
'We shall be trusting her to you, sir; she is very dear to me. We
should be man and wife but for her health.'
'All that my anxious attention can give her she shall have,' said Mr.
Owen, bowing over my lover's hand.
Yet he did not stay his hour without letting us see, poor fellow, that
in the depths of his heart he was a grieving man. He said nothing; no
reference was made to his affliction: but in certain pauses the pain of
memory would enter his face like a shadow, and sometimes he would sigh
tremulously as one in sorrow sighs in sleep, scarcely knowing you saw,
that he did so.
When he was gone, my father said to Mr. Moore that his spirits felt as
light again now that he had seen what sort of man it was who would have
charge of my health.
'Taking all sides of it,' he said, 'I don't think we could have
done better. Marie goes with an old nurse who loves her as her own
child; Mr. Owen seems a kind-hearted, experienced, practical man. I
hope he understands that our appreciation of his kindness will not
be restricted to bare thanks on the return of the vessel. The more
I see of Burke, the better I like him. He is an honest, experienced
seaman from crown to heel, and in saying that I am allowing him all
the virtues. No; the arrangements are wholly to my satisfaction and my
mind is at rest. It will be like a long yachting trip for Marie: she
will have a fine ship under her, and all the seclusion and comfort of
a yacht combined with the safety of ample tonnage. I am satisfied. It
was a cruel difficulty; we have had to meet it; it is well met, and
now, Marie, there is nothing to do but wait. Have patience. The months
will swiftly roll by--then you will return to us, a healthy, fine young
woman, full of life and colour and vigour, instead of----' His voice
broke off in a sob and he turned his head away. I ran to him and he
held me.
On April 2 we went down to Gravesend. Mr. Moore accompanied us. Captain
Burke had telegraphed that the 'Lady Emma' was lying off that town and
would tow to sea in the afternoon of the 2nd. We arrived at Gravesend
at about twelve o'clock and drove to a hotel. All my luggage had been
sent on board the ship in the docks. Mrs. Burke waited for us in a room
overlooking the river; here she had ordered luncheon to be served. She
seemed hearty and happy: kissed me, and curtseyed to my father and Mr.
Moore, and taking me to the window said:
'There she is, Miss Marie. There's your ocean home. What do you think
of her as a picture?'
She pointed to a vessel that was straining at a buoy almost immediately
opposite. A tug was lying near her. It was a young April day; the
sunshine thin and pale, the blue of the heavens soft and dim, with a
number of swelling bodies of clouds, humped and bronzed, sailing with
the majesty of line-of-battle ships into the south-west. A brisk wind
blew and the river was full of life. The grey water twinkled and was
flashed in places into a clearness and beauty of bluish crystal by the
brushing of the breeze. The eye was filled and puzzled for some moments
by the abounding tints and motion. A large steamer with her line of
bulwarks palpitating with heads of emigrants was slowly passing down;
another with frosted funnel and drainings of red rust on her side, as
though she still bled from the scratches of a recent vicious fight
outside, was warily passing up: beside her was a large, full-rigged
ship towing to London, and the sluggish passage of the masts, yards,
and rigging of the two vessels, the steamer sliding past the other,
combined with the sudden turning of a little schooner close by, all her
canvas shaking, and with the heeling figure of a brig, her dark breasts
of patched canvas swelling for the flat shores opposite, a spout of
white water at her forefoot, and a short-lived vein of river-froth at
her rudder; _then_, close in, two barges heaped with cargo, blowing
along stiff as flag-poles under brown wings of sail; these with vessels
at both extremities of the Reach, coming and going, interlacing the
perspective of their rigging into a complication of colours and
wirelike outlines, for ever shifting: all this wonderful changing life,
I say, adding to it the trembling of the stream of river, the pouring
of smoke, the pulling and shivering of flags, put a giddiness into the
scene, and for some moments I stared idly, with Mrs. Burke beside me
pointing to the 'Lady Emma.'
My eye then went to the ship, and rested upon as pretty a little
fabric as probably ever floated upon the water of the Thames. I may
venture upon a description of her and speak critically: indeed I must
presuppose some knowledge of the sea in you, otherwise I shall be at
a loss; for as you shall presently discover I was long enough upon
the ocean, under circumstances of distress scarcely paralleled in the
records, to learn by heart the language of the deep, how to speak of
ships and tell of sailors' doings, and I cannot but name the things of
the sea in the language in which the mariner talks of them.
The 'Lady Emma' was a full-rigged ship, between six hundred and seven
hundred tons in burthen; she was a wooden ship--iron sailing vessels
were few in those days; she was painted black; but though loaded for
the voyage she sat lightly upon the water, and a hand's-breadth of new
metal sheathing burned along her water-line like a gilding of sunlight
the length of her. Her lower masts were white, her upper masts a bright
yellow; her yards were very square, or as a landsman would call them
wide: the most inexperienced eye might guess that when clothed in sail
she would spread wings as of an albatross in power, breadth, and beauty
for a meteoric flight over the long blue heave.
'How do you like her, Miss Marie?' said Mrs. Burke.
'She is a pretty ship, I think,' I answered.
'She is a beauty,' said the good woman; 'she outsails everything.'
'She has a fine commanding lift about the bows,' said Mr. Moore,
passing his arm through mine. 'Captain Burke tells me she has done as
much as three hundred and twelve miles in the twenty-four hours.'
'So she has, sir,' said Mrs. Burke.
'I wish she'd maintain that rate of sailing all the time Marie is
aboard,' said my father.
'Oh, Sir Mortimer, this going will seem but as of yesterday's happening
when yonder ship's out there again, returned, and your dear girl's in
your arms, strong, fine, and hearty, rich in voice, and bright-eyed as
she used to be when a baby. These voyages seem long to take, and when
they're ended it's like counting how many fingers you have to remember
them, so easy and quick it all went.'
Lunch was served and we seated ourselves, but my throat was dry and
I could swallow nothing but a little wine. My father and Mr. Moore
pretended to eat; suddenly looking up I met my sweetheart's gaze: a
look of inexpressible tenderness and distress entered his face, and
starting from his seat he went to the window, and kept his back to us
for a few minutes. Mrs. Burke went to him and whispered in his ear; I
perfectly understood that she begged him to bear up for my sake: indeed
it needed but for my father and my lover to give way, for me to break
down utterly, with a menace of consequent prostration that must put an
end to this scheme of a voyage on the very threshold of it.
We left the hotel at two o'clock and walked slowly to the pier. I was
closely veiled. I could not have borne the inquisitive stare of the
people as we passed. Whilst we waited for a boat, I watched a mother
saying good-bye to her son, a bright-haired boy of fourteen in the
uniform of a merchant midshipman. She was in deep mourning, a widow,
and I had but to look at her pale face to know that the boy was her
child. The lad struggled with his feelings; his determination to be
manly and not to be seen to cry by the people standing round about nor
to go on board his ship with red eyes doubtless helped him. He broke
away from her with a sort of sharp sobbing laugh, crying, 'Back again
in a year, mother, back again in a year,' and left her. She stood as
though turned to stone. When in the boat he flourished his cap to her;
she watched him like a statue with the most dreadful expression of
grief the imagination could paint. Never shall I forget the motionless
figure of that widow mother and the grief in her face, and the look in
her tearless eyes.
'There's plenty of sorrow in this world,' said Mrs. Burke, as the four
of us seated ourselves in the boat, 'and there's no place where more
grief's to be seen than here, owing to the leave-takings and the coming
back of ships with news.'
'Master of a ship fell dead yesterday just as he was a-stepping
ashore,' said the waterman who was rowing us. 'Bad job for his large
family.'
'You'll take care to have a letter ready before the ship is out of the
Channel, Marie,' said my father. 'Mrs. Burke, your husband will give
Miss Otway every opportunity of sending letters home?'
'I'll see to it, Sir Mortimer.'
We drew alongside the ship. Captain Burke and Mr. Owen stood at the
gangway to receive us. When I went up the ladder, supported by my
father, Captain Burke with his hat off extended his hand, saying:
'Miss Otway, welcome on board the "Lady Emma." She has received my
whisper. She knows her errand and what's expected of her. She'll keep
time, Sir Mortimer; and the magic that'll happen betwixt the months
whilst our jibboom is pointing to as many courses as the compass has
marks is going to transform this delicate, pale young lady into the
heartiest, rosiest lass that ever stepped over a ship's side.'
'I pray so, I pray so,' exclaimed my father.
'Captain Burke is not too sanguine,' exclaimed Mr. Owen with a smile.
'When do you start?' asked Mr. Moore.
'Soon after three, sir, I hope,' answered Captain Burke.
I ran my eye over the ship. The scene had that sort of morbid interest
to me which the architecture and furniture of a prison cell takes for
one who is to pass many months in it. I beheld a long white deck,
extending from the taffrail into the bows, with several structures
breaking the wide lustrous continuity: one forward was the galley,
the ship's kitchen; this side of it was a large boat with sheep
bleating inside her; whilst underneath was a sty-full of pigs, flanked
by hen-coops whose bars throbbed with the ceaseless protrusion and
withdrawal of the flapping combs of cocks and the heads of hens. Near
us was a great square hatch, covered over with a tarpaulin, and farther
aft, as the proper expression is, was a big glazed frame for the
admission of light into the cabin; some distance past it a sort of box,
curved to the aspect of a hood, called the companion-way, conducted you
below. At the end of the ship was the wheel, like a circle of flame
with the brasswork of it flashing to the sun, and immediately in front
stood the compass box or binnacle, glittering like the wheel, and
trembling to its height upon the white planks like a short pillar of
fire.
A number of sailors hung about the forecastle, and a man leaned in the
little door of the galley in a red shirt, bare to the elbows, eying us,
with a pair of fat, dough-like, tattooed arms crossed upon his breast,
a picture of stupid, sulky curiosity.
We stayed for a few minutes talking in the gangway; Mrs. Burke then
asked me to step below and see my cabin, and I went down the steps
followed by the rest, and entered the ship's little plain state-room.
I stopped at the foot of the ladder and drew my breath with difficulty.
What was it? An extraordinary sensation of icy chill had passed through
me. It was over in an instant, but it was as though the hand of death
itself had clutched my heart. Was it a presentiment working so potently
as to affect me physically? Was it some subtle motion of the nerves
influenced by the sight of the interior, and by the strange shipboard
smells in it which there was no virtue in the hanging pots of flowers
to sweeten? I said nothing. My father halted to the arrest of my hand,
supposing I wished to look about me, and yet, oh, merciful God! when I
date myself back to that hour, and think of me as entering that cabin
for the first time, and then of what happened afterwards, I cannot for
an instant question--nay, with fear and awe I devoutly believe--that
the heart-moving sensation of chill which came and went in the beat of
a pulse was a breath off the pinion of my angel of fate or destiny,
stirring in the thick-ribbed blackness of the future at sight of my
first entrance into the scene of my distress. Do not think me fanciful
nor high strained in expression or imagination. My meaning will be
clear to you.
The Burkes had done their best to make this state cabin comfortable
to the eye. Shelves full of books were secured to the ship's wall: a
couple of globes of gold and silver fish hung under the skylight, where
too were some rows of flowers hanging in pots. A couple of tall glasses
were affixed to the cabin walls, and the lamp was handsome and of
bright metal. A new carpet was stretched over the deck, and the table
was covered with a cloth, so that the interior looked like a little
parlour or living-room ashore. I also observed a stove in the fore end
of the cabin; it looked new, as though fitted for this particular
voyage.
'Dear Miss Marie, let me show you your bedroom,' said Mrs. Burke.
A narrow corridor went out of this living room in the direction of the
stern; on either hand were cabins, four of a side. Mrs. Burke threw
open a door on the port or left hand side, and we entered a large
berth. Two had been knocked into one for my use.
'This is bigger than anything I could have secured for you on board a
steamer,' said my father.
My old nurse's eyes were upon me whilst I gazed around. They had
made as elegant a little bedroom of the place as could possibly be
manufactured on board a plain, homely sailing ship. Every convenience
was here, and the furniture was handsome. They had put pink silk
curtains to my bunk which was single--that is, the upper shelf was
removed so that I should have the upper deck clear above me when I
pillowed my head. They had prettily decorated with drapery a large oval
glass nailed to the bulkhead: this mirror caught the light trembling
off the river, and brimming through the porthole and filled the
interior with a radiance of its own as though it had been a lamp. The
carpet was thick and rich; the armchair low and soft. A writing table
stood in the corner, and on it was a lovely bouquet; the berth was rich
with the smell of those delicious flowers; the atmosphere sweet as a
breeze in a garden of roses. It was my lover's gift, sent on board the
ship just before she left the docks, but I did not know this until
after I had said good-bye to him.
'It is as comfortable as your bedroom at home, Marie,' said my father.
'I find your thoughtful heart everywhere here, nurse,' said I.
'We have all done our best, and our best shall go on being done,' she
answered, smiling, and meeting my father's gaze she dropped him one of
her little old-world curtseys.
'I don't think you'll find anything missing, sir,' said Captain Burke,
'from Mr. Owen's medicine chest down to the smallest case of goodies in
the lazarette.'
'My daughter is in kind hands. I am satisfied,' said my father, and he
came to me and put his arm round my neck.
Captain Burke, saying he was needed on deck, went out. Mrs. Burke and
Mr. Owen followed; my father stepped into the state-room that I might
be alone with my lover.
He caught me quickly to his heart and kissed me again and again with
a passion of grief and love. We had exchanged our vows before, over
and over. We could but kiss and whisper hopes of a sweet meeting, of a
lasting reunion by-and-by. It was like a parting between a young bride
and bridegroom, but with a dreadful significance going into it out of
my health and out of the thought of the perils of the sea. Indeed, a
sadness as of death itself was in that parting, and I know Archie felt
that, as I did, when he released me and stood a moment looking into my
white face.
When we went into the cabin I found my father earnestly conversing with
Mrs. Burke. He was asking questions about my luggage and effects, and
impressing certain things upon her memory. A few minutes later Captain
Burke came down the companion-steps, and, halting before he reached the
bottom, exclaimed:
'Sir Mortimer, I'm sorry to say the tug'll be laying hold of us now
almost immediately.'
My father started, looked at me with something frantic in the
expression of his face, then crying 'Well, if the time has come----'
and took me in his arms. Then with tears standing in his eyes, and
gazing upwards, he asked God to bless and to protect me, and to
restore me, his only child, in safety and in health to him; and now
speechless with grief, mutely looking a farewell to Mrs. Burke, who
herself was weeping, he went on deck, followed by Mr. Moore, whose
leave-taking here had been no more than a single kiss pressed upon my
forehead as I stood beside the table after my father had released me.
When they were gone I sank into a chair; Mrs. Burke looked with wet
eyes through a cabin window. She was right to let my grief have its
way. After a little I heard the voices of men chorusing on deck;
overhead people regularly tramped to and fro. Mr. Owen came into the
cabin and said:
'Pray, Miss Otway, let me conduct you above. The air will refresh you,
and the picture of the river is striking and full of life.'
'Come, dear Miss Marie, with me,' said Mrs. Burke, and I put my arm
through hers and went on deck.
I stood still on discovering that our voyage was begun. Our ship had
been moored to a buoy; there had been no anchor to weigh, no wild
music of seamen nor hoarse quarter-deck commands to give the news of
departure to those under deck; the little tug had quietly manoeuvred
for our tow-rope, and now the ship's bows were pointing down the river,
her keen stem shearing through the froth of the paddle-wheels ahead,
with some sailors heave-hoing as they dragged upon the ropes which
hoisted certain staysails and jibs; the old town of Gravesend was
sliding away upon the quarter. I strained my eyes in vain for a sight
of the boat in which my father and Mr. Moore might have been making for
the shore. Well perhaps that I could not distinguish her. I think it
would have broken my heart then to have seen them, thus, for the last
time, making their way ashore for that home I was leaving for months,
and perhaps for ever!
'We have started, nurse!' I exclaimed.
'Yes, dear,' she answered. 'Do not make haste to cease crying. Let
nature work by degrees in her own fashion. I shall soon see my dear
girl looking proudly with health, and oh, the joy of your meeting with
your father and Mr. Moore, and my happiness when I see them staring at
you, scarce knowing you for your beauty and brightness!'
The water blazed with sunshine, the merry twinkling of it by the fresh
April wind made the whole Reach a path of dazzling light. Twenty
vessels of all sorts were about us: some leaned with rounded canvas
soft as sifted snow, with yellow streaks of metal glancing wet to the
light out of the brackish foam, that wanted the shrillness and spit of
the froth of the brine; some lifted bare skeleton scaffolds of spars
and yards as they towed past; some were no bigger than a Yarmouth
smack, and some were great steamers and deep and lofty ships from or
for the Antipodes. But whatever you looked at was beautiful with the
hues of the afternoon, the backing of the green land, the inspiration
of the sea, the spirit of ocean liberty wide as the horizon that is
boundless, and high as the air through which the clouds blew.