It is not much of a story. It is only the mild adventure of a boy at
sea; and of a small, sad boy at that. This boy had an elder brother who
was ill; and the physicians in consultation had decided that a long
sea-voyage was his only hope, and that even in this case the hope was a
very faint one.
There was a ship at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco,--a very
famous clipper, one of those sailors of the sea known as Ocean
Greyhounds. She was built for speed, and her record was a brilliant one;
under the guidance of her daring captain, she had again and again proved
herself worthy of her name. She was called the _Flying Cloud_. Her
cabins were luxuriously furnished; for in those days seafarers were
oftener blown about the world by the four winds of heaven than propelled
by steam. Yet when the _Flying Cloud_, one January day, tripped anchor
and set sail, there were but three strangers on the quarter-deck--a
middle-aged gentleman in search of health, the invalid brother, in his
eighteenth year, and the small, sad boy.
[Illustration: West from Black Point, 1856]
The captain's wife, a lady of Salem who had followed him from sea to
sea for many a year, was the joy and salvation of that forlorn little
company. How forlorn it was only the survivor knows, and he knows well
enough. Forty years have scarcely dimmed the memory of it. Through all
the wear and tear of time the remembrance of that voyage has at
intervals haunted him: the length of it, the weariness of it, and the
almost unbroken monotony stretching through the ninety odd days that
dawned and darkened between San Francisco and New York; the solitary
sail that was blown on and on, and becalmed and buffeted between the
blue waste of waters and the blue waste of sky; the lonesomeness of it
all--no land, no lights flashing across the sea in glad assurance; no
passing ships to hail us with faint-voiced "Ahoy!"--only the
ever-tossing waves, the trailing sea-gardens, the tireless birds of the
air and the monsters of the deep.
Ah, well-a-day! There was a solemn and hushed circle listening to family
prayers that morning,--the morning of the 4th of January. The father's
voice trembled as he opened the Bible and read from that beautiful
psalm:
"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. For
He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves
thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths;
their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and
stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry
unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their
distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are
still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so He bringeth them
unto their desired haven. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His
goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men!"
The small, sad boy looked smaller and sadder than ever as he stood on
the deck of the _Flying Cloud_ and waved his last farewell. He tried his
best to be manly and to swallow the heart that was leaping in his
throat, and at the earliest possible moment he flew to his journal and
made his first entry there. He was going to keep a journal because his
brother kept one, and because it was the proper thing to keep a journal
at sea--no ship is complete without its log, you know; and, moreover, I
think it was a custom in that family to keep a journal; for it was, more
or less, a journalistic family.
Now we are nearing the anniversary of that boy's journal: it runs
through January, February and March; it is more than forty years old
this minute. And because it is a boy's journal, and the boy was small
and sad, I'm going to peep into it and fish out a line or two. With an
effort he made this entry:
"CLIPPER SHIP, FLYING CLOUD,
"January 4, 1857.
"I watched them till we were out of sight of them, and then began to
look about to see what I could see. It begins to get rough. I tried to
see home, but I could not. The pilot says he will take a letter ashore
for us. Now I will go to bed."
Then he cried unto the Lord in his trouble with a heart as heavy as
lead.
"JAN. 5.--The day rather rough, with little squalls of rain. We are
passing the Farallone Islands, but I feel too bad to sketch them. I get
homesick when I think of the dear ones I left behind me. I hope I may
see them all in this world again."
That was the gray beginning of a voyage that had very little color in
it. The coast-line sank apace; the gray rocks--the Farallones, the haunt
of the crying gull--dissolved in the gray mist. The hours were all
alike: all dismal and slow-footed.
"I don't feel very well to-day," said the small, sad boy, quite
plaintively. On the 6th he brightens and begins to take notice. History
would have less to fasten on were there not some such entries as this:
"A list of our live-stock: 17 pigs; 12 dozen hens and roosters; 3
turkeys; 1 gobbler; a cockatoo and a wild-cat. We have a fair breeze,
and carry 26 sails.
"JAN. 7.--The day is calm. I began to read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I like
it. The captain's wife was going to train the wild-cat when it bit
her--but not very hard.
"8.--There was not much wind to-day. We fished for sea-gulls and caught
four. I caught one and let it go again. Two hens flew overboard. The
sailors in a boat got one of them; the gulls killed one.
"9.--The day has been rather gloomy. I caught another sea-gull but let
him go again. On deck nearly all day.
"10.--The cockatoo sits on deck and talks and talks.
"11.--It makes me feel bad when I think of home. I want to be there."
The long, long weary days dragged on. It is thought worth while to note
that there were fresh eggs for breakfast, fresh pork for dinner, fresh
chicken for supper; that a porpoise had been captured, and that his
carcass yielded "three gallons of oil as good as sperm oil"; that no
ship had been seen--"no sail from day to day"; that they were in the
latitude of Panama; that it was squally or not squally, as the case
might be; that on one occasion they captured "four barrels of oil," the
flotsam of some ill-fated whaler, and that it all proved "very
exciting"; that a dolphin was captured, and that he died in splendor,
passing through the whole gamut of the rainbow--that the words of
tradition might be fulfilled; that the hens had suffered no sea-change,
but had contributed from a dozen to two dozen eggs per day. Still
stretched the immeasurable waste of waters to the horizon line on every
hand. Day by day the small boy made his entries; but he seemed to be
running down, like a clock, and needed winding up. This is how his
record dwindled:
"JAN. 20.--The day is very pleasant, with some wind. We crossed the
equator. I sat up in one of the boats a long time. I wish my little
brothers were here to play with me.
"21.--The day is very pleasant, with a good breeze. We are going ten or
eleven knots an hour.
"22.--The day is very pleasant. A nine-knot breeze. Nothing new happened
to-day.
"23.--The day is pleasant. Six-knot breeze."
It came to pass that the small, sad boy, wearying of "Uncle Tom" and his
"cabin," was driven to extremes; and, having obtained leave of the
captain--who was autocrat of all his part of the world,--he climbed into
one of the ship's boats, as it hung in the davits over the side of the
vessel. It was an airy voyage he took there, sailing between sea and
sky, soaring up and down with the rolling vessel, like a bird upon the
wing.
He rigged a tiny mast there--it was a walking-stick that ably served
this purpose; the captain's wife provided sails no larger than
handkerchiefs. With thread-like ropes and pencil spars he set his sails
for dreamland. One day the wind bothered him; he could not trim his
canvas, and in desperation he set it dead against the wind, and then the
sails were filled almost to bursting. But his navigation was at fault;
for he was heading in a direction quite opposite to the _Flying Cloud_.
Then came a facetious sailor and whispered to him: "Do you want ever to
get to New York?"--"Yes, I do," said the little captain of the midair
craft.--"Well, then, you'd better haul in sail; for you're set dead agin
us now." The sails were struck on the instant and never unfurled again.
I wonder why some people are so very inconsiderate when they speak to
children, especially to simple or sensitive children? The small, sad boy
took it greatly to heart, and was cast down because he feared that he
might have delayed the bark that bore him all too slowly toward the
far-distant port. This was indeed simplicity of the deepest dye, and
something of that simplicity the boy was never to escape unto the end
of time. We are as God made us, and we must in all cases put up with
ourselves.
What a lonely voyage was that across the vast and vacant sea! Now and
then a distant sail glimmered upon the horizon, but disappeared like a
vanishing snowflake. The equator was crossed; the air grew colder; storm
and calm followed each other; the daily entry now becomes monotonous.
"FEBRUARY 2.--To-day for the first time we saw an albatross.
"7.--Rather rough and cold; I have spent all day in the cabin. It makes
me homesick to have such weather.
"14.--I rose at five o'clock and went on deck, and before long saw land.
It was Terra del Fuego; it was a beautiful sight. Here lay a pretty
island, there a towering precipice, and over yonder a mountain covered
with snow. We made the fatal Cape Horn at two o'clock, and passed it at
four o'clock. Now we are in the Atlantic Ocean.
"WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY.--Rough weather: a sixteen-knot breeze. To-day we
got our one thousandth egg, and the hens are doing well. At
twelve--eight bells--we saw a sail on our weather-bow: she was going the
same way as we were. At two, we overtook and spoke her. She was the
whaler _Scotland_ from New Zealand, bound for New Bedford, with
thirty-five hundred barrels of oil. We soon passed her. I wish her good
luck."
I will no longer stretch the small, sad boy upon the rack of his dull
journal. He had a glimpse at Juan Fernandez, but the island of his
dreams was so far off that he had to climb to the maintop in order to
get a sight of its shadowy outline. When it had faded away like the
clouds, the lonely little fellow cried himself to sleep for love of his
Robinson Crusoe.
One night the moon--a large, mellow tropical one,--rose from a bank of
cloud so like a mountain's chain that the small one clapped his hands in
glee and cried: "Land ho!" But, alas! it was only cloud-land; and his
eyes, that were starving for a sight of God's green earth, were again
bedewed. Indeed he was bound for a distant shore, a voyage of ninety-one
days; and during all that voyage he was in sight of land for five days
only. It may be said that the port he was bound for, and where he was
destined to pass two years at school, four thousand miles from his own
people, may be called "The Vale of Tears."
Off the Brazilian coast a head-wind forced the ship to tack repeatedly;
she was sometimes so near the land that people could be seen moving,
like black dots, along the shore. Native fishermen, mounted upon the
high seats of their catamarans--the frailest rafts,--drifted within
hailing distance; and over night the brave ship was within almost
speaking distance of Pernambuco. The lights of the city were like a bed
of glowworms,--but the small, sad boy was blown off into the sea again,
for his hour had not yet come.
Here is the last entry I shall weary you with, for I would not abuse
your patience:
"APRIL 5, 1857.--I was _awoke_ this morning by the noise the pilot made
in getting on board. At ten o'clock the steam-tug Hercules took us in
tow. We had beautiful views of the shore [God knows how beautiful they
were in his eyes!], and at three o'clock we were at the Astor House,
with Captain and Mrs. Cresey, Mr. Connor, and the Stoddard boys--all of
the _Flying Cloud_,--where we retired to soft beds to spend the night."
There is a plaintive touch in that reference to _soft beds_ after three
months in the straight and narrow bunk of a ship. And there is more
pathos in all those childish pages than you wot of; for, alas and alas!
I am the sole survivor,--I was that small, sad boy; and I alone am left
to tell the tale.