THE MERLIN.
BE it known that the Merlin, the name in which our vessel delights, is a
small propeller, with a screw wheel, and a crazy mess of machinery in
the middle, which go far towards making one deaf and dumb by day, but
very wakeful and talkative by night; so thoroughly are the rumbling,
thumping and clanking disseminated through all those parts appointed for
the passengers. The Merlin has not only her peculiar noises, but her own
peculiar ways and motions; motions half wallowing and half progressive;
a compound motion very difficult to describe, at the time, mainly on
account of a disagreeable confusion in the brain and stomach.
The arrangements in the Merlin for going to repose are better than those
for quitting it. No chestnut lies more snugly in the burr than your
passenger in his berth. If he happen to be short and slender, it is sure
to fit him all the better. But when he gets out of it, he is pushed
forward into company immediately, and washes in the one bowl, and looks
at the one glass. On board the Merlin, one feels disposed to give the
harshest words of his vocabulary a frequent airing. He sees how it is,
and he says to himself: I have the secret of this Merlin; she is
intended to put a stop to travel; to hinder people from leaving Halifax
for Sydney and St. Johns. Wait you eight and forty hours after this
ungenerous soliloquy, and speak out then. What do you say? The Merlin is
the thing!
Away in this dusky corner of the world Peril spins her web. High and
wide and deep she stretches her subtle lines: cliffs, reefs and banks,
ice, currents, mists and winds. But the Merlin is no moth, no feeble
insect to get entangled in this terrible snare. Dark-winged dragonfly of
the sea, she cuts right through them all. Your grand ocean steamer, with
commander of repute, plays the tragic actress quite too frequently in
the presence of these dread capes. But the Merlin, with Captain
Sampson’s tread upon the deck, in the night and in the light, with his
look ahead and his eye aloft, and his plummet in the deep sea, trips
along her billowy path as lightly as a lady trips among her flowers. A
blessing upon Captain Sampson who sails the little Merlin from Nova
Scotia to Newfoundland. He deserves to sail an Adriatic.
Here we are again in that same bad fog, that smothered much of our
pleasure, and some of our good luck, in the America. It is gloomy
midnight, and the sea is up. A pale, blue flame crowns the smoke-stack,
and sheds a dreary light upon the sooty, brown sails. The breeze plays
its wild music in the tight rigging, while the swells beat the bass on
the hollow bow. To a landsman, how frightfully the Merlin rolls! But we
are dashing along through this awful wilderness, right steadily. Every
hour carries us ten miles nearer port. Ye wandering barks, on this dark,
uncertain highway, do hear the mournful clang of our bell, and turn out
in time as the law of nature directs! Ye patient, watchful mariners that
keep the look-out forward, pierce the black mist with your keen sight,
and spy the iceberg, that white sepulchre of the careless sailor. Just
here there is a mountain in the deep, and we are crossing its summit,
which accounts for the sharp, rough sea, the captain tells me. The
vessel now turns into the wind, the loose sails roar and crack, and
bound in their strong harness, like frightened horses; loud voices cut
through the uproar, rapid footsteps thump, and rattling ropes lash the
deck. Then there is a momentary lull: they heave the lead. The mountain
top is under us, say, five hundred feet. All is right. Captain Sampson
puts off into wider waters, and I, chilly and damp, creep into my berth,
full of hope and sleep.