THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS ONCE MORE.—A BUMPER TO THE QUEEN AND
PRESIDENT.
THE waves are crisp with a snowy mane, and the rocky shores of
Twillingate are draped with splendid lights and shadows. While the seams
and surfaces of the cliffs are strikingly plain in the sunlight, they
are dark as caverns in the shade. This gives the coast a wonderfully
broken, wild, and picturesque look.
Once more the sea “is all before us where to choose.” The joy of this
freedom is utterly inexpressible, although, in consideration of the day,
we—we Yankees—occasionally hurra right heartily. But no words can do
justice to the delightful emotions of moments such as these. “Messmates,
hear a brother sailor sing the _dangers_ of the sea,” runs the old song.
None that I have ever heard or read express at all the real pleasure of
its _freedom_. The freedom of the seas! If any great city council would
do a man of feeling a noble pleasure, let them vote him that.
A lonely isle of crystalline brightness, all the way from Melville Bay,
most likely, gleams in the north-east. Pale and solitary, like some
marble mausoleum, the iceberg of Twillingate stands off in the southern
waters. After all, how feeble is man in the presence of these arctic
wonders! With all his skill, intelligence and power, he passes, either
on the sunny or the shady side, closely at his peril, only in safety at
a distance too great to satisfy his curiosity, and gazes at their
greatness and their splendor, and thinks and feels, records his thoughts
and feelings, draws their figure and paints their complexion, but may no
more lay his hand upon them than the Jew of old might lay his hand upon
the ark of the covenant. He may do it and live, do it twice or thrice,
and then he may perish for his temerity. There now reposes, amid the
currents and billows of the ocean, the huge, polar structure, which has
been to us an object of the liveliest interest and wonder; its bright
foundations fifty fathoms in the deep; an erection suggestive of the
skill and strength of the Creator; with a mystery enveloping its story,
its conception, birth and growth, its native land, the hour of its
departure, its strange and labyrinthine voyage. While the body of this
building-of-the-elements sleeps below, and only its gables and towers
glow and melt in the brightness of these summer days, yet is it as
dissolvable as the clouds from which it originally fell. It is but the
clouds condensed and crystallized. A column of vapor, mainly invisible,
perpetually ascends into its native heavens, while the atmosphere, and
the warm, briny currents melt and wear, at every imaginable point of the
vast surface. Pass a few sunny weeks, and all will be melted, and, like
a snow-flake, lost in the immensity of waters.
Still the flags wave above. We fill our glasses with iceberg-water, and
drink with cheers to the Queen and President. As the breeze dies away in
the long, long afternoon, and we roll lazily on the glassy swells, the
painter and I, the poorest of sailors, lapse into sea-sickness, and go
below.