THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL
In the plain, simple regions we are describing,--where the sea is the
great avenue of active life, and the pine forests are the great source
of wealth,--ship-building is an engrossing interest, and there is no
fete that calls forth the community like the launching of a vessel. And
no wonder; for what is there belonging to this workaday world of ours
that has such a never-failing fund of poetry and grace as a ship? A ship
is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it: its white wings touch the
regions of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the
odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we fondly dream,
moves in brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides of every day.
Who that sees one bound outward, with her white breasts swelling and
heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy, does not feel his own heart
swell with a longing impulse to go with her to the far-off shores? Even
at dingy, crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the
coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But on
these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still, and the
blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden
incoming of a ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance. Who that
has stood by the blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled as it is by soft
slopes of green farming land, interchanged here and there with heavy
billows of forest-trees, or rocky, pine-crowned promontories, has not
felt that sense of seclusion and solitude which is so delightful? And
then what a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in like a
white cloud,--the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before
her! with what a great free, generous plash she throws out her anchors,
as if she said a cheerful "Well done!" to some glorious work
accomplished! The very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come
with her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through the
pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts;
"all her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory palaces,
whereby they have made her glad." No wonder men have loved ships like
birds, and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in fatal
wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love than to leave her
in the last throes of her death-agony.
A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious poetry ever
underlying its existence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve the
trite monotony of life; the ship-owner lives in communion with the whole
world, and is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that
infest the routine of inland life.
Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than that which was to
start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage. Moses had risen while the
stars were yet twinkling over their own images in Middle Bay, to go down
and see that everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in
the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being ready to go
to the launching.
Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions
for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining
the scene,--the materials for which they were packing into baskets
covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat
which lay within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.
It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges should cross
together in this boat with their contributions of good cheer.
The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent on their quota
of the festive preparations, in which Dame Kittridge's housewifely
reputation was involved,--for it had been a disputed point in the
neighborhood whether she or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of
course, with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had
been all but superhuman.
The Captain skipped in and out in high feather,--occasionally pinching
Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the
vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his
sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father
were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing
which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting Mrs. Kittridge.
"Such levity!" she said, as she saw Sally in full chase after his
retreating figure, in order to be revenged for some sly allusions he had
whispered in her ear.
"Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!" she called, "come back this minute.
What are you about? I should think your father was old enough to know
better."
"Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o' renews one's youth to get a new ship
done," said the Captain, skipping in at another door. "Sort o' puts me
in mind o' that _I_ went out cap'en in when I was jist beginning to
court you, as somebody else is courtin' our Sally here."
"Now, father," said Sally, threateningly, "what did I tell you?"
"It's really _lemancholy_," said the Captain, "to think how it does
distress gals to talk to 'em 'bout the fellers, when they ain't thinkin'
o' nothin' else all the time. They can't even laugh without sayin'
he-he-he!"
"Now, father, you know I've told you five hundred times that I don't
care a cent for Moses Pennel,--that he's a hateful creature," said
Sally, looking very red and determined.
"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "I take that ar's the reason you've ben
a-wearin' the ring he gin you and them ribbins you've got on your neck
this blessed minute, and why you've giggled off to singin'-school, and
Lord knows where with him all summer,--that ar's clear now."
"But, father," said Sally, getting redder and more earnest, "I don't
care for him really, and I've told him so. I keep telling him so, and he
will run after me."
"Haw! haw!" laughed the Captain; "he will, will he? Jist so, Sally; that
ar's jist the way your ma there talked to me, and it kind o' 'couraged
me along. I knew that gals always has to be read back'ard jist like the
writin' in the Barbary States."
"Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?" said his
helpmeet; "and jist carry this 'ere basket of cold chicken down to the
landin' agin the Pennels come round in the boat; and you must step spry,
for there's two more baskets a-comin'."
The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward the sea with it, and
Sally retired to her own little room to hold a farewell consultation
with her mirror before she went.
You will perhaps think from the conversation that you heard the other
night, that Sally now will cease all thought of coquettish allurement in
her acquaintance with Moses, and cause him to see by an immediate and
marked change her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands
thoughtfully before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety of
laying aside the ribbons he gave her--perhaps she will alter that
arrangement of her hair which is one that he himself particularly
dictated as most becoming to the character of her face. She opens a
little drawer, which looks like a flower garden, all full of little
knots of pink and blue and red, and various fancies of the toilet, and
looks into it reflectively. She looses the ribbon from her hair and
chooses another,--but Moses gave her that too, and said, she remembers,
that when she wore that "he should know she had been thinking of him."
Sally is Sally yet--as full of sly dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of
streaks.
"There's no reason I should make myself look like a fright because I
don't care for him," she says; "besides, after all that he has said, he
ought to say more,--he ought at least to give me a chance to say no,--he
_shall_, too," said the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in the
glass.
"Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge," called her mother, "how long will
you stay prinkin'?--come down this minute."
"Law now, mother," said the Captain, "gals must prink afore such times;
it's as natural as for hens to dress their feathers afore a
thunder-storm."
Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and scarfs, whose
bright, high colors assorted well with the ultramarine blue of her
dress, and the vivid pomegranate hue of her cheeks. The boat with its
white sails flapping was balancing and courtesying up and down on the
waters, and in the stern sat Mara; her shining white straw hat trimmed
with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink shell complexion. The
dark, even penciling of her eyebrows, and the beauty of the brow above,
the brown translucent clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face
striking even with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was unusually
animated and excited, and her cheeks had a rich bloom of that pure deep
rose-color which flushes up in fair complexions under excitement, and
her eyes had a kind of intense expression, for which they had always
been remarkable. All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was
looking out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at
times in the silence of eyes.
"Now bless that ar gal," said the Captain, when he saw her. "Our Sally
here's handsome, but she's got the real New-Jerusalem look, she
has--like them in the Revelations that wears the fine linen, clean and
white."
"Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool of yourself
about no girl at your time o' life," said Mrs. Kittridge, speaking under
her breath in a nipping, energetic tone, for they were coming too near
the boat to speak very loud.
"Good mornin', Mis' Pennel; we've got a good day, and a mercy it is so.
'Member when we launched the North Star, that it rained guns all the
mornin', and the water got into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the
things over, and made a sight o' pester."
"Yes," said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction, "everything
seems to be going right about this vessel."
Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with seats, and
Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming sail. The day was one of
those perfect gems of days which are to be found only in the
jewel-casket of October, a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so
clear that every distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness,
and every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in crystalline
clearness against the sky. There was so brisk a breeze that the boat
slanted quite to the water's edge on one side, and Mara leaned over and
pensively drew her little pearly hand through the water, and thought of
the days when she and Moses took this sail together--she in her pink
sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with a tin dinner-pail
between them; and now, to-day the ship of her childish dreams was to be
launched. That launching was something she regarded almost with
superstitious awe. The ship, built on one element, but designed to have
its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, framed and fashioned
with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true
element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. Such was her
thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it
have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?--to Sally Kittridge,
for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside
her, and who would have shown her white teeth all round at such a
suggestion, and said, "Now, Mara, who but you would have thought of
that?"
But there are souls sent into this world who seem to have always
mysterious affinities for the invisible and the unknown--who see the
face of everything beautiful through a thin veil of mystery and sadness.
The Germans call this yearning of spirit home-sickness--the dim
remembrances of a spirit once affiliated to some higher sphere, of whose
lost brightness all things fair are the vague reminders. As Mara looked
pensively into the water, it seemed to her that every incident of life
came up out of its depths to meet her. Her own face reflected in a
wavering image, sometimes shaped itself to her gaze in the likeness of
the pale lady of her childhood, who seemed to look up at her from the
waters with dark, mysterious eyes of tender longing. Once or twice this
dreamy effect grew so vivid that she shivered, and drawing herself up
from the water, tried to take an interest in a very minute account which
Mrs. Kittridge was giving of the way to make corn-fritters which should
taste exactly like oysters. The closing direction about the quantity of
mace Mrs. Kittridge felt was too sacred for common ears, and therefore
whispered it into Mrs. Pennel's bonnet with a knowing nod and a look
from her black spectacles which would not have been bad for a priestess
of Dodona in giving out an oracle. In this secret direction about the
_mace_ lay the whole mystery of corn-oysters; and who can say what
consequences might ensue from casting it in an unguarded manner before
the world?
And now the boat which has rounded Harpswell Point is skimming across to
the head of Middle Bay, where the new ship can distinctly be discerned
standing upon her ways, while moving clusters of people were walking up
and down her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity. All sorts of
gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged in the little
world assembling there.
"I hain't seen the Pennels nor the Kittridges yet," said Aunt Ruey,
whose little roly-poly figure was made illustrious in her best
cinnamon-colored dyed silk. "There's Moses Pennel a-goin' up that ar
ladder. Dear me, what a beautiful feller he is! it's a pity he ain't
a-goin' to marry Mara Lincoln, after all."
"Ruey, do hush up," said Miss Roxy, frowning sternly down from under the
shadow of a preternatural black straw bonnet, trimmed with huge bows of
black ribbon, which head-piece sat above her curls like a helmet. "Don't
be a-gettin' sentimental, Ruey, whatever else you get--and talkin' like
Miss Emily Sewell about match-makin'; I can't stand it; it rises on my
stomach, such talk does. As to that ar Moses Pennel, folks ain't so
certain as they thinks what he'll do. Sally Kittridge may think he's
a-goin' to have her, because he's been a-foolin' round with her all
summer, and Sally Kittridge may jist find she's mistaken, that's all."
"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "I 'member when I was a girl my old aunt, Jerushy
Hopkins, used to be always a-dwellin' on this Scripture, and I've been
havin' it brought up to me this mornin': 'There are three things which
are too wonderful for me, yea, four, which I know not: the way of an
eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in
the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.' She used to say it as a
kind o' caution to me when she used to think Abram Peters was bein'
attentive to me. I've often reflected what a massy it was that ar never
come to nothin', for he's a poor drunken critter now."
"Well, for my part," said Miss Roxy, fixing her eyes critically on the
boat that was just at the landing, "I should say the ways of a maid with
a man was full as particular as any of the rest of 'em. Do look at Sally
Kittridge now. There's Tom Hiers a-helpin' her out of the boat; and did
you see the look she gin Moses Pennel as she went by him? Wal', Moses has
got Mara on his arm anyhow; there's a gal worth six-and-twenty of the
other. Do see them ribbins and scarfs, and the furbelows, and the way
that ar Sally Kittridge handles her eyes. She's one that one feller
ain't never enough for."
Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore, and Moses and
one or two other young men came to assist in their landing. Never had he
looked more beautiful than at this moment, when flushed with excitement
and satisfaction he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his black
curls blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally with a look of frank
admiration as she stood there dropping her long black lashes over her
bright cheeks, and coquettishly looking out from under them, but she
stepped forward with a little energy of movement, and took the offered
hand of Tom Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised rapture,
and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped Mrs. Pennel on shore, and then
took Mara on his arm, looking her over as he did so with a glance far
less assured and direct than he had given to Sally.
"You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?" said he.
"Not if you help me," she said.
Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the vessel, she
ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him. Moses's brow clouded a
little, and Mara noticed it. Moses thought he did not care for Sally; he
knew that the little hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he
wanted, and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly
with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling which possesses
coquettes of both sexes. Sally, on all former occasions, had shown a
marked preference for him, and professed supreme indifference to Tom
Hiers.
"It's all well enough," he said to himself, and he helped Mara up the
ladders with the greatest deference and tenderness. "This little woman
is worth ten such girls as Sally, if one only could get her heart. Here
we are on our ship, Mara," he said, as he lifted her over the last
barrier and set her down on the deck. "Look over there, do you see Eagle
Island? Did you dream when we used to go over there and spend the day
that you ever would be on _my_ ship, as you are to-day? You won't be
afraid, will you, when the ship starts?"
"I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that sails in water,"
said Mara with enthusiasm. "What a splendid ship! how nicely it all
looks!"
"Come, let me take you over it," said Moses, "and show you my cabin."
Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of various comments
by the crowd of spectators below, and the clatter of workmen's hammers
busy in some of the last preparations could yet be heard like a shower
of hail-stones under her.
"I hope the ways are well greased," said old Captain Eldritch. "'Member
how the John Peters stuck in her ways for want of their being greased?"
"Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over five minutes after
she was launched?" said the quavering voice of Miss Ruey; "there was
jist such a company of thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is
now."
"Well, there wasn't nobody hurt," said Captain Kittridge. "If Mis'
Kittridge would let me, I'd be glad to go aboard this 'ere, and be
launched with 'em."
"I tell the Cap'n he's too old to be climbin' round and mixin' with
young folks' frolics," said Mrs. Kittridge.
"I suppose, Cap'n Pennel, you've seen that the ways is all right," said
Captain Broad, returning to the old subject.
"Oh yes, it's all done as well as hands can do it," said Zephaniah.
"Moses has been here since starlight this morning, and Moses has pretty
good faculty about such matters."
"Where's Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily?" said Miss Ruey. "Oh, there they are
over on that pile of rocks; they get a pretty fair view there."
Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily were sitting under a cedar-tree, with two or
three others, on a projecting point whence they could have a clear view
of the launching. They were so near that they could distinguish clearly
the figures on deck, and see Moses standing with his hat off, the wind
blowing his curls back, talking earnestly to the golden-haired little
woman on his arm.
"It is a launch into life for him," said Mr. Sewell, with suppressed
feeling.
"Yes, and he has Mara on his arm," said Miss Emily; "that's as it should
be. Who is that that Sally Kittridge is flirting with now? Oh, Tom
Hiers. Well! he's good enough for her. Why don't she take him?" said
Miss Emily, in her zeal jogging her brother's elbow.
"I'm sure, Emily, I don't know," said Mr. Sewell dryly; "perhaps he
won't be taken."
"Don't you think Moses looks handsome?" said Miss Emily. "I declare
there is something quite romantic and Spanish about him; don't you think
so, Theophilus?"
"Yes, I think so," said her brother, quietly looking, externally, the
meekest and most matter-of-fact of persons, but deep within him a voice
sighed, "Poor Dolores, be comforted, your boy is beautiful and
prosperous!"
"There, there!" said Miss Emily, "I believe she is starting."
All eyes of the crowd were now fixed on the ship; the sound of hammers
stopped; the workmen were seen flying in every direction to gain good
positions to see her go,--that sight so often seen on those shores, yet
to which use cannot dull the most insensible.
First came a slight, almost imperceptible, movement, then a swift
exultant rush, a dash into the hissing water, and the air was rent with
hurrahs as the beautiful ship went floating far out on the blue seas,
where her fairer life was henceforth to be.
Mara was leaning on Moses's arm at the instant the ship began to move,
but in the moment of the last dizzy rush she felt his arm go tightly
round her, holding her so close that she could hear the beating of his
heart.
"Hurrah!" he said, letting go his hold the moment the ship floated free,
and swinging his hat in answer to the hats, scarfs, and handkerchiefs,
which fluttered from the crowd on the shore. His eyes sparkled with a
proud light as he stretched himself upward, raising his head and
throwing back his shoulders with a triumphant movement. He looked like a
young sea-king just crowned; and the fact is the less wonderful,
therefore, that Mara felt her heart throb as she looked at him, and that
a treacherous throb of the same nature shook the breezy ribbons
fluttering over the careless heart of Sally. A handsome young
sea-captain, treading the deck of his own vessel, is, in his time and
place, a prince.
Moses looked haughtily across at Sally, and then passed a half-laughing
defiant flash of eyes between them. He looked at Mara, who could
certainly not have known what was in her eyes at the moment,--an
expression that made his heart give a great throb, and wonder if he saw
aright: but it was gone a moment after, as all gathered around in a knot
exchanging congratulations on the fortunate way in which the affair had
gone off. Then came the launching in boats to go back to the collation
on shore, where were high merry-makings for the space of one or two
hours: and thus was fulfilled the first part of Moses Pennel's Saturday
afternoon prediction.