My foot is on my gallant deck,
Once more the rover is free!
And the ‘Larboard Watch’—the person referred to below is at the
masthead, or somewhere up there—
Oh, who can tell what joy he feels,
As o’er the foam his vessel reels,
And his tired eyelids slumb’ring fall,
He rouses at the welcome call
Of ‘Larboard watch—ahoy!’
Yes, and there was for ever and always some jackass-voiced person
braying out—
Rocked in the cradle of the deep,
I lay me down in peace to sleep!
Other favourites had these suggestive titles: ‘The Storm at Sea;’ ‘The
Bird at Sea;’ ‘The Sailor Boy’s Dream;’ ‘The Captive Pirate’s Lament;’
‘We are far from Home on the Stormy Main’—and so on, and so on, the list
is endless. Everybody on a farm lived chiefly amid the dangers of the
deep in those days, in fancy.
But all that is gone now. Not a vestige of it is left. The iron-clad,
with her unsentimental aspect and frigid attention to business, banished
romance from the war-marine, and the unsentimental steamer has banished
it from the commercial marine. The dangers and uncertainties which made
sea life romantic have disappeared and carried the poetic element along
with them. In our day the passengers never sing sea-songs on board a
ship, and the band never plays them. Pathetic songs about the wanderer
in strange lands far from home, once so popular and contributing such
fire and colour to the imagination by reason of the rarity of that kind
of wanderer, have lost their charm and fallen silent, because everybody
is a wanderer in the far lands now, and the interest in that detail is
dead. Nobody is worried about the wanderer; there are no perils of the
sea for him, there are no uncertainties. He is safer in the ship than he
would probably be at home, for there he is always liable to have to
attend some friend’s funeral, and stand over the grave in the sleet,
bareheaded—and that means pneumonia for him, if he gets his deserts; and
the uncertainties of his voyage are reduced to whether he will arrive on
the other side in the appointed afternoon, or have to wait till morning.
The first ship I was ever in was a sailing vessel. She was twenty-eight
days going from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands. But the main
reason for this particularly slow passage was, that she got becalmed,
and lay in one spot fourteen days in the centre of the Pacific, two
thousand miles from land. I hear no sea-songs in this present vessel,
but I heard the entire layout in that one. There were a dozen young
people—they are pretty old now I reckon—and they used to group
themselves on the stern, in the starlight or the moonlight, every
evening, and sing sea-songs till after midnight, in that hot, silent,
motionless calm. They had no sense of humour, and they always sang
‘Homeward Bound,’ without reflecting that that was practically
ridiculous, since they were standing still and not proceeding in any
direction at all; and they often followed that song with ‘Are we almost
there, are we almost there, said the dying girl as she drew near home?’
It was a very pleasant company of young people, and I wonder where they
are now. Gone, oh, none knows whither; and the bloom and grace and
beauty of their youth, where is that? Among them was a liar; all tried
to reform him, but none could do it. And so, gradually, he was left to
himself, none of us would associate with him. Many a time since I have
seen in fancy that forsaken figure, leaning forlorn against the
taffrail, and have reflected that perhaps if we had tried harder, and
been more patient, we might have won him from his fault and persuaded
him to relinquish it. But it is hard to tell; with him the vice was
extreme, and was probably incurable. I like to think—and, indeed, I do
think—that I did the best that in me lay to lead him to higher and
better ways.
There was a singular circumstance. The ship lay becalmed that entire
fortnight in exactly the same spot. Then a handsome breeze came fanning
over the sea, and we spread our white wings for flight. But the vessel
did not budge. The sails bellied out, the gale strained at the ropes,
but the vessel moved not a hair’s breadth from her place. The captain
was surprised. It was some hours before we found out what the cause of
the detention was. It was barnacles. They collect very fast in that part
of the Pacific. They had fastened themselves to the ship’s bottom; then
others had fastened themselves to the first bunch, others to these, and
so on, down and down and down, and the last bunch had glued the column
hard and fast to the bottom of the sea, which is five miles deep at that
point. So the ship was simply become the handle of a walking-cane five
miles long—yes, and no more movable by wind and sail than a continent
is. It was regarded by every one as remarkable.
Well, the next week—however, Sandy Hook is in sight.
_PLAYING COURIER_
A time would come when we must go from Aix-les-Bains to Geneva, and from
thence, by a series of day-long and tangled journeys, to Bayreuth in
Bavaria. I should have to have a courier, of course, to take care of so
considerable a party as mine.
But I procrastinated. The time slipped along, and at last I woke up one
day to the fact that we were ready to move and had no courier. I then
resolved upon what I felt was a foolhardy thing, but I was in the humour
of it. I said I would make the first stage without help—I did it.
I brought the party from Aix to Geneva by myself—four people. The
distance was two hours and more, and there was one change of cars. There
was not an accident of any kind, except leaving a valise and some other
matters on the platform—a thing which can hardly be called an accident,
it is so common. So I offered to conduct the party all the way to
Bayreuth.
This was a blunder, though it did not seem so at the time. There was
more detail than I thought there would be: 1. Two persons whom we had
left in a Genevan pension some weeks before must be collected and
brought to the hotel. 2. I must notify the people on the Grand Quay who
store trunks to bring seven of our stored trunks to the hotel and carry
back seven which they would find piled in the lobby. 3. I must find out
what part of Europe Bayreuth was in and buy seven railway tickets for
that point. 4. I must send a telegram to a friend in the Netherlands. 5.
It was now two in the afternoon, and we must look sharp and be ready for
the first night train, and make sure of sleeping-car tickets. 6. I must
draw money at the bank.
It seemed to me that the sleeping-car tickets must be the most important
thing, so I went to the station myself to make sure; hotel messengers
are not always brisk people. It was a hot day and I ought to have
driven, but it seemed better economy to walk. It did not turn out so,
because I lost my way and trebled the distance. I applied for the
tickets, and they asked me which route I wanted to go by, and that
embarrassed me and made me lose my head, there were so many people
standing around, and I not knowing anything about the routes, and not
supposing there were going to be two; so I judged it best to go back and
map out the road and come again.
I took a cab this time, but on my way upstairs at the hotel I remembered
that I was out of cigars, so I thought it would be well to get some
while the matter was in my mind. It was only round the corner and I
didn’t need the cab. I asked the cabman to wait where he was. Thinking
of the telegram and trying to word it in my head, I forgot the cigars
and the cab, and walked on indefinitely. I was going to have the hotel
people send the telegram, but as I could not be far from the Post Office
by this time, I thought I would do it myself. But it was further than I
had supposed. I found the place at last, and wrote the telegram and
handed it in. The clerk was a severe-looking, fidgety man, and he began
to fire French questions at me in such a liquid form that I could not
detect the joints between his words, and this made me lose my head
again. But an Englishman stepped up and said the clerk wanted to know
where he was to send the telegram. I could not tell him, because it was
not my telegram, and I explained that I was merely sending it for a
member of my party. But nothing would pacify the clerk but the address;
so I said that if he was so particular I would go back and get it.
However, I thought I would go and collect those lacking two persons
first, for it would be best to do everything systematically and in
order, and one detail at a time. Then I remembered the cab was eating up
my substance down at the hotel yonder; so I called another cab, and told
the man to go down and fetch it to the Post Office and wait till I came.
I had a long hot walk to collect those people, and when I got there they
couldn’t come with me because they had heavy satchels, and must have a
cab. I went away to find one, but before I ran across any I noticed that
I had reached the neighbourhood of the Grand Quay—at least, I thought I
had—so I judged I could save time by stepping around and arranging about
the trunks. I stepped around about a mile, and although I did not find
the Grand Quay, I found a cigar shop, and remembered about the cigars. I
said I was going to Bayreuth, and wanted enough for the journey. The man
asked me which route I was going to take. I said I did not know. He said
he would recommend me to go by Zurich and various other places which he
named, and offered to sell me seven second-class through tickets for $22
apiece, which would be throwing off the discount which the railroads
allowed him. I was already tired of riding second class on first-class
tickets, so I took him up.
By-and-by I found Natural & Co.’s storage office, and told them to send
seven of our trunks to the hotel and pile them up in the lobby. It
seemed to me that I was not delivering the whole of the message; still,
it was all I could find in my head.
Next I found the bank, and asked for some money, but I had left my
letter of credit somewhere and was not able to draw. I remembered now
that I must have left it lying on the table where I wrote my telegram;
so I got a cab and drove to the Post Office and went upstairs, and they
said that a letter of credit had indeed been left on the table, but that
it was now in the hands of the police authorities, and it would be
necessary for me to go there and prove property. They sent a boy with
me, and we went out the back way and walked a couple of miles and found
the place; and then I remembered about my cabs, and asked the boy to
send them to me when he got back to the Post Office. It was nightfall
now, and the Mayor had gone to dinner. I thought I would go to dinner
myself, but the officer on duty thought differently, and I stayed. The
Mayor dropped in at half past ten, but said it was too late to do
anything to-night—come at 9.30 in the morning. The officer wanted to
keep me all night, and said I was a suspicious-looking person, and
probably did not own the letter of credit, and didn’t know what a letter
of credit was, but merely saw the real owner leave it lying on the
table, and wanted to get it because I was probably a person that would
want anything he could get, whether it was valuable or not. But the
Mayor said he saw nothing suspicious about me, and that I seemed a
harmless person, and nothing the matter with me but a wandering mind,
and not much of that. So I thanked him and he set me free, and I went
home in my three cabs.
As I was dog-tired, and in no condition to answer questions with
discretion, I thought I would not disturb the Expedition at that time of
night, as there was a vacant room I knew of at the other end of the
hall; but I did not quite arrive there, as a watch had been set, the
Expedition being anxious about me. I was placed in a galling situation.
The Expedition sat stiff and forbidding, on four chairs in a row, with
shawls and things all on, satchels and guide-books in lap. They had been
sitting like that for four hours, and the glass going down all the time.
Yes, and they were waiting—waiting for me. It seemed to me that nothing
but a sudden, happily contrived, and brilliant _tour de force_ could
break this iron front and make a diversion in my favour; so I shied my
hat into the arena, and followed it with a skip and a jump, shouting
blithely:
‘Ha, ha, here we all are, Mr. Merryman!’
Nothing could be deeper or stiller than the absence of applause which
followed. But I kept on; there seemed no other way, though my
confidence, poor enough before, had got a deadly check, and was in
effect gone.
I tried to be jocund out of a heavy heart; I tried to touch the other
hearts there and soften the bitter resentment in those faces by throwing
off bright and airy fun, and making of the whole ghastly thing a
joyously humorous incident; but this idea was not well conceived. It was
not the right atmosphere for it. I got not one smile; not one line in
those offended faces relaxed; I thawed nothing of the winter that looked
out of those frosty eyes. I started one more breezy, poor effort, but
the head of the Expedition cut into the centre of it, and said:
‘Where have you been?’
I saw by the manner of this that the idea was to get down to cold
business now. So I began my travels, but was cut short again.
‘Where are the two others? We have been in frightful anxiety about
them.’
‘Oh, they’re all right. I was to fetch a cab. I will go straight off,
and——’
‘Sit down! Don’t you know it is 11 o’clock? Where did you leave them?’
‘At the pension.’
‘Why didn’t you bring them?’
‘Because we couldn’t carry the satchels. And so I thought——’
‘Thought! You should not try to think. One cannot think without the
proper machinery. It is two miles to that pension. Did you go there
without a cab?’
‘I—well, I didn’t intend to; it only happened so.’
‘How did it happen so?’
‘Because I was at the Post Office, and I remembered that I had left a
cab waiting here, and so, to stop the expense, I sent another cab
to—to——’
‘To what?’
‘Well, I don’t remember now, but I think the new cab was to have the
hotel pay the old cab, and send it away.’
‘What good would that do?’
‘What good would it do? It would stop the expense, wouldn’t it?’
‘By putting the new cab in its place to continue the expense?’