THERE WAS A KING IN THULE.
He never took that advice. He had already transformed Sheila into a
heroine during the half hour of their stroll from the beach and around
the house. Not that he fell in love with her at first sight, or anything
even approaching to that. He merely made her the central figure of a
little speculative romance, as he had made many another woman before. Of
course, in these little fanciful dramas, written along the sky-line, as
it were, of his life, he invariably pictured himself as the fitting
companion of the fair creature he saw there. Who but himself could
understand the sentiment of her eyes, and teach her little love-ways,
and express unbounded admiration of her? More than one practical young
woman, indeed, in certain circles of London society, had been informed
by her friends that Mr. Lavender was dreadfully in love with her; and
had been much surprised, after this confirmation of her suspicions, that
he sought no means of bringing the affair to a reasonable and sensible
issue. He did not even amuse himself by flirting with her, as men would
willingly do who could not be charged with any serious purpose whatever.
His devotion was more mysterious and remote. A rumor would get about
that Mr. Lavender had finished another of those charming heads in
pastel, which, at a distance, reminded one of Greuze, and that Lady
So-and-so, who had bought it forthwith, had declared that it was the
image of this young lady who was partly puzzled and partly vexed by the
incomprehensible conduct of her reputed admirer. It was the fashion, in
these social circles, to buy those heads of Lavender when he chose to
paint them. He had achieved a great reputation by them. The good people
liked to have a genius in their own set whom they had discovered, and
who was only to be appreciated by persons of exceptional taste and
penetration. Lavender, the uninitiated were assured, was a most
cultivated and brilliant young man. He had composed some charming songs.
He had written, from time to time, some quite delightful little poems,
over which fair eyes had grown full and liquid. Who had not heard of the
face that he painted for a certain young lady whom every one expected
him to marry?
The young man escaped a great deal of the ordinary consequences of this
petting, but not all. He was at bottom really true-hearted, frank and
generous--generous even to an extreme--but he had acquired a habit of
producing striking impressions which dogged and perverted his every
action and speech. He disliked losing a few shilling at billiards, but
he did not mind losing a few pounds: the latter was good for a story.
Had he possessed any money to invest in shares, he would have been
irritated by small rises or small falls; but he would have been vain of
a big rise, and he would have regarded a big fall with equanimity, as
placing him in a dramatic light. The exaggerations produced by this
habit of his fostered strange delusions in the minds of people who did
not know him very well: and sometimes the practical results, in the way
of expected charities or what not, amazed him. He could not understand
why people should have made such mistakes, and resented them as an
injustice.
And as they sat at dinner on this still, brilliant evening in summer, it
was Sheila's turn to be clothed in the garments of romance. Her father,
with his great gray beard and heavy brow, became the King of Thule,
living in this solitary house overlooking the sea, and having memories
of a dead sweetheart. His daughter, the princess, had the glamour of a
thousand legends dwelling in her beautiful eyes; and when she walked by
the shores of the Atlantic, that were now getting yellow under the
sunset, what strange and unutterable thoughts must appear in the wonder
of her face! He remembered no more how he had pulled to pieces Ingram's
praises of Sheila. What had become of the "ordinary young lady, who
would be a little interesting, if a little stupid, before marriage, and
after marriage sink into the dull, domestic hind"? There could be no
doubt that Sheila often sat silent for a considerable time, with her
eyes fixed on her father's face when he spoke, or turning to look at
some other speaker. Had Lavender now been asked if this silence had not
a trifle of dullness in it, he would have replied by asking if there
were dullness in the stillness and the silence of the sea. He grew to
regard her calm and thoughtful look as a sort of spell; and if you had
asked him what Sheila was like, he would have answered by saying that
there was moonlight in her face.
The room, too, in which this mystic princess sat was strange and
wonderful. There were no doors visible, for the four walls were
throughout covered by a paper of foreign manufacture, representing
spacious Tyrolese landscapes and incidents of the chase. When Lavender
had first entered this chamber his eye had been shocked by these coarse
and prominent pictures--by the green rivers, the blue lakes and the
snow-peaks that rose above certain ruddy chalets. Here a chamois was
stumbling down a ravine, and there an operatic peasant, some eight or
ten inches in actual length, was pointing a gun. The large figures, the
coarse colors, the impossible scenes--all this looked, at first sight,
to be in the worst possible taste; and Lavender was convinced that
Sheila had nothing to do with the introduction of this abominable
decoration. But somehow, when he turned to the line of ocean that was
visible from the window, to the lonely shores of the island and the
monotony of colors showing in the still picture without, he began to
fancy that there might be a craving up in these latitudes for some
presentation, however rude and glaring, of the richer and more
variegated life of the South. The figures and mountains on the walls
became less prominent. He saw no incongruity in a whole chalet giving
way, and allowing Duncan, who waited at table, to bring forth from this
aperture to the kitchen a steaming dish of salmon, while he spoke some
words in Gaelic to the servants at the other end of the tube. He even
forgot to be surprised at the appearance of little Mairi, with whom he
had shaken hands a little while before, coming round the table with
potatoes. He did not, as a rule, shake hands with servant-maids, but was
not this fair-haired, wistful-eyed girl some relative, friend or
companion of Shiela's? and had he not already begun to lose all
perception of the incongruous or the absurd in the strange pervading
charm with which Sheila's presence filled the place?
He suddenly found Mackenzie's deep-set eyes fixed upon him, and became
aware that the old man had been mysteriously announcing to Ingram that
there were more political movements abroad than people fancied. Sheila
sat still and listened to her father as he expounded these things, and
showed that, although at a distance, he could perceive the signs of the
times. Was it not incumbent, moreover, on a man who had to look after a
number of poor and simple folks, that he should be on the alert?
"It iss not bekass you will live in London you will know everything,"
said the King of Borva, with a certain significance in his tone. "There
iss many things a man does not see at his feet that another man will see
who is a good way off. The International, now--"
He glanced furtively at Lavender.
"--I hef been told there will be agents going out every day to all
parts of this country and other countries, and they will hef plenty of
money to live like gentlemen, and get among the poor people, and fill
their minds with foolish nonsense about a revolution. Oh yes, I hear
about it all, and there iss many members of Parliament in it; and it iss
every day they will get farther and farther, all working hard, though no
one sees them who does not understand to be on the watch."
Here again the young man received a quiet, scrutinizing glance; and it
began to dawn upon him, to his infinite astonishment, that Mackenzie
half suspected him of being an emissary of the International. In the
case of any other man he would have laughed and paid no heed, but how
could he permit Sheila's father to regard him with any such suspicion?
"Don't you think, sir," he said boldly, "that those Internationalists
are a lot of incorrigible idiots?"
As if a shrewd observer of men and motives were to be deceived by such a
protest! Mackenzie regarded him with increased suspicion, although he
endeavored to conceal the fact that he was watching the young man from
time to time. Lavender saw all the favor he had won during the day
disappearing, and moodily wondered when he should have a chance of
explanation.
After dinner they went outside and sat down on a bench in the garden,
and the men lit their cigars. It was a cool and pleasant evening. The
sun had gone down in red fire behind the Atlantic, and there was still
left a rich glow of crimson in the west, while overhead, in the pale
yellow of the sky, some filmy clouds of rose-color lay motionless. How
calm was the sea out there, and the whiter stretch of water coming into
Loch Roag! The cool air of the twilight was scented with sweetbrier. The
wash of the ripples along the coast could be heard in the stillness. It
was a time for lovers to sit by the sea, careless of the future or the
past.
But why would this old man keep prating of his political prophecies?
Lavender asked of himself. Sheila had spoken scarcely a word all the
evening; and of what interest could it be to her to listen to theories
of revolution and the dangers besetting our hot-headed youth? She merely
stood by the side of her father, with her hand on his shoulder. He
noticed, however, that she paid particular attention whenever Ingram
spoke; and he wondered whether she perceived that Ingram was partly
humoring the old man, at the same time that he was pleasing himself with
a series of monologues, interrupted only by his cigar.
"That is true enough, Mr. Mackenzie," Ingram would say, lying back with
his two hands clasped round his knee, as usual: "you've got to be
careful of the opinions that are spread abroad, even in Borva, where not
much danger is to be expected. But I don't suppose our young men are
more destructive in their notions than young men always have been. You
know every young fellow starts in life by knocking down all the beliefs
he finds before him, and then he spends the rest of his life in setting
them up again. It is only after some years he gets to know that all the
wisdom of the world lies in the old commonplaces he once despised. He
finds that the old familiar ways are the best, and he sinks into being a
commonplace person, with much satisfaction to himself. My friend
Lavender, now, is continually charging me with being commonplace. I
admit the charge. I have drifted back into all the old ways and
beliefs--about religion and marriage and patriotism, and what not--that
ten years ago I should have treated with ridicule."
"Suppose the process continues?" suggested Lavender, with some evidence
of pique.
"Suppose it does," continued Ingram carelessly. "Ten years hence I may
be proud to become a vestryman, and have the most anxious care about the
administration of the rates. I shall be looking after the drainage of
houses and the treatment of paupers and the management of Sunday
schools--But all this is an invasion of your province, Sheila," he
suddenly added, looking up to her.
The girl laughed, and said, "Then I have been commonplace from the
beginning?"
Ingram was about to make all manner of protests and apologies, when
Mackenzie said, "Sheila, it wass time you will go in-doors, if you have
nothing about your head. Go in and sing a song to us, and we will listen
to you; and not a sad song, but a good merry song. These teffles of the
fishermen, it iss always drownings they will sing about from the morning
till the night."
Was Sheila about to sing in this clear, strange twilight, while they sat
there and watched the yellow moon come up behind the southern hills?
Lavender had heard so much of her singing of those fishermen's ballads
that he could think of nothing more to add to the enchantment of this
wonderful night. But he was disappointed. The girl put her hand on her
father's head, and reminded him that she had had her big greyhound Bras
imprisoned all the afternoon, that she had to go down to Borvabost with
a message for some people who were leaving by the boat in the morning,
and would the gentlemen therefore excuse her not singing to them for
this one evening?
"But you cannot go away down to Borvabost by yourself, Sheila," said
Ingram. "It will be dark before you return."
"It will not be darker than this all the night through," said the girl.
"But I hope you will let us go with you," said Lavender, rather
anxiously; and she assented with a gracious smile, and went to fetch the
great deerhound that was her constant companion.
And lo! he found himself walking with a princess in this wonder-land
through that magic twilight that prevails in northern latitudes.
Mackenzie and Ingram had gone on in front. The large deerhound, after
regarding him attentively, had gone to its mistress's side, and remained
closely there. Lavender could scarcely believe his ears that the girl
was talking to him lightly and frankly, as though she had known him for
years, and was telling him of all her troubles with the folks at
Borvabost, and of those poor people whom she was now going to see. No
sooner did he understand that they were emigrants, and that they were
going to Glasgow before leaving finally for America, than in quite an
honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such
poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the
aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge
the government with a shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up
suddenly. In the gentlest fashion she told him what she knew of these
poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until he
was ready to curse the hour in which he had blundered into taking a side
on a question about which he cared nothing and knew less.
"But some other time," continued Sheila, "I will tell you what we do
here, and I will show you a great many letters I have from friends of
mine who have gone to Greenock and to New York and Canada. Oh yes, it is
very bad for the old people: they never get reconciled to the
change--never; but it is very good for the young people, and they are
glad of it, and are much better off than they were here. You will see
how proud they are of the better clothes they have, and of good food,
and of money to put in the bank; and how could they get that in the
Highlands, where the land is so poor that a small piece is of no use,
and they have not money to rent the large sheep-farms? It is very bad to
have people go away--it is very hand on many of them--but what can they
do? The piece of ground that was very good for the one family, that is
expected to keep the daughters when they marry, and the sons when they
marry, and then there are five or six families to live on it. And hard
work--that will not do much with very bad land and the bad weather we
have here. The people get downhearted when they have their crops spoiled
by the long rain, and they cannot get their peats dried; and very often
the fishing turns out bad, and they have no money at all to carry on the
farm. But now you will see Borvabost."
Lavender had to confess that this wonderful princess would persist in
talking in a very matter-of-fact way. All the afternoon, while he was
weaving a luminous web of imagination around her, she was continually
cutting it asunder, and stepping forth as an authority on the growing of
some wretched plants or the means by which rain was to be excluded from
window-sills. And now, in this strange twilight, when she ought to have
been singing of the cruelties of the sea or listening to half-forgotten
legends of mermaids, she was engaged with the petty fortunes of men and
girls who were pleased to find themselves prospering in the Glasgow
police-force or educating themselves in a milliner's shop in Edinburgh.
She did not appear conscious that she was a princess. Indeed, she seemed
to have no consciousness of herself at all, and was altogether occupied
in giving him information about practical subjects in which he professed
a profound interest he certainly did not feel.
But even Sheila, when they had reached the loftiest part of their route,
and could see beneath them the island and the water surrounding it, was
struck by the exceeding beauty of the twilight; and as for her
companion, he remembered it many a time thereafter as if it were a dream
of the sea. Before them lay the Atlantic--a pale line of blue, still,
silent and remote. Overhead, the sky was of a clear, pale gold, with
heavy masses of violet cloud stretched across from north to south, and
thickening as they got near to the horizon. Down at their feet, near the
shore, a dusky line of huts and houses was scarcely visible; and over
these lay a pale blue film of peat-smoke that did not move in the still
air. Then they saw the bay into which the White Water runs, and they
could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island
through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away, toward the east, lay
the bulk of the island--dark green undulations of moorland and pasture;
and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the
clear light of the sky, and was gleaming westward like a star. But all
this was as nothing to the glory that began to shine in the south-east,
where the sky was of a pale violet over the peaks of Mealasabhal and
Suainabhal. There, into the beautiful dome, rose the golden crescent of
the moon, warm in color, as though it still retained the last rays of
the sunset. A line of quivering gold fell across Loch Roag, and touched
the black hull and spars of the boat in which Sheila had been sailing in
the morning. That bay down there, with its white sands and massive
rocks, its still expanse of water, and its background of mountain-peaks
palely colored by the yellow moonlight, seemed really a home for a magic
princess who was shut off from all the world. But here, in front of
them, was another sort of sea and another sort of life--a small
fishing-village hidden under a cloud of pale peat-smoke, and fronting
the great waters of the Atlantic itself, which lay under a gloom of
violet clouds.
"Now," said Sheila with a smile, "we have not always weather as good as
this in the island. Will you not sit on the bench over there with Mr.
Ingram, and wait until my papa and I come up from the village again?"
"May not I go down with you?"
"No. The dogs would learn you were a stranger, and there would be a
great deal of noise, and there will be many of the poor people asleep."
So Sheila had her way; and she and her father went down the hillside
into the gloom of the village, while Lavender went to join his friend
Ingram, who was sitting on the wooden bench, silently smoking a clay
pipe.
"Well, I have never seen the like of this," said Lavender in his
impetuous way: "it is worth going a thousand miles to see. Such colors
and such clearness! and then the splendid outlines of those mountains,
and the grand sweep of this loch! This is the sort of thing that drives
me to despair, and might make one vow never to touch a brush again. And
Sheila says it will be like this all the night through."
He was unaware that he had spoken of her in a very familiar way, but
Ingram noticed it.
"Ingram," he said suddenly, "that is the first girl I have ever seen
whom I should like to marry."
"Stuff!"
"But it is true. I have never seen any one like her--so handsome, so
gentle, and yet so very frank in setting you right. And then she is so
sensible, you know, and not too proud to have much interest in all sorts
of common affairs--"
There was a smile in Ingram's face, and his companion stopped in some
vexation: "You are not a very sympathetic confidant."
"Because I know the story of old. You have told it me about twenty
women, and it is always the same. I tell you, you don't know anything at
all about Sheila Mackenzie yet: perhaps you never may. I suppose you
will make a heroine of her, and fall in love with her for a fortnight,
and then go back to London and get cured by listening to the witticisms
of Mrs. Lorraine."
"Thank you very much."
"Oh, I didn't mean to offend you. Some day, no doubt, you will love a
woman for what she is, not for what you fancy her to be; but that is a
piece of good-fortune that seldom occurs to a youth of your age. To
marry in a dream, and wake up six months afterward--that is the fate of
ingenuous twenty-three. But don't you let Mackenzie hear you talk of
marrying Sheila, or he'll have some of his fishermen throw you into Loch
Roag."
"There, now, that _is_ one point I can't understand about her," said
Lavender eagerly. "How can a girl of her shrewdness and good sense have
such a belief in that humbugging old idiot of a father of hers, who
fancies me a political emissary, and plays small tricks to look like
diplomacy? It is always 'My papa can do this,' and 'My papa can do
that,' and 'There is no one at all like my papa.' And she is continually
fondling him, and giving little demonstrations of affection, of which he
takes no more notice than if he were an Arctic bear."
Ingram looked up with some surprise in his face. "You don't mean to say,
Lavender," he said slowly, "that you are already jealous of the girl's
own father?"
He could not answer, for at this moment Sheila, her father and the big
greyhound came up the hill. And again it was Lavender's good fortune to
walk with Sheila across the moorland path they had traversed some little
time before. And now the moon was still higher in the heavens, and the
yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag
quivered in a deeper gold. The night-air was scented with the Dutch
clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling
and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that
murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the
darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the west were
shut out from sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of
Loch Roag, with its pathway of yellow fire, and far away on the other
side the shoulders and peaks of the southern mountains, that had grown
gray and clear and sharp in the beautiful twilight. And this was
Sheila's home.
[To be continued.]
FOOTNOTES:
[G] "My black-haired girl, my pretty girl, my black-haired girl, don't
leave me." _Nighean dubh_ is pronounced _Nyean du_.
[H] Literally, _Gearaidh-na'h-Aimhne_--"the cutting of the river."
[I] Another name given by the islanders to these stones is
_Fir-bhreige_, "false men." Both names, False Men and the Mourners,
should be of some interest to antiquarians, for they will suit pretty
nearly any theory.
WINTER.
The golden sunshine has fled away,
The clouds o'erhead hang heavy and gray,
The world is woefully sad to-day;
And I am thinking of you, dear, you.
The cold clay hides from the rain and dew
The tenderest heart that the world e'er knew.
Why should I think of you when the rain
Smiteth so sharply the window-pane,
And the wild winds round the old house 'plain?
You were so sweet and sunny and bright,
Ever your presence brought life and light,
And I recall you in storm and night.
When snow-shrouds hang on the corpse-cold trees,
When sharp frosts sting and the north winds freeze,
What has your mem'ry to do with these?
O fair lost love! O love that is dead!
The pleasant days from my life are fled,
The rosy morns and the sunsets red.
The light has faded from out my life,
Leaving the clouds and the stormy strife,
And the keen sharp cold that cuts like a knife.
The days and the months, how slow they glide,
Gray-robed and cold-breathed and frozen-eyed!
The summer died for me when you died.
O world of woe and of want and pain!
O heaven of clouds and storm and rain!
When shall I find my summer again?
LUCY H. HOOPER.
NEW WASHINGTON.
A stranger visiting the national capital should begin by leaving it. He
should cross the Anacostia River at the Navy-yard, climb the heights
behind the village of Uniontown, be careful to find exactly the right
path, and seat himself on the parapet of old Fort Stanton. His feeling
of fatigue will be overcome by one of astonishment that the scene should
contain so much that is beautiful in nature, so much that is exceedingly
novel if not very good in art, and so much that has the deepest
historical interest. From the blue hills of Prince George's county in
Maryland winds the Anacostia, whose waters at his feet float all but the
very largest vessels of our navy, while but six miles above they float
nothing larger than a Bladensburg goose. To the left flows the Potomac,
a mile wide. Between the rivers lies Washington. A vast amphitheatre,
its green or gray walls cloven only by the two rivers, appears to
surround the city. "Amphitheatre" is the word, for within the great
circle, proportioned to it in size and magnificence, dwarfing all other
objects, stands the veritable arena where our public gladiators and wild
beasts hold their combats. This of course is the Capitol, whose white
dome rises like a blossoming lily from the dark expanse below.
Along these summits are the remains of a chain of earthworks that
completely enveloped the capital. They are all overgrown by verdure, and
are fast disappearing; but whenever the site of one is relieved against
the clear sky a grassy embrasure or a bit of rampart may yet be seen
from a distance. Here stretched
The watchfires of a hundred circling camps,
whose light is in the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic," for it was a
personal view of them, and of these altars built in the evening dews and
damps, which gave form to the great lyric. Here in a few years, when
more of the business-men of Washington shall have learned how to do
business, or when her social development shall have detained the
cultured and wealthy who now come and go, will be found a circle of
beautiful villas and nearly all the luxuries of summer life.
Below the high bank opposite, where the Congressional Cemetery skirts
the city, where some famous men are actually buried, and where Congress
places cenotaphs that look like long rows of antiquated beehives for all
who die while members of that body, a line of black dots crosses the
Anacostia like the corks of a fisherman's seine. They are the piles that
upheld a bridge in the summer of 1814. On the hills to the right the
little army of five thousand redcoats made a feint toward this bridge,
and caused the Americans to burn it. Away to the left, across the
Potomac, stretches Long Bridge, which was also fired the next night by
the British and by the fleeing inhabitants of the captured town.
The eight miles of Virginia shore visible from Washington contain really
but three objects. Two or three dark chimneys and steeples and a few
misty outlines are all one needs to see of Alexandria, which is six
miles down the river, and appears about as ancient as its Egyptian
namesake. Nearer, the monotony is broken by the tower of Fairfax
Seminary; nearer still, among the oaks of Arlington, by the mansion of
Custis-Lee, imposing, pillared and cream-colored; or it was the last in
the days when cream had a color.
Descending from the old fort, the stranger should go at once to
Georgetown and climb up into the little burying-ground of Holyrood. The
view thence will give him all that was excluded from the other. He will
now be prepared to examine Washington in detail, and as this is not a
guide-book he shall go his way alone. But the "gentle reader" is
requested to linger an hour longer upon the natural walls and look down
with me on the dark city.
Below is such a growth of beautiful and strange that we can understand
it only by remembering that we look down on all the United States. Into
that problem of squares and circles and triangles wise men from the East
plunge and see Beacon street; wise men from the West plunge and see
Poker Flat; and from the highest ground we can find we will try to see
the whole of Washington. We cannot distinguish a friend's house from an
enemy's. The lines are mingled and the colors blended by our distance.
Individuals are lost to sight entirely. What would be such a conflict of
sounds down there that we should never be certain of what we heard, is
now so faint a hum that it does not disturb us or affect our speech. We
have risen into a better atmosphere, and find that some things which
were ugly have grown good and graceful.
To allude to all the noted and novel things in this complicated scene
would be to fill a book, and enough pre-Raphaelites are already browsing
there. Giving due attention to particulars in their places, we must yet
give effects in sweeping strokes, steering as best we can between the
Scylla of didactic details and the Charybdis of glittering generalities.
The candid observer wonders not that Washington is so far below what it
ought to be, but that it exists as a city at all. It has suffered
calamities that would have extinguished any other place. The vitality
that could survive them would seem capable of surviving anything. Other
towns have had to contend against natural disadvantages, but they have
had the aid of citizens who knew what they wanted, and who used the
public money and energy and brains for the public good. But here has
been the novel sight of a city having every natural advantage, yet
compelled to fight its own citizens for life; to see the public money
and energy and brains--what little there were--used to kill not only the
town, but the people in it; to support men of weight in the community
who really did not want it polluted by trade or manufactures or any
such vulgar things.
The Capitol, which now, like the Irishman's shanty, has the front door
on the back side, was made to face the east because in that direction
lay as fine a site as ever a town possessed, and there the city was to
be built. To the westward the ground was such that men are living who as
boys waded for reed-birds and caught catfish where now is the centre of
business. The necessity of transforming this tract in the very beginning
of trade retarded the general growth incalculably. The owners of the
good ground didn't want to do anything themselves, and were too greedy
to let anybody else. The Executive Mansion, a mile to the westward,
attracted other public buildings about it; the people who had to support
themselves bought real estate in the swamps; those who lived without
business of their own followed them of course; and the fine plateau
prepared by Nature has been touched only so far as improvement has been
compelled by forces radiating from the other side of the Capitol. The
life and trade that tend to crystallize around one centre are still much
dissipated by the policy that ruined Capitol Hill; but as this can no
longer endanger the general prosperity, it is now more a blessing than a
calamity. It makes sure and speedy the reclamation of the waste places,
while the improvement of all the good ones must take place at last. The
owners of the barren sites which yet break the continuity of blocks in
good localities can sit still and "hold on" if they please, but they
must expect to see the "worthless" tracts--Swampoodle, Murder Bay and
Hell's Bottom--fill with life and rise in value faster than their own.
Another calamity, which has grown with the city instead of being
outgrown, is the changes that have been permitted to take place in the
Potomac. Long Bridge, instead of being built so as to permit an
uninterrupted flow of the stream, was composed for a great distance of
an earthen road--a dam--arresting half the water of the river. This
temporarily benefited the Georgetown channel, no doubt, by forcing all
the water into it. But a marsh is rising in the middle of the stream,
creeping rapidly up to the Washington wharves, threatening the health of
the city, and so crippling its commerce that an expensive remedy must be
speedily applied. There is some difference of opinion as to the
comparative injuries and benefits arising from the bridge, but the fact
remains clear that this important river has suffered needless injury to
a degree that is deplorable. In the past, however, the fault has been as
much with the city as with Congress. That body cannot improve rivers
where there is no commerce to be benefited, nor give new facilities to
towns that do not make the most of what they have. But the gazer from
Fort Stanton--glancing beyond the Navy-yard and the shot-battered
monitors that lie there, across Greenleaf's Point and the Arsenal, made
tragic by the death of many a British soldier and of the Lincoln-Seward
assassins half a century later--overlooking the wharves of Washington
and dimly descrying the masts at Georgetown, now sees a traffic that has
earned a consideration it has not received. A few weeks ago we paused in
an after-dinner walk, down there on the Arsenal boulevard, to watch the
troubles of a crew and the labors of a tug which were altogether too
suggestive. A senseless fellow of a captain came sailing up the river
from a foreign port, his vessel laden with a valuable cargo, and
attempted a landing at Washington. He knew no better than to suppose
that the capital of this nation, on one of our finest rivers, possessing
all its days a navy-yard, would permit itself to be approached by a
merchantman. He stuck in the mud within a hundred yards of the wharf.
There he spent three or four days in anxiety and chagrin, and finally
got a tug to pull him back into navigable water. He swung about, made
haste down the river and took his vessel to another port, uttering some
natural oaths, no doubt, and wondering what kind of country he had got
into. A small vessel going from Washington to Georgetown heads for
Chesapeake Bay, passes up around the island of filth accumulated by the
bridge, and sails four miles in ascending two.
Bordering the broad belt of grass and trees which we see sweeping
gracefully through the heart of the city from the Capitol to the
President's, where rise the towers of the Smithsonian, the roof of the
Agricultural Bureau, and all that is built of the Washington Monument,
there stretched another calamity, which existed some fifty years, which
was at last extinguished during 1872 at an immense cost to the city,
which was one of the "improvements" of the past, which once employed the
public money and energy--we cannot repeat brains--to kill not only the
town, but the people in it. This was the great pestiferous open sewer
that stole into a filthy existence under the name of the Washington
Canal.
But there was a greater misfortune than any of these. Slavery need only
be mentioned. More of Washington's present defects are attributable to
it in one way or another than to all else. Yet under this crowning
calamity, added to the others, the undulating plain before us, which
appears so sluggish from the height to which we have climbed, has within
seventy-five years passed from a wilderness into a city of one hundred
and eleven thousand inhabitants. Although the general government kept
the breath of life in it during a period when perhaps nothing else could
have done so, yet such a growth, under all the circumstances, cannot be
accounted for without recognizing an inherent strength that has never
been acknowledged by the multitudes who come to "see" Washington. It
proves that she may have a significance of her own. The visitor should
remember that New York and Boston are enjoying, and Philadelphia has
nearly reached, the third century of their lives.
This scene from the heights is a fascinating one for the day-dreamer.
Everything is in harmony with the past character of the capital.
Everything is misty, vast, uncertain, grand and ill-defined. One does
not see clearly the boundaries--the city and country are one. Every
street we trace in the distance, almost every building, almost every
foot of ground, has gathered something of tradition from the lives of
the statesmen, generals, jurists, diplomates who have lived and wrought
here for three-quarters of a century. The visions that passed before the
eyes of Washington as he stood on the Observatory Hill there, a
subaltern under Braddock, contemplating the wilderness about him and
imagining the future; the pictures that filled the fancy of the
intractable L'Enfant as he defined the great mall and thought of the
gardens between the Tuileries and the Chamber of Deputies; Andrew J.
Downing giving his last days to such an arrangement of the trees and
grass as would be worthy of the design; President Madison and his
cabinet, with a useless little army at their heels, flying in despair
from yonder bloody hillside; Admiral Cockburn derisively riding an old
mare up Pennsylvania Avenue; the burning Capitol and White House
lighting up the gloom of that hideous night; Stephen Decatur shot to
death just round the bend of the Anacostia there; the conflicts by
tongue and pen that have again and again gone on here till the whole
country swayed; Gamaliel Bailey silencing a mob at his door; the
histories that lie buried under the thirty thousand headboards that
gleam like an army of ghosts among the trees of Arlington; Abraham
Lincoln gasping his life away in that little Tenth street house; his
assassin dashing in darkness across the bridge at our feet, over which
we have just passed, and spurring almost into the shadow of the parapet
where we stand;--all these things, and a hundred more as tempting to the
dreamer, come crowding on the mind at every glance. Yet who stops to
call Washington a romantic city? When the White House, just visible from
those tree-tops, shall have ceased, as it soon must do, to be the home
of the chief magistrate, what future magician shall summon down those
cheerless stairways the ghostly procession of dead Presidents, as our
first literary necromancer marshaled the shades of royal governors
across the threshold of the Province House? We turn from all this to
speak of the practical affairs of to-day which await us in the city,
with a reluctance that delays our feet as we descend.
A phrase applied, we believe, by Dickens, when writing of the avenues
here many years ago, and illustrating his remarkable faculty of telling
the most truth when he exaggerated most, rises so constantly to mind
when one considers what Washington has been, that we are tempted to make
it a kind of text. He described the great houseless thoroughfares as
"beginning nowhere and ending in nothing." That phrase sets old
Washington before the reader as the literal truth could never do.
But the reader must now remember that old Washington is going--that a
new Washington has come. The city is no longer disposed to make
apologies, wait for generosity or beg for patronage. It is disposed--and
has proved its disposition--to take off its seedy coat and go to work in
its own way. Its waiting is now only for enlightened judgment from
others, and its begging is only for justice.
The change of local government in 1871, when Congress gave the District
of Columbia a legislature and a representative, was the particular event
from which may be dated such innovations as make necessary a revision of
the popular opinion. The visitors who come this month, and who have not
been here since the last inauguration, will have to learn the capital
anew. While the establishment of the territorial government and the
organization of its outgrowths--particularly the Board of Public
Works--mark the new departure by physical changes, all will understand
that it was the first gun at Charleston, startling the stagnant pool
here, which set in motion the successive waves that carried the city up
to this departure. The public affairs of the city became practically
unmanageable. A joint-stock company could not organize for the most
trifling business without depending on the slow and uncertain action of
Congress for a charter. A few active men, who saw that the old order of
things could be endured no longer, met quietly in 1870 at the house of
an honored citizen on K street to see what further they could see. They
continued to meet at each other's homes, lightening their interchange of
thought for the public by such an extension of hospitality as drew into
their circle many influential Congressmen, and converted them to the new
idea that there was something in Washington besides the national
service. The result was, that the city government was abolished; a
legislative assembly was created; a governor was appointed by the
President of the United States; and a delegate was sent to Congress,
instead of a crowd of lobbyists, to represent the District of Columbia.
This delegate is always to be a member of the committee on the District,
Congress has the constitutional right of exclusive legislation, and the
Assembly cannot impose taxes of any consequence without especial
authority from the people.
The wisdom of the change was doubted at first by many real friends of
progress, who thought they saw grave legal complications arising; who
knew what popular government in a large city, with no restriction of the
election franchise, might mean; who at times thought of New York with a
shudder; who knew that as Washington was the centre of everything
political, it was necessarily the centre of political corruption; that
her alleys were crowded with ignorant freedmen; that her ward
politicians were as unscrupulous and skillful as the same class in other
cities; and who thought it safer to trust the average Congressman than
the small political trader and his chattels. But Congress sits as a
perpetual court of appeal on the spot where its members can judge from
personal knowledge, ready to overrule any act of the Assembly that can
be shown to be a bad one; and one house of the Assembly, with the
governor and executive boards, is appointed by the President. The
election of the larger house and of the delegate to Congress is
sufficient security to the people, and Washington is to-day in most
respects the best-governed city of its size in the United States. The
powers of the little Assembly are very limited: the governor can veto
its measures; Congress can override them both; the President can veto
the acts of Congress; two-thirds of Congress can still surmount this
veto. This complicated system may retard good measures, but it is not
probable that any very bad one can long survive under it.
The Baron Haussmann here is the Board of Public Works. It is grading,
filling, paving, planting, fencing, parking, and making the
thoroughfares what they would never have become by ordinary means. At
last we see what Washingtonians never saw before--vast public operations
having a consistent and tangible shape; obeying a purpose that can be
understood, defined and executed; beginning somewhere and ending in
something. Within its sphere this Board has despotic power: it would be
worthless with any less. It dares to strike without fear or favor, and
hit whoever stands in the way: the way would never be cleared if it did
not. It makes bitter enemies by its inexorable exactions: the public
cannot be served except at the expense of the individual. A strong party
has fought it by injunctions and failed: the same persons will no doubt
continue to fight, while the Board will no doubt continue to vindicate
itself and go on with its work. It made some mistakes which wrought
hardships to individuals who wished it well, but such were the
difficulties before it at the outset that it might have made greater
mistakes and still been forgiven. It is to be hoped that it will have
enemies enough to watch it closely, criticise it sharply and hold it to
a strict accountability; but should it have enough to really interfere
with its present course, then we shall have to add one more, and a great
one, to the list of Washington's calamities. The new blood that created
it is able to sustain it, while the air it has done so much to purify is
already laden with blessings from the lips of strangers.
In the matter of public improvements an equitable adjustment of
relations--always heretofore uncertain and unsatisfactory--between the
District and the general government still remains to be accomplished,
and at this writing is impatiently awaited by the city. Congress should
explicitly define for itself a course that can be depended upon, so that
the city can go ahead and know what it ought to do. The general
government, promising great things which began nowhere and ended in
nothing, laid out the city for its own use, and gave more space to
streets and ornamental grounds than to buildings. The plan was wise and
good, but did not appear so until the liberal citizens, unable to endure
the disgrace of such a city as the nation thrust upon them, taxing
themselves six millions of dollars for street purposes, went generously
to work, with their own money improved the immense fronts of the
government property, which pays no taxes, evolved something tangible out
of the old cloudy-magnificent plan, and gave the country, so far as they
could, a decent capital.
There is another important matter for adjustment. The city has left
nothing undone that money and labor could do to make the public schools
the best in the United States. It is doubtful whether there has ever
before been seen in any city or State an expenditure for public schools
so generous, under all the circumstances, as that of Washington within
the past few years. The best school-houses here are the best the
Prussian commissioners, who lately came to inspect them, had ever seen.
A very great number of the pupils educated by the city are the children
of government servants whose homes are in the States, and who pay no
considerable taxes here. Every State and Territory has received a
liberal allotment of public land for school-purposes except the District
of Columbia, which has probably done more for schools without the
endowment, considering the time and taxable property at command, than
any State has ever done with it.
Of course the city has received many benefits from the general
government, but the considerable ones have been indirect. The excellent
water-works, for instance, costing about three millions of dollars, were
built with the nation's money and by army engineers, because the nation
needed them, and show how entirely identical are the interests of both
parties. Their respective duties, while they need defining anew, are so
wedded that there is no room for serious difference. It is really a
matter for congratulation that the general government held back and did
not take more of the improvements into its own hands. The city's present
claims are by so much stronger: the two governments can work in harmony,
and any efforts that are now made will not be thrown away. Had Congress
acted sooner we might have had more Washington canals, and Washington
and Georgetown street-cars, and similar Congressional "improvements,"
beginning nowhere but in ignorance or selfishness, and ending in nothing
but nuisances. The improvement of the interiors of the national grounds,
however, by the general government, is now keeping pace with that of the
exteriors by the city as nearly as is possible under present
legislation, and their superintendence has become at last an office of
some practical consequence to Washington. The general government owns
about one-half of the property in the District, and during seventy years
has expended for the improvement of the thoroughfares a little over one
million of dollars. The city during the same time has expended for the
same purpose nearly fourteen millions of dollars.
The old Washington idea seems to have consisted in finishing a city
before it was begun. To use an architectural figure, the capital of the
column has been well designed and partly carved, but the base is not yet
laid. Those characteristics which the builders thought would be a sure
foundation of greatness have proved insufficient in the past and will
prove so in the future. The infusion of new blood has done wonders
within ten years, but there is still needed the admixture of another
current. Wealth and ideality--supposed to be possessed by all who are
attracted hither--do not raise a man above material wants or fail to
multiply them. When Washington shall give her utmost attention to
satisfying the vulgarest common wants of common people, she will have
taken her first real step toward--anything. She has had enough of fog
and moonshine. She wants for a proper period the most unmitigated
materiality--not as an end, of course, but as the first means of making
something else possible. She will be made our republican Paris, if made
so at all, by the aid of the shops, the wonderful skilled labor, the
economical living of poor people, on which rested, as well as on higher
things, the splendors of the imperial Paris. The average American lady
goes to that city to buy "things," as well as to visit the Louvre, and
while the late emperor endeavored to make his capital the social centre
of the world, he did not scorn to make it a fashionable market and
foster a Palace of Industry.
That Washington is an admirable place for manufactures is clear to all
who have sought the facts. Whether she will ever become a manufacturing
city is a question that must be settled by the citizens themselves.
Whoever doubts that the growth of skilled labor here will be an
indispensable condition of the higher growth that is sought fails to
understand modern civilization, and should not have survived the days
when things began nowhere and ended in nothing. The old thoroughbred
Washingtonian will never invest a dollar to build a railroad or a modern
workshop, of course. He does not know anything about them, and does not
want to. His idea of business is to get real estate, and "hold on" till
somebody else makes it valuable. Gentlemen of new Washington, Hercules
will stand idle till he sees your own shoulders at the wheel. When you
shall have the faithful, enlightened manual labor of New England, you
may expect such flowers as Yale and Harvard and the aesthetic fruits they
enfold. You may be unable to see any intimate connection between such
labor and such culture, but nevertheless it exists. Old Washington could
not see it, and now you are compelled to bury old Washington out of
sight. It is time for Mohammed to start if he wants his mountain.
There are a few business-men in Washington who are as enlightened, as
liberal, as trustworthy as any in the country; and abundant is their
reward. There are a few who deal only in good wares, who always sell
them at a reasonable profit, who believe that any kind of deception is a
blunder, who manage their establishments with economy, who are aware
that the more money they permit their customers to make the more they
will ultimately make themselves,--who, in short, have learned the
principles of business and have the character to stand by them. But so
many fall short--often through ignorance--in one or more of these
respects that the average business character is low. If a lady wishes to
spend twenty-five dollars in shopping, she can generally travel eighty
miles--to Baltimore and back--and save enough of that small sum to pay
her for going, besides being sure of finding what she wants. The
Washington shopkeepers may really think that they cannot help this. They
_must_ help it, or consent to be soon shoved aside by those who can.
Instead of being troubled by the sight of his best customers going as
far as New York whenever they have anything of consequence to buy, the
genuine old Washington retailer seems to take a calm satisfaction in
putting such fastidious buyers to so much inconvenience. Here it is
rather the exception than the rule for the man of small business to do
just what he promises to do. He don't know the value of another's time,
is used to disappointments himself, and somehow or other will manage to
disarrange your most careful calculations. Unable himself to meet an
engagement thoroughly and exactly, he seems determined that nobody else
shall.
But you cease censuring the average business-man when you begin to deal
with the average Washington mechanic. There are some good ones, but they
are absorbed by the large and experienced dealers in labor, and are
beyond the knowledge or reach of ordinary mortals. You want a little
job done at your house; you call on a "boss;" certainly--it shall be
done instantly; a workman will be sent in a few minutes; two days
afterward he comes and "looks at it;" the next day he returns with
another man and they both look at it; another day passes, and an
apprentice-boy, with a lame negro to wait on him, comes and makes your
home hideous by pretending to begin; when they have given your family a
proper amount of information, and torn things to pieces sufficiently,
they go away. Two more days elapse, and you go again to the boss; he is
surprised--he supposed the work had been done, for he had given
"orders;" at the end of a week perhaps the job that should have consumed
two hours of honest work is done; then, if you pay the boss no more than
the work actually cost him, you know that the sum is twice as much as it
should have cost him. As a generalization this is a true picture of
Washington labor.
These things are trifles? They are just what determine the permanent
residence of multitudes of valuable citizens. They are the trifles that
in the aggregate make the difference between civilization and barbarism.
For every broken promise or slighted piece of work the city suffers.
Civilized people like to live smoothly and comfortably. Washington,
thinking of something besides hotels and boarding-houses, and the people
of leisure who come once a year to fill them for a few weeks, must
provide for a permanent population of moderately poor people. The word
of a merchant or banker is supposed to be as good as his bond; his
occupation is gone when this ceases to be the case; his standing is
reported in a business guide-book, and dealers with him act accordingly.
Cannot some of the methods that enforce integrity in higher branches of
business be more systematically applied by dealers in manual labor? The
men who are reforming the city's outward appearance have an opportunity
of doing something in this direction. A Northern mechanic who reverences
his conscience, and makes the most of his opportunities to gain
knowledge and character, cannot emigrate to a better place than
Washington.
Yet when one looks into the past he thinks that perhaps labor is
improving as fast as other things here. He is inclined to admire it when
he remembers how much worse it used to be. John Adams was the first
occupant of the White House, and this is what his wife said in a private
letter just after moving into it: "To assist us in this great castle,
and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one
single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you
can obtain. If they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep
fires, I design to be pleased. But, surrounded with forests, can you
believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to
cut and cart it?" Seventy-two years ago the President's wife could get
nothing but promises toward hanging a servant's bell! Washington was in
a forest and couldn't furnish wood enough to warm the presidential
hearthstone! The forests and people of that day are gone, but those
eternal "promises" remain.
The recent building in Washington has been mostly that of dwellings,
which the ordinary visitor, following the old routes between the Capitol
and West End, will hardly notice, although they have covered many acres
within the past four years. Since the Board of Public Works has
settled--some would say unsettled--the foundations of things, we may
expect to see the heavy building for business purposes, which must soon
take place even if there be no change in the character of business,
conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves
have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage--a thing
for which Washington is not noted--to disfigure them by the hideous
jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid
monstrosities as the Treasury--as a whole, the worst public building in
the city, although good in parts, so situated that one must go down
stairs from Pennsylvania Avenue to get into the grand north entrance,
without proportion, completeness or consistency--it will be impossible
even for Congress to build.
Both the physical and moral appearance of Washington truly represent the
civilization of the nation as a whole. Such is, after all, the only
description that can be given; and so vast and heterogeneous is the
nation that to many readers this will be no description at all. A farmer
measures out a half bushel of wheat, "levels" it, and tells you truly
that the only difference is in quantity between that in the measure and
that which it came from in the bin: take the architecture, the people,
the ideas of all these States, shake them together in a half bushel,
"level" them, and you can truly say you have Washington. Any noteworthy
character of its own is still lacking. So long as it is nothing more
than a representative of the whole country, it will in many desirable
things fall far below a dozen other cities, whose independence has
enabled them to reach excellences toward which Washington vaguely
aspires. As the capital it will not be the best and most enlightened,
but will be the "average" city. As an independent one its destiny is now
in its own hands, and facilities are thrown at its feet such as no other
can hope to have. There have been good excuses for its shortcomings in
the past. There are none now. Two years ago, Washington was a great boy
who had grown up under the repressive guardianship of his Uncle Samuel;
he had not been permitted to do anything for himself; he had no money
except the few pennies which the old gentleman had grudgingly given him
for menial services. He needed higher culture and better business habits
than his uncle exhibited: the leading-strings were at last sufficiently
cut. His guardian, still exercising a good deal of authority, has
permitted him to go into business for himself; given him the use of the
greatest library in the United States; surrounded him with specimens of
architecture invaluable as models or as warnings; opened to him the
treasures of the Smithsonian, the Coast Survey and a unique medical
museum; given him the benefit of a fine observatory; placed at his
disposal magnificent pleasure-grounds; set before him a botanical
garden; put up for him some good statues and pictures; shown him models
of all the mechanical inventions of the age; sent to him as associates
the first statesmen, jurists and captains of the land; and brought to
his door as guests the polished representatives of all civilized
countries. What more does the boy want that he may make a man of
himself? Nothing but a will of his own so to develop his natural
resources that he can use these things. Will he now refuse to earn the
necessary money to enjoy them, and insist on living, in shabby-genteel
ignorance and idleness, exclusively on the pocket-money of the visitors
to whom his uncle introduces him? If he does, shall we call him a
gentleman?
CHAUNCEY HICKOX.
IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.
Forty days in the great desert of the sea--forty nights camped under
cloud-canopies, with the salt dust of the waves drifting over us.
Sometimes a Bedouin sail flashed for an hour upon the distant horizon,
and then faded, and we were alone again; sometimes the west, at sunset,
looked like a city with towers, and we bore down upon its glorified
walls, seeking a haven; but a cold gray morning dispelled the illusion,
and our hearts sank back into the illimitable sea, breathing a long
prayer for deliverance.
Once a green oasis blossomed before us--a garden in perfect bloom,
girded about with creaming waves; within its coral cincture pendulous
boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs
stole down upon us; above all, the triumphant palm trees clashed their
melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates
of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle
was buried in night and distance.
In many volumes of adventure I had read of sea-perils: I was at last to
learn the full interpretation of their picturesque horrors. Our little
craft, the Petrel, had buffeted the boisterous waves for five long
weeks. Fortunately, the bulk of her cargo was edible: we feared neither
famine nor thirst. Moreover, in spite of the continuous gale that swept
us out of our reckoning, the Petrel was in excellent condition, and, as
far as we could judge, we had no reason to lose confidence in her. It
was the gray weather that tried our patience and found us wanting: it
was the unparalleled pitching of the ninety-ton schooner that
disheartened and almost dismembered us. And then it was wasting time at
sea. Why were we not long before at our journey's end? Why were we not
threading the vales of some savage island, reaping our rich reward of
ferns and shells and gorgeous butterflies?
The sea rang its monotonous changes--fair weather and foul, days like
death itself, followed by days full of the revelations of new life, but
mostly days of deadly dullness, when the sea was as unpoetical as an
eternity of cold suds and blueing.
I cannot always understand the logical fitness of things, or, rather, I
am at a loss to know why some things in life are so unfit and illogical.
Of course, in our darkest hour, when we were gathered in the confines of
the Petrel's diminutive cabin, it was our duty to sing psalms of hope
and cheer, but we didn't. It was a time for mutual encouragement: very
few of us were self-sustaining, and what was to be gained by our
combining in unanimous despair?
Our weatherbeaten skipper--a thing of clay that seemed utterly incapable
of any expression whatever, save in the slight facial contortion
consequent to the mechanical movement of his lower jaw--the skipper sat,
with barometer in hand, eyeing the fatal finger that pointed to our
doom: the rest of us were lashed to the legs of the centre-table, glad
of any object to fix our eyes upon, and nervously awaiting a turn in the
state of affairs, that was then by no means encouraging.
I happened to remember that there were some sealed letters to be read
from time to time on the passage out, and it occurred to me that one of
the times had come, perhaps the last and only, wherein I might break the
remaining seals and receive a sort of parting visit from the fortunate
friends on shore.
I opened one letter and read these prophetic lines: "Dear child"--she
was twice my age, and privileged to make a pet of me--"Dear child, I
have a presentiment that we shall never meet again in the flesh."
That dear girl's intuition came near to being the death of me: I
shuddered where I sat, overcome with remorse. It was enough that I had
turned my back on her and sought consolation in the treacherous bosom of
the ocean--that, having failed to find the spring of immortal life in
human affection, I had packed up and emigrated, content to fly the ills
I had in search of change; but that parting shot, below the water-line
as it were, that was more than I asked for, and something more than I
could stomach. I returned to watch with the rest of our little company,
who clung about the table with a pitiful sense of momentary security,
and an expression of pathetic condolence on every countenance, as though
each were sitting out the last hours of the others.
Our particular bane that night was a crusty old sea-dog whose memory of
wrecks and marine disasters of every conceivable nature was as complete
as an encyclopaedia. This "old man of the sea" spun his tempestuous yarn
with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence
with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been
air-tight--it was as close as possible--yet we heard the shrieking of
the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves
rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam
buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing
stricken with sudden fear: we seemed to be hanging on the crust of a
great bubble that was, sooner or later, certain to burst and let us drop
into its vast, black chasm, where in Cimmerian darkness we should be
entombed for ever.
The scenic effect, as I then considered, was unnecessarily vivid: as I
now recall it, it seems to me strictly in keeping and thoroughly
dramatic. At any rate, you might have told us a dreadful story with
almost fatal success.
I had still one letter left--one bearing this suggestive legend: "To be
read in the saddest hour." Now, if there is a sadder hour in all time
than the hour of hopeless and friendless death, I care not to know of
it. I broke the seal of my letter, feeling that something charitable and
cheering would give me strength. A few dried leaves were stored within
it. The faint fragrance of summer bowers reassured me: somewhere in the
blank world of waters there was land, and there Nature was kind and
fruitful: out over the fearful deluge this leaf was borne to me in the
return of the invisible dove my heart had sent forth in its extremity. A
song was written therein, perhaps a song of triumph: I could now silence
the clamorous tongue of our sea-monster, who was glutting us with tales
of horror, for a jubilee was at hand, and here was the first note of its
trumpets.
I read:
Beyond the parting and the meeting
I shall be soon:
Beyond the farewell and the greeting,
Beyond the pulse's fever-beating,
I shall be soon.
I paused. A night black with croaking ravens, brooding over a slimy
hulk, through whose warped timbers the sea oozed--that was the sort of
picture that arose before me. I looked farther for a crumb of comfort:
Beyond the gathering and the strewing
I shall be soon:
Beyond the ebbing and the flowing,
Beyond the coming and the going,
I shall be soon.
A tide of ice-water seemed rippling up and down my spinal column: the
marrow congealed within my bones. But I recovered. When a man has supped
full of horror, and there is no immediate climax, he can collect himself
and be comparatively brave. A reaction restored my soul.
Once more the melancholy chronicler of the ill-fated Petrel resumed his
lugubrious narrative. I resolved to listen, while the skipper eyed the
barometer, and we all rocked back and forth in search of the centre of
gravity, looking like a troupe of mechanical blockheads nodding in
idiotic unison. All this time the little craft drifted helplessly, "hove
to" in the teeth of the gale.
The sea-dog's yarn was something like this: He once knew a lonesome man
who floated about in a waterlogged hulk for three months--who saw all
his comrades starve and die, one after another, and at last kept watch
alone, craving and beseeching death. It was the staunch French brig La
Perle, bound south into the equatorial seas. She had seen rough weather
from the first: day after day the winds increased, and finally a cyclone
burst upon her with insupportable fury. The brig was thrown upon her
beam-ends, and began to fill rapidly. With much difficulty her masts
were cut away, she righted, and lay in the trough of the sea rolling
like a log. Gradually the gale subsided, but the hull of the brig was
swept continually by the tremendous swell, and the men were driven into
the foretop cross-trees, where they rigged a tent for shelter and
gathered what few stores were left them from the wreck. A dozen wretched
souls lay in their stormy nest for three whole days in silence and
despair. By this time their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a
drop of water remained: then their tongues were loosened, and they
railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate:
one man alone was speechless--a Spaniard with a wicked light in his eye,
and a repulsive manner that had made trouble in the forecastle more than
once.
When hunger had driven them nearly to madness they were fed in an almost
miraculous manner. Several enormous sharks had been swimming about the
brig for some hours, and the hungry sailors were planning various
projects for the capture of them: tough as a shark is, they would
willingly have risked life for a few raw mouthfuls of the same. Somehow,
though the sea was still and the wind light, the brig gave a sudden
lurch and dipped up one of the monsters, who was quite secure in the
shallow aquarium between the gunwales. He was soon despatched, and
divided equally among the crew: some ate a little, and reserved the rest
for another day; some ate till they were sick, and had little left for
the next meal. The Spaniard with the evil eye greedily devoured his
portion, and then grew moody again, refusing to speak with the others,
who were striving to be cheerful, though it was sad enough work.
When the food was all gone save a few mouthfuls that one meagre eater
had hoarded to the last, the Spaniard resolved to secure a morsel at the
risk of his life. It had been a point of honor with the men to observe
sacredly the right of ownership, and any breach of confidence would have
been considered unpardonable. At night, when the watch was sleeping, the
Spaniard cautiously removed the last mouthful of shark hidden in the
pocket of his mate, but was immediately detected and accused of theft.
He at once grew desperate, struck at the poor wretch whom he had robbed,
missed his blow, and fell headlong from the narrow platform in the
foretop, and was lost in the sea. It was the first scene in the mournful
tragedy about to be enacted on that limited stage.
There was less disturbance after the disappearance of the Spaniard: the
spirits of the doomed sailors seemed broken: in fact, the captain was
the only one whose courage was noteworthy, and it was his indomitable
will that ultimately saved him.
One by one the minds of the miserable men gave way: they became peevish
or delirious, and then died horribly. Two, who had been mates for many
voyages in the seas north and south, vanished mysteriously in the night:
no one could tell where they went nor in what manner, though they seemed
to have gone together.