"Come unto these yellow sands."
_The Tempest._
"Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
_Tennyson_
In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk upon the Battery toward
sunset, and watch the steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the
pleasant places along the coast where people pass the hot months.
Sea-side lodgings are not very comfortable, I am told; but who would
not be a little pinched in his chamber, if his windows looked upon the
sea?
In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at such times, and so
respectfully do I regard the sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue
often says, with her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of
Greenwich Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and wishes,
broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and desires, whose hands have
been shot away in some hard battle of experience, so that they cannot
grasp the results towards which they reach.
She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions do lie, ruined and
hopeless now, strewn about the placid contentment of my mental life,
as the old pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich, maimed and
musing in the quiet morning sunshine. Many a one among them thinks
what a Nelson he would have been if both his legs had not been
prematurely carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of triumph he would
have ended, if, unfortunately, he had not happened to have been blown
blind by the explosion of that unlucky magazine.
So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar, stiff with gold
lace, around my neck, instead of this limp white cravat; and I have
even brandished my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom
has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he doubted whether
I should come out quite square in my petty cash. Yet he understands
it. Titbottom was born in Nantucket.
That is the secret of my fondness for the sea; I was born by it. Not
more surely do Savoyards pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the
sound of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight and sound of
the ocean to return to it and renew their fealty. In dreams the
children of the sea hear its voice.
I have read in some book of travels that certain tribes of Arabs have
no name for the ocean, and that when they came to the shore for the
first time, they asked with eager sadness, as if penetrated by the
conviction of a superior beauty, "what is that desert of water more
beautiful than the land?" And in the translations of German stories
which Adoniram and the other children read, and into which I
occasionally look in the evening when they are gone to bed--for I like
to know what interests my children--I find that the Germans, who do
not live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, and tell the
sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if they had especial charm
for them, because their country is inland.
We who know the sea have less fairy feeling about it, but our
realities are romance. My earliest remembrances are of a long range of
old, half dilapidated stores; red brick stores with steep wooden
roofs, and stone window-frames and door-frames, which stood upon docks
built as if for immense trade with all quarters of the globe.
Generally there were only a few sloops moored to the tremendous posts,
which I fancied could easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical
hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with rusty,
seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came slowly moving up the
harbor, with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness of
superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship had
ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of
smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity of any
floating thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty. The ship
was leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, and then came the
disembowelling.
How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign spoils! How it
had gorged itself (such galleons did never seem to me of the feminine
gender) with the luscious treasures of the tropics! It had lain its
lazy length along the shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery
harvests of tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through the strong wicker
prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that eschew the
temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal wood, arose from the
hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a shrill
and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and falling of an
autumn wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and boxes, and
crates, and swung them ashore.
But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised the fragrant
freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the
mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was
perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from
the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old northern port.
Long after the confusion of unloading was over, and the ship lay as if
all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timorously along the edge of
the dock, and at great risk of falling in the black water of its huge
shadow, I placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and so established a
mystic and exquisite connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves
and all the passionate beauties they embower; with jungles, Bengal
tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. I touched
Asia, the Cape of Good Hope and the Happy Islands. I would not believe
that the heat I felt was of our northern sun; to my finer sympathy it
burned with equatorial fervors.
The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe that many of them
remain, but they have lost their character. When I knew them, not only
was I younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town; at least the
bulk of its India trade had shifted to New York and Boston. But the
appliances remained. There was no throng of busy traffickers, and
after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and gazed into the
solemn interiors.
Silence reigned within,--silence, dimness, and piles of foreign
treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame boa-constrictors, served as
seats for men with large stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen
trowsers, who sat looking out of the door toward the ships, with
little other sign of life than an occasional low talking, as if in
their sleep. Huge hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow
molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within bounds, but must
continually expand, and exude, and overflow, stood against the walls,
and had an architectural significance, for they darkly reminded me of
Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the low vaulted store seemed
cyclopean columns incomplete. Strange festoons and heaps of bags,
square piles of square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer
stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by
audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen boxes of precious
dyes that even now shine through my memory, like old Venetian schools
unpainted,--these were all there in rich confusion.
The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was spicy with mingled
odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside,
and then the cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of the
far off island-groves; and if only some parrot or macaw hung within,
would flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue
flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out that grateful
gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and without moving, I was
circumnavigating the globe.
From the old stores and the docks slowly crumbling, touched, I know
not why or how, by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out
of town on those well remembered afternoons, to the fields that lay
upon hillsides over the harbor, and there sat, looking out to sea,
fancying some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends of the
earth, to be my type and image, who would so sail, stately and
successful, to all the glorious ports of the Future. Going home, I
returned by the stores, which black porters were closing. But I stood
long looking in, saturating my imagination, and as it appeared, my
clothes, with the spicy suggestion. For when I reached home my
thrifty mother--another Prue--came snuffing and smelling about me.
"Why! my son, (_snuff, snuff,_) where have you been? (_snuff,
snuff._) Has the baker been making (_snuff_) ginger-bread? You
smell as if you'd been in (_snuff, snuff,_) a bag of cinnamon."
"I've only been on the wharves, mother."
"Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up your clothes with
molasses. Wharves are dirty places, and dangerous. You must take care
of yourself, my son. Really this smell is (_snuff, snuff_,) very
strong."
But I departed from the maternal presence, proud and happy. I was
aromatic. I bore about me the true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt
distant countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and cloves, without
the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself with being the representative of
the Indies. I was in good odor with myself and all the world.
I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes kindly provision. An
imagination so easily excited as mine could not have escaped
disappointment if it had had ample opportunity and experience of the
lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I made the India
voyage, I have never been a traveller, and saving the little time I
was ashore in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and romance,
which the first sight of foreign lands inspires.
That little time was all my foreign travel. I am glad of it. I see now
that I should never have found the country from which the East
Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not grow with
which that hand laid upon the ship placed me in magic conception. As
for the lovely Indian maid whom the palmy arches bowered, she has long
since clasped some native lover to her bosom, and, ripened into mild
maternity, how should I know her now?
"You would find her quite as easily now as then," says my Prue, when I
speak of it. She is right again, as usual, that precious woman; and
it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life have moored me fast
to a book-keeper's desk, they have left all the lands I longed to see
fairer and fresher in my mind than they could ever be in my
memory. Upon my only voyage I used to climb into the top and search
the horizon for the shore. But now in a moment of calm thought I see
a more Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and do not envy the
youths who go there and make fortunes, who wear grass-cloth jackets,
drink iced beer, and eat curry; whose minds fall asleep, and whose
bodies have liver complaints.
Unseen by me for ever, nor ever regretted, shall wave the Egyptian
palms and the Italian pines. Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still
echo with the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon unrifled of
its marbles, look, perfect, across the Egean blue.
My young friends return from their foreign tours elate with the smiles
of a nameless Italian, or Parisian belle. I know not such cheap
delights; I am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I walk with Tasso along
the terraced garden of the Villa d'Este, and look to see Beatrice
smiling down the rich gloom of the cypress shade. You staid at the
_Hôtel Europa_ in Venice, at _Danielli's_ or the _Leone
bianco_; I am the guest of Marino Faliero, and I whisper to his
wife as we climb the giant staircase in the summer moonlight,
"Ah! senza amaro
Andare sul mare,
Col sposo del mare,
Non puo consolare."
It is for the same reason that I did not care to dine with you and
Aurelia, that I am content not to stand in St. Peter's. Alas! if I
could see the end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For those of us
whom Nature means to keep at home, she provides entertainment. One man
goes four thousand miles to Italy, and does not see it, he is so
short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he stays in his room and
sees more than Italy.
But for this very reason that it washes the shores of my possible
Europe and Asia, the sea draws me constantly to itself. Before I came
to New York, while I was still a clerk in Boston, courting Prue, and
living out of town, I never knew of a ship sailing for India or even
for England and France, but I went up to the State House cupola or to
the observatory on some friend's house in Roxbury, where I could not
be interrupted, and there watched the departure.
The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the stream; busy little boats
and puffing steamers darted about it, clung to its sides, paddled away
from it, or led the way to sea, as minnows might pilot a whale. The
anchor was slowly swung at the bow; I could not hear the sailors'
song, but I knew they were singing. I could not see the parting
friends, but I knew farewells were spoken. I did not share the
confusion, although I knew what bustle there was, what hurry, what
shouting, what creaking, what fall of ropes and iron, what sharp
oaths, low laughs, whispers, sobs. But I was cool, high, separate. To
me it was
"A painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
The sails were shaken out, and the ship began to move. It was a fair
breeze, perhaps, and no steamer was needed to tow her away. She
receded down the bay. Friends turned back--I could not see them--and
waved their hands, and wiped their eyes, and went home to dinner.
Farther and farther from the ships at anchor, the lessening vessel
became single and solitary upon the water. The sun sank in the west;
but I watched her still. Every flash of her sails, as she tacked and
turned, thrilled my heart.
Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen one of the passengers or
the crew. I did not know the consignees, nor the name of the vessel. I
had shipped no adventure, nor risked any insurance, nor made any bet,
but my eyes clung to her as Ariadne's to the fading sail of
Theseus. The ship was freighted with more than appeared upon her
papers, yet she was not a smuggler. She bore all there was of that
nameless lading, yet the next ship would carry as much. She was
freighted with fancy. My hopes, and wishes, and vague desires, were
all on board. It seemed to me a treasure not less rich than that which
filled the East Indiaman at the old dock in my boyhood.
When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon the horizon, I waved my
hand in last farewell, I strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind
had gone to sea, and had left noise behind. But now I heard again the
multitudinous murmur of the city, and went down rapidly, and threaded
the short, narrow, streets to the office. Yet, believe it, every dream
of that day, as I watched the vessel, was written at night to
Prue. She knew my heart had not sailed away.
Those days are long past now, but still I walk upon the Battery and
look towards the Narrows and know that beyond them, separated only by
the sea, are many of whom I would so gladly know, and so rarely
hear. The sea rolls between us like the lapse of dusky ages. They
trusted themselves to it, and it bore them away far and far as if into
the past. Last night I read of Antony, but I have not heard from
Christopher these many months, and by so much farther away is he, so
much older and more remote, than Antony. As for William, he is as
vague as any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic dynasties.
It is the sea that has done it, it has carried them off and put them
away upon its other side. It is fortunate the sea did not put them
upon its underside. Are they hale and happy still? Is their hair
gray, and have they mustachios? Or have they taken to wigs and
crutches? Are they popes or cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia
Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the Council of Ten? Do they
sing, _Behold how brightly breaks the morning_ with Masaniello?
Do they laugh at Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour,
chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with Zobeide in the Caliph's garden,
or have they made cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my youth,
where in your wanderings have you tasted the blissful Lotus, that you
neither come nor send us tidings?
Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false reports steal into
history and defile fair fames. Was it longer ago than yesterday that
I walked with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked with her of
the countries to which she meant to sail? She was young, and
dark-eyed, and wore great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears.
The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, had risen like a dawn
in the darkness of her mind. I talked and listened by rapid turns.
Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told me of her splendid
plans, how palaces tapestried with gorgeous paintings should be
cheaply hired, and the best of teachers lead her children to the
completest and most various knowledge; how,--and with her slender
pittance!--she should have a box at the opera, and a carriage, and
liveried servants, and in perfect health and youth, lead a perfect
life in a perfect climate?
And now what do I hear? Why does a tear sometimes drop so audibly upon
my paper, that Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild rebuking
glance of inquiry, whether it is kind to let even a single tear fall,
when an ocean of tears is pent up in hearts that would burst and
overflow if but one drop should force its way out? Why across the sea
came faint gusty stories, like low voices in the wind, of a cloistered
garden and sunny seclusion--and a life of unknown and unexplained
luxury. What is this picture of a pale face showered with streaming
black hair, and large sad eyes looking upon lovely and noble children
playing in the sunshine--and a brow pained with thought straining into
their destiny? Who is this figure, a man tall and comely, with melting
eyes and graceful motion, who comes and goes at pleasure, who is not a
husband, yet has the key of the cloistered garden?
I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. The pictures pass before
my mind suddenly and unawares, and I feel the tears rising that I
would gladly repress. Titbottom looks at me, then stands by the window
of the office and leans his brow against the cold iron bars, and looks
down into the little square paved court. I take my hat and steal out
of the office for a few minutes, and slowly pace the hurrying
streets. Meek-eyed Alice! magnificent Maud! sweet baby Lilian! why
does the sea imprison you so far away, when will you return, where do
you linger? The water laps idly about docks,--lies calm, or gaily
heaves. Why does it bring me doubts and fears now, that brought such
bounty of beauty in the days long gone?
I remember that the day when my dark haired cousin, with hoops of
barbaric gold in her ears, sailed for Italy, was quarter-day, and we
balanced the books at the office. It was nearly noon, and in my
impatience to be away, I had not added my columns with sufficient
care. The inexorable hand of the office clock pointed sternly towards
twelve, and the remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to noon.
To a man whose pleasures are not many, and rather small, the loss of
such an event as saying farewell and wishing God-speed to a friend
going to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to me, especially, because
there was always more to me, in every departure, than the parting and
the farewell. I was gradually renouncing this pleasure, as I saw
small prospect of ending before noon, when Titbottom, after looking at
me a moment, came to my side of the desk, and said:
"I should like to finish that for you."
I looked at him: poor Titbottom! he had no friends to wish God-speed
upon any journey. I quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and went
out. It was in the days of sail packets and less regularity, when
going to Europe was more of an epoch in life. How gaily my cousin
stood upon the deck and detailed to me her plan! How merrily the
children shouted and sang! How long I held my cousin's little hand in
mine, and gazed into her great eyes, remembering that they would see
and touch the things that were invisible to me for ever, but all the
more precious and fair! She kissed me--I was younger then--there were
tears, I remember, and prayers, and promises, a waving handkerchief,--a
fading sail.
It was only the other day that I saw another parting of the same
kind. I was not a principal, only a spectator; but so fond am I of
sharing, afar off, as it were, and unseen, the sympathies of human
beings, that I cannot avoid often going to the dock upon steamer-days
and giving myself to that pleasant and melancholy observation. There
is always a crowd, but this day it was almost impossible to advance
through the masses of people. The eager faces hurried by; a constant
stream poured up the gangway into the steamer, and the upper deck, to
which I gradually made my way, was crowded with the passengers and
their friends.
There was one group upon which my eyes first fell, and upon which my
memory lingers. A glance, brilliant as daybreak--a voice,
"Her voice's music,--call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
warble,"
a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling farewell upon a circle of
worshippers, to each one of whom that gracious calmness made the smile
sweeter, and the farewell more sad--other figures, other flowers, an
angel face--all these I saw in that group as I was swayed up and down
the deck by the eager swarm of people. The hour came, and I went on
shore with the rest. The plank was drawn away--the captain raised his
hand--the huge steamer slowly moved--a cannon was fired--the ship was
gone.
The sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed away. In five minutes
the steamer was as much separated from the shore as if it had been at
sea a thousand years.
I leaned against a post upon the dock and looked around. Ranged upon
the edge of the wharf stood that band of worshippers, waving
handkerchiefs and straining their eyes to see the last smile of
farewell--did any eager selfish eye hope to see a tear? They to whom
the handkerchiefs were waved stood high upon the stern, holding
flowers. Over them hung the great flag, raised by the gentle wind into
the graceful folds of a canopy,--say rather a gorgeous gonfalon waved
over the triumphant departure, over that supreme youth, and bloom, and
beauty, going out across the mystic ocean to carry a finer charm and
more human splendor into those realms of my imagination beyond the
sea.
"You will return, O youth and beauty!" I said to my dreaming and
foolish self, as I contemplated those fair figures, "richer than
Alexander with Indian spoils. All that historic association, that
copious civilization, those grandeurs and graces of art, that variety
and picturesqueness of life, will mellow and deepen your experience
even as time silently touches those old pictures into a more
persuasive and pathetic beauty, and as this increasing summer sheds
ever softer lustre upon the landscape. You will return conquerors and
not conquered. You will bring Europe, even as Aurelian brought
Zenobia captive, to deck your homeward triumph. I do not wonder that
these clouds break away, I do not wonder that the sun presses out and
floods all the air, and land, and water, with light that graces with
happy omens your stately farewell."
But if my faded face looked after them with such earnest and longing
emotion,--I, a solitary old man, unknown to those fair beings, and
standing apart from that band of lovers, yet in that moment bound more
closely to them than they knew,--how was it with those whose hearts
sailed away with that youth and beauty? I watched them closely from
behind my post. I knew that life had paused with them; that the world
stood still. I knew that the long, long summer would be only a
yearning regret. I knew that each asked himself the mournful question,
"Is this parting typical--this slow, sad, sweet recession?" And I knew
that they did not care to ask whether they should meet again, nor dare
to contemplate the chances of the sea.
The steamer swept on, she was near Staten Island, and a final gun
boomed far and low across the water. The crowd was dispersing, but the
little group remained. Was it not all Hood had sung?
"I saw thee, lovely Inez,
Descend along the shore
With bands of noble gentlemen,
And banners waved before;
And gentle youths and maidens gay,
And snowy plumes they wore;--
It would have been a beauteous dream,
If it had been no more!"
"O youth!" I said to them without speaking, "be it gently said, as it
is solemnly thought, should they return no more, yet in your memories
the high hour of their loveliness is for ever enshrined. Should they
come no more they never will be old, nor changed, to you. You will wax
and wane, you will suffer, and struggle, and grow old; but this summer
vision will smile, immortal, upon your lives, and those fair faces
shall shed, for ever, from under that slowly waving flag, hope and
peace."
It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature. Long, long ago we
lost our first-born, Prue and I. Since then, we have grown older and
our children with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps, and decay. We
are happy, our children are obedient and gay. But should Prue live
until she has lost us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our graves,
she will have always one babe in her heart. Every mother who has lost
an infant, has gained a child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort
here, lovers, whose mistress has sailed away?
I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only, as I watched the
youths, and turned away while they still stood gazing. One, I
observed, climbed a post and waved his black hat before the
white-washed side of the shed over the dock, whence I supposed he
would tumble into the water. Another had tied a handkerchief to the
end of a somewhat baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had
forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mournfully down, as if
overpowered with grief it could not express. The entranced youth
still held the umbrella aloft. It seemed to me as if he had struck his
flag; or as if one of my cravats were airing in that sunlight. A
negro carter was joking with an apple-woman at the entrance of the
dock. The steamer was out of sight.
I found that I was belated and hurried back to my desk. Alas! poor
lovers; I wonder if they are watching still? Has he fallen exhausted
from the post into the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached and rent,
still pendant upon that somewhat baggy umbrella?
"Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day," said I to Prue, as I stirred
my tea at evening. As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me the
sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name should be Hebe. I took a
lump of sugar and looked at her. She had never seemed so lovely, and
as I dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced at Prue as I
did so. The dear woman smiled, but did not answer my exclamation.
Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the emotions of those I
do not know. But sometimes the old longing comes over me as in the
days when I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and magnetically
sailed around the world.
It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved farewell to the
steamer, and while the lovely figures standing under the great
gonfalon were as vivid in my mind as ever, that a day of premature
sunny sadness, like those of the Indian summer, drew me away from the
office early in the afternoon: for fortunately it is our dull season
now, and even Titbottom sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock.
Although why he should leave it, or where he goes, or what he does, I
do not well know. Before I knew him, I used sometimes to meet him with
a man whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby, the scrivener. Even
then it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their loneliness than
made society for each other. Recently I have not seen Bartleby; but
Titbottom seems no more solitary because he is alone.
I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about. Staten Island
looked so alluring, tender-hued with summer and melting in the haze,
that I resolved to indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a little
selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at my watch, and saw that
if I should hurry home for Prue the trip would be lost; then I should
be disappointed, and she would be grieved.
Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions, which I am going to
answer affirmatively, with _ought_,) to take the trip and recount
my adventures to Prue upon, my return, whereby I should actually enjoy
the excursion and the pleasure of telling her; while she would enjoy
my story and be glad that I was pleased? Ought I wilfully to deprive
us both of this various enjoyment by aiming at a higher, which, in
losing, we should lose all?
Unfortunately, just as I was triumphantly answering "Certainly not!"
another question marched into my mind, escorted by a very defiant
_ought_.
"Ought I to go when I have such a debate about it?"
But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my own scruples, the
ferry-bell suddenly rang, and answered all my questions. Involuntarily
I hurried on board. The boat slipped from the dock. I went up on deck
to enjoy the view of the city from the bay, but just as I sat down,
and meant to have said "how beautiful!" I found myself asking:
"Ought I to have come?"
Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the scenery of the bay; but
the remembrance of Prue and the gentle influence of the day plunged me
into a mood of pensive reverie which nothing tended to destroy, until
we suddenly arrived at the landing.
As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by Mr. Bourne, who passes the
summer on the island, and who hospitably asked if I were going his
way. His way was toward the southern end of the island, and I said
yes. His pockets were full of papers and his brow of wrinkles; so when
we reached the point where he should turn off, I asked him to let me
alight, although he was very anxious to carry me wherever I was going.
"I am only strolling about," I answered, as I clambered carefully out
of the wagon.
"Strolling about?" asked he, in a bewildered manner; "'do people
stroll about, now-a-days?"
"Sometimes," I answered, smiling, as I pulled my trowsers down over my
boots, for they had dragged up, as I stepped out of the wagon, "and
beside, what can an old book-keeper do better in the dull season than
stroll about this pleasant island, and watch the ships at sea?"
Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes.
"I'd give five thousand dollars a year for a dull season," said he,
"but as for strolling, I've forgotten how."
As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily across the fields and woods,
and were fastened upon the distant sails.
"It is pleasant," he said musingly, and fell into silence. But I had
no time to spare, so I wished him good afternoon.
"I hope your wife is well," said Bourne to me, as I turned away. Poor
Bourne! He drove on alone in his wagon.
But I made haste to the most solitary point upon the southern shore,
and there sat, glad to be so near the sea. There was that warm,
sympathetic silence in the air, that gives to Indian-summer days
almost a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze, that seemed
only the kindly air made visible, hung over the sea. The water lapped
languidly among the rocks, and the voices of children in a boat
beyond, rang musically, and gradually receded, until they were lost in
the distance.
It was some time before I was aware of the outline of a large ship,
drawn vaguely upon the mist, which I supposed, at first, to be only a
kind of mirage. But the more steadfastly I gazed, the more distinct it
became, and I could no longer doubt that I saw a stately ship lying at
anchor, not more than half a mile from the land.
"It is an extraordinary place to anchor," I said to myself, "or can
she be ashore?"
There were no signs of distress; the sails were carefully clewed up,
and there were no sailors in the tops, nor upon the shrouds. A flag,
of which I could not see the device or the nation, hung heavily at the
stern, and looked as if it had fallen asleep. My curiosity began to
be singularly excited. The form of the vessel seemed not to be
permanent; but within a quarter of an hour, I was sure that I had seen
half a dozen different ships. As I gazed, I saw no more sails nor
masts, but a long range of oars, flashing like a golden fringe, or
straight and stiff, like the legs of a sea-monster.
"It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified by the mist," I said
to myself, complacently. But, at the same moment, there was a
concentrated flashing and blazing in one spot among the rigging, and
it was as if I saw a beatified ram, or, more truly, a sheep-skin,
splendid as the hair of Berenice.
"Is that the golden fleece?" I thought. "But, surely, Jason and the
Argonauts have gone home long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing
expeditions now?" I asked myself, in perplexity. "Can this be a
California steamer?"
How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I not see those sails,
"thin and sere?" Did I not feel the melancholy of that solitary bark?
It had a mystic aura; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in its wake, for
it was drifting seaward. A strange fear curdled along my veins. That
summer sun shone cool. The weary, battered ship was gashed, as if
gnawed by ice. There was terror in the air, as a "skinny hand so
brown" waved to me from the deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of
the ancient mariner seemed to be reaching for me, like the hand of
death.
Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue's forgiveness for my solitary
ramble and consequent demise, a glance like the fulness of summer
splendor gushed over me; the odor of flowers and of eastern gums made
all the atmosphere. I breathed the orient, and lay drunk with balm,
while that strange ship, a golden galley now, with glittering
draperies festooned with flowers, paced to the measured beat of oars
along the calm, and Cleopatra smiled alluringly from the great
pageant's heart.
Was this a barge for summer waters, this peculiar ship I saw? It had a
ruined dignity, a cumbrous grandeur, although its masts were
shattered, and its sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the
sea, as if tormented and exhausted by long driving and drifting. I saw
no sailors, but a great Spanish ensign floated over, and waved, a
funereal plume. I knew it then. The armada was long since scattered;
but, floating far
"on desolate rainy seas,"
lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here lay one of the
fated ships of Spain. The huge galleon seemed to fill all the air,
built up against the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine
against the sunset.
But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the mast-head--a long
low vessel darted swiftly where the vast ship lay; there came a shrill
piping whistle, the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing oaths, sharp
pistol cracks, the thunder of command, and over all the gusty yell of
a demoniac chorus,
"My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed."
--There were no clouds longer, but under a serene sky I saw a bark
moving with festal pomp, thronged with grave senators in flowing
robes, and one with ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a ring. The
smooth bark swam upon a sea like that of southern latitudes. I saw the
Bucentoro and the nuptials of Venice and the Adriatic.
Who where those coming over the side? Who crowded the boats, and
sprang into the water, men in old Spanish armor, with plumes and
swords, and bearing a glittering cross? Who was he standing upon the
deck with folded arms and gazing towards the shore, as lovers on their
mistresses and martyrs upon heaven? Over what distant and tumultuous
seas had this small craft escaped from other centuries and distant
shores? What sounds of foreign hymns, forgotten now, were these, and
what solemnity of debarkation? Was this grave form, Columbus?
Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed just now. This group of
stern-faced men with high peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck
and looked out upon a shore which, I could see by their joyless smile
of satisfaction, was rough, and bare, and forbidding. In that soft
afternoon, standing in mournful groups upon the small deck, why did
they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of wintry New England?
That phantom-ship could not be the May Flower!