THE TREE OF JADE
From the time when they first went to the dame school to learn their
letters, Jonathan Adams and Humphrey Reynolds spent most of their waking
hours in each other’s company. They looked for birds’ nests together in
the woods at the edge of the broad Susquehanna River, they paddled along
its marshy banks, they played absorbing games in that busy, entrancing
place, Jonathan’s father’s shipyard. Or they would stand side by side
watching a great ship of war come sailing up the bay, a flying vision of
square white sails and darkly outlined rigging, the vessel that was
commanded by Captain Reynolds, Humphrey’s father. The two boys talked
much of what they would do when they were men; they would sit for long
hours on the wharf, their legs dangling above the water, discussing the
future.
“I am going into the Navy like my father,” Humphrey would say, “and I
intend to sail in the finest and fastest ship of the whole fleet to the
very ends of the world and back again. And I will have you for executive
officer, Jonathan.”
“No,” Jonathan would return seriously, “I get sick when I go to sea and
I don’t like hardtack and salt pork. No, I will stop at home in my
father’s yards and some day I will build a ship that is a real ship and
not just tubs like these.”
They parted when they were seventeen and did not meet again for years,
for Humphrey went into the Navy as he had planned and Jonathan, with
mallet and chisel in hand and with that sober, earnest air that always
clung to him, was already at work in his father’s shipyard. In time he
became master of the entire business, while Humphrey was scouring the
seas, sailing on just those far voyages of which he had so often
dreamed. Jonathan had his dreams also, but he did not speak of them,
only toiled away at building the heavy, sturdy vessels that carried
America’s trade overseas early in the last century. Honest ships they
were and reliable, as sure of coming to port as though they had belonged
to the age of steam, but oh, how long it took them to make a voyage! In
the privacy of his dingy little office Jonathan, with the door fastened,
would push aside the clutter of plans and drawings and would get out the
model of a strange vessel, sharp, slender and graceful, with a hull like
a racing yacht. He would set it upon the bench to carve a little here,
to alter a curve by a hair’s breadth there, or merely to stand staring
at it sometimes for hours at a time, staring and thinking.
One day when he was so standing, utterly lost in some unspoken vision,
there came a knock at the door, followed by an impatient second one and
a thunderous third, all during the moment of time that it took the
shipmaster to put out of sight his beloved model. When the door was
opened there strode in a tall sunburned person in blue uniform, Humphrey
Reynolds come at last to see his old comrade, bringing a roll of
government documents under his arm.
“Congress has taken a sudden turn toward increasing the Navy,” the young
officer explained, “and the orders are going out to build twelve ships
in haste. One of the contracts is to come to you, if you will take it.
They are even in such need that they have not laid down the
specifications to the last bolt and rope’s end, so that the man who
builds this ship and the officer who superintends the construction, can
really have something to say about the design.”
He looked his old friend very steadily in the eye and saw a slow smile
of deep, unspoken delight dawn upon the shipbuilder’s face. Jonathan
Adams’ hard hands did not often tremble, but they shook a little now as
he reached up to the shelf above the bench and brought down his model.
“I have been thinking about such a design since I was ten years old,” he
said, “and the chance to build it has come at last. We will make them a
real ship, Humphrey, and the whole world will open its eyes when it sees
you sail her.”
She grew up quickly on the ways, that ship of their very hearts’ desire,
with her bowsprit standing far out over the neighboring street, and with
people stopping in the lane to watch Jonathan’s whole force of workmen
toiling up and down her timbered sides. Old Navy officers who had seen,
some of them, the ships of the Revolution, and who had all fought in the
War of Eighteen-twelve, would come to inspect her and would shake their
heads.
“Look at that high, sharp bow,” one would say; “such a craft will never
be seaworthy in the world. Why can’t these young fellows stick to the
models we have tried out for them?”
“And see the spread of sail this drawing shows,” another would comment,
pointing fiercely with a stubby forefinger; “why, the whole ridiculous
affair will capsize in the first good puff of wind! I’m thankful I don’t
have to go to sea in her.”
But the two comrades closed their ears and sat, often far into the
night, in the cramped little office, poring over drawings and comparing
designs.
“You have her thought out to the last ring, block and halyard,” Humphrey
would say, “and you never even knew if you could build her. What a
dreamer you are!”
“It takes dreaming to keep a man at his work,” Jonathan would answer.
“How do you think I would have had the patience, all these years, to
drive wooden pins into cross-timbers, or to mend the rigging of limping
coastwise schooners if I had not been thinking of just such a ship as
this, and seen her, in my mind’s eye, putting to sea under full sail, to
smash every sailing record that has been known?”
The day of the launching came, then the stepping of the giant masts, the
completing of the rigging and the bending of the new sails.
“The _West Wind_ will be ready for sea in two weeks now,” Humphrey said,
one morning at breakfast to Miranda Reynolds—she was my
great-grandmother and I was named for her. They had been married only a
month and this would be his first cruise since their wedding. She drew
her breath quickly, she had not known it was to be so soon.
“People say,” she began hesitatingly, “old sailors and longshoremen and
even the Naval officers that have been here, say that the _West Wind_
will never stand a storm.”
“They are the kind of men,” Humphrey scoffed, “who would be sailing
vessels of the model of the Ark, did not people like Jonathan Adams have
the courage, sometimes, to build something new. No, the _West Wind_ is
going to teach all the shipmasters something they never knew before,
when once she sets sail. And we expect to clear for Gibraltar in less
than a month. Why, Miranda, you’re not crying?”
“No,” declared Miranda, choking bravely, for tears have no place in a
sea captain’s household. She even managed to muster a watery smile. “I
wonder what you will leave behind you in foreign parts this time, your
gold snuffbox, perhaps.”
It was a longstanding joke that young Captain Reynolds was so careless
of his possessions that he never came home from a voyage without having
lost or mislaid by the way everything he had. But the gold snuffbox had
survived several cruises, since it was the most valuable thing he owned.
It had been presented to him by the citizens of his town when he had
come home from sea some years ago, after, so he expressed, “a miserable
Algerine pirate lay alongside him and insisted on being taken.”
It is probably only a short paragraph in your history book and possibly
a very dull one that tells you how, a little more than a hundred years
ago, the seas swarmed with pirates whose home ports were the North
African cities of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis. The great nations of
Europe and, with them, the young United States, used to buy safety from
these lawless Barbary States by sending them gifts and tribute. But
when, finally, the Pasha of Tripoli sent word to our President that his
last gift was not large enough and that more must be sent, the answer
was a fleet of American warships and the bombardment of the astonished
monarch’s seaports. There were many spirited encounters during that
little war, many feats of daring seamanship of which history has lost
sight among the greater events that have followed. But for years after
the struggle was over, the United States Navy still policed that foreign
sea with such thoroughness that the pirate craft that dared venture from
port were bold and desperate indeed.
It was thither that the _West Wind_ was to sail, with dispatches for the
Commodore of the Mediterranean Fleet. At last the ship was ready, a rare
and beautiful sight with her slim hull, her rows of guns and her
towering reach of silvery new canvas.
She sailed with the early tide, at daybreak of a mid-April morning, a
ghostly fairy-like thing, slipping away in the gray light and the mist
of dawn. Miranda stood on the dock to watch her go, with Jonathan beside
her staring fixedly after his winged dream, flying at last beyond the
seas.
“There will be tales to tell when she comes back,” he said at last, “and
I look for her to cut down the sailing time by three, four, five days,
perhaps. She has borne away the hearts of both of us but she is a good
ship and she will bring them back again.”
His stout faith in his ship was matched only by Humphrey’s unwavering
confidence. Others might have said that this maiden voyage of his first
command was a heart-breaking one, for many of his men were untrained
seamen, grumbling at their narrow quarters and heavy labor, while the
art of handling the new vessel was, in itself, not easy to acquire. The
weather was boisterous and the winds fitful, but the _West Wind_ did not
betray the two good friends who had brought her into being. The storms
lent her wings so that, at last, anxiety and discontent gave way
entirely to pride in the speed that she was making. There was a certain
grizzled old sailor, however, who openly discredited all claims of the
ship’s prowess, and who even refused to believe the evidence of the
day’s reckoning.
“Twenty-three days is the best she will do,” he vowed over and over
again. “I will stake a year’s pay on it that she can’t make an hour
less.”
Yet, on the nineteenth day of their passage, a warm, gusty afternoon of
early May, when the far horizon swam in haze, it was he who came himself
to the captain and broke through all etiquette to report, round-eyed
with amazement—
“There’s land been sighted, sir, and I don’t understand it at all. It—it
looks like Gibraltar!”
So she came through the gates of the Mediterranean, a gentle breeze
behind her, “sails all filled and asleep” as the seamen said, a swift
slender hull under a cloud of snowy canvas. She pushed into the straits
where had plied back and forth the daring Phœnician craft, the Roman
galleys and the high-pooped ships of Venice and of Spain, but she was no
lesser vessel than any one of them, for she was the first of the Yankee
clipper ships!
I have never seen those North African cities, Tangier and Tunis and the
rest, and I have no doubt that to-day they are very little like what
Humphrey Reynolds saw. But his stories have come down to me so clear and
vivid, that I almost feel that I have known those very places with their
white houses, their tropical green, the confusion and chatter of foreign
tongues in the narrow streets, the hushed silence of the wide, walled
gardens. For long months the American warships would lie off these
ports, keeping a watchful eye upon the doings of the dusky potentates
and arch-pirates who ruled them. The officers and men would go ashore to
stare at the strange sights and to bargain for souvenirs among the
street vendors, seemingly oblivious of the scowling, hostile faces about
them.
It was in Tripoli on a day when Captain Reynolds was walking from one
dark cupboard of a shop to another, looking for some fitting gift to
take home to Miranda, that he was suddenly startled by the sight of a
pale face among all those dusky ones. It was not white, but yellow, and
belonged to an old Chinaman, as dried up and withered as a mummy, who
had somehow wandered, a rare thing in those days, to this African city
and kept a little shop there among the Moors, Arabs and Berbers of
Tripoli. His wares were different from the others and very new indeed to
Humphrey’s eyes, for just such carvings and silks did not often find
their way to America. The old man invited the officer to come inside
where more articles stood upon the narrow shelves and where Humphrey had
almost decided upon the purchase of a beautifully carved ivory box for
Miranda when he spied, in a niche opposite the tiny window, such a thing
as he had never seen before.
A little pine tree was growing in a pot, a real, living one, and a
miniature of just such a tree, bent and twisted by the sea winds, that
grew upon the hill above the Susquehanna at home. The art of stunting
and pruning these tiny trees, developed in Japan perhaps, but known to
some Chinese, was quite unheard of in the Western world so that Humphrey
could scarcely believe his eyes when they told him it was green and
growing and evidently kin to the giant ones in America.
“Miranda must have that,” was his instant decision; “she will find that
I can manage to bring home the gold snuffbox and something more
besides.”
His determined effort to buy the tree, however, had a strange effect. At
the first the old shopkeeper merely met all his offers with a determined
shake of the head, but, as Humphrey insisted, he became more and more
excited and at last, wringing his hands, burst into a torrent of
jabbering explanation. Captain Reynolds had cruised along these shores
long enough to have learned a little of the mixed dialect of French,
Spanish and Moorish words by which foreigners and natives contrived to
understand one another, so that he was able to gather from the
Chinaman’s flood of talk that the pine tree was the most precious of his
possessions, that he had carried it himself all the way from Pekin, that
it was a hundred years old and that he felt certain the spirits of his
ancestors loved to cluster about its twisted little branches. What had
caused his banishment from his own land Humphrey could not make out, but
he did gain some inkling of how the withered old man felt as he looked
back upon some frail, small hut on the shore of one of China’s muddy
yellow rivers, upon some bit of land that he and his ancestors had
tilled patiently for unnumbered generations, upon a tiny garden where
the tree had grown. No, it was quite plain that he would not sell it!
So the ivory box was bought for Miranda after all. As Humphrey prepared
to go, a picturesque person came into the shop, a fat, black man, very
richly dressed with the silk scarfs, satin cloak and gold embroidered
garments of a high court official. The young American glanced at him
curiously as he squeezed by in the semi-darkness of the narrow place and
was conscious of the penetrating stare of two hard black eyes that he
could almost feel boring into his back as he went out. Before he had
gone far, he thought that he heard a queer, smothered cry of terror in
the shop. But the street was so full of noises that, though he paused to
listen, he could not be certain and so went on again. In the busy days
on board ship that followed, the Chinaman and his treasure presently
passed completely from his mind.
Reports of the _West Wind’s_ quick passage had been going about, all
this time, through the Mediterranean Fleet.
“But that was only a trial,” Humphrey kept saying, “when we were
learning how to handle her. On the voyage home we’ll show you even more
plainly what she can do.”
That voyage was now soon to be, for the vessel had been selected to
carry back the Commodore’s dispatches and reports to Washington. On the
day before she was to sail, a message came from the Pasha of Tripoli
that he was sending his personal representative to make the ship a visit
of ceremonious farewell. Captain Reynolds sighed deeply when he heard
this news, for such overtures from a government elaborately friendly but
secretly treacherous, were uneasy occasions. When the stout, dusky
minister of state came over the side, gorgeous in his jewels and satins,
Humphrey, after a moment of doubt, recognized him as the man whom he had
met in the old Chinaman’s shop. The other gave no sign of recognition,
however, but gravely went through the elaborate messages from his august
master, inspected the ship with solemn interest and expressed not only
surprise, but some doubts when told of the time she had made between
America and Gibraltar.
“Why, it cannot be done!” he cried. Not even pirate craft, it seemed,
could fly on such swift wings. “There are favorable winds and chances
for good luck on the eastern passage, but when your prow is turned
toward home again, when you are obliged to go southward to get the trade
winds that blow for all ships alike, then you will find that this is an
ordinary craft, just like all the rest.”
“We will equal our record or better it,” Humphrey replied obstinately,
“although, as I own, the westward voyage is a longer and more difficult
one. But the _West Wind_, sir, is a ship not like other ships.”
After they had sat some time in the Captain’s cabin, partaking of
refreshment and exchanging polite assurances of good will, the black
visitor, with great ceremony, produced an impressive gift from his
master, a richly embroidered scarf which he presented with a long speech
that Humphrey only half understood. He accepted it unwillingly and made
such reply as he could, after which there came an awkward pause in the
talk. Finally the Tripolitan minister, with smooth boldness, remarked
that his illustrious master would be willing to accept in return some
small gift, merely as a remembrance of the visit of Captain Reynolds and
his beautiful ship. For a moment Humphrey was utterly at a loss, since
the Government that had filled his magazines with powder and shot in
case of trouble had quite neglected to provide for any such occasion as
this. Yet the beady eyes of the African, fixed so steadily upon him,
seemed to hint that some present must be forthcoming or serious
difficulties would follow. There seemed but one thing to do.
“How Miranda will laugh at me, after all,” Humphrey sighed as he slowly
brought out the gold snuffbox and placed it in the dark hand that was
extended so quickly to receive it.
The exchange of gifts should have brought the visit to an end, but for
some reason it did not. The African still sat, staring across the table
at Humphrey, his eyes narrowed to black slits.
“The gift is of great beauty,” he said at last, “but I might explain
that the Pasha, my master, has especial love for his gardens and is most
particularly delighted when he is given any—any small curiosity to add
to the treasures he has already gathered there.” Seeing Humphrey look
blank, he explained more clearly. “You and I met, some days since, in
the shop of that mad old Chinaman who owns, but will not sell, that
little pine tree, a hundred years old. The Pasha had taken a fancy to
own it, so, since the old man would not part with it willingly, he sent
some servants to—to fetch it. But they failed. I understand the tree is
on board this ship after all.”
“On board the _West Wind_?” echoed Humphrey amazed. “I give you my word
that it is not here.”
“The tree is on this ship,” insisted the other steadily. “The Chinaman
heard somehow of our coming and departed, treasure and all; he was seen
fleeing through the town; he was seen making his way to this vessel. And
the Pasha of Tripoli desires the little pine tree!”
There was a pause, but Humphrey said nothing. The dusky visitor shrugged
his shoulders and slipped one sleek hand within his satin robe.
“The American Captain wishes further persuasion,” he said with a sly
grin. “I have something here for himself alone, which will perhaps make
him more generous.”
He drew out a handful of gold coins and laid them upon the table, looked
at Humphrey narrowly and, seeing no signs of yielding, sighed deeply and
drew out another and another. He piled them up in little shining heaps
and stood gazing, with an expectant smile across at the American. But,
since Humphrey did not put out a hand to take them he broke forth
petulantly—
“In the name of the Prophet, is not that enough? You grasping Yankees
would have everything! These are not African coins, man, but good
English sovereigns, French louis d’or, Spanish doubloons such as you can
spend like water anywhere you go. And all in exchange for one small
thing upon which my master has set his heart. Come, you drive a hard
bargain.”
“I drive no bargain for what does not belong to me, to be paid for in
stolen coin,” Humphrey answered hotly. “Do you think that I do not know
that your pirate vessels have brought in this gold; that, for each of
those heaps of coin, there has probably been a good ship sent to the
bottom, English, French or Spanish? Have you not learned once what
America thinks of piracy?”
The fat man shrugged his shoulders again.
“America is a forgetful land, and far away,” he commented drily. “News
carries thither slowly and judgment comes even slower back again. It is
twenty years since your country fought with mine; we believe America is
ceasing to watch us. The Atlantic is a broad and windy sea!”
“You do not know,” the young officer replied slowly, “that there is a
wise man in my country, my comrade and dear friend, who has learned how
to make the Atlantic a thousand miles less broad. He built this ship
with which we have shortened the voyage by four days and will, when we
set sail again, lessen it by more than that. Your pirate craft are swift
but Yankee wits are swifter and presently your vessels will bring back a
tale—for every sea-coast will ring with it—that Jonathan Adams’ ship the
_West Wind_ has crossed the ocean in eighteen days.”
“Eighteen days,” scoffed the other, “that is past any man’s belief.
Ships move by sails, not wings!”
“Eighteen days,” repeated Humphrey sternly, “I promise you that you will
hear of our voyage made in just that time. And when other vessels are
built to match or to better her, our country will come a great stride
nearer to you, a thousand miles nearer to traitors, murderers and
thieves.”
He brought his hand down upon the table with such force that the heaps
of gold went rolling and tumbling to the floor, and the dignified Arab
was forced to go groveling on his hands and knees to pick them up again.
When he arose, Humphrey was standing by the door which he held open.
“I will send an officer,” he said, “to go with you to search the ship.
Since you believe that no man speaks the truth, you shall see with your
own eyes that the Chinaman and his treasure are not here.”
There was no doubt that the man who had the duty of escorting the
foreigner over the ship took extreme delight in conducting him through
the narrowest, dirtiest recesses of the hold, so that the court
official’s fat person was breathless and his silken garments much the
worse for grease and tar when he finally expressed himself as satisfied
and came once more on deck. His farewells were less stately than his
greetings had been, and he turned back for a last word before he went
over the side.
“If the _West Wind_ sails away, after all, carrying my master’s heart’s
desire, may every curse and every evil spirit known to good Mohammedans,
follow you upon your way. May every hardship that sailors can suffer,
fall upon you, may your voyage be such a one as never captain knew
before!”
He departed in a great show of dignity and magnificence and was rowed
ashore, while Humphrey, with a sigh of relief, turned himself to the
preparations for getting under way. He had vowed a vow within himself
that Jonathan Adams should not be disappointed and that, on the homeward
voyage, they would shorten the passage by the five days for which he had
hoped.
It was at daylight next morning, when the _West Wind_ had cleared the
harbor of Tripoli and, leaving behind the palm-clad shore with its
minarets and towers and its evil, hostile city, was standing out to sea,
that Captain Reynolds sat down in his cabin to examine the log book
which he had sent for, to make certain that wind and weather and the
exact hour of weighing anchor had been correctly noted. He smiled as he
glanced at the entry of the day before with its record of the visit of
state.
“And he had the impudence, even, to curse me,” he reflected, chuckling,
“as though any one could hide on my ship without my knowing—”
He stopped abruptly, the page half-turned in his hand. For a strange
sound was developing in the locker opposite his bunk, a scratching as
though a rat were shut in behind the door, then the clicking of the
latch as, out from the narrow space where no one would think a grown man
could hide, came tumbling the Chinaman, half-smothered, but clutching
unharmed his heart’s treasure in its porcelain pot.
The Mohammedan’s curse had been thorough and, so it began to seem as the
voyage went on, of some effect, but he had forgotten one thing. Whatever
went wrong, whatever accident, small or great, befell the ship on her
race across the Atlantic, the wind never failed. The very sprites,
afreets and genie known to Arab fancy seemed to sit in the hollow of the
sail and lend strength with their blowing to the lusty trade winds.
Lines parted, tackle jammed, and sails carried away, but still the wind
held. The oldest but ablest seaman, he who had not believed in Gibraltar
when he saw it, fell from a yard and was picked up with a broken knee. A
falling block, dropping from a height to the deck below, crushed, in its
passage, the shoulder of another sailor. But still the wind held and
still the ship cut the South-Atlantic rollers like an arrow. Seven days,
eight days, nine days—they were halfway across, and excitement had begun
to run breathlessly high.
At the end of the ninth day, while the _West Wind_ was wallowing in a
cross sea, it was discovered that the water casks had broken loose from
their lashings, that two of them were crushed, others injured, and that
the greater portion of their precious water had leaked away.
“Then we have need to make port all the more quickly,” Captain Reynolds
said grimly, and stood by in person while, to each man including
himself, the meager allowance for each day was measured out.
The one who fared worst upon the voyage was the old Chinaman. He
suffered hideously from sea-sickness for the first few days, although he
made shift to stagger on deck, to haul at ropes and to give such service
as his feeble strength allowed. When the water failed, he seemed,
somehow, to be suffering far more than any of the rest. On the second
day after the mishap to the casks, he came to the captain’s cabin,
utterly refusing to be driven away. With trembling yellow hands he drew
the pine tree from beneath his rags and set it on the table.
“After I die,” he requested calmly, “will you not in justice see that my
share of water still goes to keeping my ancestors’ tree alive?”
It seemed that his whole allowance of drinking water had been poured
into the pot, since he preferred to perish himself rather than permit
his great treasure to droop and wither.
Humphrey argued and commanded, but to no purpose. The Chinaman merely
shook his head obstinately and vowed by all his gods that he would not
drink while his tree was thirsty. At last, however, a compromise was
made. The little pine was to remain on the Captain’s table and every
day, in Humphrey’s presence, the Chinaman was to drink half his
allowance of water and pour the other half upon the dry roots.
“If you can keep alive on that, your tree should also,” Humphrey said;
“there is no other way to do.”
Still muttering protests that his tree would die, the old man crawled
away. Humphrey stood looking silently at the little pine tree, so fresh
and vigorous in spite of its hundred years. He took the water that had
been set upon his table and drank half of it at one gulp, for he had
just come below and the hot quarterdeck was a thirsty place. Then he
paused a moment, the half-empty cup in his hand.
“I am a soft-hearted fool,” he muttered and poured what was left on the
dry earth of the porcelain pot.
The days passed while the men grew weaker and more sluggish at their
work, but still the breeze held and the speed of the _West Wind_ did not
falter. They passed no ship from which they could obtain water, their
only hope lay in the making of port. They turned northward, lost the
trade winds, seemed for a terrible moment to be hanging becalmed, but a
stiff breeze caught them and bore them still toward home. The old
Chinaman seemed to shrivel away like a dead leaf, but he came stumbling
every day to share his mouthful of water with his precious tree. Captain
Reynolds himself looked more worn and haggard than did any of his men.
Only the Chinaman, glancing sideways with his slanting, beady eyes at
the lusty green of the little pine, seemed to suspect why. They were
like the flitting ghosts of a ship’s crew that morning when the hot,
glittering expanse of sea was broken by a wavering line on the horizon
and the lookout’s husky call of “Land-ho” announced the low green shore
of Maryland. Eighteen days from Gibraltar and all records broken at
last!
She came into the Susquehanna River for repairs, did the worn but
triumphant _West Wind_, and Jonathan Adams came rowing out to board her,
his sober face for once all wreathed in smiles.
“By five days you shortened the voyage,” he said, “and I had not really
hoped for more than four. I always said she was not a tub, but a real
ship at last. There will be others like her, and her children’s children
will dare to spread such sail that they will cross the Atlantic in half
your time.”
As Humphrey came up the ladder to where Miranda was waiting on the
wharf, his first words were—
“I left the snuffbox behind,” while she, laughing shakily, answered—
“I knew you would.”
The whole crew, down to the cabin boy, were hailed as heroes when they
left the ship, but there was one who managed somehow to go ashore as
mysteriously as he had come aboard. The old Chinaman with his treasured
pine tree disappeared, no one knew whither, hiding himself, perhaps,
lest some emissary from Africa should even yet seek him out and rob him.
For more than a month Humphrey searched and inquired for him all up and
down the shore of the bay, but no one had seen him and no one knew where
he had gone.
Jonathan Adams’ ship the _West Wind_ sailed on many voyages and was the
model for other vessels of her class, bigger and swifter even than
herself—the great race of American clippers that once ruled the seas.
They gave our country the highest place in the world’s shipping, and
they brought her, even as Humphrey had said, a thousand miles nearer to
her neighbors across the Atlantic. But that is not all of the story of
this famous voyage. The real end came seven years later, when Humphrey
had risen to be Commodore Reynolds and when, between two cruises, he was
spending a holiday at home. One summer afternoon, a small, bent figure
toiled up the driveway of the big house above the Susquehanna. Humphrey,
with Miranda, was sitting in the shade of the high-columned veranda and
for a moment did not recognize the strange face, so covered with dust
that the yellow skin and slanting eyes were scarcely visible. But the
old Chinaman walked straight to Miranda and laid his offering on her
lap.
“For you,” he said. “He wanted to bring it to you from the very first!”
It was not the real pine tree, but the one that you see here, made of
jade and enamel with tiny jewels set around the top of the pot. Humphrey
and his wife exclaimed and admired and examined it on every side.
“But I do not understand,” Humphrey kept saying. “How did you come to
make it, and to bring it to us after seven years?”
“After seven years!”
The old Chinaman smiled patiently.
“You Americans are ever in such haste. How long, think you, it takes a
true craftsman to carve a tree of jade?”