PASSAGE FROM CALLAO TO HONOLULU.
DEPARTURE FROM CALLAO.—THE RUM SMUGGLER.—SUNSET.—SEA-BIRDS—A SAILOR’S
DEFENCE.—GENERAL QUARTERS.—SPIRIT RATION.—THE SAILOR AND
RELIGION.—THE FLAG.—SAGACITY OF THE RAT.—THE CLOUD.—CALMS AND
SHOWERS.—RELIGIOUS TRACTS.—CONSTELLATIONS.—TRADE WINDS.—CONDUCT OF
THE CREW.—MOON IN THE ZENITH.—LAY SERMON.—FUNERAL.—LAND HO!
“Huzza! for Otaheite! was the cry,
As stately swept the gallant vessel by,
The breeze springs up, the lately flapping sail
Extends its arch before the growing gale.”
SATURDAY, MAY 9. We rousted our anchors this afternoon from the bed in
which they have slumbered for the last six weeks, and stood out to sea
from the bay of Callao. The breeze freshened as the sun set, and before
our mid-watch was out, only the rock of San Lorenzo was seen lifting its
naked peaks into the light of the moon.
Farewell, Callao! I have seen quite enough of your destitution and dirt,
your pickpockets and parrots, your fish and your fleas, your brats and
your buzzards. I wonder not that nature in sore disgust sunk your
progenitor from the light of the sun; and unless you reform, you may
expect to share the same fate. Through your chambers the dolphins will
sport; your forsaken harps will thrill beneath the wild fingers of the
mermaid, while, far above, the hoarse wave pours on the rocks your
death-dirge. The sea-gull only will know the place of your rest, and
only the poor pelican mourn that you are not.
SUNDAY, MAY 10. Divine service: officers and crew all present. Subject
of the sermon, the temptations of the sailor. A chaplain in the navy has
one advantage over his brethren on land. He has his parishioners in the
most compact of all possible forms, and every one present when he
officiates. In making his official visits he has not to ride around
among five hundred families located at all points of the compass. He
cannot stir without coming in contact with them. But he has this
disadvantage; in the vicissitudes of a sea-life they are extremely apt
to break away from his constraining influence. They may be brought back
again, but it is too often through the deepest self-inflicted
humiliation.
I was called down from Lima to see a sailor who was supposed to be
dying. As I came to the hammock in which he was lying, he told me he did
not think he should live, and that he felt unfit to die. He made a free
and frank confession of the errors of his life, and desired me to pray
that he might be forgiven. I tried to lead his thoughts to the cross and
to the fountain of Christ’s blood. To these his contrition and
solicitude quickly turned. He seemed not to doubt, in his infinite need,
their full sufficiency. I prayed with him; he earnestly responded, and
so did his messmates, who stood silently grouped about his hammock.
Sailors well know what is involved in that awful transition which we
undergo in death. They never trifle with the event itself, however
heedless they may be in the indulgences which lead to it.
MONDAY, MAY 11. We have a fine, steady wind on our larboard quarter. It
has carried us, with the aid of a strong current, during the last
twenty-four hours, two hundred and sixty miles. This good fortune,
however, cannot last. We must part with the wind as we approach the
equator, and perhaps before. But sufficient to the day is the evil
thereof. It is much wiser rightly to enjoy the blessings of the present,
than to yield ourselves to anxieties about the contingencies of the
future.
We have a beautiful sunset. The air is serene, and the blue circle of
the sky rests in tranquil softness on the utmost verge of the ocean. The
whole realm of waters seems cradled in its limitless sweep. The rays of
the descending orb lie along the gently heaving billows in lines of
level light. The clouds which o’ercanopy his couch of repose, are robed
in purple and gold; while the long vistas which open through them, seem
as soft avenues to the spirit-land.
“Methinks it were no pain to die,
On such an eve, when such a sky
O’ercanopies the West.
To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,
And, like an infant, fall to sleep
On earth, my mother’s breast.
“There’s peace and welcome in yon sea
Of endless blue tranquillity.
The clouds are living things;
I trace their veins of liquid gold,
I see them solemnly unfold
Their soft and fleecy wings.
“These be the angels that convey
Us weary children of a day—
Life’s tedious journey o’er—
Where neither passions come, nor woes,
To vex the genius of repose
On Death’s majestic shore.”
TUESDAY, MAY 12. We have now leisure to look back as well as forward.
Our crew conducted themselves remarkably well at Callao. Our boats were
in constant communication with the shore, without an officer in them.
And yet, during six weeks, no disturbances took place; and only one or
two cases of intoxication occurred. One attempt was made by a hand in
the third cutter to smuggle off a skin of rum. It was discovered by the
officer who overhauled the boat as she came alongside. An effort was
made to find its owner, but no one would acknowledge the ill-gotten
thing. As the crew of the boat must have been cognizant of the fact,
they were informed by Capt. Du Pont, that unless the name of the
offender was given up, they would all be punished. They were given an
hour to decide what should be done. Before its expiration three of the
crew gave in the name of the smuggler; and he paid the penalty, which
involved a loss of the contraband article and the infliction of a severe
chastisement. We have no laws with us which are a dead letter.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13. Our wind has veered still further aft, and
consequently fills fewer of our sails; but we are running before it at
the rate of nine and ten knots the hour. The sky is covered with light,
fleecy clouds, through which the sun’s rays melt without any intensity
of light. The ocean has a long, undulating swing, like that of some vast
mass which has been seeking for ages to rock itself to rest, but is
prevented by some invisible power that has decreed against its repose.
Thirty more of the crew to-day voluntarily relinquished their spirit
ration. They considered it a source of mischief. A sailor attached to
one of our frigates was court-martialed for an attempt to break open the
spirit-room. His defence before the court was ingenious, to say the
least of it. The government, he said, had given him two tots of grog
during the day, and a third by way of splicing the main-brace. The
wardroom steward had given him, for some service he had rendered, two
more, and these five had made him crazy. It was not him, he said, but
the _whisky_ which was in him that had made the assault on the
spirit-room. And now, as the government had administered to him more
than half of this whisky, the government should bear half the
responsibility of the offence. He therefore prayed that one half of the
lashes which this offence merited might be given to the government, and
the other half he would take himself.
There is a volume of argument, in this defence, against the
whisky-ration. It is a shame for the government to render a sailor half
intoxicated, and then punish him for becoming wholly so. It is the
_first_ glass, and not the last, on which your indignation should light.
This whisky-ration has done evil enough in the service; let it be
consigned to perdition, where it belongs.
THURSDAY, MAY 14. The birds which followed us from the coast have
returned; but several boobies, who had probably lost their reckoning,
circled around our masts at sunset. As twilight deepened, they perched
on our yards, and were in a few minutes sound asleep. They might have
been easily captured, but sailors are not very partial to such trophies.
There is something in their name which they do not like, and which seems
to react on the valor of the captor. Give them a tiger, and they will
storm his jungle with only such weapons as they can pick up on the way.
But a booby, that can harm no one, and whose stupidity seems to have
suggested his name, is allowed to go unmolested. The weakest man in the
community has generally the fewest detractors, while an intellectual
giant will always have a pack at his heels. There is more honor in
striking _at_ a lion, than there is in killing a monkey.
FRIDAY, MAY 15. The sick sailor whom I came down from Lima to see, has
passed the crisis of his disease, and may recover. He fluttered for some
time between life and death. The vital flame seemed to come and go as a
thing apart from him. But now its ray is more bright and steady. He is
an orphan, without father or mother; but has a sister, to whom he is
much attached. The idea of being permitted to see her again, is almost
too much for his exhausted state. If you would get at the true character
of the sailor, you must visit him in his sickness. His better feelings
then gush out over the asperities of his lot, like a spring from amid
the tangled shrubs of the wildwood.
SATURDAY, MAY 16. We went to general quarters this morning at three
bells, and exercised the guns. Those on the main-deck are so heavy, they
require a prodigious outlay of strength to work them. Any irregularity
in the application of the force frustrates all dexterity of movement;
each man must forego all individual volition, independent action, and
become a part of the mechanism which is to be tasked to the utmost as a
whole; and yet he must have all that enthusiasm which is felt in freedom
from constraint, and when the strong impulses of the soul throw
themselves off in resistless action. It is much easier to slash away
gallantly with the sabre, than to train quickly and accurately on the
enemy a forty-four-pounder. This requires self-possession, and
indomitable firmness. Sailors have no retreat. They must conquer, die,
or surrender. The last they would seldom do, were it not forced upon
them by the laws of humanity. They would sooner die, as boarders, on the
deck of the enemy, than survive, as captives, over their own keel.
SUNDAY, MAY 17. Divine service: subject of the sermon, the influence of
religion on a man’s intellectual character. The object of the speaker
was to show that religion aids mental development,—that while it strikes
down pride, it imparts true dignity. Nothing can be more absurd than the
idea, that religion impairs strength of character. It invests even the
timid with a firmness and force which stand undismayed amid dungeons,
racks, and flaming stakes.
To possess the religious character seems to the sailor such a vast
stride in advance of his ordinary habits, that he is extremely diffident
in preferring his humble claims. He will pray when peril presses, for he
thinks a wicked man may do that, but he connects a worthy profession of
personal piety with a degree of sanctity hardly compatible with the
infirmities of his nature. He has rarely enjoyed the advantages of a
religious education; no moral training has gradually introduced him to
the sanctities of the Christian life. The utmost that he feels himself
fit to do is, like the poor publican, to smite upon his breast, and
exclaim, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” But to take his place among
those whose piety is to guide and animate others, is to him as if a lost
star were to spring out of the depths of darkness, and take its station
among the burning constellations of heaven. When therefore he does avow
his religious faith and hopes, it is generally with him no halfway
measure; no decent compromise between conscience and inclination. He
takes with him his all for this world and the next.
MONDAY, MAY 18. The phrase “fickle as the wind” is not applicable to the
trades of the Pacific. The wind before which we are running has hardly
veered a point for the last week. I commend its steadiness to those
politicians who find it necessary every few months to define their
position.
We have had about our ship this afternoon several sea-birds, to which
sailors have given the name of boatswains. They have a long feather in
their tail; which streams behind them like the train of a duchess at
court. But it answers a much wiser purpose, for instead of embarrassing
motion, it acts as a rudder, and steadies the bird in navigating the
aerial currents. Nature never bestows any useless appendages. These are
the achievements of human vanity; and sorry achievements they are. They
even enter the grave, and mock with their tinsel its awful reality.
TUESDAY, MAY 19. We have had through the day a soft, hazy atmosphere. At
sunset these light, floating vapors gathered themselves into more
substantial clouds, and promised a shower. But after hanging on the
horizon for a time, they seemed to sink below its rim. The moon came up
late; her soft light fell on the sea, but the wings of the clouds, if
touched by the effulgence, were invisible. The wind, though of
sufficient force to carry us on some eight knots, scarcely agitated the
breast of the ocean. It seemed as something intended to move over its
level plain and not to disturb its depths. It was like a shadow gliding
over the tops of a vast sleeping forest.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20. Our gun-carriages, with their black paint on a white
ground, could never be made to look neat for any length of time. The
white was perpetually working itself through its sable covering, like an
inborn levity of heart through an assumed gravity of demeanor. Our
captain and first lieutenant, who have an acknowledged taste in every
thing that belongs to the appearance of a man-of-war, ordered the
carriages thoroughly scraped of every particle of paint. A dark stain
was then given to the wood, through which the grain shows itself in its
native strength. Over this a thin varnish of spirit and oil was spread,
imparting to the wood a beautiful polish, and blending itself with its
texture. The battery of a frigate, especially as you come upon her
gun-deck, is that which first strikes the eye. Like the pulpit of a
church, if forlorn in its appearance, elegance elsewhere will not
retrieve the error. A rough pulpit may have thunder in it, but the
thunder don’t lie in its roughness.
THURSDAY, MAY 21. One of our quarter-masters has just finished a new and
splendid flag, which we shall display at the islands. How profound the
love and reverence of the sailor for his flag! He connects with it, as
it streams in freedom and light on the wind, a thousand glorious
memories. It points to crimson waves where his comrades of the deck have
triumphed or sunk overpowered to their rest. He holds the deepest crime
to be that of treason to its obligations and sacred hopes. He would
surrender it only to the King of kings.
The last words of the late Commodore Hull were addressed to the stern
majesty of Death.
“I STRIKE MY FLAG.”
I strike not to a sceptred king—
A man of mortal breath—
A weak, imperious, fickle thing;
I strike to thee, O Death!
I strike that flag which in the fight
The trust of millions hailed,
The flag which threw its meteor light
Where England’s lion quailed.
I strike to thee, whose mandates fall
Alike on king and slave,
Whose livery is the shroud and pall,
And palace-court the grave.
Thy captives crowd the caverned earth,
They fill the rolling sea,
From court and camp, the wave and hearth,
All, all have bowed to thee.
But thou, stern Death, must yet resign
Thy sceptre o’er this dust;
The Power that makes the mortal thine,
Will yet remand his trust.
His signal trump shall pierce this ear
Beneath the grave’s cold clod—
This form, these features reappear
In life before their God.
FRIDAY, MAY 22. I was sitting at a late hour last evening on the
gun-deck to catch the breeze, which came freshly through the larboard
ports, when a large, sleek, long-tailed rat, with a slow, aristocratic
step, approached the combings of the hatch, which he mounted, and then
deliberately descended into the steerage among the junior officers. What
his errand was there, I know not; but there was a dignity and
self-possession in his demeanor which was admirable. He seemed as one
conscious of his rights, and not at all disposed to waive them. I have
always felt some regard for a rat since my cruise in the Constellation.
We were fitting for sea at Norfolk, and taking in water and provisions;
a plank was resting on the sill of one of the ports which communicated
with the wharf. On a bright moonlight evening, we discovered two rats on
the plank coming into the ship. The foremost was leading the other by a
straw, one end of which each held in his mouth. We managed to capture
them both, and found, to our surprise, the one led by the other was
stone-blind. His faithful friend was trying to get him on board, where
he would have comfortable quarters during a three years’ cruise. We felt
no disposition to kill either, and landed them on the wharf. How many
there are in this world to whom the fidelity of that rat readeth a
lesson!
SATURDAY, MAY 23. We have now been out fourteen days from Callao, and
have sailed two thousand eight hundred miles, making an average of two
hundred miles a day. Not a squall, nor a threatening cloud, have we
encountered; nor have we once furled our royals, or taken in our
studding-sails. The wind has been, with scarce a point’s variation, dead
aft; and has maintained an equanimity which the most serene
philosophical temper can scarcely hope to rival. Contentment,
cheerfulness, and alacrity have been everywhere visible among the crew.
Not an offence has been committed which has received or merited
punishment. Such is our condition in the midst of the Pacific—under the
influence of its balmy airs—and under a discipline in which justice and
humanity are admirably blended. We have yet to sail some twenty-eight
hundred miles before we make our port. The distance between Callao and
the Sandwich Islands is about twice as great as that between New York
and Liverpool. Yet we all remember the time when a man bound to
Liverpool, or London, took leave of his friends with a sadness and
solemnity, which augured a dismal doubt of his return.
SUNDAY, MAY 24. Though we are near the Equator, where the weather is apt
to be variable, yet we have had a delightful day, a brilliant sky, a
smooth sea, and a mild aft wind. We had divine service at six bells. The
subject of the discourse was, the example of the primitive
Christians,—their faith, their zeal, their constancy, their sufferings,
their triumphs. They are a cloud of witnesses who have gone before us to
heaven, but they have left their footprints on the shores of time. The
example of their faith and constancy remains for our imitation.
Every man, however humble his sphere, may be, and ought to be, in his
own life a preacher of righteousness. A religious example, wherever
found, is invested with a prodigious moral power. Such an example is
within the reach of every one on the decks of a man-of-war; and there is
no situation where its effects would be more certain. We are as
responsible for the good which we can do, as the evil which we have
done. The man who had one talent was condemned, not because he had only
one talent, but because he hid that talent in the earth.
MONDAY, MAY 25. We crossed the Equator last night in our first watch, at
longitude one hundred and twenty west. We crossed it first on our way to
Rio de Janeiro; since that we have sailed through one hundred and twenty
degrees of latitude, and almost as many degrees of temperature. At Rio
we were melted down with the heat; off Cape Horn our fingers were
stiffened with the cold; and now the most grateful gift in the world
would be a glass of ice-water. Such extremes of temperature are the more
felt in the exposures inseparable from a sea-life. We have on board ship
no forests into which we can rush from the heat; no glowing grates,
around which we can gather from the cold. We must take the elements,
whatever they may be, in their full force. They shatter the
constitution; and sink a grave in the sailor’s path, over which he
rarely passes to a green old age.
TUESDAY, MAY 26. Clouds hung in thick masses on the eastern horizon this
morning. They had not that jagged outline, which in other seas indicates
a severe blow. They loomed up lazily, as if they knew not themselves for
what purpose their dark forms had been shoved between us and the
splendors of the breaking day. We supposed they were charged with
showers, and watched their motions with some interest. But the higher
they ascended, the thinner they became, till at last they gradually
melted away, and left only the soft over-arching sky. But they may
gather themselves another morn, each take a distinct shape, and utter
its satirical soliloquy, like the cloud of Shelley:—
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and the sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 27. We have been becalmed all day between the northeast
and northwest trades. The ocean has slumbered around us with scarce a
ripple. A large shark was seen hanging around our ship through the
morning. A strong hook, attached to a rope and baited with a pound or
two of pork, was drifted astern. He nabbed it as a famishing politician
an office. He was a monster in strength as well as size, and made the
sea foam with his struggles to break away. It required four or five
sailors to draw him in; and when on deck he cleared a pretty broad
circle by his ferocious sweep. But he was soon overmastered, deprived of
his head and tail by the axe, and cut up into pieces accommodated to the
sailors’ culinary apparatus. Many, as they ate him, derived their
keenest relish from their inherited antipathy to his species.
THURSDAY, MAY 28. We have had through the day scarce a breath of wind;
the thermometer has ranged at 85; the heat below has been quite
insupportable. The sun set through a thick, stagnant atmosphere; our
sails hung motionless, save an occasional flap against the mast, given
them by the sluggish swing of the ship. This continued till six bells of
the first watch, when the rain fell in a perfect deluge. The water
formed an instant lake between the bulwarks of the spar-deck, fell
through the hatches, and flooded us below. It was some minutes before
the hatches could be hooded; and when they were, our last breath of
fresh air was shut out. We continued in this situation through the
night. The sun rose into a dim, murky haze, in which his beams were
quenched long before they reached our position.
FRIDAY, MAY 29. The most gorgeous sunsets I have ever witnessed at sea
have been near the equator. We have just been watching one from the
deck; all eyes were fastened upon its magnificent phases. The whole west
appeared at first as if it had lost its steep wall, and seemed to
stretch away like a limitless prairie in conflagration. It changed and
presented itself as a wild, picturesque landscape; mountain forests were
on fire, throwing their lurid flames upon the rushing torrents, and into
the deep ravines, and upon the sleeping lakes. It changed again, and
poured its splendors upon the bastions, domes, and turrets of a vast
city. Princely palaces, columned temples, and monumental pyramids,
soared into a crimson atmosphere. A rushing wind swept the aerial
structures, and over their gigantic ruins rolled an ocean of flame. If
this be sunset, what will that conflagration be which will at last wrap
the world!
SATURDAY, MAY 30. We have been in a calm the greater part of the day.
The mirror of the ocean has been broken only by the plunges of a huge
whale. He rose at times within a few fathoms of our ship, blowing the
brine almost into the faces of our crew. They would, if permitted, have
retaliated with their harpoons; though the result would have been only
the loss of their weapons, for the monster would have carried them off
with as much ease as Samson the bodkins of Delilah. He tumbled around us
for several hours, as if measuring his size and strength with that of
our frigate. At last, with one great heave, made as if in pride and
scorn, he plunged and disappeared. Long life to him. I like his
independent bearing.
One of our seamen got tipsy to-day, and raised a disturbance on the
berth-deck. How he managed to get a double dose from the grog-tub is not
known. And yet he alleges his liquor came from that nuisance which the
law has sanctioned. I have taken some pains, during the long period that
I have been in the navy, to ascertain the causes of the offences which
have called for punishment; and from these inquiries I am clearly of the
opinion, that these offences, in nine cases out of ten, are connected
with ardent spirits; and are committed, in almost every case, by those
who draw the whisky-ration provided by the government. I am clear in the
conviction, that any statutes intended to restrain or punish
intoxication in a national ship, must be without moral force so long as
our legislation panders to this appetite in the sailor. The government
presents itself before the seaman with a cup of whisky in one hand and a
cat-o’-nine tails in the other. Here, my good fellow, drink this; but if
you drink any more, then look out for these cats. It is amazing that
such a flagrant violation of every principle of justice and humanity
should escape the reprobation and even oblique animadversion of the
department, and be left to the remonstrances of those who hold no
official relation to the navy.
SUNDAY, MAY 31. Ill health has disqualified me for performing service
to-day. Indeed it would have been difficult had I been well, as the rain
has been falling in frequent and copious showers, attended by squalls,
which have obliged us to take in our lighter sails about as soon as they
were set. I gave tracts to the crew who called for them, and nearly all
applied. Every chaplain should supply himself with a good store of these
silent preachers. They help him on in his good work. They will be read
by seamen when more labored efforts would be neglected. Many a sailor
owes his conversion to the modest tract. They have poured a steady light
around his dying hammock which had else been wrapped in darkness. The
brightest triumphs of religion are found nearest the grave. Its last
great triumph will be over death itself.
There has been for some weeks past a growing seriousness among our
sailors. The indications are too obvious to be mistaken. Two or three of
them I have reason to believe have experienced religion. They meet every
night and pray for the conversion of others. This little cloud may yet
extend itself, and its drops may fall in a copious shower. Let us have
confidence in the power of God’s grace.
MONDAY, JUNE 1. The northern constellations which have been lost to us
for several months, now that we have recrossed the equator, begin to
emerge into vision. They come back like old, tried friends, whose
fidelity time cannot chill or distance impair. Man may change, but
nature never. The same look of love which she cast upon our cradles she
will cast upon our graves. The same exulting streams, whose melodies
charmed our childhood, will at last roll among the echoing hills our
loud requiem; while the gentle dews steep with tears the flowers which
spring shall sprinkle around our place of rest. But yonder streams upon
us again the constellations of our youth.
“The northern team,
And great Orion’s more refulgent beam,
To which, around the axle of the sky,
The Bear, revolving, turns his golden eye.”
TUESDAY, JUNE 2. The northwest trades brought us on briskly till within
a few degrees of that point where we crossed the equator. We there fell
into calms, light baffling winds, and tremendous falls of rain. We were
several days working our way through these to the seventh degree, north
latitude, where we took the northeast trades, and we are now running ten
and eleven knots the hour. These trades blow obliquely to the equator,
and prevail with a surprising regularity and force. A ship bound to the
Sandwich Islands, as we are, should make the shortest cut across the
variables. When the northwest trades leave her, in consequence of her
proximity to the line, she should take advantage of every puff of wind
to make northing, till she gains the northeast trades. She may run a
little further, it is true, by this course, but she more than makes it
up by her ultimate speed; and she escapes, by the shortest route, the
extremely disagreeable weather which prevails near the equator.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3. A large flying-fish flew this evening into the cabin,
through one of the side ports. It was rather a difficult achievement, as
we were running ten knots. The little fellow had been attracted by the
light, and flew at it, as the mullet in our southern streams leap at
night into the lighted canoes of the negroes. Our flying-fish made a bad
exchange, not out of the frying-pan into the fire, it is true, but out
of the water into the frying-pan. But then he was dazzled, captivated by
a floating light, gave chase, and came to ruin. It is ever thus with
man; his life is an eager chase after some false light, some ignis
fatuus of his imagination, which leads him on till at last he drops into
his grave and disappears forever.
THURSDAY, JUNE 4. We have the chart used by the frigate United States in
her passage from Callao to Honolulu, on which her route is designated,
and the distance which she ran each day dotted down. Up to the equator,
we ran neck and neck with her. In the variables she got ahead of us; but
we have now left her some three hundred miles astern. We have been
making an average of two hundred and forty miles a day, without motion
enough to shake a dew-drop from its level leaf. We have not had, except
for a few days near the equator, occasion to take in our top-gallant
studding-sails. The thermometer has stood pretty steady at about
seventy-five, and the air is pure and bracing. If we reach our port on
Monday next, which we have now a fair prospect of doing, we shall have
made our passage from Callao in twenty-nine days; one of the very
shortest passages on record. Five thousand four hundred miles in
twenty-nine days! That will do.
FRIDAY, JUNE 5. We have the moon again directly in the zenith; she hangs
there like a resplendent orb in the centre of a magnificent dome. The
stars gleam out with timid auxiliary light; while soft clouds float with
incense from earth’s thousand altars. The dome, beneath which the
turbaned representative of the Prophet kneels, and that which bends in
grandeur over the supplicating form of the papal hierarch, are poor when
compared with this. The walls of St. Sophia will crumble, and the
pillars of St. Peter’s give way, but nature’s great dome will still
stand, brilliant and undecaying, as when it echoed the song of the
morning stars over the birth of our planet; and it will stand the same,
“Till wrapp’d in flames the realms of ether glow,
And heaven’s last thunder shakes the world below.”
SATURDAY, JUNE 6. We have in the sick-bay a sailor, James Mills, who
must die. He may survive a few days longer, and must then go. He is in
the prime of life, and a few months ago ranked among the most athletic
on our decks. He is now but the shadow of the past, and hovers dimly on
the verge of life. The night of that narrow house is not all dark to
him; some rays of light reach it from the Cross. These are now all that
can cheer him; they are all that can cheer the descending footsteps of
the proudest monarch. Into death’s domain the honors and friendships of
earth cannot enter; they leave their possessor in the hour of his utmost
need. But there is One whose love will remain with the meek, when these
depart; One whose smile will kindle up a morn even in the night of the
grave.
SUNDAY, JUNE 7. Commodore Stockton, who has always taken an interest in
our religious exercises, having occasion to speak to the crew to-day, I
induced him to extend his remarks to topics more sacred than those which
lay within his original purpose. He spoke of the Bible as that crowning
revelation which God has made of himself to man, of its elevating
influences on the human soul, of the priceless counsels which it
conveys, and the immortal hopes which it awakens. He contrasted the
gloomy condition of those tribes and nations which were without it with
that of those where its steady light shone, and found in this contrast a
vindication of its divinity, which none could gainsay or resist. He
commended its habitual study to the officers and crew as our only
infallible rule of duty, as our only safe-guiding light in the mental
and moral twilight of our being here. He rebuked the idea that religion
was out of its element among sailors, and told them that of all classes
of men they were the one that most needed its restraining influences and
glorious promises, and denounced as insane a disposition to trifle with
its precepts. He commended the good conduct of the crew on the Sabbath,
and expressed the earnest hope, that they would continue, in the event
of probable separation from them, the same respectful and earnest regard
for the duties of religion.
Such remarks as these, coming from the commander of a ship or squadron,
will do more to sustain a chaplain in the discharge of his difficult
duties than any privileges which can be conferred upon him through the
provisions of law. They honor the heart from which they flow, and their
influence will be felt in the moral well-being of hundreds, when that
heart shall have ceased to beat. The tree you have planted will grow,
and its fruit come to maturity, though you see it not.
MONDAY, JUNE 8. At seven bells of our forenoon watch the call of the
boatswain, “All hands to bury the dead!” rolled its hoarse, deep tones
through the ship. The remains of the deceased—wrapped in that hammock
from which he had often sprung as his night-watch came round—was borne
by his messmates up the main-hatch, and around the capstan, to the slow
measures of the dead-march, played by the band. In the starboard waist,
and on a plank, one end of which rested on the sill of an open port, the
relic reposed, till in the funeral service the words were announced, “We
commit this body to the deep;”—the inner end of the plank was then
lifted, and the hammocked dead, with a hoarse, rumbling sound, glided
down to his deep floating grave. Thus passed poor Mills from our midst
in the morning of his days, with broken purposes and blighted hopes.
Though the wave rolls over his form, and none can point to the place of
his rest, his humble virtues still survive in the recollections of those
who knew him.
“The departed! the departed!
They visit us in dreams,
And glide above our memories
Like shadows over streams.
The good, the brave, the beautiful,
How dreamless is their sleep,
Where rolls the dirge-like music
Of the ever-tossing deep!”
TUESDAY, JUNE 9. Last evening, while it was yet some three hours to
sunset, the cry of “Land ho!” rang from mast-head. It was the island of
Hawaii boldly breaking the line of the horizon over our larboard bow. We
were now near our port, but not sufficiently near to reach our anchorage
by daylight. We were running ten knots, and orders were given to take in
sail, that we might not shoot too far ahead.
Night, and the hour of slumber came on, and our dreams were filled with
the flowers and fruit of sunny isles. Day broke over the steeps of Oahu,
and threw its light into the port of Honolulu. Here at last we let go
our anchors, and once more clewed up our sails. We had made one of the
shortest passages on record from Callao. We had run for the last seven
days an average of two hundred and thirty-five miles. We had sailed
about six thousand miles, and had hardly disturbed a royal or
studding-sail, and the sea had been smooth as the slumbering surface of
an inland lake. Give me the Pacific and the trade winds. You have here a
quiet ocean, a steady breeze, and an even temperature. In the Atlantic
you are in squalls or calms; in the one you plunge about, and in the
other you sleep.
Here we are to part with our passengers, Mr. Ten Eyk, our commissioner
to the Sandwich Islands, with his lady, children, and Miss J——; and with
Judge Turrell, our consul to these islands, with his lady, children, and
Mr. H. They have been with us since we sailed from Norfolk. Their
society has helped to relieve the monotony of a sea-life. They have
manifested no impatience at our delays, and have cheerfully conformed,
in all respects, to the usages of a man-of-war. The consequence has
been, an uninterrupted harmony between them and the officers, and an
interchange of all those civilities on which the happiness of our social
condition depends. They are to be landed under the salute to which their
rank entitles them. They carry with them our esteem and our best wishes.
May a kind Providence be their guardian and friend.
“Farewell! a word that may be and hath been,
A sound that makes us linger—yet, farewell!”