AS I look back, boyhood with its griefs and cares vanishes into the
proud stateliness of youth. The ambition and the rivalries of the
college life—its first boastful importance as knowledge begins to dawn
on the wakened mind, and the ripe, and enviable complacency of its
senior dignity—all scud over my memory like this morning breeze along
the meadows; and like that, too, bear upon their wing a chillness—as of
distant ice-banks.
Ben has grown almost to manhood; Lilly is living in a distant home; and
Isabel is just blooming into that sweet age where womanly dignity waits
her beauty; an age that sorely puzzles one who has grown up beside
her—making him slow of tongue, but very quick of heart.
As for the rest—let us pass on.
The sea is around me. The last head-lands have gone down under the
horizon, like the city steeples, as you lose yourself in the calm of the
country, or like the great thoughts of genius, as you slip from the
pages of poets into your own quiet reverie.
The waters skirt me right and left; there is nothing but water before,
and only water behind. Above me are sailing clouds, or the blue vault,
which we call, with childish license—heaven. The sails, white and full,
like helping friends are pushing me on: and night and day are distant
with the winds which come and go—none know whence, and none know
whither. A land bird flutters aloft, weary with long flying; and lost in
a world where are no forests but the careening masts, and no foliage but
the drifts of spray. It cleaves awhile to the smooth spars, till urged
by some homeward yearning, it bears off in the face of the wind, and
sinks, and rises over the angry waters, until its strength is gone, and
the blue waves gather the poor flutterer to their cold and glassy bosom.
All the morning I see nothing beyond me but the waters, or a tossing
company of dolphins; all the noon, unless some white sail—like a ghost,
stalks the horizon, there is still nothing but the rolling seas; all the
evening, after the sun has grown big and sunk under the water line, and
the moon risen, white and cold, to glimmer across the tops of the
surging ocean—there is nothing but the sea and the sky to lead off
thought, or to crush it with their greatness.
Hour after hour, as I sit in the moonlight upon the taffrail, the great
waves gather far back, and break—and gather nearer, and break louder—and
gather again, and roll down swift and terrible under the creaking ship,
and heave it up lightly upon their swelling surge, and drop it gently to
their seething and yeasty cradle—like an infant in the swaying arms of a
mother—or like a shadowy memory upon the billows of manly thought.
Conscience wakes in the silent nights of ocean; life lies open like a
book, and spreads out as level as the sea. Regrets and broken
resolutions chase over the soul like swift-winged night-birds, and all
the unsteady heights and the wastes of action lift up distinct and clear
from the uneasy but limpid depths of memory.
Yet within this floating world I am upon, sympathies are narrowed down;
they can not range, as upon the land, over a thousand objects. You are
strangely attracted toward some frail girl, whose pallor has now given
place to the rich bloom of the sea life. You listen eagerly to the
chance snatches of a song from below, in the long morning watch. You
love to see her small feet tottering on the unsteady deck; and you love
greatly to aid her steps, and feel her weight upon your arm, as the ship
lurches to a heavy sea.
Hopes and fears knit together pleasantly upon the ocean. Each day seems
to revive them; your morning salutation is like a welcome, after
absence, upon the shore; and each “good-night” has the depth and
fullness of a land “farewell.” And beauty grows upon the ocean; you can
not certainly say that the face of the fair girl-voyager is prettier
than that of Isabel; oh, no! but you are certain that you cast innocent
and honest glances upon her as you steady her walk upon the deck, far
oftener than at the first; and ocean life and sympathy makes her kind;
she does not resent your rudeness one-half so stoutly as she might upon
the shore.
She will even linger of an evening—pleading first with the mother, and
standing beside you—her white hand not very far from yours upon the
rail—look down where the black ship flings off with each plunge whole
garlands of emeralds; or she will look up (thinking perhaps you are
looking the same way) into the skies, in search of some stars—which were
her neighbors at home. And bits of old tales will come up, as if they
rode upon the ocean quietude; and fragments of half-forgotten poems,
tremulously uttered—either by reason of the rolling of the ship, or some
accidental touch of that white hand.
But ocean has its storms when fear will make strange and holy
companionship; and even here my memory shifts swiftly and suddenly.
—It is a dreadful night. The passengers are clustered, trembling, below.
Every plank shakes; and the oak ribs groan as if they suffered with
their toil. The hands are all aloft; the captain is forward shouting to
the mate in the cross-trees, and I am clinging to one of the stanchions
by the binnacle. The ship is pitching madly, and the waves are toppling
up, sometimes as high as the yard-arm, and then dipping away with a
whirl under our keel that makes every timber in the vessel quiver. The
thunder is roaring like a thousand cannons; and at the moment the sky is
cleft with a stream of fire that glares over the tops of the waves, and
glistens on the wet decks and the spars—lighting up all so plain that I
can see the men’s faces in the main-top, and catch glimpses of the
reefers on the yard-arm, clinging like death; then all is horrible
darkness.
The spray spits angrily against the canvas; the waves crash against the
weather-bow like mountains, the wind howls through the rigging; or, as a
gasket gives way, the sail bellying to leeward, splits like the crack of
a musket. I hear the captain in the lulls, screaming out orders; and the
mate in the rigging, screaming them over, until the lightning comes, and
the thunder, deadening their voices, as if they were chirping sparrows.
In one of the flashes I see a hand upon the yard-arm lose his foothold,
as the ship gives a plunge, but his arms are clinched around the spar.
Before I can see any more, the blackness comes, and the thunder, with a
crash that half-deafens me. I think I hear a low cry, as the mutterings
die away in the distance; and the next flash of lightning, which comes
in an instant, I see upon the top of one of the waves alongside, the
poor reefer who has fallen. The lightning glares upon his face.
But he has caught at a loose bit of running rigging as he fell, and I
see it slipping off the coil upon the deck. I shout madly—man
overboard!—and—catch the rope, when I can see nothing again. The sea is
too high, and the man too heavy for me. I shout, and shout, and shout,
and feel the perspiration starting in great beads from my forehead as
the line slips through my fingers.
Presently the captain feels his way aft, and takes hold with me; and the
cook comes, as the coil is nearly spent, and we pull together upon him.
It is desperate work for the sailor, for the ship is drifting at a
prodigious rate, but he clings like a dying man.
By and by at a flash, we see him on a crest, two oars’ length away from
the vessel.
“Hold on, my man!” shouts the captain.
“For God’s sake, be quick!” says the poor fellow; and he goes down in a
trough of the sea. We pull the harder, and the captain keeps calling to
him to keep up courage, and hold strong. But in the hush we hear him
say—“I can’t hold out much longer—I’m most gone!”
Presently we have brought the man where we can lay hold of him, and are
only waiting for a good lift of the sea to bring him up, when the poor
fellow groans out—“It’s of no use—I can’t—good-by!” And a wave tosses
the end of the rope, clean upon the bulwarks.
At the next flash I see him going down under the water.
I grope my way below, sick and faint at heart; and wedging myself into
my narrow berth, I try to sleep. But the thunder and the tossing of the
ship, and the face of the drowning man, as he said good-by—peering at me
from every corner will not let me sleep.
Afterward, come quiet seas, over which we boom along, leaving in our
track, at night, a broad path of phosphorescent splendor. The sailors
bustle around the decks as if they had lost no comrade; and the voyagers
losing the pallor of fear, look out earnestly for the land.
At length my eyes rest upon the coveted fields of Britain; and in a day
more, the bright face, looking out beside me, sparkles at sight of the
sweet cottages, which lie along the green Essex shores. Broad-sailed
yachts, looking strangely, yet beautifully, glide upon the waters of the
Thames, like swans; black, square-rigged colliers from the Tyne, lie
grouped in sooty cohorts; and heavy, three-decked Indiamen—of which I
had read in story books—drift slowly down with the tide. Dingy steamers,
with white pipes, and with red pipes, whiz past us to the sea, and now
my eye rests on the great palace of Greenwich; I see the wooden-legged
pensioners smoking under the palace walls; and above them upon the
hill—as Heaven is true—that old, fabulous Greenwich, the great center of
schoolboy longitude.
Presently, from under a cloud of murky smoke heaves up the vast dome of
St. Paul’s, and the tall column of the fire, and the white turrets of
London Tower. Our ship glides through the massive dock gates, and is
moored, amid the forest of masts which bears golden fruit for Britons.
That night, I sleep far away from “the old school,” and far away from
the valley of Hillfarm; long, and late, I toss upon my bed, with sweet
visions in my mind, of London Bridge, and Temple Bar, and Jane Shore,
and Falstaff, and Prince Hal, and King Jamie. And when at length I fall
asleep my dreams are very pleasant, but they carry me across the ocean,
away from the ship—away from London—away even from the fair voyager—to
the old oaks, and to the brooks, and—to thy side—sweet Isabel!
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