Читать книгу Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities - George Payson - Страница 7

"With such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league

Cheer'd with the grateful smell old ocean smiles."

The last expression is peculiarly significant. Here was indeed the many-millioned smile of ocean. It seemed impossible that this amiable monster should be the same we had so lately seen swelling with rage, and threatening our instant destruction. But the naked ocean, even when in good humour, is after all a tiresome companion. I had formed my ideas of a sea-voyage almost entirely from Irving's description of his voyage to Europe. I remembered reading, in my younger days, of the many hours of delightful revery in which he had indulged, and of the amusements he derived from watching the unwieldly monsters of the deep in their uncouth gambols. It seemed to my boyish fancy as if the shark, the whale, the porpoise and the dolphin, and perhaps, even the veritable sea-serpent himself, had come at his bidding, as the beasts came to Adam in Paradise. But either these noble personages are less accommodating since his time, or are unwilling to pay their respects to any less distinguished visitors. Their privacy has been so often invaded by troops of cockney tourists, that it has now become almost impossible to obtain an introduction.

But if these dwellers beneath the surface, these aborigines of the ocean, indigenous, if we may so say, to the soil, failed to gratify our curiosity, or to answer our extravagant expectations, this was far from being the case with the comparatively alien but dominant race of man's introduction. A ship at sea is as different from the same ship lying at a wharf, as the lion of the desert from the cringing brute of a menagerie; I no longer wondered that such should seem to the ignorant savage, beholding them for the first time, living and intelligent creatures, tamed and subjected to the service of a superior race of beings, nor did the ancient fable of their transformation into sea-nymphs seem altogether incredible.

We spoke several ships at this time, bound in different directions. Such an event never failed to produce the most intense excitement, and a feverish anxiety to know the name of the vessel, where she was from, and whither she was bound. To compare great things with small, it was as if two worlds should cross each other's path in the heavens, and should "heave to" a moment in their breathless career to hold brief converse on their state and destiny. It would be an interesting question what matters should be introduced at so august a meeting; though it were much to be feared, that in their anxiety to touch upon none but the most important, the precious, irrecoverable moment would be altogether lost.

In the present instance, however, the question and answer are both ready beforehand; and even the order of precedence is determined by some freemasonary of the high seas, the mystery of which I did not unravel. A few moments are commonly sufficient for the purpose; the captain, who has the first words, pours through his trumpet a hoarse bellow that would be quite unintelligible if its purport were not already known,—the other courteously replies,—the flags are run up and down, to take the place of that head and hand shaking that attends the meeting of two magnates on land, and away go the obedient vessels, to meet, perhaps, no more during their whole career.

When three weeks out, we spoke an English ship from Madras, which thus became exalted, in our imaginations, to a place of vast importance. She sent her boat to obtain a supply of fuel; and we regarded the crew with almost as much interest as if they had belonged to a different planet. Charley Bainbridge, who was always on the look-out for such opportunities, slid down into the boat, and presently returned with some article he had found in her bottom, mysteriously guarded in his breeches pocket. On being pressed to exhibit his treasure, he steadily refused till after the boat had gone; when he drew forth a pebble, which he said came from Madras, and being obtained in that odd way, would make a very handsome addition to his cabinet.

A yet more lively interest was awakened by our meeting, soon after, a ship bound from Calcutta to Boston. She had been in sight all the afternoon, and, in compliance with our invitation to speak, altered her course sufficiently to come up with us just after dusk. A lantern was suspended at our poop, and guided by its light, which seemed quite absorbed by the immense darkness, she came cautiously feeling her way along, till, suddenly shooting into our little illuminated horizon, she hove to and waited to know our pleasure. All the while our ship was silent as the grave, but more than a hundred pair of eyes were peeping through the blanket of the night, as if, though the frailest and softest things, they would really tear it into shreds. We had no sooner, however, learned the destination of the stranger than our decks swarmed with sudden life. As a delay of even a few minutes is regarded as a serious inconvenience, especially by your fast-sailing Indiaman, there was little time to prepare our letters, but most on board, in expectation of such an opportunity, had everything in readiness; and the boat was hardly lowered before the mail-bag was thrown into it. When our visitor had filled her sails, and her tall shadow had merged in the surrounding blackness, a feeling of loneliness settled down upon us, that we had not known since leaving home. In a few weeks she would be in Boston; while, at the same time, we should be off the stormy Cape. It seemed like severing the last tie that bound us to home; as if we had now really begun to slide down the backside of the world, without any possibility of ever climbing up again.

We had now become somewhat accustomed to the dull routine of a long voyage. Sunrise, commonly flat and insipid, even on land, had here the superadded monotony of life at sea. The sun came bouncing out of bed, without a rag of a cloud about him, as if in a great hurry to find out whether we were just where he left us the night before. Soon after we began, one by one, to drop down from our berths; and having drawn on our pantaloons, we shuffled along, towel and wash-bowl in hand, to the waist of the ship, where we were used to perform our ablutions. A fireman's bucket attached to a stout rope had been considerately provided for the use of one hundred passengers; or, to speak more accurately, for the use of the cooks, the passengers having the benefit of it only by sufferance of those sooty dignities.

In warm weather, and quiet seas, drawing water was no great hardship; but when the seas and the latitudes both ran high, and the ship was rolling and pitching at such a rate that it was no easy matter to stand upright,—I could not help thinking that the old nursery ballad

What! cry to be washed?

Not love to be clean?

was not after all quite so orthodox in its irony as I had supposed.

Leaning over the bulwarks, with feet well braced against the slippery deck, his hair in his eyes, and the crook of his elbow nervously hooking the rigging, the unlucky ablutor picks up the "superior accommodation," and throws it over the gunwale into the sea. This is a simple and facile operation; there is no need of plumping the bucket up and down in order to fill it, the swift current has already done that for you, and has at once drawn out the whole length of the rope, while the bucket, with open mouth, seems ready to burst, like the frog in the fable, in the vain attempt to swallow the whole ocean. But to regain possession, or as Dan Carpenter, one of our Vermonters, had it, "revocare bucketum, hoc labor, hoc opus est."

This important duty being at length accomplished, we proceeded, in fine weather, to promenade the deck till breakfast. The forenoon was occupied in a great variety of ways. Some disinterested and inquiring individuals kept a constant look-out for sails, sharks, and whales, in order to gratify the universal craving for novelty and excitement. These were the newsmongers and express agents of our little community. A shark could not show his dorsal fin within a cable's length of the ship,—a whale could not wag his tail or blow his nose within five miles,—and a sail could not steal into the wide horizon of the masthead, without being at once detected by half a dozen curious eyes, and straightway reported to all below. Various groups on deck were occupied in reading, talking, and smoking, or in games of chance or skill. A few bolder spirits had even the hardihood to attempt "Spanish without a Master," but they got no farther than the story of the three travellers, and the ominous moral, "Desgraciado el que aspira a riquezas,"—miserable is he who aspires after riches.