THE SEA
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!
