VII.
I LEARN THE WAY OF THE SEA, AND ENTER MORE FULLY INTO MY HERITAGE.
The sun lifting higher above Long Island touched the spray under the bow and turned it into a little rainbow that traveled on ahead. I leaned far out to watch this pleasant omen of fortune, endeavoring meanwhile to realize something of the situation, now that we were finally under way and the years of youth and waiting, of empty dreams and disappointments, lay all behind.
It had been a week to be remembered. A whirl of racing from ship to shop, and from shop to factory—of urging and beseeching on my part, of excuses and protestations on the part of tradesmen and manufacturers. I had been almost despairing at last in the matter of material for the balloon bag, when one morning—it was the fourth day—I heard of a very large completed balloon, made to order for an aeronaut whose old one had missed connection with it by one day. When they had come to deliver it, the undertaker was just driving off, and the aeronaut had made his farewell ascension.
I found it to be of really enormous proportions—one of the largest ever manufactured, I was told—so large, in fact, that the maker was as glad to part with it as I was to secure it.
My associates also had been somewhat occupied. Mr. Sturritt’s delivery teams had been lined up on the Billowcrest dock from morning till night, unloading provisions in various forms, enough it would seem for an army. Ferratoni had laid in his cells, coils, transmitters, detectors and heaven only knows what besides, while Miss Gale had undertaken to supply, in addition to her own requirements, the warm clothing and bedding likely to be needed for an Antarctic winter.
As for Chauncey Gale, he had sat all day at a little table on the afterdeck and signed checks; checks, many of them, that would have wrecked my former commercial venture at any time during the ten years of its existence; and he whistled as he did it, and called out words of comfort to Captain Biffer, who, with a fierce eye on each end of the vessel, strode up and down where boxes, barrels, rolls, rope, chains, etc., were piled or still coming over the side—rending the Second Commandment into orders and admonitions that would have turned a clergyman gray in a night.
Now it was all over. The weird maelstrom of whirling days and nights that had added unreality to what was already dreamlike and impossible, had subsided. We were going down the harbor under full sail. Leaving the others still at breakfast, I had come out here alone to find myself.
I could not grasp it at all. The little farm boy who in the night had wakened and cried for the sea, going back to it, at last. The youth who had carried into manhood the fancy of a fair unknown land, and of one day sailing away to the South to find it, entering suddenly into an Aladdin-like realization of his dreams. It seemed to me that every vessel in the harbor ought to be decorated and firing salutes—that every soul of the vast city ought to be waving us adieu.
To be sure, we hadn’t told anybody. Gale was rather down on the papers, and we had left so suddenly that they had little chance to find out what we were doing. One of them—that of the millionaire editor—got an inkling of it in some way, and in its Sunday Magazine of two days before had filled a page with strange vagaries purporting to be our plans, and disturbing pictures of the lands and people we expected to discover. But as no one ever believes anything printed in a Sunday newspaper, even when backed up by sworn statements, these things appeared to have passed unnoticed. There had been one exception, however; my scientist of the snark and flipper, who had appeared on Monday morning to enter his promised protest.
He came at a busy time. About a hundred teams were backing into each other on the dock, whence arose a medley of unjoyous execration, and a line of men were waiting at Gale’s little table for checks. It was this auspicious moment that my scientist selected for his mission. Captain Biffer, to whom he first appealed, acknowledged him with an observation which no magazine would print, and waved him toward Gale.