Tales of the clipper ships

by C. Fox Smith

She took the ground, so it seemed at the time, quite gently: with hardly a jar, hardly a tremor, only with a little delicate contented shiver all through her graceful being, like someone settling down well pleased to rest. You might almost fancy that she said to herself:

“There—I have done with it all at last—done with bearing the blame of your sins and follies, your weakness, your incapacity, your drunkenness, your indecision. I have been your scapegoat too long. Henceforward, bear your own burdens!”

And just then the mist rolled off like a curtain. She was right under the land, in the midst of a great jagged confusion of rocks that reached out to sea for nearly a quarter of a mile. The wonder was she had not struck sooner. You could see the pink tufts of thrift clinging to the cliff face, the streaks of green and yellow lichen on the rock, the thin line of soil crested with grass at the top. Above, sheep were grazing, and there came the faint querulous cry of young lambs. A scene to fill a sailor’s heart with sentimental delight under any conditions but these!

There was nothing to be done. The Unlucky “Altisidora” had paid her last tribute to the Dark Gods. The ship lay jammed hard and fast on a sunken reef, and was making water rapidly.

They left the ship at sunset. The skipper took his seat in the boat without a word or a backward glance; the mate—sobered for once—hung his head like a beaten dog. The melancholy steward carried the faithful Ginger in a basket.

“Ain’t been such a bad ol’ gal, ’as she?” That was the gist of the crew’s valedictions. They set off in single file up the narrow path that led to the top of the cliff—an oddly incongruous little procession in that rural setting.

Anderton came last of all. One by one his shipmates topped the crest and vanished. But still he lingered. He wanted just for a minute to be alone with this old ship that had come so strangely into his life and was now to go out of it as strangely.

From where he stood he looked down upon her, lying almost at his feet. He could see all her decks, the poop, the galley, the forecastle head—everything that had grown so familiar to him through years of ship incident and ship routine. How friendly it all looked, now that he was leaving it! He wondered how he could ever have thought her the agent of Dark Gods—this patient, lovely, and enduring thing that had done man’s bidding so long—like him, the instrument of forces beyond her knowing or his. How good it had all been—how good! The dangers, the hardships, the toil, the rest, the rough and the smooth of it ... the voices of his shipmates, the courage and humour of them, their homely faces....

She was part of his life, part of himself, for ever! He would remember in years to come a hundred little things that now he did not even know he remembered, yet which lay safely folded away in the treasure-house of memory, till some chance word, some trick of sun or shade, some smell, some sound, should bring them to light ... and he would say, “Aye, that was in the old ‘Altisidora,’” ... and perhaps be silent a little, and be a little happy and sad together, as men are when they think upon their youth....

Was that what the old ship had been trying to tell him all the time—the secret that had fled before him round the world, for ever near, yet for ever just out of reach, like the many-coloured arch of spray that hung gleaming before her bows? That the hard things of life were the things best worth having in the end?... A big green wave that flooded over you, that took the breath out of you, that went clean over your head—life was like that. Run away from it and it would sweep you off your feet, smash you up against things, drown you, very likely, at the finish.... You had got to hang on to something, no matter what—a job of work, an idea, anything so long as you could get a grip on it—hang on like grim death, and the wave would go over you and leave you safe and sound....