When will it come? It is dying back—sliding past us. ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ No, louder and nearer swells ‘the voice of many waters,’ ‘the countless laugh of ocean,’ like the mirth of ten thousand girls, before us, behind us, round us; and the oily swell darkens into crisp velvet-green, till the air strikes us, and heels us over; and leaping, plunging, thrashing our bows into the seas, we spring away close-hauled upon the ever-freshening breeze, while Claude is holding on by ropes and bulwarks, and some, whose sea-legs have not yet forgot their craft, are swinging like a pendulum as they pace the deck, enjoying, as the Norse vikings would have called it, ‘the gallop of the flying sea-horse, and the shiver of her tawny wings.’
Exquisite motion! more maddening than the smooth floating stride of the race-horse, or the crash of the thorn-hedges before the stalwart hunter, or the swaying of the fir-boughs in the gale, when we used to climb as schoolboys after the lofty hawk’s nest; but not so maddening as the new motion of our age—the rush of the express-train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting; and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish; and rocks, and grass, and bushes, fleet by in dim blended lines; and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far below, meadows, and streams, and homesteads, with all their lazy old-world life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awe-struck, silent, choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on by that great pulse of England’s life-blood, rushing down her iron veins; and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primæval mission, to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all things,—even, hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers ever learning some fresh lesson, except that hardest one of all, that it is the Spirit of God which giveth you understanding.
Yes, great railroads, and great railroad age, who would exchange you, with all your sins, for any other time? For swiftly as rushes matter, more swiftly rushes mind; more swiftly still rushes the heavenly dawn up the eastern sky. ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand.’ ‘Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching!’
But come, my poor Claude, I see you are too sick for such deep subjects; so let us while away the time by picking the brains of this tall handsome boy at the helm, who is humming a love-song to himself sotto voce, lest it should be overheard by the grey-headed father, who is forward, poring over his Wesleyan hymn-book. He will have something to tell you; he has a soul in him looking out of those wild dark eyes, and delicate aquiline features of his. He is no spade-drudge or bullet-headed Saxon clod: he has in his veins the blood of Danish rovers and passionate southern Milesians, who came hither from Teffrobani, the Isle of Summer, as the old Fenic myths inform us. Come and chat with him. You dare not stir? Perhaps you are in the right. I shall go and fraternize, and bring you reports.
* * * *
He has been, at all events, ‘up the Straits’ as the Mediterranean voyage is called here, and seen ‘Palermy’ and the Sicilians. But, for his imagination, what seems to have struck it most was that it was a ‘fine place for Jack, for a man could get mools there for a matter of three-halfpence a-day.’
‘And was that all you got out of him?’ asked Claude, sickly and sulkily.
‘Oh, you must not forget the halo of glory and excitement which in a sailor’s eyes surrounds the delights of horseback. But he gave me besides a long glowing account of the catechism which they had there, three-quarters of a mile long.’
‘Pope Pius’s catechism, I suppose?’
So thought I, at first; but it appeared that all the dead of the city were arranged therein, dried and dressed out in their finest clothes, ‘every sect and age,’ as Tom said, ‘by itself; as natural as life!’ We may hence opine that he means some catacombs or other.