"JAN. 20.—The day is very pleasant, with some wind. We crossed the equator. I sat up in one of the boats a long time. I wish my little brothers were here to play with me.
"21.—The day is very pleasant, with a good breeze. We are going ten or eleven knots an hour.
"22.—The day is very pleasant. A nine-knot breeze. Nothing new happened to-day.
"23.—The day is pleasant. Six-knot breeze."
It came to pass that the small, sad boy, wearying of "Uncle Tom" and his "cabin," was driven to extremes; and, having obtained leave of the captain—who was autocrat of all his part of the world,—he climbed into one of the ship's boats, as it hung in the davits over the side of the vessel. It was an airy voyage he took there, sailing between sea and sky, soaring up and down with the rolling vessel, like a bird upon the wing.
He rigged a tiny mast there—it was a walking-stick that ably served this purpose; the captain's wife provided sails no larger than handkerchiefs. With thread-like ropes and pencil spars he set his sails for dreamland. One day the wind bothered him; he could not trim his canvas, and in desperation he set it dead against the wind, and then the sails were filled almost to bursting. But his navigation was at fault; for he was heading in a direction quite opposite to the Flying Cloud.
Then came a facetious sailor and whispered to him: "Do you want ever to get to New York?"—"Yes, I do," said the little captain of the midair craft.—"Well, then, you'd better haul in sail; for you're set dead agin us now." The sails were struck on the instant and never unfurled again.
I wonder why some people are so very inconsiderate when they speak to children, especially to simple or sensitive children? The small, sad boy took it greatly to heart, and was cast down because he feared that he might have delayed the bark that bore him all too slowly toward the far-distant port. This was indeed simplicity of the deepest dye, and something of that simplicity the boy was never to escape unto the end of time. We are as God made us, and we must in all cases put up with ourselves.
What a lonely voyage was that across the vast and vacant sea! Now and then a distant sail glimmered upon the horizon, but disappeared like a vanishing snowflake. The equator was crossed; the air grew colder; storm and calm followed each other; the daily entry now becomes monotonous.
"FEBRUARY 2.—To-day for the first time we saw an albatross.