Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart

by Donald Grant Mitchell

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.