Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities

by George Payson

I confess, for my own part, to an entire inability to enter into these emotions. I have no affection or admiration for the ocean, per se. I love it in our winding bays dotted with sails, and reflecting the flickering shadows of green banks or populous cities, and have been, once or twice in my life, awe-and-wonder-struck on beholding it swelling from afar against the rock-bound coasts of New England. Here its beauty is multiplied by contrast, and its power thoroughly aroused by opposition.

It is pleasant to lie on some lofty promontory and gaze away off into the illimitable blue, and dream that so it goes on forever, without any opposing shore. I am even willing to make short excursions with it, to meet it half way, as it were, on this neutral ground; but I care not to go home with it, or to venture into its own undisputed domain. As Shylock says to Bassanio, "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following,—but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you"—there is such a thing as too great intimacy. The sea itself suffers by this undecent familiarity. Instead of that mysterious and salutary dread we formerly entertained towards it, we come to regard it, in a manner, as our bond-servant, or beast of burden. Its sublimity is gone—its vastness becomes wearisome monotony—its royal pomp and power sink into peevish ill-humour or sullen bravado. It is not so very big either. A circular disc of salt water, thirty or forty miles across, is all you can see. If its waves were indeed mountains—if one sailed among Alps, in valleys lighted only by the mid-day sun, or along the face of a precipice, towering as high towards heaven as it sunk sheer down to the abyss—then, indeed, the naked, melancholy ocean would not need to borrow any element of sublimity from the continent earth.

This was the nature of the reflections produced by the first view of the rounded ocean; if I should hereafter take just the opposite side of the question, I hope not to be charged with inconsistency;—in a long voyage one's opinions change almost as often as the winds. The revolution, however, is seldom as sudden or as ludicrous as in the case of our unlucky enthusiasts. While they were even yet expatiating on the grandeur and sublimity of the scene, they became aware of certain uneasy and mysterious sensations, the precise locality of which it was hard to determine, but which seemed to have their capital seat somewhere in the region of the diaphragm. Strange horrors seized them, and pangs unfelt before. But it is the nature of this malady to dispose its victims to conceal their weakness as long as possible. They shrink from the mortifying disclosure, and obstinately persist, to the last moment, in declaring they never felt so well in their lives.

The little party of Vermonters, the same that had collected in the cabin the preceding evening, were among the first to feel the advances of the insidious foe.

"I say, boys," cried Charley, "isn't this—ugh—worth going to California for?"

"Grand!" "splendid!" "magnificent!" echoed the three boldest of the party, with sundry unaccountable grimaces, while the rest thought it more prudent at that moment, to keep their mouths shut as tight as possible.

"I hope, a—ugh—you ain't a going to be—a—ugh—sick," returned Charley, glancing doubtfully at the pale faces of his followers, as if to satisfy himself how many he could rely upon in the approaching struggle. "I—a-a—ugh—don't feel sick in the least," and away he hurried to lee-ward, where, for the next hour, the whole party might be seen, hanging like so many dish-clouts, over the bulwarks.

"What do yer see—a whale?" drily inquires an old salt, with a cold-blooded cruelty, of which no one with the heart even of the most magnanimous mouse, would be guilty. But they are too sick to be angry—contempt, that pierces the shell of the tortoise, touches them not,—there is a dignity, springing from the very depths of their abasement, that sets them above the reach of injury or insult—their ridiculous, indeed, reaches to the sublime. Solomon and Dr. Johnson are commonly considered the highest authority on the vanity of life—but was there ever a sufferer from sea-sickness who did not moralize, by the hour together, in a far more affecting strain? Every sigh is a book of Ecclesiastes, and is there any other philosophy like his? so sudden and effectual in its operations? that dives down so deep to the very root of pride and self-laudation?

For three days and nights I lay in my berth, dressed as I have said, parched by thirst, and tantalized by waking dreams of every cooling and delicious draught. Meanwhile, the Leucothea had reached the Gulf-stream, and in that region of storms, encountered one of the most terrific. Huge waves came foaming in over the bows, sending their crests even to my door, and pouring down the forehatch into the steerage, drowned out the frightened passengers in the very dead of night. The alarm was so sudden that some had time only to snatch their clothes; and, with them in their hands, they came running aft as to a place of comparative safety. When reproached for their pusillanimity, they offered the paltry excuse, that the water came down the hatch as big as a hogshead, and that it was already deep enough in the steerage for a man to swim in. This might have touched my healthy sympathies, but it now gave me no concern. I believe I may say without vanity, that at that moment I felt perfectly reconciled to the idea, thus suggested, of thirty or forty of our fellow-passengers being drowned like so many rats; though, for my own part, so great was my thirst, I doubted whether there was water enough in the ocean to drown me. Through the open door of my stateroom I could see the white tops of the waves, as the ship leaned over to embrace them; and I thought it no great thing to make my throat a passage for the whole Atlantic.

But I had still no relentings of purpose; through storm, and thirst, and burning fever, I was sustained by dreams of golden joy. At the period of our departure, what is commonly called the sober and prudent part of the community, regarded California as a mischievous humbug. None of my friends favoured my going; and one, still more sober and prudent than the rest, had emphatically declared his conviction, adding considerately that he did not wish to discourage me, that I should not find gold enough to lay on my thumb-nail. Few, however, who had set their hearts on going, were ever dissuaded, I apprehend, by such arguments; even the last pleasant and ingenious comparison failed to convince me: having once made up my mind, I fixed my eyes on the mark and overlooked all intervening objects. Yet my calculations, so I thought, were by no means extravagant; the simple brevity of argument with which I silenced all opposition was $2,000 certain—$20,000 probable—$100,000 possible. I now saw these numbers printed in glaring ciphers, with all the lifelike, seductive reality of a lottery placard, all over the walls of my stateroom. Who would not, for such reward, endure the discomforts of a four months' voyage, even though every week should be like the first?