CHAPTER IV
WHAT A WORLD OF LIFE WAS EVERYWHERE AROUND THEM
For a whole month the weather continued calm, and what under other circumstances might have been called delightful. Yet to these unfortunate mariners, cast away in a sea so lonesome and still, there were indeed but few delights.
For their first month I don’t think that any one did much else save read. Antonio had a handsome little library, and although there were in it many books of science, especially those relating to astronomy and electricity, still there were scores of what might have been called books of amusement, novels, plays, and the works of the greater poets.
I but mention the effects their imprisonment had on all hands as a strange psychological fact.
During this time the monotony of their existence was most keenly felt. The stillness of the air, the currentless quiet of the slowly heaving sea, the snake-like movements of the rising and falling brown weeds—all tended to cast a gloom over the mind that amounted almost to a low or nervous fever.
But in six weeks’ time there seemed to be a change for the better. Even Paddy himself recovered a deal of his old rollicking spirits, and when, down below one night, he volunteered a song to an accompaniment played by Miss Leona, Antonio felt that he was over the worst. It was one of Erin’s sweetest, mayhap saddest, songs, which has about it, nevertheless, a deal of sunshine and true beauty.
“There’s not in the wide world a valley so sweet,
As the dear little vale where the waters do meet;
Ah! the last rays of sunshine and life shall depart,
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.”
“Heigh-ho!” he sighed, after he had finished the last verse, “I’m sure it’s meself would give five years av my life just to have one word wid my Kathleen, and to assure her that I wasn’t dead at all, at all, but only just cast away in a sea av brown vegetables. Bother it all, what am I saying? But never mind, boys, it’s out and clear we’ll get one av them days, and then hurrah! for home and the ould counthrie!”
Even Teenie herself had been less bright during these first dull weeks. She had been quiet, and preferred to play with pussy and the monkeys to speaking even to Barclay.
The least unhappy person in the ship was Sister Leona, as she had come to be called; and I think it was her pure and true religion that kept her up. Indeed, her faith in the wisdom and goodness of the Father was like that of a little child in the parents who love and watch over it.