From a lecture, entitled "Masters of the Situation"
BY JAMES T. FIELDS
There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, freighted with a rich cargo, steaming at full speed from England to America. Two thirds of a prosperous voyage thus far were over, as in our mess we were beginning to talk of home. Fore and aft the songs of good cheer and hearty merriment rose from deck to cabin.
"As if the beauteous ship enjoyed the beauty of the sea,
She lifteth up her stately head, and saileth joyfully,
A lovely path before her lies, a lovely path behind;
She sails amid the loveliness like a thing of heart and mind."
Suddenly, a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but as this was a common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly mentioned in our talk that afternoon. There are always croakers on board ship, if the weather changes however slightly, but the Britannia was free, that voyage, of such unwelcome passengers. A happier company never sailed upon an autumn sea! The storytellers are busy with their yarns to audiences of delighted listeners in sheltered places; the ladies are lying about on couches, and shawls, reading or singing; children in merry companies are taking hands and racing up and down the decks,—when a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers and men, and we are grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race! One of those strong currents, always mysterious, and sometimes impossible to foresee, had set us into shore out of our course, and the ship was blindly beating on a dreary coast of sharp and craggy rocks.
I heard the order given, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that meant—the masts were in danger of falling. Looking over the side, we saw bits of the keel, great pieces of plank, floating out into the deep water. A hundred pallid faces were huddled together near the stern of the ship where we were told to go and wait. I remember somebody said that a little child, the playfellow of passengers and crew, could not be found, and that some of us started to find him; and that when we returned him to his mother she spake never a word, but seemed dumb with terror at the prospect of separation and shipwreck, and that other specter so ghastly when encountered at sea.
Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the wheelhouse, ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves, and the clashing sounds on shipboard, and it had in it an assuring, not a fearful tone. As the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's trumpet, to "ship the cargo," to "back her," to "keep her steady," we felt somehow that the commander up there in the thick mist on the wheelhouse knew what he was about, and that through his skill and courage, by the blessing of heaven, we should all be rescued. The man who saved us so far as human aid ever saves drowning mortals, was one fully competent to command a ship; and when, after weary days of anxious suspense, the vessel leaking badly, and the fires in danger of being put out, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of the line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck on the rocks and had been saved only by the captain's presence of mind and courage, simply replied, "Just what might have been expected in such a disaster; Captain Harrison is always master of the situation." Now, no man ever became master of the situation by accident or indolence. I believe with Shelley, that the Almighty has given men and women arms long enough to reach the stars if they will only put them out! It was an admirable saying of the Duke of Wellington, "that no general ever blundered into a great victory." St. Hilaire said, "I ignore the existence of a blind chance, accident, and haphazard results." "He happened to succeed," is a foolish, unmeaning phrase. No man happens to succeed.
WIT AND HUMOR
Reprinted from "American Wit and Humor," copyrighted in "Modern
Eloquence," Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.