Some days later upon going on deck in the morning, the scene was a picture of desolation. A heavy gale was blowing and several sails had been stripped off by the winds. The mast and spars made me think of the nut trees in the country after a gale when the leaves are gone; the spars were hardly clothed with canvas enough to keep the ship on her way, the few sails which remained being furled, to save them; only some of the canvas about the bowsprit and foremast being spread, with the mizzen staysail, to prevent the ship from broaching to. Eighteen men were aloft securing the sails, the ship going only two or three knots. Some of the torn sails had been sent down on deck. I never desired more the skill of a draftsman that I might picture the appearance of some of the sails as they came down after the gale had spent its ingenuity in riddling them. The shapes of the rents could not have been contrived by human skill; the canvas was not merely torn, it was picked in pieces, mocking any attempt to bring it together and even to divine how its parts were ever related to each other. The way in which the sail cloth was dishevelled by the gale, laid out in shreds, every thread loosened from its neighbor, some parts of the sail mangled, other parts minced as no art of human fingers or mechanical skill could rival, made the sailors despair of any attempt to do mending in the premises. They wound large parts of a topsail together for scouring-rags, some of it for cleaning brass work and other uses, for which the riddling wind had made the duck surprisingly soft like flannel, and some of it like lint.
It seems fearful to lie so far removed from the habitable parts of the globe, a little company of human beings without neighbors, and with no means of help should we need it. Yet there are birds flying around us; some of them are resting on these waves. This inspires us with a feeling of safety. The sight of life in these creatures seems to be a connecting link between us and the living God. “From the ends of the earth,” literally, we cry to God when our hearts are overwhelmed by a sense of solitude. I am writing in a large easy chair, in which it requires some effort to preserve an upright position. The chair is made fast with rope yarns tying it to staples driven in to the floor; but for these I should go over. My inkstand is lashed with seizings to the swinging rest in front of me, diverting my attention from writing to the ink in the glass which at every roll of the ship climbs so nearly to an angle of forty-five degrees as to excite apprehension that it will spill. Ink is at best a source of mischief to all of us under the wisest precautions. What should I do just now should mine run over the floor? The stream would look as capricious as the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness look on the map. I could not run for help, nor even stand, to call; I will put the cork in after dipping the pen when we are midway between a lee and weather roll. The girls are sewing as composedly as at home, one of them reading aloud from Dickens’ Mutual Friend. When I raise my eyes from my papers and look out of the window and see the water racing by us, white with foam, I need only the jingling of bells to make me fancy that I am in a sleigh. The man at the wheel keeps his post in his oil-cloth coat; I hear the pelting rain when the door is opened by the captain going up to ask “how she heads;” the gale is strengthening; we are nearing Cape Horn.
ALL NIGHT AWAKE.
The ship rolled so incessantly all night that I lay awake till morning. The carpenter has made me a berth board which raises the outer edge of my mattress so that as the ship rolls I am able to preserve an equilibrium. But everything in my room which could get loose was piled up in a promiscuous heap. For the first time for six weeks I did not appear at breakfast, but lay till 11 A. M. hoping to sleep.
EVENING SERVICE.
The gale lasted all day. In the evening we had religious services with the watch below. The captain read a chapter, made remarks, and called on me to follow. I told them how I had heard one of the boatswains singing, “Jesus sought me when a stranger,” in the hymn “Come thou Fount,” &c., written by Rev. Mr. Robinson, a Baptist minister in England, who, as a distinguished hymnologist of Baltimore told me, quoting from an English paper which he has preserved, departed from his early faith, but in after years when driving with a friend he heard singing and stopping to listen these words of his own hymn caught his ear:
“Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God;”
when Mr. Robinson, lifting his hands as in prayer, said, “I would give worlds if I could now feel as I did when I wrote that hymn.” The incident seemed to me a remarkable indicating of divine grace endeavoring to call home a wandering sheep to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, by causing him to remember so forcibly his former religious hope.