Cringle and cross-tree

by Oliver Optic

I had never seen my mother since I was two years old. I had no remembrance of her, and I did not feel that I could settle down upon the business of life till I had told her the strange story of my safety, and gathered together our little family under one roof. Existence seemed to be no longer tolerable unless I could attain this desirable result. Nice was on the Mediterranean, and, with little or no idea of the life of a sailor, I wanted to make a voyage to that sea.

I had served the firm of Collingsby & Faxon in Chicago as faithfully as I knew how; I had pursued and captured the former junior partner of the firm, who had attempted to swindle his associate; and for this service my grandfather and his son had presented me the yacht in which the defaulter had attempted to escape. In this craft I had imbibed a taste for nautical matters, and I wished to enlarge my experience on the broad ocean, which I had never seen.

In pursuing Mr. Collingsby's junior partner, I had run athwart the hawse of Mr. Ben Waterford, a reckless speculator, and the associate of the defaulter, who had attempted to elope with my fair cousin, Marian Collingsby. I had thus won the regard of the Collingsbys, while I had incurred the everlasting hatred of Mr. Waterford, whose malice and revenge I was yet to feel. But in spite of the good character I had established, and the service I had rendered, the family of my mother refused to recognize me, or even to hear the evidence of my relationship. I thought that they hated my father, and intended to do all they could to keep him from seeing her. Her stay in Europe was prolonged, and I feared that her father and brother were using their influence to keep her there, in order to prevent my father or me from seeing her.

I was determined to see her, and to fight my way into her presence if necessary. At the same time I wanted to learn all about a ship, and about navigation. I had flattered myself that I should make a good sailor, and I had spent my evenings, during the last year of my stay in Chicago, in studying navigation. Though I had never seen the ocean, I had worked up all the problems laid down in the books. I wanted to go to sea, and to make my way from a common sailor up to the command of a ship. I say I wanted to do this, and the thought of it furnished abundant food for my imagination; but I cannot say that I ever expected to realize my nautical ambition. I had borrowed a sextant, and used it on board of my boat, so that I was practically skilled in its use. I had taken the latitude and longitude of many points on Lake Michigan, and proved the correctness of my figures by comparing them with the books.

I intended to go to Nice, whether I went to sea as a sailor or not. I had sold my boat for eight hundred dollars, and with seven hundred more I had saved from my salary, I had fifteen hundred dollars, which I was willing to devote to the trip to Europe. But somehow it seemed to go against my grain to pay a hundred dollars or more for my passage, when I wanted to obtain knowledge and experience as a sailor. I preferred to take a place among the old salts in the forecastle, go aloft, hand, reef, and steer, to idling away my time in the cabin.

"I want to be a sailor, father," I added. "I want to know the business, at least."

"I'm afraid that boat on the lake has turned your head, Philip," said my father. "Why, you never even saw the ocean."

"Well, I have seen the lake, and the ocean cannot be very much different from it, except in extent."

"But the life of a sailor is a miserable one. You will be crowded into a dirty forecastle with the hardest kind of men."

"I am willing to take things as they come. I am going to Nice, at any rate, and I may as well work my passage there, and learn what I wish to know, as to be a gentleman in the cabin."