Chapter Ten.
Change of Scene and Fortune.
The fair wind that swept the good ship Rainbow away from California’s golden shores carried her quickly into a fresh and purer atmosphere, moral as well as physical. It seemed to most, if not all, of the gold-finders as if their brains had been cleared of golden cobwebs. They felt like convalescents from whom a low fever had suddenly departed, leaving them subdued, restful, calm, and happy.
“It’s more like a dream than a reality,” observed Ben Trench one day, as he and Polly sat on the after part of the vessel, gazing out upon the tranquil sea.
“What seems like a dream?” asked Philosopher Jack, coming aft at the moment with Watty Wilkins, and sitting down beside them.
“Our recent life in California,” replied Ben. “There was such constant bustle and toil, and restless, feverish activity, both of mind and body; and now everything is so calm and peaceful, and we are so delightfully idle. I can hardly persuade myself that it is not all a dream.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Philosopher Jack. “There are men, you know, who hold that everything is a dream; that matter is a mere fancy or conception, and that there is nothing real or actually in existence but mind.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Watty with contempt; “what would these philosophers say if matter, in the shape of a fist, were to hit them on their ridiculous noses?”
“They’d say that they only imagined a fist and fancied a blow, I suppose,” returned Jack.
“And would they say that the pain and the blood were imagination also?”