Mr. Willis told Bayard, as he said afterwards, to keep up his courage, and go forward: “The way to Valhalla is broad and smooth to the hero, but narrow and dangerous to the coward.” It appears by the brief account which is given in the introduction to his “Views Afoot,” published by Putnam & Sons, New York, that the party had a difficult task to find a vessel in which the accommodations, rates of passage, and port of destination were within their plan. They intended at first to take a vessel direct for the Continent; but in such of them as were bound for continental ports, the fare was too high. They were, however, on the point of taking passage in a Dutch sailing vessel, the consignees of which were acquaintances of Mr. Willis, and consequently made some reduction in the fares, when an opportunity offered itself for a steerage passage in a vessel bound for Liverpool. In that way, they would be conveyed to England for the sum of twenty-four dollars. But such a passage! Think of it, ye disconsolate, fault-finding tourists, who lie in the soft beds of a steamer, with fresh air and plenty of light! Think of it, ye sufferers that occupy the great forward hall of a steamship, and who curse your fate that you are compelled to take a steerage passage! What would you do or say should you be crowded into a cabin of rough planks, eight feet long, and seven feet wide, with nine passengers and eight narrow berths, in a clumsy, dirty little sailing vessel? Yet this was the young adventurer’s choice, rather than expend the small sum of twenty-five dollars from his small store. These three boys were compelled, by the terms of passage, to furnish their own provisions and bedding, and the fact that the unexpected honesty and kindness of a warehouse clerk prevented their starting off without enough food to last through the voyage, is another proof that “fortune favors the brave.”
As there was one more adult passenger in the steerage than there were berths, Bayard and his cousin Frank good-naturedly agreed to occupy one together. To the writer, who has frequently crossed the treacherous Atlantic, there seems to be no experience so inconceivably miserable and sickening as a steerage passage in a sailing vessel must be to the landsman. But when to the usual discomforts of dampness, darkness, sea-sickness, and strange company, are added the cramps caused by being packed with another passenger like a sandwich into a narrow box, and the absence of fresh air, no tortures of the Inquisition would seem to equal it. Bayard often referred to his first discouraging sensation of sea-sickness. Coming, as it always does to the passenger, just as he is taking his last sad look at the fading shores of his native country, it is always a disheartening experience. Bayard shed tears as he began to realize that he was actually afloat upon the wide ocean, and could not if he would return to the land. He has since well said, that had he known more of life, and the dangers of travel, his alarm and discouragement would have been much greater than they were, and of longer duration. Youth borrows no trouble; hence it is happy and victorious.
Of that voyage, and its sufferings, in the ship “Oxford,” beginning on the first day of July, and ending at Liverpool on the twenty-ninth of the same month, he made but brief mention; yet his experience in getting the ship’s cook to boil their potatoes, in eating their meals of pilot-bread, and in the company of their English, Scotch, Irish, and German cabin-mates, was most charmingly told in his letters to the “Gazette” and to the “Post,” as well as in “Views Afoot,” to which reference has already been made. His German companion was not only a social advantage, but furnished the adventurous youths with a pleasant opportunity to get some of the German phrases, and to hear descriptions of the country they were to visit. They were also favored by the captain’s permission to use books from the cabin library, which contained several entertaining books of travel and of fiction. The closing days of the voyage appear to have been pleasant in some respects, for the beauty of the sea made a lasting impression upon his mind, and might possibly have been still in his memory when he wrote the lines in his “Poems of Home and Travel,” running thus:—
“The sea is a jovial comrade,
He laughs wherever he goes;
His merriment shines in the dimpling lines
That-wrinkle his hale repose:
He lays himself down at the feet of the Sun,
And shakes all over with glee,
And the broad-backed billows fall faint on the shore