Next morning the Swede took him into the forecastle and related the following curious story. The evening before, while at the wheel, he had suddenly seen the late captain on the weather-side of the poop, anxiously looking up at the sails and sky; and while he stared at him in mute surprise, he turned round angrily, and looked at him with such a horrible expression of face, that he dropped the wheel in a panic and rang the bell. In Sweden, he said, ghosts were supposed to have a special dislike to a knife and to the Bible; so he rushed below to procure them, by way of charm; but although he could have got a whole bucketful of knives, he could not lay his hands upon a single Bible; and so he took instead a Swedish novel, thinking that as the late captain had not understood Swedish, it could not make much difference. He soon found, however, that he had reckoned without his host. He was no sooner set down to the wheel than the ghost reappeared, and approaching the binnacle, looked at the compass, and made angry signs to him to alter the vessel's course. So much for sea superstitions.
On boxing-day the ordinary routine of ship-life was broken by a terrible accident. The port watch had just finished tea, and had turned into their bunks for a smoke and a read, when a frightful clamour and trampling of feet got up overhead. In a moment every one was on deck, where all was in the wildest hurry and confusion. 'A man overboard!' was the cry. 'Who is it? Who is gone?' asked half-a-dozen voices. 'Johnson!' answered the second mate, excitedly hauling at a rope. 'Haul up the mainsail!' shouted the mate, in tones that rung clear and high above the uproar. 'Slack away the sheet, lads! Bear down on the clew garnets.' All was in vain: the sea was so high that the ship could not be brought round to the wind, and the captain would not hear of a boat being launched. 'It would only,' he very justly said, 'put more lives in jeopardy.' With breathless excitement the look-outs at each mast-head strained their eyes into the darkness of the wild night. The black waves were tumbling mountain high, and there, like a cork upon the billows, was their drowning messmate, slowly drifting astern to his doom. A cold shudder ran through the veins of the breathless watchers. Could nothing be done to help him? Nothing! The helmsman threw him a life-buoy as he passed; perhaps he seized it, perhaps he did not: he was never seen again.
On the 26th February they reached New York; and after unloading their tea, took in a cargo of grain and resin, and sailed for London on the 15th of March. It was a bad season of the year, and the ship was overladen with grain, which makes a peculiarly heavy and unelastic cargo. The weather, stormy from the first, grew gradually worse until the 23d of March, when the gale freshened into a tempest, and that again into the wildest conceivable hurricane. Some frightful hours followed; the waves rolled along the bulwarks like mountains of blackish green water; the roar of wind and sea was inconceivably fearful, and suggested to the shivering crew the idea of something demoniac. At last it became evident to all, that unless the sails could be got rid of, the ship would founder. Who was to risk his life in the attempt? What hero would be found to do this deed of courage? As usual the hour brought the man in the person of Jack Andersen, a Swedish sailor. With his open knife between his teeth, this brave fellow sprang along the encumbered deck undaunted by a heavy sea which broke over him; and soon a loud explosion told of his success; the last sail was gone, and the Sea Queen lay like a helpless log upon the waters. At three in the morning a lull occurred, and the wind and sea gradually went down; but the vessel continuing to sink deeper in the water, it was necessary to lighten her, and fifty tons of cargo were thrown overboard. The sacrifice saved her; and on the 1st of April they sighted the welcome Lizard light. As for the suffering and discomfort on board subsequent to the storm, it was simply inconceivable. Our apprentice's chest floated bottom up for days; and his log-book, which was locked up in it, got a thorough soaking, which fortunately did not render it illegible, else we should have missed a very graphic and interesting narrative of life at sea.
['ONLY TRIFLES.']
When tempted to scorn the little duties of our calling, let us think of such sayings as the following. One day a visitor at Michael Angelo's studio remarked to that great artist, who had been describing certain little finishing 'touches' lately given to a statue—'But these are only trifles.' 'It may be so,' replied the sculptor; 'but recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.' In the same spirit the great painter Poussin accounted for his reputation in these words—'Because I have neglected nothing.' It is related of a Manchester manufacturer, that, on retiring from business, he purchased an estate from a certain nobleman. The arrangement was that he should have the house with all its furniture just as it stood. On taking possession, however, he found that a cabinet which was in the inventory had been removed; and on applying to the former owner about it, the latter said: 'Well, I certainly did order it to be removed; but I hardly thought you would have cared for so trifling a matter in so large a purchase.' 'My lord,' was the reply, 'if I had not all my life attended to trifles, I should not have been able to purchase this estate; and excuse me for saying so, perhaps if your lordship had cared more about trifles, you might not have had occasion to sell it.' 'Oh, what's the good of doing this and that?' we say in reference to departments of our business where quick returns are not forthcoming, or where success does not at once stare us in the face. When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and electricity, people of this baser sort asked with a sneer 'Of what use is it?' The philosopher's retort was: 'What is the use of a child? It may become a man!' Apropos of this remark, grown-up people should remember while doing improper things in the presence of him who is 'only a child,' that he will one day become a man just like themselves.
Mr Careless Nevermind and Miss Notparticular think that great men only deal with great things. The most brilliant discoverers were of a different opinion. They made their discoveries by observing and interpreting simple facts. When fools were walking in darkness, the eyes of these wise men were in their heads. Galileo's discovery of the pendulum was suggested to his observant eye by a lamp swinging from the ceiling of Pisa Cathedral. A spider's net suspended across the path of Sir Samuel Brown, as he walked one dewy morning in his garden, was the prompter that gave to him the idea of his suspension bridge across the Tweed. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off. Galvani observed that a frog's leg twitched when placed in contact with different metals, and it was this apparently insignificant fact that led to the invention of the electric telegraph. While a bad observer may 'go through a forest and see no firewood,' a true seer learns from the smallest things and apparently the most insignificant people. 'Sir,' said Dr Johnson to a fine gentleman just returned from Italy, 'some men will learn more in the Hampstead stage than others in the tour of Europe.' Certainly the power of little things can never be denied by Englishmen who reflect that the chalk cliffs of their island have been built up by little animals—detected only by the help of the microscope—of the same order of creatures that have formed the coral reefs.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that England owes her reputation of being the best workshop in Europe not so much to the fact that she is rich in coal and iron, as because her workmen put or used to put a good finish on their work. A country must become and continue great when its labourers work honestly, paying attention to detail, putting conscience into every stone they place and into every nail they drive. There is no fear of England declining so long as it can be said of her workers what was said of the Old Masters in statuary, painting, and cathedral-building:
In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods are everywhere.
How much of this honest workmanship, that careth for little things and not merely for the large and showy, is to be seen on the roof of Milan Cathedral! Here the smallest and least visible statue of the statue forest that tops the building, is carved with quite as great care as the largest and most conspicuous.