A woman will talk of what runs in her head.”
Sunday, Nov. 16. The Sabbath has returned, and we have had divine service. Last night we discovered a sail on our starboard bow, close hauled upon her wind. This morning we tacked ship and brought her to. She proved to be a brig from Norfolk, bound to Rio de Janeiro. She had been fifty-two days out, with light head winds. We wished the captain a pleasant voyage, and parted company. We were in hopes she might prove a craft bound to some port in the United States, and that she would take letters back from us. We were disappointed; our friends must wait for letters from our port of destination. It will probably be six months from our departure before they will get a line from us.
You who cannot leave your wives and children for a week, without intelligence from them, go to sea with the prospect that we have, of not hearing from them for a year. The truth is, none but old bachelors and hen-pecked husbands should go to sea. The latter flies from persecution, the former from that wretchedness which a sight of real domestic happiness inflicts. The bliss of Eden made even Satan more wretched than he was before. But the ocean is itself a rich domain. The treasures of empires lie in its depths. The wrecks of the richest argosies are hers; and her waves roll over the unsurrendered forms of matchless beauty. She gives back nought that comes within her vast embrace. Her great seal of proprietorship will be broken only by the thunders of the last trump.
Monday, Nov. 17. Our ship has been tantalized all day with a light head wind—just one of those winds that are but little better than none; the only advantage it has over a dead calm is the air it affords. As for progress, we might as well be
“A painted ship upon a painted ocean.”
How dependent is a ship on the elements! Let the winds refuse to visit us, and this noble frigate would never move from her present position; she would rot down piece-meal where she is now lying, with the bleaching bones of five hundred men on her decks. But the winds are at the bidding of Him whose pavilion is in the clouds, and whose mandates are nature’s resistless law. May we ever live in humble submission to His will, and rejoice that He reigns; feeling fully assured that His measures are dictated by infinite wisdom, and by an unerring regard to the happiness of His creatures.
I found in the sick-bay to-day a patient laboring under a typhoid fever, and apparently near his end. He spoke to me of his mother and his sisters, and tears filled his eyes. The first being that rushes to the recollections and heart of a sailor, smitten with disease at sea, is his mother. She still clings to his memory and affection in the midst of all the forgetfulness and hardihood induced by a roving life. The last message he leaves is for her; his last dying whisper breathes her name. The mother as she instills the lessons of piety and filial obligation upon the heart of her infant son, should always feel that her labor is not in vain. She may drop into her grave, but she has left behind influences that will work for her. The bow is broken, but the arrow is sped and will do its office.
Tuesday, Nov. 18. Another day of light airs. Our sails hang as pertinaciously to our masts as a veil over the features of one whose imaginary beauty has touched your heart. We discovered another sail to-day over our weather bow, hull down. Conjecture makes her the Courier, which sailed from Hampton Roads two or three days before us. There is an interest in speaking a vessel at sea, which they who dwell on land can hardly realize. These nautical greetings are all that break the vast solitude of the ocean. Without them a ship would be more lonely than the solitary traveller on the desert of Sahara, for he will now and then encounter a gazelle.
A sailor’s life is one of constant privations. He makes his meals from bread which the hammer can scarcely break, and from meat often as juiceless and dry as the bones which it feebly covers. The fresh products of the garden and the fruits of the field have all been left behind. As for a bowl of milk, which the child of the humblest cottager can bring to its lips, it is as much beyond his reach as the nectar which sparkled in the goblets of the fabled divinities on Ida. When Adam went forth from his lost Eden, under the frown of God, he had still a confiding companion at his side, to share with him the sorrows of his lot, and he still found some flowers amid the briers and brambles which infested his path; but the sailor finds no flowers springing up along the pathway of the sea, and he has no consoling companion there, except in his dreams of some far-off shore.
Wednesday, Nov. 19. We have three sailors in the sick-bay to-day, in a very critical condition. They are all good men, so far at least as ship duty is concerned. Their death would make a serious breach in our crew. Our intelligent surgeon and his faithful assistants are devoted to them. They are not left night or day, for an hour, without a medical attendant. Commodore Stockton went into the sick-bay to-day to see them. He never forgets the sailor. He pities when others might reproach, forgives when others might denounce, and never abandons him even though he should abandon himself; and yet he exacts prompt obedience. His discipline, and that of Capt. Du Pont, is derived in a great measure from moral influences, the power of correct example and the pressure of circumstance.