Part 4 (1/2)

I wrote to you after my pilgrimage to the tomb of Was.h.i.+ngton. It was almost the only object of natural or historical interest in our own country that I had not visited, and that seen, I made all haste back to embark, in pursuance of my plans of travel, for Europe. At Philadelphia I found a first-rate merchant-brig, the Pacific, on the eve of sailing for Havre. She was nearly new, and had a French captain, and no pa.s.sengers--three very essential circ.u.mstances to my taste--and I took a berth in her without hesitation. The next day she fell down the river, and on the succeeding morning I followed her with the captain in the steamboat.

Some ten or fifteen vessels, bound on different voyages, lay in the roads waiting for the pilot boat; and, as she came down the river, they all weighed anchor together and we got under way. It was a beautiful sight--so many sail in close company under a smart breeze, and I stood on the quarter-deck and watched them in a mood of mingled happiness and sadness till we reached the Capes. There was much to elevate and much to depress me. The dream of my lifetime was about to be realized. I was bound to France; and those fair Italian cities, with their world of a.s.sociation and interest were within the limit of a voyage; and all that one looks to for happiness in change of scene, and all that I had been pa.s.sionately wis.h.i.+ng and imagining since I could dream a day-dream or read a book, was before me with a visible certainty; but my home was receding rapidly, perhaps for years, and the chances of death and adversity in my absence crowded upon my mind--and I had left friends--(many--many--as dear to me, any one of them, as the whole sum of my coming enjoyment), whom a thousand possible accidents might remove or estrange; and I scarce knew whether I was more happy or sad.

We made Cape Henlopen about sundown, and all shortened sail and came to. The little boat pa.s.sed from one to another, taking off the pilots, and in a few minutes every sail was spread again, and away they went with a das.h.i.+ng breeze, some on one course some on another, leaving us in less than an hour, apparently alone on the sea. By this time the clouds had grown black, the wind had strengthened into a gale, with fits of rain; and as the order was given to ”close-reef the top-sails,” I took a last look at Cape Henlopen, just visible in the far edge of the horizon, and went below.

OCT. 18.--It is a day to make one in love with life. The remains of the long storm, before which we have been driven for a week, lie, in white, turreted ma.s.ses around the horizon, the sky overhead is spotlessly blue, the sun is warm, the wind steady and fresh, but soft as a child's breath, and the sea--I must sketch it to you more elaborately. We are in the Gulf Stream. The water here as you know, even to the cold banks of Newfoundland, is always blood warm, and the temperature of the air mild at all seasons, and, just now, like a south wind on land in June. Hundreds of sea birds are sailing around us--the spongy sea-weeds, washed from the West Indian rocks, a thousand miles away in the southern lat.i.tudes, float by in large ma.s.ses--the sailors, barefoot and bareheaded, are scattered over the rigging, doing ”fair-weather work”--and just in the edge of the horizon, hidden by every swell, stand two vessels with all sail spread, making, with the first fair wind they have had for many days, for America.

This is the first day that I have been able to be long enough on deck to study the sea. Even were it not, however, there has been a constant and chilly rain which would have prevented me from enjoying its grandeur, so that I am reconciled to my unusually severe sickness. I came on deck this morning and looked around, and for an hour or two I could scarce realize that it was not a dream. Much as I had watched the sea from our bold promontory at Nahant, and well as I thought I knew its character in storms and calms, the scene which was before me surprized and bewildered me utterly. At the first glance, we were just in the gorge of the sea; and, looking over the leeward quarter, I saw, stretching up from the keel, what I can only describe as a hill of dazzling blue, thirty or forty feet in real alt.i.tude, but sloped so far away that the white crest seemed to me a cloud, and the s.p.a.ce between a sky of the most wonderful beauty and brightness. A moment more, and the crest burst over with a splendid volume of foam; the sun struck through the thinner part of the swell in a line of vivid emerald, and the whole ma.s.s swept under us, the brig rising and riding on the summit with the buoyancy and grace of a bird.

The single view of the ocean which I got at that moment, will be impressed upon my mind for ever. Nothing that I ever saw on land at all compares with it for splendor. No sunset, no lake scene of hill and water, no fall, not even Niagara, no glen or mountain gap ever approached it. The waves had had no time to ”knock down,” as the sailors phrase it, and it was a storm at sea without the hurricane and rain. I looked off to the horizon, and the long majestic swells were heaving into the sky upon its distant limit, and between it and my eye lay a radius of twelve miles, an immense plain flas.h.i.+ng with green and blue and white, and changing place and color so rapidly as to be almost painful to the sight. I stood holding by the tafferel an hour, gazing on it with a childish delight and wonder. The spray had broken over me repeatedly, and, as we s.h.i.+pped half a sea at the scuppers at every roll, I was standing half the time up to the knees in water; but the warm wind on my forehead, after a week's confinement to my berth, and the excessive beauty lavished upon my sight, were so delicious, that I forgot all, and it was only in compliance with the captain's repeated suggestion that I changed my position.

I mounted the quarter-deck, and, pulling off my shoes, like a schoolboy, sat over the leeward rails, and, with my feet dipping into the warm sea at every lurch, gazed at the glorious show for hours. I do not hesitate to say that the formation, progress, and final burst of a sea-wave, in a bright sun, are the most gorgeously beautiful sight under heaven. I must describe it like a jeweller to you, or I can never convey my impressions.

First of all, a quarter of a mile away to windward, your eye is caught by an uncommonly high wave, rus.h.i.+ng right upon your track, and heaping up slowly and constantly as it comes, as if some huge animal were ploughing his path steadily and powerfully beneath the surface. Its ”ground,” as a painter would say, is of a deep indigo, clear and smooth as enamel, its front curved inward, like a sh.e.l.l, and turned over at the summit with a crest of foam, flas.h.i.+ng and changing perpetually in the suns.h.i.+ne, like the sudden outburst of a million of ”unsunned diamonds;” and, right through its bosom, as the sea falls off, or the angle of refraction changes, there runs a s.h.i.+fting band of the most vivid green, that you would take to have been the cestus of Venus, as she rose from the sea, it is so supernaturally translucent and beautiful. As it nears you, it looks in shape like the prow of Cleopatra's barge, as they paint it in the old pictures; but its colors, and the grace and majesty of its march, and its murmur (like the low tones of an organ, deep and full, and, to my ear, ten times as articulate and solemn), almost startle you into the belief that it is a sentient being, risen glorious and breathing from the ocean. As it reaches the s.h.i.+p, she rises gradually, for there is apparently an under-wave driven before it, which prepares her for its power; and as it touches the quarter, the whole magnificent wall breaks down beneath you with a deafening surge, and a volume of foam issues from its bosom, green and blue and white, as if it had been a mighty casket in which the whole wealth of the sea, crysoprase, and emerald, and brilliant spars, had been heaped and lavished at a throw. This is the ”tenth wave,” and, for four or five minutes, the sea will be smooth about you, and the sparkling and dying foam falls into the wake, and may be seen like a white path, stretching away over the swells behind, till you are tired of gazing at it. Then comes another from the same direction, and with the same shape and motion, and so on till the sun sets, or your eyes are blinded and your brain giddy with splendor.

I am sure this language will seem exaggerated to you, but, upon the faith of a lonely man (the captain has turned in, and it is near midnight and a dead calm), it is a mere skeleton, a goldsmith's inventory, of the reality. I long ago learned that first lesson of a man of the world, ”to be astonished at nothing,” but the sea has overreached my philosophy--quite. I am changed to a mere child in my wonder. Be a.s.sured, no view of the ocean from land can give you a shadow of an idea of it. Within even the outermost Capes, the swell is broken, and the color of the water in soundings is essentially different--more dull and earthy. Go to the mineral cabinets of Cambridge or New Haven, and look at the _fluor spars_, and the _turquoises_, and the clearer specimens of _crysoprase_, and _quartz_, and _diamond_, and imagine them all polished and clear, and flung at your feet by millions in a noonday sun, and it may help your conceptions of the sea after a storm. You may ”swim on bladders” at Nahant and Rockaway till you are gray, and be never the wiser.

The ”middle watch” is called, and the second mate, a fine rough old sailor, promoted from ”the mast,” is walking the quarter-deck, stopping his whistle now and then with a gruff ”How do you head?” or ”keep her up, you lubber,” to the man at the helm; the ”silver-sh.e.l.l”

of a waning moon, is just visible through the dead lights over my shoulder (it has been up two hours, to me, and by the difference of our present merideans, is just rising now over a certain hill, and peeping softly in at an eastern window that I have watched many a time when its panes have been silvered by the same chaste alchymy), and so after a walk on the deck for an hour to look at the stars and watch the phosphorus in the wake, I think of ----, I'll get to mine own uneven pillow, and sleep too.

LETTER II.

AT SEA, OCTOBER 20.--We have had fine weather for progress, so far, running with north and north-westerly winds from eight to ten knots an hour, and making, of course, over two hundred miles a day. The sea is still rough; and though the brig is light laden and rides very buoyantly, these mounting waves break over us now and then with a tremendous surge, keeping the decks constantly wet, and putting me to many an uncomfortable s.h.i.+ver. I have become reconciled, however, to much that I should have antic.i.p.ated with no little horror. I can lie in my berth forty-eight hours, if the weather is chill or rainy, and amuse myself very well with talking bad French across the cabin to the captain, or laughing at the distresses of my friend and fellow-pa.s.senger, Turk (a fine setter dog, on his first voyage), or inventing some disguise for the peculiar flavor which that dismal cook gives to all his abominations, or, at worst, I can bury my head in my pillow, and brace from one side to the other against the swell, and enjoy my disturbed thoughts--all without losing my temper, or wis.h.i.+ng that I had not undertaken the voyage.

Poor Turk! his philosophy is more severely tried. He has been bred a gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive. No a.s.siduities can win him to take the least notice of the crew, and I soon discovered, that, when the captain and myself were below, he endured many a persecution. In an evil hour, a night or two since, I suffered his earnest appeals for freedom to work upon my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain under the windla.s.s, I gave him the liberty of the cabin. He slept very quietly on the floor till about midnight, when the wind rose and the vessel began to roll very uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a couple of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp of distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He changed his position, and, with the next roll, the mate's trunk ”brought away,” and shooting across the cabin, jammed him with such violence against the captain's state-room door, that he sprang howling to the deck, where the first thing that met him was a was.h.i.+ng sea, just taken in at mids.h.i.+ps, that kept him swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned, and with a gallon of water in his long hair, he took again to the cabin, and making a desperate leap into the steward's berth, crouched down beside the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction. The water soon penetrated however, and with a ”_sacre!_” and a blow that he will remember for the remainder of the voyage, the poor dog was again driven from the cabin, and I heard no more of him till morning.

His decided preference for me has since touched my vanity, and I have taken him under my more special protection--a circ.u.mstance which costs me two quarrels a day at least, with the cook and steward.

The only thing which forced a smile upon me during the first week of the pa.s.sage was the achievement of dinner. In rough weather, it is as much as one person can do to keep his place at the table at all; and to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a general slide in the direction of the lurch, requires a sleight and coolness reserved only for a sailor. ”_Prenez garde!_” shouts the captain, as the sea strikes, and in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and held up to wait for the other lurch in att.i.tudes which it would puzzle the pencil of Johnson to exaggerate. With his plate of soup in one hand, and the larboard end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle between his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught around the mounting corner of the table, the captain maintains his seat upon the transom, and, with a look of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye on the s.h.i.+fting level of his vermicelli; the old weather-beaten mate, with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long leg back to the cabin panels at the same moment, and with his breast against the table, takes his own plate and the castors, and one or two of the smaller dishes under his charge; and the steward, if he can keep his legs, looks out for the vegetables, or if he falls, makes as wide a lap as possible to intercept the volant articles in their descent. ”Gentlemen that live at home at ease” forget to thank Providence for the blessings of a permanent level.

OCT. 24.--We are on the Grand Bank, and surrounded by hundreds of sea-birds. I have been watching them nearly all day. Their performances on the wing are certainly the perfection of grace and skill. With the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles with an arrowy swiftness, lifting their long tapering pinions scarce perceptibly, and mounting and falling as if by a mere act of volition, without the slightest apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment seems to be to scoop through the deep hollows of the sea, and they do it so quickly that your eye can scarce follow them, just disturbing the polish of the smooth crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from swell to swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white b.r.e.a.s.t.s a feather too deep in the capricious and wind-driven surface.

I feel a strange interest in these wild-hearted birds. There is something in this fearless instinct, leading them away from the protecting and pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and desolate element, that moves both my admiration and my pity. I cannot comprehend it. It is unlike the self-caring instincts of the other families of Heaven's creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I used to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment--expiating some lifetime sin in this restless metempsychosis.

Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driven to sea probably by the gale; and so fatigued as hardly to be able to rise again upon the wing. Yesterday morning a large curlew came struggling down the wind, and seemed to have just sufficient strength to reach the vessel. He attempted to alight on the main yard, but failed and dropped heavily into the long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken without an attempt to escape. He must have been on the wing two or three days without food, for we were at least two hundred miles from land. His heart was throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he held his head up with difficulty. He was pa.s.sed aft; but, while I was deliberating on the best means for resuscitating and fitting him to get on the wing again, the captain had taken him from me and handed him over to the cook, who had his head off before I could remember French enough to arrest him. I dreamed all that night of the man ”that shot the albatross.” The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling me that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that they died invariably in a few hours. The least food, in their exhausted state, swells in their throats and suffocates them. Poor Curlew! there was a tenderness in one breast for him at least--a feeling I have the melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciprocated by the bird himself--that seat of his affections having been allotted to me for my breakfast the morning succeeding his demise.

OCT. 29.--We have a tandem of whales ahead. They have been playing about the s.h.i.+p an hour, and now are coursing away to the east, one after the other, in gallant style. If we could only get them into traces now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the foretop and drive a degree or two, on a summer sea! It would not be more wonderful, _de novo_, than the discovery of the lightning-rod, or navigation by steam! And by the way, the sight of these huge creatures has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to which the sea has _grown_ upon my mind during the voyage. I have seen one or two whales, exhibited in the docks, and it seemed to me always that they were monsters--out of proportion, entirely, to the range of the ocean.

I had been accustomed to look out to the horizon from land (the radius, of course, as great as at sea), and, calculating the probable speed with which they would compa.s.s the intervening s.p.a.ce, and the disturbance they would make in doing it, it appeared that in any considerable numbers, they would occupy more than their share of notice and sea-room. Now--after sailing five days, at two hundred miles a day, and not meeting a single vessel--it seems to me that a troop of a thousand might swim the sea a century and chance to be never crossed, so endlessly does this eternal horizon open and stretch away!

OCT. 30.--The day has pa.s.sed more pleasantly than usual The man at the helm cried ”a sail,” while we were at breakfast, and we gradually overtook a large s.h.i.+p, standing on the same course, with every sail set. We were pa.s.sing half a mile to leeward, when she put up her helm and ran down to us, hoisting the English flag. We raised the ”star-spangled banner” in answer, and ”hove to,” and she came das.h.i.+ng along our quarter, heaving most majestically to the sea, till she was near enough to speak us without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered with sailors dressed all alike and very neatly, and around the gangway stood a large group of officers in uniform, the oldest of whom, a n.o.ble-looking man with gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several ladies stood back by the cabin door--pa.s.sengers apparently. She was a man of war, sailing as a king's packet between Halifax and Falmouth, and had been out from the former port nineteen days. After the usual courtesies had pa.s.sed, she bore away a little, and then kept on her course again, the two vessels in company at the distance of half a pistol shot. I rarely have seen a more beautiful sight. The fine effect of a s.h.i.+p under sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it is only at sea and under circ.u.mstances like these, that it can be observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a huge body as lightly as an egg-sh.e.l.l on its bosom, and tossing it sometimes half out of the water without the slightest apparent effort, is astonis.h.i.+ng. I sat on deck watching her with undiminished interest for hours. Apart from the spectacle, the feeling of companions.h.i.+p, meeting human beings in the middle of the ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspoken from land), was delightful. Our brig was the faster sailer of the two, but our captain took in some of his canvas for company's sake; and all the afternoon we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's whistle, and the orders of the officers of the deck, and I could distinguish very well, with a gla.s.s, the expression of the faces watching our own really beautiful vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for her port, and we stretching south for the coast of France. I watched her till she went over the horizon, and felt as if I had lost friends when the night closed in and we were once more

”Alone on the wide, wide sea.”

NOV. 3.--We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing ”nine” (as delightful a sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for all is confusion on board.

LETTER III.