Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/260

254 of vessels getting to sea, reaching from the city wharves through the Narrows, and past the Hook, quite to the ocean-stream, far as the eye could reach, with stately march and silken sails, all counting on lucky voyages, but each time some of the number, no doubt, destined to go to Davy's locker, and never come on this coast again.—And again, in the evening of a pleasant day, it was my amusement to count the sails in sight. But as the setting sun continually brought more and more to light, still further in the horizon, the last count always had the advantage, till by the time the last rays streamed over the sea, I had doubled and trebled my first number; though I could no longer class them all under the several heads of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but most were faint generic vessels only. And then the temperate twilight light, perchance, revealed the floating home of some sailor whose thoughts were already alienated from this American coast, and directed towards the Europe of our dreams.—I have stood upon the same hill-top when a thunder shower rolling down from the Catskills and Highlands passed over the island, deluging the land, and when it had suddenly left us in sunshine, have seen it overtake successively with its huge shadow and dark descending wall of rain the vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were suddenly drooping and dark like the sides of barns, and they seemed to shrink before the storm; while still far beyond them on the sea, through this dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which the storm had not yet reached.—And at midnight, when all around and overhead was darkness, I have seen a field of trembling silvery light far out on the sea, the reflection of the moonlight from the ocean, as if beyond the precincts of our night, where the moon traversed a cloudless heaven,—