Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/469

 462 Hark to the wild Rosanna cheering! Never droops she, while changing clime At every leap, the levels nearing: Faith in ourselves is faith in Time!

And faith in Nature keeps the force We have in us for daily wear. Come from thy keen Alps down, and, hoarse, Tell to the valleys the tale I bear, O River!

Now, my friend, adieu! In contrast, and in likeness, you Have risen before me from the tide, Whose channel is narrow, whose noise is wide; Whose rage is that of your native seas; Buzzing of battle like myriad bees, Which you have heard on the Euxine shore Sounding in earnest. Here have I placed The delicate spirit with which you adore Dame Nature in lone haunts embraced. Have I frighted it, frail thing, aghast? I have shown it the way to live and last!

How often will those long links of foam Cry to me in my English home, To nerve me, whenever I hear them bellow, Like the smack of the hand of a gallant fellow!

I give them my meaning here, and they Will give me theirs when far away. And the snowy points, and the ash-pale peaks, Will bring a trembling to my cheeks, The leap of the white-fleck’d, clear light, green— Sudden the length of its course be seen, As, swift it launches an emerald shoulder, And, thundering ever of the mountain, Slaps in sport some giant boulder, And tops it in a silver fountain.



a voyage I made to the Sandwich Islands, chiefly for the purpose of conveying to King Kammehammeha a supply of champagne and bottled beer, an application was made by an Englishman there for a passage in my vessel to Sydney. I was not at all disposed to comply with the request, for I could only do so at considerable personal inconvenience; but it was urged so strongly by the applicant that I at last consented, partly because we were under some obligations to him, but chiefly because of the truth of his representations that if I refused, the individual on whose behalf he made the application might have to remain there many months before another vessel would touch at the island which was not bound for California, to which State he had excellent reasons for not returning.

The captain of a vessel has something else to do for some hours after leaving port without paying attention to passengers, or even thinking of them, and it was not until the third day after we had put to sea that I remembered I had a passenger on board. The sea being remarkably smooth, I was rather surprised at not seeing him on deck all that day, and still more when three or four days more passed over without his making his appearance. I enquired of the steward if he was ill, and found that he never complained, that he took whatever food was brought to him in his cabin, but ate very little of it, and never uttered a wish for anything in particular. As he had a perfect right to remain in his cabin if he so pleased I never attempted to interfere with him, though I was really afraid that he might make himself ill while on board, a most painful occurrence for the captain of a vessel which has no surgeon. Several times I directed the steward, when he took his meals into his cabin, to make the remark that it was very fine on deck, but he took no notice, and I never once set eyes on him from the day I sailed from the Sandwich Islands until he came on deck to go ashore at Sydney, and then I was too busy hardly to look at him.

After landing the cargo I had on board, my partner and I came to the conclusion that as there were a good many persons in the town waiting for a vessel bound for England in which they might take a passage, that it would be a profitable way of employing the Tasmania to clear her out, and make a voyage to the mother country with passengers, returning with freight.

There were fewer ships sailed from Sydney to England at that time than there are now, so that we had no trouble in disposing of the berths, our chief difficulty in the matter being how to crowd the greatest number of berths into the least possible space. After we had been three or four days at sea, and things had begun to shake into their places, I had time to notice such of the passengers as made their appearance on deck, and among them I recognised the man I had brought from the Sandwich Islands. He was of remarkable height, had white hair, one side of his face quite covered with rag, and a thick woollen comforter round his neck, which I never saw him without during the whole voyage. He had not now a cabin to himself, and it was perhaps his desire to obtain solitude which induced him to adopt the opposite course of proceeding to that he had followed in his passage to Sydney. Instead of keeping below he was on deck every morning directly after daylight, and, except at meal times, he never left it until long after the lights were put out at night. As he came on deck he used to take a camp-stool, plant it close to the stern of the vessel, and never stir from there except when the bell rang for meals. If anybody addressed an observation to him, he as far as I saw took not the least notice of it, nor could the servants often get a reply from him if they had occasion to ask him a question. I never saw a man, unless it were a fakir in Calcutta once, so entirely absorbed in his thoughts as this man was. For a long time an object of speculation to the idle passengers, and continually stared at by them, he yet sat there without appearing to hear or see anything, and I have seen great tears rolling down his uncovered cheek, which he made no attempt to hide or wipe away. There was nobody on board who did not sympathise with him, and the general opinion was that he must have undergone some terrible misfortunes.

I believe not a few of them would have made a considerable pecuniary sacrifice to have learnt what these were, but they never did.

My ship was by no means a clipper, but a few days more or less in a long voyage is not a matter