Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/37

 Rh the captain, and we pull for the steamer with fears that she will pull away from us before we can reach her. The wind is contrary, the rowers weary, the night deepens, the waves roll, the lantern on the ship becomes a star. We fire pistol-shots and kindle paper, and they send up colored lights and fire the cannon. Our fires and shots they do not see or hear. Two hours of fear at being deserted, of questionings as to what to do in such extremity, of yet greater fears that the big black waves rolling high about and beneath us will roll bigger and blacker above us, of tests of inward quality of courage and faith, in which the most believing do not always prove the most courageous, and we come up at last, with great rejoicing, to the huge ship, with its many lights and warm cheer, looking like the palace of home and heaven, riding upon the waters of death. So may that palace yet welcome us all!

The stay-aboard company are thoroughly alarmed at our long absence. But when the fear and congratulations at our safety are over, they follow the example of the Irish mother and her lost child, so affectingly depicted by Hood, whose waitings over him lost are speedily replaced by scoldings at him found. To protect ourselves against their retorts, the rhymist of the party prepared, on the rolling deck, a defense, which, like all poetry, has permitted exaggerations mingled with its truth—a sort of wine-and-water fiction and fact that can be easily separated. As a memento of a lazy moment it may be worth inserting here. If one seeks to sing it, he can employ the tune of "My Maryland," which is the old college air of "Lauriger."