Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/818

810 is but wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for nothing else, of course are fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool Liner. Yet it is, for all that, something which haunts the memory long,—which comes back years after in inland vales and quiet farm-houses like brown-moss agates set in emerald meadows, in book-lined studios, and in close city streets. For it is part of the might and mystery of the sea, the secret influence that sets the blood on fire and the heart throbbing,—of any in whose veins runs some of the true salt-water sympathy. Men are born landsmen, and are born on land, but belong to the Ocean's family. Sooner or later, whatever their calling, they recognize the tie. They may struggle against it, and scotch it, but cannot kill it. They may not be seamen,—they may wear black coats and respectable white ties, and have large balances in the bank, but they are the Sea's men,—brothers by blood-relationship, if not by trade, of Ulysses and Vasco, of Columbus and Cabot, of Frobisher and Drake.

Other stories of the sea are floating through my memory as I write,—tales told with elbows leaning on cabin-tables, while the swinging-lamp oscillated drearily overhead, and sent uncertain shadows into the state-room doors. There is the story which Vivian Grey told us of the beautiful clipper "Nighthawk,"—her who sailed with the "Bonita" and "Driving-Scud" and "Mazeppa," in the great Sea-Derby, whose course lay round the world. How, one Christmas-day, off the pitch of Cape Horn, he, standing on her deck, saw her dive bodily into a sea, and all of her to the mainmast was lost in ocean,—her stately spars seemingly rising out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;—it seemed an age to him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to make sail in a reef-topsail-breeze to claw off its terrible rocks, seen but too plainly under their Ice. How, as he said, "about four in the afternoon it seemed to blow worse than ever, and you could see the staunch boat was pressed down under her canvas, and every spar was groaning and quivering, while the ship went bodily to leeward." And next, "how she seemed to come to herself, as it were, with a long staggering roll, and to spring to windward as if relieved of a dead weight; for the gale had broken, and the foam-belt along the cliffs grew dimmer and dimmer, and the land fainter and fainter. And then," he said, "to hear the fo'castle-talk, you would have said that never was such a ship, such spars, such a captain, such seamanship, and such luck, since Father Jason cleared the 'Argo' from the Piræus, for Colchis and a market."

Or I might tell you how Dr., the ship-surgeon, was in that Collard steamer which ran down the fishing-boat in the fog off Cape Race,—and how, looking from his state-room window, he saw a mighty cliff so near that he could almost lay his hand upon it. How Fanshaw was on board the "Sea-King" when she was burned, off Point Linus,—and how he hung in the chains till he was taken off, and his hair was repeatedly set on fire by the women—emigrant-passengers—jumping over his head into the sea.

But not so near a-shaking hands with Death did any of them tell, as Ned Kennedy,—who, poor fellow, lies buried in some lone cañon of the Sierra Madre. Let us hear him give it in his wild, reckless way. Ned was sitting opposite us, his thick, black hair curling from under his plaid travelling-cap,—his thick eyebrows working, and his hands occupied in arranging little fragments of pilot-biscuit on the table. He broke in upon the last man who was talking, with a—

"Tell you what, boys,—I've a better idea of what all that means. I suppose you both know what the Mediterranean lines of steamers are, and what capital seamanship, and travelling comfort, and all that, you find there. The engineers, however, are Scotch, English, or American, always; because why? A French