Blue Voyage: A Novel (28 page)

You can imagine, Cynthia, how enthralled I was with all this, and how quickly, in my absorption in such wonders, I forgot the separation from my brother and sister, and the tragedy—now far off, tiny, and soundless—which had brought it all about. It soon seemed as if I had always lived in New Bedford, with Miss Bendall and Cousin Stanley and old John (a perfect stage coachman!) and Mabel, the Irish cook, who churned the butter in the pantry. I knew every flower and spider in the garden, every branch of every tree, and whether it would hold my weight or not; and every picture in every one of the forty-odd bound volumes of Harpers which I used to take up with me to the cupola. The great black cistern, which concealed somewhere a sinister little tinkle of water, was my ocean, where I sailed a flotilla of small blue-painted boats provided by Cousin Stanley. In the evenings, there was often a game of cribbage with Cousin Stanley or Miss Bendall, or else Cousin Stanley would talk to me about ships and shipping—he was a shipowner—and the voyages he had made as a young man. Smoking a crackling great calabash pipe, he talked rapidly and vividly; so much so that I sometimes found it difficult, afterward, to get to sleep: my senses stimulated, my imagination full of sights and sounds. It was a result of these talks that I began, in the afternoons and on Saturdays, exploring the wharves for myself. With what a thrill I used to start down Union Street, seeing, at the bottom of the mile-long cobbled hill, the bright golden eagle of a pilothouse! Or how entrancing to discover in the morning, when I looked down from the cupola before breakfast, a new four-master coming up the harbor, with its dark sails just being dropped!

The magnificent climax to all this, however, came early one Saturday morning—when Cousin Stanley woke me and told me to get dressed quickly: he “had a surprise for me.” The big bell in the Catholic steeple, a block away, by which I always went to bed and got up, was striking five, and it was just beginning to be light. What could the surprise be? I had no idea, but I knew better than to spoil Cousin Stanley’s delight in it by asking. When I went down the stairs, he was waiting for me in the darkness by the door, holding one finger to his lips as a sign to me to be quiet. We stole out, tiptoed across the piazza, and down the flagged path to the gate, where John was waiting for us with the buggy. “To the Union Street Wharf, John!” said Cousin Stanley—and instantly I was lost in a chaos of intoxicating speculations. Were we going to sea? but how could we, without luggage, without even our coats or sweaters?… The sky was beginning to turn pink as we turned from North Street; the city was profoundly still; not a sound, except for Betsy’s
clip-clop
on the asphalt and the twittering of sparrows and robins in the elms, where a deeper darkness seemed still to linger. But when we turned again, into the foot of Union Street, what a difference! For there before us, on the long confused wharf, was a scene of the most intense activity—a whale-ship was being made ready for the sea.

Dismounting, we plunged into the midst of this chaos. The ship, in which Cousin Stanley owned a share, was the
Sylvia Lee:
she was, he told me, pointing to her crossed spars, a brig, and one of the last sailing vessels in the whaling trade. Two gangways led aboard her; and along these shuffled a steady stream of men, carrying boxes, bundles, small kegs, and coils of rope. Cousin Stanley moved away to talk with someone he knew, leaving me beside a pile of fresh wooden boxes, the very boxes which were rapidly being shouldered aboard. Shouts, cries, commands, a fracas of voices—how did they manage to hear one another? A man with a brown megaphone was leaning over the bow rail of the brig (the white bowsprit pointed up Union Street) and shouting “Mr. Pierce! Mr. Pierce!” … Where was Mr. Pierce? and what was he wanted for? and who was the man with the megaphone? The tops of the masts were now struck by the sun, and became surprisingly brilliant, orange-colored, in contrast with the still-somber wharf and the dark hulk of the vessel herself. Sea gulls fluttered and swooped, quarreling, around the stem, where a man in a white jacket had emptied a pail of garbage. These too, when they rose aloft, entered the sunlight and became flamingo-colored. “Mr. Pierce!… Mr. Pierce! Is Mr. Pierce there?” I became anxious about Mr. Pierce. What if he should arrive too late? It might be something terribly important. “Jones! send one of your men up to the office, will you, and see if Mr. Pierce is there. If he is, tell him I haven’t got my papers yet. At once!” Where was Jones? I heard no reply from him, but there must have been one, lost in the general hubbub, for the megaphone seemed to be appeased. Only for a moment, however: it reappeared immediately on the high deck of the stem, before the deckhouse. “Now then men, make it lively. I want those gangways cleared in five minutes … Mr. Jones, will you see that the slack in that cable is taken in.” … A block began a rhythmic chirping in the bow—two men, leaning backward, pulled in short, hard pulls at a rope. The pile of boxes beside me was diminishing—a dozen, ten, eight, six—condensed soup.

“Well, Billy! Shall we go aboard?”

This was the moment of Cousin Stanley’s delight, and in reply I could do nothing but grin. Was he serious? I didn’t like to commit myself, one way or the other.

“Come along, then!” he added, and led the way to the bow gangway, which was now clear. It consisted merely of two great planks lashed together at the ends, and it swayed, when we reached the middle, with a shortening rhythm which seemed disquietingly to come up to meet one’s foot in mid-air. In the dirty water between wharf and ship a lot of straw, bottles, and some lemon peels rose and fell, suckingly. I felt dizzy. I was glad to jump down from the broad black bulwark to the weatherworn deck. We walked aft, and climbed up the short companionway to the poop.

“Good morning, Captain! Just about ready, eh?”

“Mornin’, Stanley. Yep—tug should be here now.… There she is, too. You haven’t seen Pierce, have you?”

“Pierce? No. Why?”

“He hasn’t brought my—”

The little tug
Wamsutta
(old friend of mine) floundered astern of us with ringing bells and a sudden up-boiling of foam over her reversed propellers. The pilot was leaning out of his little window, shouting, a corn cob in his fist. The
Sylvia Lee
began swaying a little, agitatedly, with creaking hawsers. The Captain turned his megaphone toward the
Wamsutta
and spoke quietly—

“I’ll be ready in five minutes, Peter … Mr. Jones, get your men aboard. Has Mr. Pierce been found?”

“Yes, sir. He’s just goin’ aboard.”

“All right. When he’s off, throw out your gangways, and be ready to give Peter a hand. And have some men standing by to cast off.”

“Yes sir.”

The wharf had suddenly become perfectly silent. A dozen men stood motionless, in a group, watching us with an air of profound wonder, as if already we had passed out of their lives and become something remote, unexplained, transcendental. One of the last of the whale ships! But we were something more than that—we were a departing world, the moon taking its first flight from the earth. And I felt myself that I belonged to the
Sylvia Lee,
and was at last taking leave of everything familiar, setting forth at daybreak toward the unimaginable, the obscure, the unattainable.
Islands
somewhere! the Islands of the Blest! or wherever it was that old Ulysses went, beyond the Pillars of Hercules—those same islands that I still dream about periodically, lying in mid-Atlantic, two fair green isles divided by a deep strait, and inhabited by a tall race of surpassing beauty! Was it something like this I thought of? The
Wamsutta
had come puffing alongside, its bell ringing twice and then once and then three times; the hawsers were cast off and fell swashing into the dirty water; and the
Sylvia Lee,
trembling, began to glide stern-foremost into the breezy harbor. The men waved their caps and shouted farewells. “So long, Mike! Don’t lose your false teeth!” “Don’t forget to tell Jim what I told you!” “So long, boys! We’ll be back for the next election!” “So long! So long!” … Phrases were replaced by shouts, and then the shouts by wavings; and as the
Wamsutta
turned us handily about in midstream, and then strode ahead of us with easier puffs and lengthening towrope, a pandemonium of bells and whistles gave us a wild salute. Good-by, New Bedford! Good-by, Achushnet River! We’re rolling down to Rio, rolling down to the Horn, racing north to the Pole, where the icebergs grind screaming together and the right whale breaches through a sheet of ice and snow!… The lighthouse keeper in the “Bug” ran out on his lowest circular balcony and blew his little tin foghorn three times as we passed, and then, waving his arm, shouted something unintelligible. He looked very small, and his dinghy, bowing on the end of its painter under the balcony, seemed no bigger than a peasecod. I felt that I was leaving this, too, forever; and the gaunt scarred rocks of Fairhaven, which smelt so deliciously of kelp at low tide, where I had so often explored the salt pools; and Fort Rodman, where the tiny blue sentry crept back and forth by the barracks like a toy. Good-by, good-by! William Demarest is going away on the
Sylvia Lee;
you will never again see him driving on the Point Road, or gathering scallop shells on the salt beach that looks westward toward Padanaram. Never again. Never again.

Away on the
Sylvia Lee
! We had cleared the Point already, and now we could glance up the deep inlet that led to Padanaram and Dartmouth. Further off, on our starboard bow, lay the low green brightening shore of Nonquitt, with its Elephant Rock, its Spindle, its rickety little wharf, its mosquitoes, and its bog full of red lilies and orchids. I tried to make out the Spindle, with its little keg on top of the iron pole, but it was too far away. Farewell, Nonquitt! We are whalers sailing away to perils and wonders in uncharted seas!… Cousin Stanley suddenly lifted me up so that I could see into one of the whaleboats, with its rusty harpoons and tub of coiled rope. Mr. Jones and the Captain were beside us; and Mr. Pierce, who had not gone ashore after all.

“She doesn’t look very smart, does she?” said the Captain. He rubbed a harsh finger on the blistered gunwale. “But there’ll be plenty of time for paintin’ and polishin’ between here and Valparaiso … I think if you’re goin’ to get some breakfast, Stanley——”

“Yes. I suppose we’d better have it. Like some breakfast, Billy?”

Breakfast! a deep qualm opened within me like a kind of marsh-flower. I suddenly became conscious of the fact that I was on a
ship
. We went down a steep stairway into the officers’ saloon, gloomy and evil-smelling, where a red and pink tablecloth covered a long table. At the forward end, the table abutted on a slant mast-root which was beautifully encased in varnished and inlaid wood, and around which ran a little mahogany tumbler-rack, like a veranda. But the smell was appalling! The smell of whale oil, perhaps, which, after years of whale voyaging, had saturated the ship. My gorge rose, and I was terrified lest, on a calm day, with no excuse whatever, I should disgrace myself by being sick. I sat down gingerly. The idea of eating food became abhorrent to me; the bread looked dusty and hard, the corned beef a thousand years old; the dishes, too, were thick and grayish, somehow oppressive. And then, to have corned beef, and boiled potatoes, with their skins imperfectly removed, for breakfast! In a state of passive weakness, not daring to move or speak lest the paroxysm should seize me, I allowed Mr. Jones to give me corned beef and potatoes. Reluctantly, I raised my fork to begin, when the cook (the man in the white jacket whom I had seen emptying the pail of garbage!) put down before me a thick china bowl, full of
melted butter
. Into this he dropped a dull leaden spoon. “Help yourself, sonny!” he said. “Whale oil.” Incontinently, I raised my hand to my mouth, and felt myself on the point of giving that horrible little crow which is the prelude to disaster. My mouth drew itself together—I felt my tongue cold against my cold palate—and then I rose and fled. Disgraced! The laughter that followed me up the steep stairway was kindly, however, and as I stood again by the bulwark in the fresh wind I forgot that momentary discomfort in the sheer romanticism of the voyage. Valpraiso! Was it really possible? These sails, which the men were now breaking out one by one, and which now gently filled with the following wind, and shifted a little with a settling creak of spars long unused, these sails would carry the
Sylvia Lee
all the way to Tierra del Fuego, and round the Horn to Valparaiso. What would Union Street seem like then, with its little green streetcars? Would the men remember Buttonwood Park, and the bears, and the motor-paced bicycle races at the bicycle track? Would they talk about these things, or long for them, these things which were now so commonplace and real? Would these things then seem as distant and incredible as Valparaiso seemed now?…

Well, Cynthia—I draw to the end of this simple narrative. I find myself losing heart or losing impetus. What if, after all, the impulse to tell of it should seem to you rather silly?… Yet, at the last minute, it had its thrill of terror, which perhaps more than anything else served to make it memorable. For when the sails had all been spread, and the towrope had been cast off, and the
Wamsutta
drew away to starboard and stopped, her nose pointing toward Cuttyhunk, it was then that the greatest moment came. One of the whaleboats was manned and lowered into the sea; into this we clambered, Mr. Pierce and Cousin Stanley and I; and the men pulled away toward the waiting tug. The
Sylvia Lee
hung enormous above us, her sails flapping, as we drew out from her shadow; but I now paid little attention to the beautiful tall ship, for I had discovered that the whaleboat was leaking, leaking fast! In a moment I had to draw up my feet. Before we had gone half the distance to the
Wamsutta
we had taken in about four inches of water. Were we sinking? Would we get there before we sank? What astonished me was the indifference of the men at the oars—they sat with their feet in the swashing water and hauled stolidly away as if nothing whatever were occurring. I felt, therefore, that it would be a breach of etiquette to comment, or show anxiety, and I scarcely knew
what
attitude to take toward Mr. Pierce’s humorous observation that it looked “as if they were trying to drown us.” It hardly seemed a subject for joking. I was measuring the water, measuring the gap between us and the
Wamsutta;
and seldom have I experienced such an acute sensation of relief as when we drew alongside and climbed aboard in a smell of oil and hot-breathing engines. More remarkable still, however, was the fact that the men in the whaleboat did not pause to bail out the water—which was now halfway up their legs—but at once turned the heavy boat about and started back again. How slowly, how laboriously, she seemed to creep! By the time they had come up once more with the
Sylvia Lee
her gunwales were only a foot out of water. They were safe, however—we saw them climb briskly aboard. And then we saw the boat being hauled up, while one man bailed with a pail, flinging great scoops of hollow silver over the side; and at once, majestically, with filling sails, the
Sylvia Lee bore
away. The men waved to us and shouted—the
Wamsutta
blew three vibrating blasts of her whistle—and while the ship moved statelily southward, we turned and chug-chugged back toward New Bedford. Good-by,
Sylvia Lee!…
Good-by indeed. For the
Sylvia Lee
was destined to be one of the tragedies of the sea. None of the men who sailed away with her ever returned. No one ever knew how she was wrecked. All that was found of her, two years later, west of the Horn, was the fragment of sternplate that bore her name.