Orphan Island
by
“On the surface at last a flat islet is spied,
And shingle and sand are heaped up by the tide;
Seeds brought by the breezes take root, and erewhile
Man makes him a home on the insect-built pile!”
ANN TAYLOR.
XVI. SMITH METHODS WITH SOME DULL THINGS
XVIII. MR. THINKWELL AND THE LOWER ORDERS
THE BEGINNING OF IT
1
MISS CHARLOTTE SMITH, a kind-hearted lady of thirty or so, set forth in the year 1855 to conduct some fifty orphans, of various nationalities and all of them under ten years of age, from East London to San Francisco, where an orphanage had been provided for them by a wealthy philanthropist, who was so right-minded as to desire to use in this manner some of the riches he had obtained in the Californian gold rush of six years before. They went in a large steamship, provided also by the philanthropist, much of it being fitted out as a crèche, with such arrangements for the entertainment, restraint, and otherwise rendering as peaceable and innocuous as might be, of infant orphans, as occurred to thoughtful and philanthropic minds in the middle years of the nineteenth century. There were a number of little walled pens for the more juvenile orphans, in which they sat and disported themselves with bricks, rattles, dolls, balls, wooden animals, and the other harmless objects suitable to their tender years; there were shelves stocked with books for the young which it was hoped that the elder orphans might be induced to peruse; there were basins everywhere, of which it was hoped such orphans as should be
overcome by the sea's motion would avail themselves; there were tin baths suitable for their ablutions, and cots in which they might be placed when washed. Miss Smith had under her a Scottish nurse and a French (Protestant) nursemaid, and between them the three women did what was necessary for their little charges.
Every day Miss Smith would conduct the elder orphans on deck, and give them instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, the Scriptures, the English language (with which even the British orphans had but a trifling acquaintance) and the wisdom and beneficence of the Deity as evinced by His wonders in the deep. When they saw flying fishâ “You see, my children,” said Miss Smith, “how good God is. He has caused both the birds to swim and the fish to fly, in order that such perverse men as are too hardened in their blindness to be moved, as they should be, by the common course of nature, that is to say, by flying birds and swimming fish, may, seeing these still greater marvels, believe in spite of themselves and be saved.”
For Miss Smith had been taught, and in her turn taught the orphans, that God had arranged all His marvels with a view to man, the central figure of the universe. “Why were worms made?” a disgusted orphan, digging in its little garden patch in England, had once inquired of her, and her reply was ready and simple. “To make ground-bait for man when he fishes, my love.” And that seemed to the orphan a very reasonable reply, as, indeed, it was. Miss Smith had a reply to everything; no orphan ever caught her at a loss. “Why,” the unfortunate and disturbed children would ask, “are we sick when the ship rolls?” Miss Smith would attempt no discourse on the nature of the
internal and gastronomic system of man, but would say placidly as she sewed, “In order, my dears, that we may know that we are in God's hand, and that of ourselves we are nothing. Man, the lord of creation and the noblest of the animals, has but to step off solid earth on to the rocking deep to lose all his equilibrium and his pride, and often a great deal more besides. It is good for us,” said Miss Smith absently, as she bit off her thread, “to be thus humiliated. ⦠But,” she added, more kindly, “you will doubtless get better, my dears, as you become used to it.”
The ship's doctor, an Irishman with long ginger whiskers, was passing by, and had stopped to listen to Miss Smith's discourse. Here he guffawed, with what seemed to Miss Smith a very unseemly, mocking kind of merriment, and ejaculated, with the vilest pronunciation imaginable, “
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
. Faith, ma'am, you know the reason for everything!”
“It is time, children,” said Miss Smith to the orphans, “that you went below,” and firmly she gathered the orphans together about her crinoline and swept them away. She did not care for the ship's doctor, who was a papist by upbringing, an atheist by temperament, if not by conviction, a disagreeable, mocking man, a quoter of Latin tags which were probably indelicate, a lover of strong drink, and scarcely to be considered a gentleman. Miss Charlotte Smith was herself the daughter of a very respectable English country clergyman, of the Evangelical persuasion. Such clergymen, such clergymen's daughters, abounded more greatly then than now.
The voyage took its course, broken only by the customary incidents of ocean journeys in those days, until some days after the S. S.
Providence
had rounded Cape Horn. Then the unfortunate and not very soundly constructed ship met with very foul weather, and one Saturday night collided with a sunken reef and was stove in below her water-line. All hope being given up, beyond that which lay in the launching of the boats and the improbable mercies of Providence, the captain sent a message to Miss Smith that she should immediately come on deck with her numerous little charges and their two nurses, in order that they might all be embarked in the boats. Hurriedly attiring themselves in such garments as were necessary (Miss Smith did not omit her crinoline), the three women dragged the orphans from their beds, wrapped their little coats or shawls about them, and conducted them on deck.
What a sight met their eyes! The sea's fury had now abated, but the smitten ship lay aslant at such an angle that the waves washed over her decks; she was lurching slowly to starboard, soon obviously to sink into her watery grave. The black and sullen seas, though appeased in violence, still moaned sullenly, while the receding storm still reverberated.
At the shocking spectacle, the orphans wailed, and Miss Smith, clasping her hands and looking up to heaven, exclaimed: “But for the mercy of Providence, we are indeed lost! Who shall survive the wrath of the Almighty as expressed by His storms and His seas?”
“Who indeed, madam?” replied the captain. “Very probably none of us will. Our only hope is in the boats, and they have but small chance of reaching safety. But, by your leave, we will now embark these children.
They
, poor fatherless creatures, must all, if possible, be saved. And you yourself also, madam, for these infants would be in a sad plight without your care, should they ever win to safety.”
Hearing these words, Anne-Marie, the French nursemaid, fearing that she was not to be among the rescued, set up a great lamentation, so that the infants, clinging about her, wept too, and every one was in an uproar, and Jean, the Scottish nurse, said sharply, “Hauld your whist, girl. If the Lord has it in His mind to save ye, saved ye wull be, and if He has it writ in His Book to drown ye, drowned ye wull be, wail ye never sae sair. So hauld your whist, lassie, and await His guid pleasure, and keep the bairns quiet. Their greeting adds confusion to the scene.”
“Well spoken, Jean,” said Miss Smith. “It is indeed of little use for any of us to bewail our fate, for what will be will be, and what is appointed for us we have none of us any idea. If it be God's will that we come safely through this fearful storm, why then we shall come through it. If not ⦔
“Why then, ma' am, we'll drown,” Dr. O'Malley finished for her shortly, for, indeed, time was short. “
Dum loquor hora fugit
,” he added, “that is to say, this is no time for blather.”
“Very true, doctor,” the captain agreed. “We must make all haste with the boats if any one is to be saved, for the sea is gaining on us at a prodigious rate.”
It was a difficult business lowering the long boats
into the tossing sea and then lowering into them the orphans, who, with the folly and incapacity of their years, made the task as troublesome as it could well be; indeed, several infants were unhappily lost in the process. Finally the two largest boats were each loaded with twenty orphans and some sailors to take the oars and steer. In one of them Miss Smith embarked, while the other contained the nurse Jean. The third boat held the seven remaining orphans, Anne-Marie, and various of the officers and crew, including Dr. O'Malley. The fourth never got launched, for the ship foundered as they lowered it, and all left on deck were sucked beneath the turbulent waters. The third boat also was involved in this disaster, not having yet cleared herself from the ship sufficiently to weather the wash caused by the vessel's subsidence. The boat capsized, and its wretched inmates were flung into the sea, which was so wild that they were immediately scattered far and wide and no rescues could be effected by the other two boats.
“Unhappy fatherless infants!” Miss Smith mourned the seven perished orphans. “What a pitiful fate is theirs! But at least their little lives were (comparatively) innocent”â(though Miss Smith had for long been in charge of children, she did not actually know them very well)â” whereas the unfortunate doctor has been called to his last account with who knows what of sin upon his conscience! God does indeed move in a mysterious way. Yet indeed, are we ourselves in much better case? What chance have we to make any refuge in these lonely seas, or to survive long the tempests of the deep?”
These inquiries, which were indeed merely rhetorical, were not answered by the sailors, who
needed all their breath for their labour. Miss Smith very properly used hers for singing hymns and offering up prayers for deliverance; as for the orphans, all theirs was spent on wailings and lamentings, due rather to present discomfort, for the cold and wet and the lurching of the boats was very disagreeable to them, than to fear, which they were too irrational to feel acutely.
Presently a voice hailed the boats from the water, and Dr. O'Malley was observed to be bobbing up and down near them, clinging to a spar from the wreck. With some difficulty he was extracted from the sea and dragged into the boat in which Miss Smith presided, where he lay in a great state of exhaustion, consoling himself with a bottle which, even in this fearful hour, he had not forgotten to place in his pocket before leaving the ship.
“Strange indeed,” mused Miss Smith, “are the ways of Providence, which has thought fit, in Its inscrutable wisdom to save the doctor and to drown seven innocent infants.”
Thus the fearful night wore through, becoming before morning much calmer, so that when dawn lightened the sky it revealed a dreary waste of gray waters which heaved indeed, and very disagreeably, but with so great an assuagement of their earlier fury that the danger of swamping seemed practically at an end. The two boats had kept within hail of one another, and daybreak found them but a few yards apart. The only other object visible in that vast and watery waste was a low mound of land which looked to be but a mile or so away.
“America!” ejaculated Miss Smith. “The Almighty be thanked that He has guided us aright through the deep!”
The doctor emitted a sound of scornful and intoxicated mirth. The sailors addressed Miss Smith with no greater contempt than that which they entertained for all her sex.