One Evening, While Waiting
The Slow Movements Of An Opponent At Chess, The Following Remarks In
Slightly Raised Tones Were Audible Above The Rest:
- "Do you really think
me pretty?
- Oh flattering man! - Deuce, ace - Treble, double, and rub -
That's a good hand - Check - It's your play - You've gammoned me - Ay, ay,
sir - Parbleu! - Holloa! steward, whisky-toddy for four - I totally despise
conventionalisms - Checkmate - Brandy-punch for six - You've thrown away all
your hearts" - and a hundred others, many of them demands for something
from the culinary department. Occasionally a forlorn wight, who neither
played chess nor cards, would venture on deck to kill time, and return
into the saloon panting and shivering, in rough surtout and fur cap,
bringing a chilly atmosphere with him, voted a bore for leaving the door
open, and totally unable to induce people to sympathise with him in his
complaints of rain, cold, or the "ugly night." By eleven the saloon used
to become almost unbearable, from the combined odours of roast onions,
pickles, and punch, and at half-past the lights were put out, and the
company dispersed, most to their berths, but some to smoke cigars on deck.
Though the Cunard steamers are said by English people to be as near
perfection as steamers can be, I was sorry not to return in a clipper.
There is something so exhilarating in the motion of a sailing-vessel,
always provided she is neither rolling about in a calm, lying to in a
gale, or beating against a head-wind. She seems to belong to the sea, with
her tall tapering masts, her cloud of moving canvas, and her buoyant
motion over the rolling waves. Her movements are all comprehensible, and
above-board she is invariably clean, and her crew are connected in one's
mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of
youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. "Sam Slick," with his usual
force and aptitude of illustration, says that "she goes through the water
like a subsoil-plough with an eight-horse team." There is so much noise
and groaning, and smoke and dirt, so much mystery also, and the ship
leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be
any regular sailors, and in their stead a collection of individuals
remarkably greasy in their appearance, who may be cooks or stokers, or
possibly both. Then you cannot go on the poop without being saluted by a
whiff of hot air from the grim furnaces below; men are always shovelling
in coal, or throwing cinders overboard; and the rig does not seem to
belong to any ship in particular. The masts are low and small, and the
canvas, which is always spread in fair weather, looks as if it had been
trailed along Cheapside on a wet day. In the America it was not such a
very material assistance either; for on one occasion, when we were running
before a splendid breeze under a crowd of sail, the engines were stopped
and the log heaved, which only gave our speed at three miles an hour. One
lady passenger had been feeding her mind with stories of steamboat
explosions in the States, and spent her time in a morbid state of terror
by no means lessened by the close proximity of her state-room to the
dreaded engine.
On the sixth day after leaving Halifax the wind, which everybody had been
hoping for or fearing, came upon us at last, and continued increasing for
three days, when, if we had been beating against it, we should have called
it a hurricane. It was, however, almost directly aft, and we ran before it
under sail. The sky during the two days which it lasted was perfectly
cloudless, and the sea had that peculiar deep, clear, greenish-blue tint
only to be met with far from land. There was a majesty, a sublimity about
the prospect from the poop exceeding everything which I had ever seen.
There was the mighty ocean showing his power, and here were we poor
insignificant creatures overcoming him by virtue of those heaven sent arts
by which man
"Has made fire, flood, and earth,
The vassals of his will."
I had often read of mountain waves, but believed the comparison to be a
mere figure of speech till I saw them here, all glorious in their beauty,
under the clear blue of a December sky. Two or three long high hills of
water seemed to fill up the whole horizon, themselves an aggregate of a
countless number of leaping, foam-capped waves, each apparently large
enough to overwhelm a ship. Huge green waves seemed to chase us, when,
just as they reached the stern, the ship would lift, and they would pass
under her. She showed especial capabilities for rolling. She would roll
down on one side, the billows seeming ready to burst in foam over her,
while the opposite bulwark was fifteen or eighteen feet above the water,
displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the
days, when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a
brilliancy unknown in our foggy clime. It did not look like a wan flat
surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere
hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The
towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds,
looked like hills of green glass, and the phosphorescent light like fiery
lamps within - the moonlight glittered upon our broad foamy wake - our masts
and spars and rigging stood out in sharp relief against the sky, while for
once our canvas looked white. Far in the distance the sharp bow would
plunge down into the foam, and then our good ship, rising, would shake her
shiny sides, as if in joy at her own buoyancy. The busy hum of men marred
not the solitary sacredness of midnight on the Atlantic.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 126 of 128
Words from 127817 to 128826
of 129941
