In the Footprints of the Padres | Page 4

ago in California!
There is no change like a sea change, no matter who suffers it; and
one's first sea voyage is a revelation. The mystery of it is usually not
unmixed with misery. Five and forty years ago it was a very serious
undertaking to uproot one's self, say good-bye to all that was nearest
and dearest, and go down beyond the horizon in an ill-smelling,
overcrowded, side-wheeled tub. Not a soul on the dock that day but
fully realized this. The dock and the deck ran rivers of tears, it seemed
to me; and when, after the lingering agony of farewells had reached the
climax, and the shore-lines were cast off, and the Star of the West
swung out into the stream, with great side-wheels fitfully revolving, a

shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting
from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her
emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I
have never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that
was enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about
to break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and
the shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding,
and confusion worse confounded in evidence everywhere,--perhaps it
did break, that overwrought heart of mine and has been a patched thing
ever since.
We were a miserable lot that night, pitched to and fro and rolled from
side to side as if we were so much baggage. And there was a special
horror in the darkness, as well as in the wind that hissed through the
rigging, and in the waves that rushed past us, sheeted with foam that
faded ghostlike as we watched it,--faded ghostlike, leaving the
blackness of darkness to enfold us and swallow us up.
Day after day for a dozen days we ploughed that restless sea. There
were days into which the sun shone not; when everybody and
everything was sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers
were sea-sick and the other half sick of the sea. The decks were slimy,
the cabins stuffy and foul. The hours hung heavily, and the horizon line
closed in about us a gray wall of mist.
Then I used to bury myself in my books and try to forget the world,
now lost to sight, and, as I sometimes feared, never to be found again. I
had brought my private library with me; it was complete in two
volumes. There was "Rollo Crossing the Atlantic," by dear old Jacob
Abbot; and this book of juvenile travel and adventure I read on the spot,
as it were,--read it carefully, critically; flattering myself that I was a lad
of experience, capable of detecting any nautical error which Jacob, one
of the most prolific authors of his day, might perchance have made.
The other volume was a pocket copy of "Robinson Crusoe," upon the
fly-leaf of which was scrawled, in an untutored hand, "Charley from
Freddy,"--this Freddy was my juvenile chum. I still have that little
treasure, with its inscription undimmed by time.

Frequently I have thought that the reading of this charming book may
have been the predominating influence in the development of my taste
and temper; for it was while I was absorbed in the exquisitely pathetic
story of Robinson Crusoe that the first island I ever saw dawned upon
my enchanted vision. We had weathered Cape Sable and the Florida
Keys. No sky was ever more marvellously blue than the sea beneath us.
The density and the darkness that prevail in Northern waters had gone
out of it; the sun gilded it, the moon silvered it, and the great stars
dropped their pearl-plummets into it in the vain search for soundings.
Sea gardens were there,--floating gardens adrift in the tropic gale; pale
green gardens of berry and leaf and long meandering vine, rocking
upon the waves that lapped the shores of the Antilles, feeding the
current of the warm Gulf Stream; and, forsooth, some of them to find
their way at last into the mazes of that mysterious, mighty, menacing
sargasso sea. Strange sea-monsters, more beautiful than monstrous,
sported in the foam about our prow, and at intervals dashed it with
color like animated rainbows. From wave to wave the flying fish
skimmed like winged arrows of silver. Sometimes a land-bird was
blown across the sky--the sea-birds we had always with us,--and ever
the air was spicy and the breeze like a breath of balm.
One day a little cloud dawned upon our horizon. It was at first pale and
pearly, then pink like the hollow of a sea-shell, then misty blue,--a
darker blue, a deep blue dissolving into green, and