The Wreck of the Golden Mary | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas
Stories" edition by David Price, email [email protected]

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY

THE WRECK

I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have
encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and
metaphorical. It has always been my opinion since I first possessed
such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is
next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the
course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although I
am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have an
intelligent interest in most things.
A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I am in the habit
of holding forth about number one. That is not the case. Just as if I was
to come into a room among strangers, and must either be introduced or
introduce myself, so I have taken the liberty of passing these few
remarks, simply and plainly that it may be known who and what I am. I
will add no more of the sort than that my name is William George
Ravender, that I was born at Penrith half a year after my own father
was drowned, and that I am on the second day of this present blessed
Christmas week of one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, fifty-six
years of age.
When the rumour first went flying up and down that there was gold in
California--which, as most people know, was before it was discovered
in the British colony of Australia--I was in the West Indies, trading
among the Islands. Being in command and likewise part-owner of a
smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was doing it.
Consequently, gold in California was no business of mine.
But, by the time when I came home to England again, the thing was as
clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day. There was
Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths' shops, and the
very first time I went upon 'Change, I met a friend of mine (a seafaring
man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his watch-chain.
I handled it. It was as like a peeled walnut with bits unevenly broken

off here and there, and then electrotyped all over, as ever I saw
anything in my life.
I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, and she
died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am ashore, I live in
my house at Poplar. My house at Poplar is taken care of and kept
ship-shape by an old lady who was my mother's maid before I was born.
She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the world. She is
as fond of me as if she had ever had an only son, and I was he. Well do
I know wherever I sail that she never lays down her head at night
without having said, "Merciful Lord! bless and preserve William
George Ravender, and send him safe home, through Christ our
Saviour!" I have thought of it in many a dangerous moment, when it
has done me no harm, I am sure.
In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for best
part of a year: having had a long spell of it among the Islands, and
having (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever