A fair and prosperous voyage was prophesied by all, as the vessel flew along the Gulf Stream, the air growing softer with every day’s advance, and a fair wind keeping the officers and crew in perfect good humor.
After he had once conquered the dizziness with which he first tried to climb the rigging, Sam began to think with Ben, that the most delightful life in the world was a sailor’s. He had never been very fond of study, though he liked to read when the book exactly suited him. The district school from time immemorial had been taught by a woman in the summer. This was partly from a motive of laudable economy on the part of the school committee, who thought it their duty to have the young ideas of Merrill’s Corner taught to shoot with as little expense as possible. As to a woman’s earning half as much as a man, or justice demanding she should receive an equal rate of wages, it had never entered into their wise heads. “A woman’s school,” all the boys in the neighborhood felt to be entirely beneath their dignity, whether their services were needed at home or not.
In winter, “fun” was the principal pursuit. School was all very well, as an excuse for the boys to get together, and most of them studied just enough to keep out of the reach of punishment. Snowballing, skating and practical jokes upon the master, were pursued much more industriously than the geography, grammar and arithmetic, which they “went through” again and again. Up to the time of his leaving home, Sam had not the least understanding what English grammar was intended for. The master who taught it, sinned against half the rules in explaining them. He would tell them they “dun their sums wrong,” and that they “hadn’t got no lesson for a week.” Nor did the boys bother themselves with wondering what it was all about. They were brought up to go to school so many months every year, and supposed it was all right.
Now, at sea, there were very few books to be found. The sailors had a collection of old song and jest books, voyages, and biographies of celebrated criminals. One of them had bought Fox’s Book of Martyrs by mistake, at a stall, thinking from the pictures that it was an account of some great executions, possibly of pirates and highwaymen. It was the only thing like a religious book in the forecastle, except a few tracts and Testaments, sent on board by some society before the vessel left New-York. There was a Bible on the cabin table, replaced regularly every morning, after cleaning up, but no one ever looked into it. Cheap novels was the only branch of literature that had any encouragement in the cabin, where dice, cards and dominoes, formed the principal amusement.
It was astonishing to Sam how much he recollected at sea of what he had read at home. All the books in the district school library relating to political life or history, he ran through as he read them, without attempting to remember. He could not recall three rules in syntax, or the population of a single country of Europe, but facts and events he had not read more than once, he could tell by the half-hour to the sailors in return for their long stories, until these simple-hearted, unlettered men, began to look on him as a prodigy. They taught him every kind of knot that could be tied, or plaits that could be twisted, all the practical seamanship that a boy could understand, and for the first time in his life Sam began to feel a pride and interest in acquiring knowledge, for its own sake, and for the use he could put it to.
So far he had met with only one great disappointment. He had privately longed for a storm at sea, with “waves rolling mountains high,” as Ben used to quote from his favorite authors, and the ship “scudding under bare poles,” one of his newly acquired nautical phrases. He began to be afraid he should not be gratified, as the Swiftsure was fast leaving the region of storms behind, and the Horn seemed too distant to calculate upon. Every day as he went aloft to watch for a sail, he looked quite as wistfully for clouds. The captain had promised to speak the first homeward bound vessel, that they might send letters to the States. He did not intend to go into any port but Valparaiso, as they were so fortunate in the outset of their voyage, and he was anxious to round the Horn as soon as possible. So all hands watched for homeward-bound vessels every fair day, and those who had not become too indolent, amused themselves keeping a diary, to be sent by them to their friends. Sam had an elaborate sea-letter to Ben on hand, as his father intended writing to Mrs. Gilman, an intention which stopped there, for though he found plenty of “nothing in the world to do,” he never found “time to commence.”
Ben was to be furnished with a practical commentary on navigation, that might fit him for his favorite pursuit, if his father ever came to consent to it. It opened with several bold allusions to Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook. Sam’s first great discovery in seamanship, that there were but eight “ropes” in a ship, after all, followed the historical introduction. It would seem as incomprehensible to Ben as it had been to him at first, and he enjoyed in anticipation the puzzled look of unbelief, until the clue to the riddle was found, when he proceeded to name the complicated rigging, as braces, stays, clue-lines, halyards, &c., and contradicted the popular fallacy that “sheets” were sails, as they had always supposed. A statement that “eight bells” did not mean eight o’clock alone, but were sounded every four hours in the day, was added. Ben “stood generally corrected,” and a great deal of useful information upon reefing, furling, and slushing down the masts, was combined in the next page.
The last was written the first stormy day they had met with since leaving New-York harbor. Sam had been on deck, as usual, in the morning, but retreated to the society of the forecastle, as the wind and rain gradually increased. None of the sailors thought it was going to end in “much of a blow” at first, or that it was worth honoring with thick jackets and “sou’ westers.” The cabin passengers sat as long as possible at dinner, to pass away the time, and bothered the captain with useless questions every time he appeared among them.
But the gale increased slowly and surely. One sail after another was taken in. The captain was on deck all night, the mate or himself shouting their orders in the teeth of the roaring wind, and even then the men could scarcely distinguish them. Shut up in the dark and crowded steerage, bruised with the rolling of the vessel, Sam began to think, on the second day, that a storm at sea was by no means so romantic as he imagined. Some of the men, Colcord among them, were horribly frightened, and sure they were all going to the bottom. Some slept and some prayed, and cried like boys—some boys would have scorned the cowardice—and never ceased wishing they were safe on land again. Others swore at them for making such a disturbance, and exhorted them, in no very pious way, to “die like men”—at any rate.
Still the gale increased until the morning of the third day. The captain had very little hope that the ship could live through the tempest, and did not attempt to conceal it from the few passengers that ventured upon deck, clinging to the ropes and sides, lest they should share in the fate of every thing movable, and be washed over-board by some retreating wave. It seemed impossible, as the huge foam-crested surges rose above them, that the vessel could ever be lifted in safety,—as though the roaring waters must close over, and drive the ship with its awful freight of human souls down, down, down to the very depths of the yawning sea.
And now came a stunning shock, as the dread changed to the horror of reality, and driven over by the mingled force of wind and wave, the ship lay beaten helplessly along, her tall yards dipping the dark turbid waters.
There was no time for thought, scarcely for fear. The worn-out crew, the helpless passengers guided by the frantic gestures of the captain, worked with a strength and courage impossible in a less awful moment. The orders shouted in their very ears died away in the roar of the storm before they could be understood; but all obeyed the instinct of the moment, and worked as one man to lighten the ship. They cut and tore away with reckless energy every thing within their reach. The foremast, with every stay severed by rapid hacking strokes—quivered, snapped like a reed in the gale, and fell away with a dull, heavy plunge, heard above the awful roar. Not till then did any dare to hope, or even see as the ship slowly righted,—every timber creaking and shuddering as in the strain of parting,—that the dense clouds drifted with less violence above them, and the gale had spent its utmost fury.
In the first certainty of safety, no one thought of the losses and inconveniences that they had suffered. Yet, by the time the sea began to subside, captain, crew and passengers seemed to forget the awful danger, in fretting about losses, trifling in themselves, at least in comparison to their escape. Not a trace of fresh provisions now could be found, more than half the water and meat casks had disappeared in company with the mast. The “doctor,” as the cook was called by the sailors, mourned vainly over absenting pots, pans and coppers, that had gone to cook, this “food for fishes,”—and the cabin table vented their disgust to half-raw ham, and coffee, which had more the flavor of beef tea,—on his devoted head. The sunshine of mate and captain vanished with the serene sky, as the rigging of the jury-mast was retarded, and the sailors exercised their ancient privilege of grumbling on every thing that “turned up,” or “didn’t turn up,” as the case might be. Five, ten, fifteen disconsolate days above and below, until from the change in the vessel’s course, and a momentary condescension on the captain’s part, it was discovered that the Swiftsure was nearing Rio, to refit and take in fresh provisions.
Perhaps no one but the very youngest among them remembered with more than a passing thought how near they had been to the end of life. The danger, though he had not known it until it was over, had been a sermon which Sam could not but listen to, and he wondered at first with child-like undoubting belief in a future life, how they could all seem so indifferent to it. Then the recollection became less vivid, as the sea and sky returned to their calm beauty, and were absorbed, except in some just waking or sleeping moment, in the eager anticipation of land; and above all, first setting foot in a foreign country.
Nothing could be more welcome, or more beautiful, than the first distant, then gradually deepening view of Rio and the country around it. “Land ho,” had a magical sound, that brought every passenger to crowd the deck. For the last week the discomforts of the ship had become almost intolerable. Head winds, increasing heat, salt provisions adding to the cravings of thirst, that could only make the thick slimy water doled out to them endurable, were included in the list of grievances. The “Swiftsure,” was declared to belie her name entirely. The owners were rated and blamed from morning till night for crowding freight and passengers into a vessel scarcely sea-worthy, as they now suddenly discovered. Sam usually kept out of the way of his old comrades, the sailors, unless especially invited to join them, and they in turn crossed the Captain’s path as seldom as possible. Now every thing was changed, even the wind. The men moved with alacrity, the passengers clustered sociably together, talking of tropical fruits and wines, and were even heard to mention spring-water complacently.
It was the realization of some of his many dreams of enchantment to Sam, as the shore became more defined. The rocks and foliage of New Hampshire, for his home had been in one of its least fertile parts, gave him very little idea of the luxuriance of tropical countries, or the vivid beauty of color of the earth, and sea and sky, in the glowing sunset which welcomed them. It was so strange, after the isolation of the voyage, to see other ships passing, even steamboats, trailing their lines of smoke and vapor in the distance. The sharp summits of the Sugar Loaf, and the other mountains that gird this fine harbor, were touched by the very clouds.
The city, picturesque and novel, in the first distant view, grew stranger still as they came nearer and nearer, and cast anchor at last in the far-famed harbor of Rio Janeiro.