THE SURVIVOR’S STORY

It is not much of a story. It is only the mild adventure of a boy at sea; and of a small, sad boy at that. This boy had an elder brother who was ill; and the physicians in consultation had decided that a long sea-voyage was his only hope, and that even in this case the hope was a very faint one.

There was a ship at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco,-a very famous clipper, one of those sailors of the sea known as Ocean Greyhounds. She was built for speed, and her record was a brilliant one; under the guidance of her daring captain, she had again and again proved herself worthy of her name. She was called the Flying Cloud. Her cabins were luxuriously furnished; for in those days seafarers were oftener blown about the world by the four winds of heaven than propelled by steam. Yet when the Flying Cloud, one January day, tripped anchor and set sail, there were but three strangers on the quarter-deck-a middle-aged gentleman in search of health, the invalid brother, in his eighteenth year, and the small, sad boy.

The captain’s wife, a lady of Salem who had followed him from sea to sea for many a year, was the joy and salvation of that forlorn little company. How forlorn it was only the survivor knows, and he knows well enough. Forty years have scarcely dimmed the memory of it. Through all the wear and tear of time the remembrance of that voyage has at intervals haunted him: the length of it, the weariness of it, and the almost unbroken monotony stretching through the ninety odd days that dawned and darkened between San Francisco and New York; the solitary sail that was blown on and on, and becalmed and buffeted between the blue waste of waters and the blue waste of sky; the lonesomeness of it all-no land, no lights flashing across the sea in glad assurance; no passing ships to hail us with faint-voiced “Ahoy!”-only the ever-tossing waves, the trailing sea-gardens, the tireless birds of the air and the monsters of the deep.

Ah, well-a-day! There was a solemn and hushed circle listening to family prayers that morning,-the morning of the 4th of January. The father’s voice trembled as he opened the Bible and read from that beautiful psalm:

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. For He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so He bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men!”

The small, sad boy looked smaller and sadder than ever as he stood on the deck of the Flying Cloud and waved his last farewell. He tried his best to be manly and to swallow the heart that was leaping in his throat, and at the earliest possible moment he flew to his journal and made his first entry there. He was going to keep a journal because his brother kept one, and because it was the proper thing to keep a journal at sea-no ship is complete without its log, you know; and, moreover, I think it was a custom in that family to keep a journal; for it was, more or less, a journalistic family.

Now we are nearing the anniversary of that boy’s journal: it runs through January, February and March; it is more than forty years old this minute. And because it is a boy’s journal, and the boy was small and sad, I’m going to peep into it and fish out a line or two. With an effort he made this entry:

“CLIPPER SHIP, FLYING CLOUD,
“January 4, 1857.

“I watched them till we were out of sight of them, and then began to look about to see what I could see. It begins to get rough. I tried to see home, but I could not. The pilot says he will take a letter ashore for us. Now I will go to bed.”

Then he cried unto the Lord in his trouble with a heart as heavy as lead.

“JA.-The day rather rough, with little squalls of rain. We are passing the Farallone Islands, but I feel too bad to sketch them. I get homesick when I think of the dear ones I left behind me. I hope I may see them all in this world again.”

That was the gray beginning of a voyage that had very little color in it. The coast-line sank apace; the gray rocks-the Farallones, the haunt of the crying gull-dissolved in the gray mist. The hours were all alike: all dismal and slow-footed.

“I don’t feel very well to-day,” said the small, sad boy, quite plaintively. On the 6th he brightens and begins to take notice. History would have less to fasten on were there not some such entries as this:

“A list of our live-stock: 17 pigs; 12 dozen hens and roosters; 3 turkeys; 1 gobbler; a cockatoo and a wild-cat. We have a fair breeze, and carry 26 sails.

“JA.-The day is calm. I began to read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I like it. The captain’s wife was going to train the wild-cat when it bit her-but not very hard.

“8.-There was not much wind to-day. We fished for sea-gulls and caught four. I caught one and let it go again. Two hens flew overboard. The sailors in a boat got one of them; the gulls killed one.

“9.-The day has been rather gloomy. I caught another sea-gull but let him go again. On deck nearly all day.

“10.-The cockatoo sits on deck and talks and talks.

“11.-It makes me feel bad when I think of home. I want to be there.”

The long, long weary days dragged on. It is thought worth while to note that there were fresh eggs for breakfast, fresh pork for dinner, fresh chicken for supper; that a porpoise had been captured, and that his carcass yielded “three gallons of oil as good as sperm oil”; that no ship had been seen-“no sail from day to day”; that they were in the latitude of Panama; that it was squally or not squally, as the case might be; that on one occasion they captured “four barrels of oil,” the flotsam of some ill-fated whaler, and that it all proved “very exciting”; that a dolphin was captured, and that he died in splendor, passing through the whole gamut of the rainbow-that the words of tradition might be fulfilled; that the hens had suffered no sea-change, but had contributed from a dozen to two dozen eggs per day. Still stretched the immeasurable waste of waters to the horizon line on every hand. Day by day the small boy made his entries; but he seemed to be running down, like a clock, and needed winding up. This is how his record dwindled:

“JA.-The day is very pleasant, with some wind. We crossed the equator. I sat up in one of the boats a long time. I wish my little brothers were here to play with me.

“21.-The day is very pleasant, with a good breeze. We are going ten or eleven knots an hour.

“22.-The day is very pleasant. A nine-knot breeze. Nothing new happened to-day.

“23.-The day is pleasant. Six-knot breeze.”

It came to pass that the small, sad boy, wearying of “Uncle Tom” and his “cabin,” was driven to extremes; and, having obtained leave of the captain-who was autocrat of all his part of the world,-he climbed into one of the ship’s boats, as it hung in the davits over the side of the vessel. It was an airy voyage he took there, sailing between sea and sky, soaring up and down with the rolling vessel, like a bird upon the wing.

He rigged a tiny mast there-it was a walking-stick that ably served this purpose; the captain’s wife provided sails no larger than handkerchiefs. With thread-like ropes and pencil spars he set his sails for dreamland. One day the wind bothered him; he could not trim his canvas, and in desperation he set it dead against the wind, and then the sails were filled almost to bursting. But his navigation was at fault; for he was heading in a direction quite opposite to the Flying Cloud.

Then came a facetious sailor and whispered to him: “Do you want ever to get to New York?”-“Yes, I do,” said the little captain of the midair craft.-“Well, then, you’d better haul in sail; for you’re set dead agin us now.” The sails were struck on the instant and never unfurled again.

I wonder why some people are so very inconsiderate when they speak to children, especially to simple or sensitive children? The small, sad boy took it greatly to heart, and was cast down because he feared that he might have delayed the bark that bore him all too slowly toward the far-distant port. This was indeed simplicity of the deepest dye, and something of that simplicity the boy was never to escape unto the end of time. We are as God made us, and we must in all cases put up with ourselves.

What a lonely voyage was that across the vast and vacant sea! Now and then a distant sail glimmered upon the horizon, but disappeared like a vanishing snowflake. The equator was crossed; the air grew colder; storm and calm followed each other; the daily entry now becomes monotonous.

“FEBRUARY 2.-To-day for the first time we saw an albatross.

“7.-Rather rough and cold; I have spent all day in the cabin. It makes me homesick to have such weather.

“14.-I rose at five o’clock and went on deck, and before long saw land. It was Terra del Fuego; it was a beautiful sight. Here lay a pretty island, there a towering precipice, and over yonder a mountain covered with snow. We made the fatal Cape Horn at two o’clock, and passed it at four o’clock. Now we are in the Atlantic Ocean.

“WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY.-Rough weather: a sixteen-knot breeze. To-day we got our one thousandth egg, and the hens are doing well. At twelve-eight bells-we saw a sail on our weather-bow: she was going the same way as we were. At two, we overtook and spoke her. She was the whaler Scotland from New Zealand, bound for New Bedford, with thirty-five hundred barrels of oil. We soon passed her. I wish her good luck.”

I will no longer stretch the small, sad boy upon the rack of his dull journal. He had a glimpse at Juan Fernandez, but the island of his dreams was so far off that he had to climb to the maintop in order to get a sight of its shadowy outline. When it had faded away like the clouds, the lonely little fellow cried himself to sleep for love of his Robinson Crusoe.

One night the moon-a large, mellow tropical one,-rose from a bank of cloud so like a mountain’s chain that the small one clapped his hands in glee and cried: “Land ho!” But, alas! it was only cloud-land; and his eyes, that were starving for a sight of God’s green earth, were again bedewed. Indeed he was bound for a distant shore, a voyage of ninety-one days; and during all that voyage he was in sight of land for five days only. It may be said that the port he was bound for, and where he was destined to pass two years at school, four thousand miles from his own people, may be called “The Vale of Tears.”

Off the Brazilian coast a head-wind forced the ship to tack repeatedly; she was sometimes so near the land that people could be seen moving, like black dots, along the shore. Native fishermen, mounted upon the high seats of their catamarans-the frailest rafts,-drifted within hailing distance; and over night the brave ship was within almost speaking distance of Pernambuco. The lights of the city were like a bed of glowworms,-but the small, sad boy was blown off into the sea again, for his hour had not yet come.

Here is the last entry I shall weary you with, for I would not abuse your patience:

“APRIL 5, 1857.-I was awoke this morning by the noise the pilot made in getting on board. At ten o’clock the steam-tug Hercules took us in tow. We had beautiful views of the shore [God knows how beautiful they were in his eyes!], and at three o’clock we were at the Astor House, with Captain and Mrs. Cresey, Mr. Connor, and the Stoddard boys-all of the Flying Cloud,-where we retired to soft beds to spend the night.”

There is a plaintive touch in that reference to soft beds after three months in the straight and narrow bunk of a ship. And there is more pathos in all those childish pages than you wot of; for, alas and alas! I am the sole survivor,-I was that small, sad boy; and I alone am left to tell the tale.