第8章

"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's Bay," said the captain earnestly."We were delayed in lading, and baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-about and across.Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when Imade port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had.They cared for nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast.I owned an eighth of the vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her.She was a full-rigged ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky.Imeant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved.She had been an excellent vessel in her day.Of the cowards aboard her I can't say so much.""Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.

"I wa'n't caught astern o' the lighter by any fault of mine,"said the captain gloomily."We left Fort Churchill and run out into the Bay with a light pair o' heels; but I had been vexed to death with their red-tape rigging at the company's office, and chilled with stayin' on deck an' tryin' to hurry up things, and when we were well out o' sight o' land, headin' for Hudson's Straits, I had a bad turn o' some sort o' fever, and had to stay below.The days were getting short, and we made good runs, all well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of hard driving."I began to find this unexpected narrative a little dull.

Captain Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that lacked the longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but Ilistened respectfully while he explained the winds having become contrary, and talked on in a dreary sort of way about his voyage, the bad weather, and the disadvantages he was under in the lightness of his ship, which bounced about like a chip in a bucket, and would not answer the rudder or properly respond to the most careful setting of sails.

"So there we were blowin' along anyways," he complained; but looking at me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were unkindly wandering, he ceased to speak.

"It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure," said I, with redoubled interest.

"It was a dog's life," said the poor old gentleman, quite reassured, "but it made men of those who followed it.I see a change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers now, small and poor as 'tis, who once would have followed the sea, every lazy soul of 'em.There is no occupation so fit for just that class o' men who never get beyond the fo'cas'le.I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper.In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them.They saw the world for themselves, and like's not their wives and children saw it with them.They may not have had the best of knowledge to carry with 'em sight-seein', but they were some acquainted with foreign lands an' their laws, an' could see outside the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o'

proportion.Yes, they lived more dignified, and their houses were better within an' without.Shipping's a terrible loss to this part o' New England from a social point o' view, ma'am.""I have thought of that myself," I returned, with my interest quite awakened."It accounts for the change in a great many things,--the sad disappearance of sea-captains,--doesn't it?""A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading," said my companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching air of unreserve."A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for company's sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book.Most of us old shipmasters came to know 'most everything about something; one would take to readin' on farming topics, and some were great on medicine,--but Lord help their poor crews!--or some were all for history, and now and then there'd be one like me that gave his time to the poets.I was well acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and if you met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible while about their havin' so much information, and the money that could be made out of keepin' 'em.He was one of the smartest captains that ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive.There was old Cap'n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture measurements, same's other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all that.No, there's nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like ours.These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage.No: when folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it.There's no large-minded way of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule everything;we're all turned upside down and going back year by year.""Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to soothe his feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the noise of the water on a beach below.It sounded like the strange warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide.A late golden robin, with the most joyful and eager of voices, was singing close by in a thicket of wild roses.