A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
“When I sailed: when I sailed.”
Ballad of Robert Kidd.
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A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
“When I sailed: when I sailed.”
Ballad of Robert Kidd.
With the opening of spring my heart opens. My
fancy expands with the flowers, and, as I walk down
town in the May morning, toward the dingy counting-room,
and the old routine, you would hardly
believe that I would not change my feelings for
those of the French Barber-Poet Jasmin, who goes,
merrily singing, to his shaving and hair cutting.
The first warm day puts the whole winter to
flight. It stands in front of the summer like a young
warrior before his host, and, single-handed, defies
and destroys its remorseless enemy.
I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the
earliest breath of summer.
“The brave young David has hit old Goliah
square in the forehead this morning,” I say to
Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft sunshine.
My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not
quite disentangled from her dreams, thinks I am
speaking of a street-brawl, and replies that I had
better take care of my own head.
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“Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose,”
I answer gaily, turning round to make her one of
Titbottom's bows.
“But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer
wardrobe?”
Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two
months of winter yet, and I had better stop and
order some more coal as I go down town.
“Winter—coal!”
Then I step back, and taking her by the arm,
lead her to the window. I throw it open even
wider than before. The sunlight streams on the
great church-towers opposite, and the trees in the
neighboring square glisten, and wave their boughs
gently, as if they would burst into leaf before dinner.
Cages are hung at the open chamber-windows
in the street, and the birds, touched into song by
the sun, make Memnon true. Prue's purple and
white hyacinths are in full blossom, and perfume
the warm air, so that the canaries and the mocking
birds are no longer aliens in the city streets,
but are once more swinging in their spicy native
groves.
A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, listening
and looking. Cuba and the Tropics are in the air.
The drowsy tune of a hand-organ rises from the
square, and Italy comes singing in upon the sound.
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My triumphant eyes meet Prue's. They are full of
sweetness and spring.
“What do you think of the summer-wardrobe
now?” I ask, and we go down to breakfast.
But the air has magic in it, and I do not cease to
dream. If I meet Charles, who is bound for Alabama,
or John, who sails for Savannah, with a
trunk full of white jackets, I do not say to them, as
their other friends say,—
“Happy travellers, who cut March and April
out of the dismal year!”
I do not envy them. They will be sea-sick on the
way. The southern winds will blow all the water
out of the rivers, and, desolately stranded upon mud,
they will relieve the tedium of the interval by tying
with large ropes a young gentleman raving with
delirium tremens. They will hurry along, appalled
by forests blazing in the windy night; and, housed
in a bad inn, they will find themselves anxiously
asking, “Are the cars punctual in leaving?”—
grimly sure that impatient travellers find all conveyances
too slow. The travellers are very warm,
indeed, even in March and April,—but Prue doubts
if it is altogether the effect of the southern climate.
Why should they go to the South? If they only
wait a little, the South will come to them. Savannah
arrives in April; Florida in May; Cuba and the
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Gulf come in with June, and the full splendor of
the Tropics burns through July and August. Sitting
upon the earth, do we not glide by all the constellations,
all the awful stars? Does not the flash
of Orion's scimeter dazzle as we pass? Do we not
hear, as we gaze in hushed midnights, the music of
the Lyre; are we not throned with Cassiopea; do
we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as
we sail, as we sail?
When Christopher told me that he was going to
Italy, I went into Bourne's conservatory, saw a
magnolia, and so reached Italy before him. Can
Christopher bring Italy home? But I brought to
Prue a branch of magnolia blossoms, with Mr.
Bourne's kindest regards, and she put them upon
her table, and our little house smelled of Italy for a
week afterward. The incident developed Prue's
Italian tastes, which I had not suspected to be so
strong. I found her looking very often at the magnolias;
even holding them in her hand, and standing
before the table with a pensive air. I suppose she
was thinking of Beatrice Cenci, or of Tasso and
Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or of some
other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe.
So easily Prue went to Italy!
Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in
the air, and leaps along my veins as well as through
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the trees. I immediately travel. An orange takes
me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to Pæstum.
The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring Brazil
into the happy rooms she treads, and she takes me
to South America as she goes to dinner. The pearls
upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf.
Upon her shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his
carpet, I am transported to the vales of Cashmere;
and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring days,
I go round the world.
But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that
could only be satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds
were real, and I could stroll among the towering
splendors of a sultry spring evening. Ah! if I could
leap those flaming battlements that glow along the
west—if I could tread those cool, dewy, serene
isles of sunset, and sink with them in the sea of
stars.
I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles.
“But why is it so impossible,” I ask, “if you go
to Italy upon a magnolia branch?”
The smile fades from her eyes.
“I went a shorter voyage than that,” she answered;
“it was only to Mr. Bourne's.”
I walked slowly out of the house, and overtook
Titbottom as I went. He smiled gravely as he
greeted me, and said:
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“I have been asked to invite you to join a little
pleasure party.”
“Where is it going?”
“Oh! anywhere,” answered Titbottom.
“And how?”
“Oh! anyhow,” he replied.
“You mean that everybody is to go wherever he
pleases, and in the way he best can. My dear Titbottom,
I have long belonged to that pleasure party,
although I never heard it called by so pleasant a
name before.”
My companion said only:
“If you would like to join, I will introduce
you to the party. I cannot go, but they are all on
board.”
I answered nothing; but Titbottom drew me
along. We took a boat, and put off to the most
extraordinary craft I had ever seen. We approached
her stern, and, as I curiously looked at it, I could
think of nothing but an old picture that hung in
my father's house. It was of the Flemish school,
and represented the rear view of the vrouw of a
burgomaster going to market. The wide yards were
stretched like elbows, and even the studding-sails
were spread. The hull was seared and blistered,
and, in the tops, I saw what I supposed to be strings
of turnips of cabbages, little round masses, with
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tufted crests; but Titbottom assured me they were
sailors.
We rowed hard, but came no nearer the vessel.
“She is going with the tide and wind,” said I;
“we shall never catch her.”
My companion said nothing.
“But why have they set the studding-sails?”
asked I.
“She never takes in any sails,” answered Titbottom.
“The more fool she,” thought I, a little impatiently,
angry at not getting nearer to the vessel.
But I did not say it aloud. I would as soon have
said it to Prue as to Titbottom. The truth is, I
began to feel a little ill, from the motion of the boat,
and remembered, with a shade of regret, Prue and
peppermint. If wives could only keep their husbands
a little nauseated, I am confident they might
be very sure of their constancy.
But, somehow, the strange ship was gained, and
I found myself among as singular a company as I
have ever seen. There were men of every country,
and costumes of all kinds. There was an indescribable
mistiness in the air, or a premature twilight,
in which all the figures looked ghostly and unreal.
The ship was of a model such as I had never seen,
and the rigging had a musty odor, so that the whole
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craft smelled like a ship-chandler's shop grown
mouldy. The figures glided rather than walked
about, and I perceived a strong smell of cabbage
issuing from the hold.
But the most extraordinary thing of all was the
sense of resistless motion which possessed my mind
the moment my foot struck the deck. I could have
sworn we were dashing through the water at the
rate of twenty knots an hour. (Prue has a great,
but a little ignorant, admiration of my technical
knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked
aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and
I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging,
but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it
came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders;
or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish
main, echoing through remote years—so far away it
sounded.
Yet I heard no orders given; I saw no sailors
running aloft, and only one figure crouching over
the wheel. He was lost behind his great beard as
behind a snow-drift. But the startling speed with
which we scudded along did not lift a solitary hair
of that beard, nor did the old and withered face of
the pilot betray any curiosity or interest as to what
breakers, or reefs, or pitiless shores, might be lying
in ambush to destroy us.
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Still on we swept; and as the traveller in a nighttrain
knows that he is passing green fields, and
pleasant gardens, and winding streams fringed with
flowers, and is now gliding through tunnels or darting
along the base of fearful cliffs, so I was conscious
that we were pressing through various climates
and by romantic shores. In vain I peered into the
gray twilight mist that folded all. I could only see
the vague figures that grew and faded upon the
haze, as my eye fell upon them, like the intermittent
characters of sympathetic ink when heat
touches them.
Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in which
we sailed, and then cold as the breath of a polar
ocean. The perfume of new-mown hay and the
breath of roses, came mingled with the distant
music of bells, and the twittering song of birds, and
a low surf-like sound of the wind in summer woods.
There were all sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil
landscape such as Prue loves—and which shall
be painted as the background of her portrait whenever
she sits to any of my many artist friends—and
that pastoral beauty shall be called England; I
strained my eyes into the cruel mist that held all
that music and all that suggested beauty, but I
could see nothing. It was so sweet that I scarcely
knew if I cared to see. The very thought of it
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charmed my senses and satisfied my heart. I smelled
and heard the landscape that I could not see.
Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of blossoming
vineyards was wafted across the air; the
flowery richness of orange groves, and the sacred
odor of crushed bay leaves, such as is pressed from
them when they are strewn upon the flat pavement
of the streets of Florence, and gorgeous priestly
processions tread them under foot. A steam of incense
filled the air. I smelled Italy—as in the
magnolia from Bourne's garden—and, even while
my heart leaped with the consciousness, the odor
passed, and a stretch of burning silence succeeded.
It was an oppressive zone of heat—oppressive not
only from its silence, but from the sense of awful,
antique forms, whether of art or nature, that were
sitting, closely veiled, in that mysterious obscurity.
I shuddered as I felt that if my eyes could pierce
that mist, or if it should lift and roll away, I should
see upon a silent shore low ranges of lonely hills,
or mystic figures and huge temples trampled out of
history by time.
This, too, we left. There was a rustling of distant
palms, the indistinct roar of beasts, and the
hiss of serpents. Then all was still again. Only
at times the remote sigh of the weary sea, moaning
around desolate isles undiscovered; and the howl of
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winds that had never wafted human voices, but had
rung endless changes upon the sound of dashing
waters, made the voyage more appalling and the
figures around me more fearful.
As the ship plunged on through all the varying
zones, as climate and country drifted behind us, unseen
in the gray mist, but each, in turn, making
that quaint craft England or Italy, Africa and the
Southern seas, I ventured to steal a glance at the
motley crew, to see what impression this wild career
produced upon them.
They sat about the deck in a hundred listless
postures. Some leaned idly over the bulwarks, and
looked wistfully away from the ship, as if they
fancied they saw all that I inferred but could not
see. As the perfume, and sound, and climate
changed, I could see many a longing eye sadden
and grow moist, and as the chime of bells echoed
distinctly like the airy syllables of names, and, as it
were, made pictures in music upon the minds of
those quaint mariners—then dry lips moved, perhaps
to name a name, perhaps to breathe a prayer.
Others sat upon the deck, vacantly smoking pipes
that required no refilling, but had an immortality of
weed and fire. The more they smoked the more
mysterious they became. The smoke made the
mist around them more impenetrable, and I could
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clearly see that those distant sounds gradually grew
more distant, and, by some of the most desperate
and constant smokers, were heard no more. The
faces of such had an apathy, which, had it been human,
would have been despair.
Others stood staring up into the rigging, as if
calculating when the sails must needs be rent and
the voyage end. But there was no hope in their
eyes, only a bitter longing. Some paced restlessly
up and down the deck. They had evidently been
walking a long, long time. At intervals they, too,
threw a searching glance into the mist that enveloped
the ship, and up into the sails and rigging
that stretched over them in hopeless strength and
order.
One of the promenaders I especially noticed.
His beard was long and snowy, like that of the
pilot. He had a staff in his hand, and his movement
was very rapid. His body swung forward, as
if to avoid something, and his glance half turned
back over his shoulder, apprehensively, as if he
were threatened from behind. The head and the
whole figure were bowed as if under a burden,
although I could not see that he had anything upon
his shoulders; and his gait was not that of a man
who is walking off the ennui of a voyage, but rather of
a criminal flying, or of a startled traveller pursued.
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As he came nearer to me in his walk, I saw that
his features were strongly Hebrew, and there was
an air of the proudest dignity, fearfully abased, in
his mien and expression. It was more than the dignity
of an individual. I could have believed that
the pride of a race was humbled in his person.
His agile eye presently fastened itself upon me,
as a stranger. He came nearer and nearer to me,
as he paced rapidly to and fro, and was evidently
several times on the point of addressing me, but,
looking over his shoulder apprehensively, he passed
on. At length, with a great effort, he paused for an
instant, and invited me to join him in his walk.
Before the invitation was fairly uttered, he was in
motion again. I followed, but I could not overtake
him. He kept just before me, and turned occasionally
with an air of terror, as if he fancied I were
dogging him; then glided on more rapidly.
His face was by no means agreeable, but it had
an inexplicable fascination, as if it had been turned
upon what no other mortal eyes had ever seen. Yet
I could hardly tell whether it were, probably, an
object of supreme beauty or of terror. He looked
at everything as if he hoped its impression might
obliterate some anterior and awful one; and I was
gradually possessed with the unplesant idea that his
eyes were never closed—that, in fact, he never slept.
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Suddenly, fixing me with his unnatural, wakeful
glare, he whispered something which I could not
understand, and then darted forward even more
rapidly, as if he dreaded that, in merely speaking,
he had lost time.
Still the ship drove on, and I walked hurriedly
along the deck, just behind my companion. But
our speed and that of the ship contrasted strangely
with the mouldy smell of old rigging, and the listless
and lazy groups, smoking and leaning on the
bulwarks. The seasons, in endless succession and
iteration, passed over the ship. The twilight was
summer haze at the stern, while it was the fiercest
winter mist at the bows. But as a tropical breath,
like the warmth of a Syrian day, suddenly touched
the brow of my companion, he sighed, and I could
not help saying:
“You must be tired.”
He only shook his head and quickened his pace.
But now that I had once spoken, it was not so
difficult to speak, and I asked him why he did not
stop and rest.
He turned for moment, and a mournful sweetness
shone in his dark eyes and haggard, swarthy face.
It played flittingly around that strange look of
ruined human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset
about a crumbling and forgotten temple. He
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put his hand hurriedly to his forehead, as if he were
trying to remember—like a lunatic, who, having
heard only the wrangle of fiends in his delirium,
suddenly, in a conscious moment, perceives the
familiar voice of love. But who could this be, to
whom mere human sympathy was so startlingly
sweet?
Still moving, he whispered with a woful sadness,
“I want to stop, but I cannot. If I could only
stop long enough to leap over the bulwarks!”
Then he sighed long and deeply, and added,
“But I should not drown.”
So much had my interest been excited by his
face and movement, that I had not observed the
costume of this strange being. He wore a black
hat upon his head. It was not only black, but it
was shiny. Even in the midst of this wonderful
scene, I could observe that it had the artificial newness
of a second-hand hat; and, at the same moment,
I was disgusted by the odor of old clothes—
very old clothes, indeed. The mist and my sympathy
had prevented my seeing before what a singular
garb the figure wore. It was all second-hand
and carefully ironed, but the garments were obviously
collected from every part of the civilized
globe. Good heavens! as I looked at the coat, I
had a strange sensation. I was sure that I had
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once worn that coat. It was my wedding surtout—
long in the skirts—which Prue had told me,
years and years before, she had given away to the
neediest Jew beggar she had ever seen.
The spectral figure dwindled in my fancy—the
features lost their antique grandeur, and the restless
eye ceased to be sublime from immortal sleeplessness,
and became only lively with mean cunning.
The apparition was fearfully grotesque, but the
driving ship and the mysterious company gradually
restored its tragic interest. I stopped and leaned
against the side, and heard the rippling water that
I could not see, and flitting through the mist, with
anxious speed, the figure held its way. What was
he flying? What conscience with relentless sting
pricked this victim on?
He came again nearer and nearer to me in his
walk. I recoiled with disgust, this time, no less
than terror. But he seemed resolved to speak, and,
finally, each time, as he passed me, he asked single
questions, as a ship which fires whenever it can
bring a gun to bear.
“Can you tell me to what port we are
bound?”
“No,” I replied; “but how came you to take
passage without inquiry? To me it makes little
difference.”
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“Nor do I care,” he answered, when he next
came near enough; I have already been there.”
“Where?” asked I.
“Wherever we are going,” he replied. “I have
been there a great many times, and, oh! I am very
tired of it.”
“But why are you here at all, then; and why
don't you stop?”
There was a singular mixture of a hundred conflicting
emotions in his face, as I spoke. The
representative grandeur of a race, which he sometimes
showed in his look, faded into a glance of
hopeless and puny despair. His eyes looked at me
curiously, his chest heaved, and there was clearly a
struggle in his mind, between some lofty and mean
desire. At times, I saw only the austere suffering
of ages in his strongly-carved features, and again I
could see nothing but the second-hand black hat
above them. He rubbed his forehead with his
skinny hand; he glanced over his shoulder, as if
calculating whether he had time to speak to me;
and then, as a splendid defiance flashed from his
piercing eyes, so that I know how Milton's Satan
looked, he said, bitterly, and with hopeless sorrow,
that no mortal voice ever knew before:
“I cannot stop: my woe is infinite, like my
sin!”—and he passed into the mist.
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But, in a few moments, he reappeared. I could
now see only the hat, which sank more and more
over his face, until it covered it entirely; and I
heard a querulous voice, which seemed to be quarrelling
with itself, for saying what it was compelled
to say, so that the words were even more appalling
than what it had said before:
“Old clo'! old clo'!”
I gazed at the disappearing figure, in speechless
amazement, and was still looking, when I was
tapped upon the shoulder, and, turning round, saw
a German cavalry officer, with a heavy moustache,
and a dog-whistle in his hand.
“Most extraordinary man, your friend yonder,”
said the officer; “I don't remember to have seen
him in Turkey, and yet I recognize upon his feet
the boots that I wore in the great Russian cavalry
charge, where I individually rode down five hundred
and thirty Turks, slew seven hundred, at a moderate
computation, by the mere force of my rush,
and, taking the seven insurmountable walls of
Constantinople at one clean flying leap, rode straight
into the seraglio, and, dropping the bridle, cut the
sultan's throat with my bridle-hand, kissed the
other to the ladies of the hareem, and was back
again within our lines and taking a glass of wine
with the hereditary Grand Duke Generalissimo
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before he knew that I had mounted. Oddly enough,
your old friend is now sporting the identical boots
I wore on that occasion.”
The cavalry officer coolly curled his moustache
with his fingers. I looked at him in silence.
“Speaking of boots,” he resumed, “I don't remember
to have told you of that little incident of
the Princess of the Crimea's diamonds. It was
slight, but curious. I was dining one day with the
Emperor of the Crimea, who always had a cover
laid for me at his table, when he said, in great perplexity,
`Baron, my boy, I am in straits. The Shah
of Persia has just sent me word that he has
presented me with two thousand pearl-of-Oman
necklaces, and I don't know how to get them over,
the duties are so heavy.' `Nothing easier,' replied
I; `I'll bring them in my boots.' `Nonsense!' said
the Emperor of the Crimea. `Nonsense! yourself,'
replied I, sportively: for the Emperor of the
Crimea always gives me my joke; and so after
dinner I went over to Persia. The thing was easily
enough done. I ordered a hundred thousand pairs
of boots or so, filled them with the pearls; said at
the Custom-house that they were part of my private
wardrobe, and I had left the blocks in to keep
them stretched, for I was particular about my
bunions. The officers bowed, and said that their
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own feet were tender, upon which I jokingly remarked
that I wished their consciences were, and
so in the pleasantest manner possible the pearl-of-Oman
necklaces were bowed out of Persia, and the
Emperor of the Crimea gave me three thousand of
them as my share. It was no trouble. It was
only ordering the boots, and whistling to the infernal
rascals of Persian shoe-makers to hang for
their pay.”
I could reply nothing to my new acquaintance,
but I treasured his stories to tell to Prue, and at
length summoned courage to ask him why he had
taken passage.
“Pure fun,” answered he, “nothing else under
the sun. You see, it happened in this way:—I
was sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar of
Lebanon, on the very summit of that mountain,
when suddenly, feeling a little warm, I took a brisk
dive into the Mediterranean. Now I was careless,
and got going obliquely, and with the force of such
a dive I could not come up near Sicily, as I had
intended, but I went clean under Africa, and came
out at the Cape of Good Hope, and as Fortune
would have it, just as this good ship was passing.
So I sprang over the side, and offered the crew to
treat all round if they would tell me where I started
from. But I suppose they had just been piped to
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grog, for not a man stirred, except your friend
yonder, and he only kept on stirring.”
“Are you going far?” I asked.
The cavalry officer looked a little disturbed. “I
cannot precisely tell,” answered he, “in fact, I wish
I could;” and he glanced round nervously at the
strange company.
“If you should come our way, Prue and I will
be very glad to see you,” said I, “and I can promise
you a warm welcome from the children.”
Many thanks,” said the officer,—and handed me
his card, upon which I read, Le Baron Munchausen.
“I beg your pardon,” said a low voice at my
side; and, turning, I saw one of the most constant
smokers—a very old man—“I beg your pardon, but
can you tell me where I came from?”
“I am sorry to say I cannot,” answered I, as I
surveyed a man with a very bewildered and wrinkled
face, who seemed to be intently looking for
something.
“Nor where I am going?”
I replied that it was equally impossible. He
mused a few moments, and then said slowly, “Do
you know, it is a very strange thing that I have not
found anybody who can answer me either of those
questions. And yet I must have come from somewhere,”
said he, speculatively—“yes, and I must
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be going somewhere, and I should really like to
know something about it.”
“I observe,” said I, “that you smoke a good
deal, and perhaps you find tobacco clouds your
brain a little.”
“Smoke! Smoke!” repeated he, sadly, dwelling
upon the words; “why, it all seems smoke to
me;” and he looked wistfully around the deck, and
I felt quite ready to agree with him.
“May I ask what you are here for,” inquired I;
“perhaps your health, or business of some kind;
although I was told it was a pleasure party?”
“That's just it,” said he; “if I only knew where
we were going, I might be able to say something
about it. But where are you going?”
“I am going home as fast as I can,” replied I
warmly, for I began to be very uncomfortable.
The old man's eyes half closed, and his mind seemed
to have struck a scent.
“Isn't that where I was going? I believe it is;
I wish I knew; I think that's what it is called.
Where is home?”
And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud of
smoke, in which he was quite lost.
“It is certainly very smoky,” said he, “I came
on board this ship to go to—in fact, I meant, as I
was saying, I took passage for—.” He smoked
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silently. “I beg your pardon, but where did you
say I was going?”
Out of the mist where he had been leaning over
the side, and gazing earnestly into the surrounding
obscurity, now came a pale young man, and put his
arm in mine.
“I see,” said he, “that you have rather a general
acquaintance, and, as you know many persons, perhaps
you know many things. I am young, you
see, but I am a great traveller. I have been all over
the world, and in all kinds of conveyances; but,”
he continued, nervously, starting continually, and
looking around, “I haven't yet got abroad.”
“Not got abroad, and yet you have been everywhere?”
“Oh! yes; I know,” he replied, hurriedly; “but
I mean that I haven't yet got away. I travel constantly,
but it does no good—and perhaps you can
tell me the secret I want to know. I will pay any
sum for it. I am very rich and very young, and, if
money cannot buy it, I will give as many years of
my life as you require.”
He moved his hands convulsively, and his hair
was wet upon his forehead. He was very handsome
in that mystic light, but his eye burned with eagerness,
and his slight, graceful frame thrilled with the
earnestness of his emotion. The Emperor Hadrian,
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who loved the boy Antinous, would have loved the
youth.
“But what is it that you wish to leave behind?”
said I, at length, holding his arm paternally; “what
do you wish to escape?”
He threw his arms straight down by his side,
clenched his hands, and looked fixedly in my eyes.
The beautiful head was thrown a little back upon
one shoulder, and the wan faced glowed with yearning
desire and utter abandonment to confidence, so
that, without his saying it, I knew that he had
never whispered the secret which he was about to
impart to me. Then, with a long sigh, as if his
life were exhaling, he whispered,
“Myself.”
“Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long journey.”
“I know it,” he replied mournfully; “and I cannot
even get started. If I don't get off in this
ship, I fear I shall never escape.” His last words
were lost in the mist which gradually removed him
from my view.
“The youth has been amusing you with some of
his wild fancies, I suppose,” said a venerable man,
who might have been twin brother of that snowybearded
pilot. “It is a great pity so promising a
young man should be the victim of such vagaries.”
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He stood looking over the side for some time,
and at length added,
“Don't you think we ought to arrive soon?”
“Where?” asked I.
“Why, in Eldorado, of course,” answered he.
“The truth is, I became very tired of that long process
to find the Philosopher's Stone, and, although
I was just upon the point of the last combination
which must infallibly have produced the medium,
I abandoned it when I heard Orellana's account,
and found that Nature had already done in Eldorado
precisely what I was trying to do. You see,”
continued the old man abstractedly, “I had put
youth, and love, and hope, besides a great many
scarce minerals, into the crucible, and they all dissolved
slowly, and vanished in vapor. It was
curious, but they left no residuum except a little
ashes, which were not strong enough to make a lye
to cure a lame finger. But, as I was saying,
Orellana told us about Eldorado just in time, and
I thought, if any ship would carry me there it must
be this. But I am very sorry to find that any one who
is in pursuit of such a hopeless goal as that pale
young man yonder, should have taken passage. It
is only age,” he said, slowly stroking his white
beard, “that teaches us wisdom, and persuades us
to renounce the hope of escaping ourselves; and just
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as we are discovering the Philosopher's Stone, relieves
our anxiety by pointing the way to Eldorado.”
“Are we really going there?” asked I, in some
trepidation.
“Can there be any doubt of it?” replied the old
man. “Where should we be going, if not there?
However, let us summon the passengers and
ascertain.”
So saying, the venerable man beckoned to the
various groups that were clustered, ghost-like, in the
mist that enveloped the ship. They seemed to
draw nearer with listless curiosity, and stood or sat
near us, smoking as before, or, still leaning on the
side, idly gazing. But the restless figure who had
first accosted me, still paced the deck, flitting in
and out of the obscurity; and as he passed there
was the same mien of humbled pride, and the air of
a fate of tragic grandeur, and still the same faint
odor of old clothes, and the low querulous cry,
“Old clo!' old clo'!”
The ship dashed on. Unknown odors and
strange sounds still filled the air, and all the world
went by us as we flew, with no other noise than
the low gurgling of the sea around the side.
“Gentlemen,” said the reverend passenger for
Eldorado, “I hope there is no misapprehension as
to our destination?”
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As he said this, there was a general movement
of anxiety and curiosity. Presently the smoker,
who had asked me where he was going, said,
doubtfully:
“I don't know—it seems to me—I mean I wish
somebody would distinctly say where we are
going.”
“I think I can throw a light upon this subject,”
said a person whom I had not before remarked. He
was dressed like a sailor, and had a dreamy eye.
“It is very clear to me where we are going. I
have been taking observations for some time, and I
am glad to announce that we are on the eve of
achieving great fame; and I may add,” said he,
modestly, “that my own good name for scientific
acumen will be amply vindicated. Gentlemen, we
are undoubtedly going into the Hole.”
“What hole is that?” asked M. le Baron Munchausen,
a little contemptuously.
“Sir, it will make you more famous than you
ever were before,” replied the first speaker, evidently
much enraged.
“I am persuaded we are going into no such absurd
place,” said the Baron, exasperated.
The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully
angry. He drew himself up stiffly and said:
“Sir, you lie!”
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M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very good
part. He smiled and held out his hand:
“My friend,” said he, blandly, “that is precisely
what I have always heard. I am glad you do me
no more than justice. I fully assent to your theory:
and your words constitute me the proper historiographer
of the expedition. But tell me one thing,
how soon, after getting into the Hole, do you think
we shall get out?”
“The result will prove,” said the marine
gentleman, handing the officer his card, upon
which was written, Captain Symmes. The two
gentlemen then walked aside; and the groups
began to sway to and fro in the haze as if not quite
contented.
“Good God,” said the pale youth, running up to
me and clutching my arm, “I cannot go into any
Hole alone with myself. I should die—I should
kill myself. I thought somebody was on board,
and I hoped you were he, who would steer us to
the fountain of oblivion.”
“Very well, that is in the Hole,” said M. le
Baron, who came out of the mist at that moment,
leaning upon the Captain's arm.
“But can I leave myself outside?” asked the
youth, nervously.
“Certainly,” interposed the old Alchemist; “you
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may be sure that you will not get into the Hole,
until you have left yourself behind.”
The pale young man grasped his hand, and gazed
into his eyes.
“And then I can drink and be happy,” murmured
he, as he leaned over the side of the ship,
and listened to the rippling water, as if it had been
the music of the fountain of oblivion.”
“Drink! drink!” said the smoking old man. “
Fountain! fountain! Why, I believe that is
what I am after. I beg your pardon,” continued
he, addressing the Alchemist. “But can you tell
me if I am looking for a fountain?”
“The fountain of youth, perhaps,” replied the
Alchemist.
“The very thing!” cried the smoker, with a
shrill laugh, while his pipe fell from his mouth,
and was shattered upon the deck, and the old man
tottered away into the mist, chuckling feebly to
himself, “Youth! youth!”
“He'll find that in the Hole, too,” said the Alchemist,
as he gazed after the receding figure.
The crowd now gathered more nearly around us.
“Well, gentlemen,” continued the Alchemist,
“where shall we go, or, rather, where are we
going?”
A man in a friar's habit, with the cowl closely
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drawn about his head, now crossed himself, and
whispered:
“I have but one object. I should not have been
here if I had not supposed we were going to find
Prester John, to whom I have been appointed
father confessor, and at whose court I am to live
splendidly, like a cardinal at Rome. Gentlemen,
if you will only agree that we shall go there, you
shall all be permitted to hold my train when
I proceed to be enthroned as Bishop of Central
Africa.
While he was speaking, another old man came
from the bows of the ship, a figure which had been
so immoveable in its place that I supposed it was
the ancient figure-head of the craft, and said in a
low, hollow voice, and a quaint accent:
“I have been looking for centuries, and I cannot
see it. I supposed we were heading for it. I
thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires,
the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation
of purple hills. Ah! me. I am sure I heard
the singing of birds, and the faint low of cattle.
But I do not know: we come no nearer; and yet I
felt its presence in the air. If the mist would only
lift, we should see it lying so fair upon the sea, so
graceful against the sky. I fear we may have
passed it. Gentlemen,” said he, sadly, “I am
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[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]
afraid we may have lost the island of Atlantis for
ever.”
There was a look of uncertainty in the throng
upon the deck.
“But yet,” said a group of young men in every
kind of costume, and of every country and time,
“we have a chance at the Encantadas, the Enchanted
Islands. We were reading of them only
the other day, and the very style of the story had
the music of waves. How happy we shall be to
reach a land where there is no work, nor tempest,
nor pain, and we shall be for ever happy.”
“I am content here,” said a laughing youth, with
heavily matted curls. “What can be better than
this? We feel every climate, the music and the
perfume of every zone, are ours. In the starlight I
woo the mermaids, as I lean over the side, and no
enchanted island will show us fairer forms. I am
satisfied. The ship sails on. We cannot see but
we can dream. What work or pain have we here?
I like the ship; I like the voyage; I like my company,
and am content.”
As he spoke he put something into his mouth,
and, drawing a white substance from his pocket,
offered it to his neighbor, saying, “Try a bit of this
lotus; you will find it very soothing to the nerves,
and an infallible remedy for home-sickness.”
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“Gentlemen,” said M. le Baron Munchausen, “I
have no fear. The arrangements are well made;
the voyage has been perfectly planned, and each
passenger will discover what he took passage to find,
in the Hole into which we are going, under the auspices
of this worthy Captain.”
He ceased, and silence fell upon the ship's company.
Still on we swept; it seemed a weary way.
The tireless pedestrians still paced to and fro, and
the idle smokers puffed. The ship sailed on, and
endless music and odor chased each other through
the misty air. Suddenly a deep sigh drew universal
attention to a person who had not yet spoken.
He held a broken harp in his hand, the strings fluttered
loosely in the air, and the head of the speaker,
bound with a withered wreath of laurels, bent over
it.
“No, no,” said he, “I will not eat your lotus,
nor sail into the Hole. No magic root can cure the
home-sickness I feel; for it is no regretful remembrance,
but an immortal longing. I have roamed
farther than I thought the earth extended. I have
climbed mountains; I have threaded rivers; I have
sailed seas; but nowhere have I seen the home for
which my heart aches. Ah! my friends, you look
very weary; let us go home.”
The pedestrian paused a moment in his walk, and
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the smokers took their pipes from their mouths.
The soft air which blew in that moment across the
deck, drew a low sound from the broken harp-strings,
and a light shone in the eyes of the old man of the
figure-head, as if the mist had lifted for an instant,
and he had caught a glimpse of the lost Atlantis.
“I really believe that is where I wish to go,” said
the seeker of the fountain of youth. “I think I would
give up drinking at the fountain if I could get there.
I do not know,” he murmured, doubtfully; “it is
not sure; I mean, perhaps, I should not have
strength to get to the fountain, even if I were near
it.”
“But is it possible to get home?” inquired the
pale young man. “I think I should be resigned if I
could get home.”
“Certainly,” said the dry, hard voice of Prester
John's confessor, as his cowl fell a little back, and a
sudden flush burned upon his gaunt face; “if there
is any chance of home, I will give up the Bishop's
palace in Central Africa.”
“But Eldorado is my home,” interposed the old
Alchemist.
“Or is home Eldorado?” asked the poet, with the
withered wreath, turning towards the Alchemist.
It was a strange company and a wondrous voyage.
Here were all kinds of men, of all times and
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countries, pursuing the wildest hopes, the most chimerical
desires. One took me aside to request that
I would not let it be known, but that he inferred
from certain signs we were nearing Utopia. Another
whispered gaily in my ear that he thought the water
was gradually becoming of a ruby color—the hue
of wine; and he had no doubt we should wake in
the morning and find ourselves in the land of Cockaigne.
A third, in great anxiety, stated to me that
such continuous mists were unknown upon the ocean;
that they were peculiar to rivers, and that, beyond
question, we were drifting along some stream,
probably the Nile, and immediate measures ought to
be taken that we did not go ashore at the foot of the
mountains of the moon. Others were quite sure
that we were in the way of striking the great
southern continent; and a young man, who gave his
name as Wilkins, said we might be quite at ease,
for presently some friends of his would come flying
over from the neighboring islands and tell us all we
wished.
Still I smelled the mouldy rigging, and the odor
of cabbage was strong from the hold.
O Prue, what could the ship be, in which such
fantastic characters were sailing toward impossible
bournes—characters which in every age have ventured
all the bright capital of life in vague
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speculations and romantic dreams? What could it be but
the ship that haunts the sea for ever, and, with all
sails set, drives onward before a ceaseless gale, and
is not hailed, nor ever comes to port?
I know the ship is always full; I know the graybeard
still watches at the prow for the lost Atlantis,
and still the alchemist believes that Eldorado is at
hand. Upon his aimless quest, the dotard still asks
where he is going, and the pale youth knows that
he shall never fly himself. Yet they would gladly
renounce that wild chase and the dear dreams of
years, could they find what I have never lost. They
were ready to follow the poet home, if he would
have told them where it lay.
I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air of
the purple uplands which they shall never tread. I
hear the sweet music of the voices they long for in
vain. I am no traveller; my only voyage is to the
office and home again. William and Christopher,
John and Charles sail to Europe and the South, but
I defy their romantic distances. When the spring
comes and the flowers blow, I drift through the
year belted with summer and with spice.
With the changing months I keep high carnival
in all the zones. I sit at home and walk with Prue,
and if the sun that stirs the sap quickens also the
wish to wander, I remember my fellow-voyagers on
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that romantic craft, and looking round upon my
peaceful room, and pressing more closely the arm
of Prue, I feel that I have reached the port for
which they hopelessly sailed. And when winds
blow fiercely and the night-storm rages, and the
thought of lost mariners and of perilous voyages
touches the soft heart of Prue, I hear a voice
sweeter to my ear than that of the syrens to the
tempest-tost sailor: “Thank God! Your only
cruising is in the Flying Dutchman!”
-- -- p535-194
Curtis, George William, 1824-1892 [1856], Prue and I. (Dix, Edwards & co., New York) [word count] [eaf535T].
