University of Virginia Library

SEA FROM SHORE.

SEA FROM SHORE.

In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk
upon the Battery toward sunset, and watch the
steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the
pleasant places along the coast where people pass
the hot months. Sea-side lodgings are not very
comfortable, I am told; but who would not be a
little pinched in his chamber, if his windows looked
upon the sea?

In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at such
times, and so respectfully do I regard the sailors
who may chance to pass, that Prue often says, with
her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of Greenwich
Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and
wishes, broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and
desires, whose hands have been shot away in some
hard battle of experience, so that they cannot grasp
the results towards which they reach.

She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions
do lie, ruined and hopeless now, strewn about the
placid contentment of my mental life, as the old
pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich,
maimed and musing in the quiet morning sunshine.
Many a one among them thinks what a Nelson he
would have been if both his legs had not been prematurely
carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of
triumph he would have ended, if, unfortunately, he
had not happened to have been blown blind by the
explosion of that unlucky magazine.

So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar,
stiff with gold lace, around my neck, instead of
this limp white cravat; and I have even brandished
my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom
has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he
doubted whether I should come out quite square in
my petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom
was born in Nantucket.

That is the secret of my fondness for the sea;
I was born by it. Not more surely do Savoyards
pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the sound
of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight
and sound of the ocean to return to it and renew
their fealty. In dreams the children of the sea hear
its voice.

I have read in some book of travels that certain

tribes of Arabs have no name for the ocean, and
that when they came to the shore for the first time,
they asked with eager sadness, as if penetrated by
the conviction of a superior beauty, “what is that
desert of water more beautiful than the land?”
And in the translations of German stories which
Adoniram and the other children read, and into
which I occasionally look in the evening when they
are gone to bed—for I like to know what interests
my children—I find that the Germans, who do not
live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, and
tell the sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if
they had especial charm for them, because their
country is inland.

We who know the sea have less fairy feeling
about it, but our realities are romance. My earliest
remembrances are of a long range of old, half dilapidated
stores; red brick stores with steep wooden
roofs, and stone window-frames and door-frames,
which stood upon docks built as if for immense trade
with all quarters of the globe.

Generally there were only a few sloops moored to
the tremendous posts, which I fancied could easily
hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical hurricane.
But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with
rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came
slowly moving up the harbor, with an air of indolent

self-impoance and consciousness of superiority,
which inspired me with profound respect. If the
ship had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a
sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should
only have wondered at the temerity of any floating
thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty.
The ship was leisurely chained and cabled to the
old dock, and then came the disembowelling.

How the stately monster had been fattening upon
foreign spoils! How it had gorged itself (such galleons
did never seem to me of the feminine gender)
with the luscious treasures of the tropics! It had
lain its lazy length along the shores of China, and
sucked in whole flowery harvests of tea. The Brazilian
sun flashed through the strong wicker prisons,
bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that
eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor,
of sandal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors chanting
cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a shrill
and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and
falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that
lifted the bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung
them ashore.

But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised
the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar
and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the
song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed

with India. The universal calm of southern
seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the
quiet, decaying old northern port.

Long after the confusion of unloading was over,
and the ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I
dared to creep timorously along the edge of the
dock, and at great risk of falling in the black water
of its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon the
hot hulk, and so established a mystic and exquisite
connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves
and all the passionate beauties they embower; with
jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet
of Chinese fairies. I touched Asia, the Cape of
Good Hope and the Happy Islands. I would not
believe that the heat I felt was of our northern sun;
to my finer sympathy it burned with equatorial
fervors.

The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe
that many of them remain, but they have lost their
character. When I knew them, not only was I
younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town;
at least the bulk of its India trade had shifted to
New York and Boston. But the appliances remained.
There was no throng of busy traffickers,
and after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and
gazed into the solemn interiors.

Silence reigned within,—silence, dimness, and

piles of foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like
tame boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with
large stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen
trowsers, who sat looking out of the door toward
the ships, with little other sign of life than an occasional
low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge
hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow
molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within
bounds, but must continually expand, and exude, and
overflow, stood against the walls, and had an architectural
significance, for they darkly reminded me of
Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the low
vaulted store seemed cyclopean columns incomplete.
Strange festoons and heaps of bags, square piles of
square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer
stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and
shamed it by audacious assumption of eternal sun,
little specimen boxes of precious dyes that even now
shine through my memory, like old Venetian schools
unpainted,—these were all there in rich confusion.

The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was
spicy with mingled odors. I liked to look suddenly
in from the glare of sunlight outside, and then the
cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of
the far off island-groves; and if only some parrot or
macaw hung within, would flaunt with glistening
plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue flashed in

a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from
out that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was
complete, and without moving, I was circumnavigating
the globe.

From the old stores and the docks slowly
crumbling, touched, I know not why or how,
by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled
out of town on those well remembered
afternoons, to the fields that lay upon hillsides over
the harbor, and there sat, looking out to sea, fancying
some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends
of the earth, to be my type and image, who would
so sail, stately and successful, to all the glorious ports
of the Future. Going home, I returned by the
stores, which black porters were closing. But I
stood long looking in, saturating my imagination,
and as it appeared, my clothes, with the spicy suggestion.
For when I reached home my thrifty mother—another
Prue—came snuffing and smelling
about me.

“Why! my son, (snuff, snuff,) where have you
been? (snuff, snuff.) Has the baker been making
(snuff) ginger-bread? You smell as if you'd been
in (snuff, snuff,) a bag of cinnamon.”

“I've only been on the wharves, mother.”

“Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up

your clothes with molasses. Wharves are dirty
places, and dangerous. You must take care of
yourself, my son. Really this smell is (snuff, snuff,)
very strong.”

But I departed from the maternal presence, proud
and happy. I was aromatic. I bore about me the
true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt distant
countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and
cloves, without the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself
with being the representative of the Indies. I
was in good odor with myself and all the world.

I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes
kindly provision. An imagination so easily excited
as mine could not have escaped disappointment if it
had had ample opportunity and experience of the
lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I
made the India voyage, I have never been a
traveller, and saving the little time I was ashore
in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and
romance, which the first sight of foreign lands inspires.

That little time was all my foreign travel. I am
glad of it. I see now that I should never have
found the country from which the East Indiaman
of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not
grow with which that hand laid upon the ship
placed me in magic conception. As for the lovely

Indian maid whom the palmy arches bowered, she
has long since clasped some native lover to her
bosom, and, ripened into mild maternity, how should
I know her now?

“You would find her quite as easily now as
then,” says my Prue, when I speak of it.

She is right again, as usual, that precious woman;
and it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life
have moored me fast to a book-keeper's desk, they
have left all the lands I longed to see fairer and
fresher in my mind than they could ever be in my
memory. Upon my only voyage I used to climb
into the top and search the horizon for the shore.
But now in a moment of calm thought I see a more
Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and do
not envy the youths who go there and make fortunes,
who wear grass-cloth jackets, drink iced
beer, and eat curry; whose minds fall asleep, and
whose bodies have liver complaints.

Unseen by me for ever, nor ever regretted, shall
wave the Egyptian palms and the Italian pines.
Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still echo with
the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon,
unrifled of its marbles, look, perfect, across the
Egean blue.

My young friends return from their foreign tours
elate with the smiles of a nameless Italian or

Parisian belle. I know not such cheap delights; I
am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I walk with Tasso
along the terraced garden of the Villa d'Este, and
look to see Beatrice smiling down the rich gloom
of the cypress shade. You staid at the Hôtel
Europa in Venice, at Danielli's, or the Leone bianco;
I am the guest of Marino Faliero, and I whisper to
his wife as we climb the giant staircase in the
summer moonlight,

It is for the same reason that I did not care to
dine with you and Aurelia, that I am content not
to stand in St. Peter's. Alas! if I could see the
end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For those
of us whom Nature means to keep at home, she
provides entertainment. One man goes four thousand
miles to Italy, and does not see it, he is so
short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he
stays in his room and sees more than Italy.

But for this very reason that it washes the shores
of my possible Europe and Asia, the sea draws me
constantly to itself. Before I came to New York,
while I was still a clerk in Boston, courting Prue,
and living out of town, I never knew of a ship

sailing for India or even for England and France,
but I went up to the State House cupola or to the
observatory on some friend's house in Roxbury,
where I could not be interrupted, and there watched
the departure.

The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the stream;
busy little boats and puffing steamers darted about
it, clung to its sides, paddled away from it, or led
the way to sea, as minnows might pilot a whale.
The anchor was slowly swung at the bow; I could
not hear the sailors' song, but I knew they were
singing. I could not see the parting friends, but I
knew farewells were spoken. I did not share the
confusion, although I knew what bustle there was,
what hurry, what shouting, what creaking, what
fall of ropes and iron, what sharp oaths, low
laughs, whispers, sobs. But I was cool, high,
separate. To me it was

The sails were shaken out, and the ship began
to move. It was a fair breeze, perhaps, and no
steamer was needed to tow her away. She receded
down the bay. Friends turned back—I could not
see them—and waved their hands, and wiped their
eyes, and went home to dinner. Farther and farther

from the ships at anchor, the lessening vessel
became single and solitary upon the water. The
sun sank in the west; but I watched her still.
Every flash of her sails, as she tacked and turned,
thrilled my heart.

Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen
one of the passengers or the crew. I did not know
the consignees, nor the name of the vessel. I had
shipped no adventure, nor risked any insurance,
nor made any bet, but my eyes clung to her as
Ariadne's to the fading sail of Theseus. The ship
was freighted with more than appeared upon her
papers, yet she was not a smuggler. She bore all
there was of that nameless lading, yet the next ship
would carry as much. She was freighted with
fancy. My hopes, and wishes, and vague desires,
were all on board. It seemed to me a treasure not
less rich than that which filled the East Indiaman
at the old dock in my boyhood.

When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon
the horizon, I waved my hand in last farewell, I
strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind had
gone to sea, and had left noise behind. But now I
heard again the multitudinous murmur of the city,
and went down rapidly, and threaded the short,
narrow, streets to the office. Yet, believe it, every
dream of that day, as I watched the vessel, was

written at night to Prue. She knew my heart had
not sailed away.

Those days are long past now, but still I walk
upon the Battery and look towards the Narrows,
and know that beyond them, separated only by the
sea, are many of whom I would so gladly know,
and so rarely hear. The sea rolls between us like
the lapse of dusky ages. They trusted themselves
to it, and it bore them away far and far as if into
the past. Last night I read of Antony, but I have
not heard from Christopher these many months,
and by so much farther away is he, so much older
and more remote, than Antony. As for William, he
is as vague as any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic
dynasties.

It is the sea that has done it, it has carried them
off and put them away upon its other side. It is
fortunate the sea did not put them upon its underside.
Are they hale and happy still? Is their
hair gray, and have they mustachios? Or have
they taken to wigs and crutches? Are they popes
or cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia
Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the Council
of Ten? Do they sing, Behold how brightly breaks
the morning with Masaniello? Do they laugh at
Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour,
chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with

Zobeide in the Caliph's garden, or have they made
cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my
youth, where in your wanderings have you tasted
the blissful Lotus, that you neither come nor send
us tidings?

Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false
reports steal into history and defile fair fames.
Was it longer ago than yesterday that I walked
with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked
with her of the countries to which she meant to
sail? She was young, and dark-eyed, and wore
great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears.
The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, had
risen like a dawn in the darkness of her mind. I
talked and listened by rapid turns.

Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told me
of her splendid plans, how palaces tapestried with
gorgeous paintings should be cheaply hired, and the
best of teachers lead her children to the completest
and most various knowledge; how,—and with her
slender pittance!—she should have a box at the
opera, and a carriage, and liveried servants, and in
perfect health and youth, lead a perfect life in a
perfect climate?

And now what do I hear? Why does a tear
sometimes drop so audibly upon my paper, that
Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild rebuking

glance of inquiry, whether it is kind to let even a
single tear fall, when an ocean of tears is pent up
in hearts that would burst and overflow if but one
drop should force its way out? Why across the sea
came faint gusty stories, like low voices in the
wind, of a cloistered garden and sunny seclusion—
and a life of unknown and unexplained luxury.
What is this picture of a pale face showered with
streaming black hair, and large sad eyes looking
upon lovely and noble children playing in the sunshine—and
a brow pained with thought straining
into their destiny? Who is this figure, a man tall
and comely, with melting eyes and graceful motion,
who comes and goes at pleasure, who is not
a husband, yet has the key of the cloistered
garden?

I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. The
pictures pass before my mind suddenly and unawares,
and I feel the tears rising that I would
gladly repress. Titbottom looks at me, then stands
by the window of the office and leans his brow
against the cold iron bars, and looks down into the
little square paved court. I take my hat and steal
out of the office for a few minutes, and slowly pace
the hurrying streets. Meek-eyed Alice! magniticent
Maud! sweet baby Lilian! why does the
sea imprison you so far away, when will you

return, where do you linger? The water laps
idly about docks,—lies calm, or gaily heaves.
Why does it bring me doubts and fears now, that
brought such bounty of beauty in the days long
gone?

I remember that the day when my dark haired
cousin, with hoops of barbaric gold in her ears,
sailed for Italy, was quarter-day, and we balanced
the books at the office. It was nearly noon, and in
my impatience to be away, I had not added my
columns with sufficient care. The inexorable hand
of the office clock pointed sternly towards twelve,
and the remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to
noon.

To a man whose pleasures are not many, and
rather small, the loss of such an event as saying
farewell and wishing God-speed to a friend going
to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to me, especially,
because there was always more to me, in
every departure, than the parting and the farewell.
I was gradually renouncing this pleasure, as I saw
small prospect of ending before noon, when Titbottom,
after looking at me a moment, came to my
side of the desk, and said:

“I should like to finish that for you.”

I looked at him: poor Titbottom! he had no
friends to wish God-speed upon any journey. I

quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and went
out. It was in the days of sail packets and less
regularity, when going to Europe was more of an
epoch in life. How gaily my cousin stood upon
the deck and detailed to me her plan! How merrily
the children shouted and sang! How long I
held my cousin's little hand in mine, and gazed into
her great eyes, remembering that they would see
and touch the things that were invisible to me for
ever, but all the more precious and fair! She
kissed me—I was younger then—there were tears, I
remember, and prayers, and promises, a waving
handkerchief,—a fading sail.

It was only the other day that I saw another
parting of the same kind. I was not a principal,
only a spectator; but so fond am I of sharing, afar
off, as it were, and unseen, the sympathies of human
beings, that I cannot avoid often going to the dock
upon steamer-days and giving myself to that
pleasant and melancholy observation. There is
always a crowd, but this day it was almost impossible
to advance through the masses of people.
The eager faces hurried by; a constant stream
poured up the gangway into the steamer, and the
upper deck, to which I gradually made my way,
was crowded with the passengers and their friends.

There was one group upon which my eyes first

fell, and upon which my memory lingers. A glance,
brilliant as daybreak—a voice,
a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling farewell
upon a circle of worshippers, to each one of whom
that gracious calmness made the smile sweeter, and
the farewell more sad—other figures, other flowers,
an angel face—all these I saw in that group as I
was swayed up and down the deck by the eager
swarm of people. The hour came, and I went on
shore with the rest. The plank was drawn away
—the captain raised his hand—the huge steamer
slowly moved—a cannon was fired—the ship was
gone.

The sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed
away. In five minutes the steamer was as much
separated from the shore as if it had been at sea a
thousand years.

I leaned against a post upon the dock and looked
around. Ranged upon the edge of the wharf stood
that band of worshippers, waving handkerchiefs
and straining their eyes to see the last smile of farewell—did
any eager selfish eye hope to see a tear?
They to whom the handkerchiefs were waved stood
high upon the stern, holding flowers. Over them
hung the great flag, raised by the gentle wind into

the graceful folds of a canopy,—say rather a gorgeous
gonfalon waved over the triumphant departure,
over that supreme youth, and bloom, and
beauty, going out across the mystic ocean to carry
a finer charm and more human splendor into those
realms of my imagination beyond the sea.

“You will return, O youth and beauty!” I said
to my dreaming and foolish self, as I contemplated
those fair figures, “richer than Alexander with
Indian spoils. All that historic association, that
copious civilization, those grandeurs and graces of
art, that variety and picturesqueness of life, will
mellow and deepen your experience even as time
silently touches those old pictures into a more persuasive
and pathetic beauty, and as this increasing
summer sheds ever softer lustre upon the landscape.
You will return conquerors and not conquered.
You will bring Europe, even as Aurelian brought
Zenobia captive, to deck your homeward triumph.
I do not wonder that these clouds break away, I do
not wonder that the sun presses out and floods all
the air, and land, and water, with light that graces
with happy omens your stately farewell.”

But if my faded face looked after them with
such earnest and longing emotion,—I, a solitary
old man, unknown to those fair beings, and standing
apart from that band of lovers, yet in that moment

bound more closely to them than they knew,
—how was it with those whose hearts sailed away
with that youth and beauty? I watched them
closely from behind my post. I knew that life had
paused with them; that the world stood still. I
knew that the long, long summer would be only a
yearning regret. I knew that each asked himself
the mournful question, “Is this parting typical—
this slow, sad, sweet recession?” And I knew
that they did not care to ask whether they should
meet again, nor dare to contemplate the chances of
the sea.

The steamer swept on, she was near Staten
Island, and a final gun boomed far and low across
the water. The crowd was dispersing, but the
little group remained. Was it not all Hood had
sung?

O youth!” I said to them without speaking,
“be it gently said, as it is solemnly thought,
should they return no more, yet in your memories
the high hour of their loveliness is for ever enshrined.

Should they come no more they never
will be old, nor changed, to you. You will wax
and wane, you will suffer, and struggle, and grow
old; but this summer vision will smile, immortal,
upon your lives, and those fair faces shall shed, for
ever, from under that slowly waving flag, hope and
peace.'

It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature.
Long, long ago we lost our first-born, Prue
and I. Since then, we have grown older and our
children with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps,
and decay. We are happy, our children are obedient
and gay. But should Prue live until she has
lost us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our
graves, she will have always one babe in her heart.
Every mother who has lost an infant, has gained a
child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort here,
lovers, whose mistress has sailed away?

I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only,
as I watched the youths, and turned away while
they still stood gazing. One, I observed, climbed a
post and waved his black hat before the white-washed
side of the shed over the dock, whence I
supposed he would tumble into the water. Another
had tied a handkerchief to the end of a somewhat
baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had
forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mournfully

down, as if overpowered with grief it could not express.
The entranced youth still held the umbrella
aloft. It seemed to me as if he had struck his flag;
or as if one of my cravats were airing in that sunlight.
A negro carter was joking with an apple-woman
at the entrance of the dock. The steamer
was out of sight.

I found that I was belated and hurried back to my
desk. Alas! poor lovers; I wonder if they are
watching still? Has he fallen exhausted from the
post into the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached
and rent, still pendant upon that somewhat baggy
umbrella?

“Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day,” said
I to Prue, as I stirred my tea at evening.

As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me
the sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name
should be Hebe. I took a lump of sugar and looked
at her. She had never seemed so lovely, and as I
dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced
at Prue as I did so. The dear woman smiled, but
did not answer my exclamation.

Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the
emotions of those I do not know. But sometimes
the old longing comes over me as in the days when
I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and
magnetically sailed around the world.

It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved
farewell to the steamer, and while the lovely figures
standing under the great gonfalon were as vivid in
my mind as ever, that a day of premature sunny sadness,
like those of the Indian summer, drew me
away from the office early in the afternoon: for fortunately
it is our dull season now, and even Titbottom
sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock. Although
why he should leave it, or where he goes, or
what he does, I do not well know. Before I knew
him, I used sometimes to meet him with a man
whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby, the scrivener.
Even then it seemed to me that they rather
clubbed their loneliness than made society for each
other. Recently I have not seen Bartleby; but Titbottom
seems no more solitary because he is alone.

I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about.
Staten Island looked so alluring, tender-hued with
summer and melting in the haze, that I resolved to
indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a little
selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at my
watch, and saw that if I should hurry home for
Prue the trip would be lost; then I should be disappointed,
and she would be grieved.

Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions,
which I am going to answer affirmatively, with
ought,) to take the trip and recount my adventures

to Prue upon my return, whereby I should actually
enjoy the excursion and the pleasure of telling her;
while she would enjoy my story and be glad that I
was pleased? Ought I wilfully to deprive us both
of this various enjoyment by aiming at a higher,
which, in losing, we should lose all?

Unfortunaely, just as I was triumphantly answering
“Certainly not!” another question marched
into my mind, escorted by a very defiant ought.

“Ought I to go when I have such a debate about
it?”

But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my
own scruples, the ferry-bell suddenly rang, and answered
all my questions. Involuntarily I hurried
on board. The boat slipped from the dock. I went
up on deck to enjoy the view of the city from the
bay, but just as I sat down, and meant to have said
“how beautiful!” I found myself asking:

“Ought I to have come?”

Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the
scenery of the bay; but the remembrance of Prue
and the gentle influence of the day plunged me into
a mood of pensive reverie which nothing tended to
destroy, until we suddenly arrived at the landing.

As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by Mr.
Bourne, who passes the summer on the island, and
who hospitably asked if I were going his way.

His way was toward the southern end of the island,
and I said yes. His pockets were full of papers
and his brow of wrinkles; so when we reached the
point where he should turn off, I asked him to let
me alight, although he was very anxious to carry
me wherever I was going.

“I am only strolling about,” I answered, as I
clambered carefully out of the wagon.

“Strolling about?” asked he, in a bewildered
manner; “do people stroll about, now-a-days?”

“Sometimes,” I answered, smiling, as I pulled
my trowsers down over my boots, for they had
dragged up, as I stepped out of the wagon, “and
beside, what can an old book-keeper do better in
the dull season than stroll about this pleasant
island, and watch the ships at sea?”

Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes.

“I'd give five thousand dollars a year for a dull
season,” said he, “but as for strolling, I've forgotten
how.”

As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily across
the fields and woods, and were fastened upon the
distant sails.

“It is pleasant,” he said musingly, and fell into
silence. But I had no time to spare, so I wished
him good afternoon.

“I hope your wife is well,” said Bourne to me, as

I turned away. Poor Bourne! He drove on alone
in his wagon.

But I made haste to the most solitary point upon
the southern shore, and there sat, glad to be so near
the sea. There was that warm, sympathetic silence
in the air, that gives to Indian-summer days almost
a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze,
that seemed only the kindly air made visible, hung
over the sea. The water lapped languidly among
the rocks, and the voices of children in a boat beyond,
rang musically, and gradually receded, until
they were lost in the distance.

It was some time before I was aware of the outline
of a large ship, drawn vaguely upon the mist,
which I supposed, at first, to be only a kind of
mirage. But the more steadfastly I gazed, the more
distinct it became, and I could no longer doubt that
I saw a stately ship lying at anchor, not more than
half a mile from the land.

“It is an extraordinary place to anchor,” I said to
myself, “or can she be ashore?”

There were no signs of distress; the sails were
carefully clewed up, and there were no sailors in
the tops, nor upon the shrouds. A flag, of which I
could not see the device or the nation, hung heavily
at the stern, and looked as if it had fallen asleep.
My curiosity began to be singularly excited. The

form of the vessel seemed not to be permanent;
but within a quarter of an hour, I was sure that I
had seen half a dozen different ships. As I gazed, I
saw no more sails nor masts, but a long range of
oars, flashing like a golden fringe, or straight and
stiff, like the legs of a sea-monster.

“It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified by
the mist,” I said to myself, complacently.

But, at the same moment, there was a concentrated
flashing and blazing in one spot among the
rigging, and it was as if I saw a beatified ram, or,
more truly, a sheep-skin, splendid as the hair of
Berenice.

“Is that the golden fleece?” I thought. “But,
surely, Jason and the Argonauts have gone home
long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing expeditions
now?” I asked myself, in perplexity. “Can
this be a California steamer?”

How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I
not see those sails, “thin and sere?” Did I not
feel the melancholy of that solitary bark? It had
a mystic aura; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in its
wake, for it was drifting seaward. A strange fear
curdled along my veins. That summer sun shone
cool. The weary, battered ship was gashed, as if
gnawed by ice. There was terror in the air, as a
“skinny hand so brown” waved to me from the

deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of the
ancient mariner seemed to be reaching for me, like
the hand of death.

Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue's forgiveness
for my solitary ramble and consequent
demise, a glance like the fulness of summer splendor
gushed over me; the odor of flowers and of eastern
gums made all the atmosphere. I breathed the
orient, and lay drunk with balm, while that strange
ship, a golden galley now, with glittering draperies
festooned with flowers, paced to the measured beat
of oars along the calm, and Cleopatra smiled alluringly
from the great pageant's heart.

Was this a barge for summer waters, this peculiar
ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, a cumbrous
grandeur, although its masts were shattered, and its
sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the
sea, as if tormented and exhausted by long driving
and drifting. I saw no sailors, but a great Spanish
ensign floated over, and waved, a funereal plume.
I knew it then. The armada was long since
scattered; but, floating far

lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here
lay one of the fated ships of Spain. The huge
galleon seemed to fill all the air, built up against
the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine
against the sunset.

But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the
mast-head—a long low vessel darted swiftly where
the vast ship lay; there came a shrill piping whistle,
the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing oaths, sharp
pistol cracks, the thunder of command, and over all
the gusty yell of a demoniac chorus,

—There were no clouds longer, but under a serene
sky I saw a bark moving with festal pomp, thronged
with grave senators in flowing robes, and one with
ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a ring. The
smooth bark swam upon a sea like that of southern
latitudes. I saw the Bucentoro and the nuptials of
Venice and the Adriatic.

Who where those coming over the side? Who
crowded the boats, and sprang into the water, men
in old Spanish armor, with plumes and swords, and
bearing a glittering cross? Who was he standing
upon the deck with folded arms and gazing towards
the shore, as lovers on their mistresses and martyrs
upon heaven? Over what distant and tumultuous
seas had this small craft escaped from other centuries
and distant shores? What sounds of foreign
hymns, forgotten now, were these, and what solemnity

of debarkation? Was this grave form, Columbus?

Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed
just now. This group of stern-faced men with high
peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck and
looked out upon a shore which, I could see by their
joyless smile of satisfaction, was rough, and bare,
and forbidding. In that soft afternoon, standing in
mournful groups upon the small deck, why did
they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of
wintry New England? That phantom-ship could
not be the May Flower!

I gazed long upon the shifting illusion.

“If I should board this ship,” I asked myself,
“where should I go? whom should I meet? what
should I see? Is not this the vessel that shall carry
me to my Europe, my foreign countries, my impossible
India, the Atlantis that I have lost?”

As I sat staring at it I could not but wonder
whether Bourne had seen this sail when he looked
upon the water? Does he see such sights every
day, because he lives down here? Is it not perhaps
a magic yacht of his; and does he slip off privately
after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and
Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado? Does he run races
with Ptolemy, Philopater and Hiero of Syracuse,
rare regattas on fabulous seas?

Why not? He is a rich man, too, and why should
not a New York merchant do what a Syracuse
tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? Has Bourne's
yacht those sumptuous chambers, like Philopater's
galley, of which the greater part was made of split
cedar, and of Milesian cypress; and has he twenty
doors put together with beams of citron-wood, with
many ornaments? Has the roof of his cabin a
carved golden face, and is his sail linen with a
purple fringe?

“I suppose it is so,” I said to myself, as I looked
wistfully at the ship, which began to glimmer and
melt in the haze.

“It certainly is not a fishing smack?” I asked,
doubtfully.

No, it must be Bourne's magic yacht; I was sure
of it. I could not help laughing at poor old Hiero,
whose cabins were divided into many rooms, with
floors composed of mosaic work, of all kinds of
stones tessellated. And, on this mosaic, the whole
story of the Iliad was depicted in a marvellous manner.
He had gardens “of all sorts of most wonderful
beauty, enriched with all sorts of plants, and
shadowed by roofs of lead or tiles. And, besides
this, there were tents roofed with boughs of white
ivy and of the vine—the roots of which derived
their moisture from casks full of earth, and were

watered in the same manner as the gardens. There
were temples, also, with doors of ivory and citron-wood,
furnished in the most exquisite manner, with
pictures and statues, and with goblets and vases of
every form and shape imaginable.”

“Poor Bourne!” I said, “I suppose his is finer
than Hiero's, which is a thousand years old. Poor
Bourne! I don't wonder that his eyes are weary,
and that he would pay so dearly for a day of leisure.
Dear me! is it one of the prices that must be paid
for wealth, the keeping up a magic yacht?”

Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud.

“The magic yacht is not Bourne's,” answered a
familiar voice. I looked up, and Titbottom stood
by my side. “Do you not know that all Bourne's
money would not buy the yacht?” asked he. “He
cannot even see it. And if he could, it would be
no magic yacht to him, but only a battered and solitary
hulk.”

The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom spoke,
and there lay my Spanish galleon, my Bucentoro,
my Cleopatra's galley, Columbus's Santa Maria,
and the Pilgrims' May Flower, an old bleaching
wreck upon the beach.

“Do you suppose any true love is in vain?” asked
Titbottom solemnly, as he stood bareheaded, and the
soft sunset wind played with his few hairs. “Could

Cleopatra smile upon Antony, and the moon upon
Endymion, and the sea not love its lovers?”

The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he spoke.
I might have sailed in Hiero's ship, or in Roman
galleys, had I lived long centuries ago, and been
born a nobleman. But would it be so sweet a remembrance,
that of lying on a marble couch, under
a golden-faced roof, and within doors of citron-wood
and ivory, and sailing in that state to greet queens
who are mummies now, as that of seeing those fair
figures, standing under the great gonfalon, themselves
as lovely as Egyptian belles, and going to see
more than Egypt dreamed?

The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne's. I
took Titbottom's arm, and we sauntered toward the
ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with this sad
vizier? My languid odalisque, the sea, lay at my
feet as we advanced, and sparkled all over with a
sunset smile. Had I trusted myself to her arms, to
be borne to the realms that I shall never see, or
sailed long voyages towards Cathay, I am not sure
I should have brought a more precious present to
Prue, than the story of that afternoon.

“Ought I to have gone alone?” I asked her, as I
ended.

“I ought not to have gone with you,” she replied,
“for I had work to do. But how strange that you

should see such things at Staten Island. I never
did, Mr. Titbottom,” said she, turning to my deputy,
whom I had asked to tea.

“Madam,” answered Titbottom, with a kind of
wan and quaint dignity, so that I could not help
thinking he must have arrived in that stray ship
from the Spanish armada, “neither did Mr. Bourne.”