7. CHAPTER VII.
Good old Arcturion! Maternal craft, that rocked me so
often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted
thee on the broad deep. So far from home, with such a
motley crew, so many islanders, whose heathen babble
echoing through thy Christian hull, must have grated
harshly on every carline.
Old ship! where sails thy lone ghost now? For of the
stout Arcturion no word was ever heard, from the dark
hour we pushed from her fated planks. In what time of
tempest, to what seagull's scream, the drowning eddies did
their work, knows no mortal man. Sunk she silently, helplessly,
into the calm depths of that summer sea, assassinated
by the ruthless blade of the swordfish? Such things have
been. Or was hers a better fate? Stricken down while
gallantly battling with the blast; her storm-sails set; helm
manned; and every sailor at his post; as sunk the Hornet,
her men at quarters, in some distant gale.
But surmises are idle. A very old craft, she may have
foundered; or laid her bones upon some treacherous reef;
but as with many a far rover, her fate is a mystery.
Pray Heaven, the spirit of that lost vessel roaming abroad
through the troubled mists of midnight gales—as old mariners
believe of missing ships—may never haunt my future
path upon the waves. Peacefully may she rest at the bottom
of the sea; and sweetly sleep my shipmates in the
lowest watery zone, where prowling sharks come not, nor
billows roll.
By quitting the Arcturion when we did, Jarl and I unconsciously
eluded a sailor's grave. We hear of providential
deliverances. Was this one? But life is sweet to all,
death comes as hard. And for myself I am almost tempted
to hang my head, that I escaped the fate of my shipmates;
something like him who blushed to have escaped the fell
carnage at Thermopylæ.
Though I can not repress a shudder when I think of that
old ship's end, it is impossible for me so much as to imagine,
that our deserting her could have been in any way instrumental
in her loss. Nevertheless, I would to Heaven the
Arcturion still floated; that it was given me once more to
tread her familiar decks.
