University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.

In the plain, simple regions we are describing, — where
the sea is the great avenue of active life, and the pine-forests
are the great source of wealth, — ship-building is an engrossing
interest, and there is no fête that calls forth the community
like the launching of a vessel.

And no wonder; for what is there belonging to this work-a-day
world of ours that has such a never-failing fund of
poetry and grace as a ship? A ship is a beauty and a mystery
wherever we see it: its white wings touch the regions
of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full
of the odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life,
we fondly dream, moves in brighter currents than the
muddy, tranquil tides of every day.

Who that sees one bound outward, with her white breasts
swelling and heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy,
does not feel his own heart swell with a longing impulse to
go with her to the far-off shores? Even at dingy, crowded
wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the coming
in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But
on these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and
still, and the blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary
forests, the sudden incoming of a ship from a distant
voyage is a sort of romance. Who that has stood by the
blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled as it is by soft slopes
of green farming land, interchanged here and there with

heavy billows of forest-trees, or rocky, pine-crowned promontories,
has not felt that sense of seclusion and solitude
which is so delightful? And then what a wonder! There
comes a ship from China, drifting in like a white cloud, —
the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before
her; with what a great free, generous plash she throws
out her anchors, as if she said a cheerful “Well done!” to
some glorious work accomplished! The very life and spirit
of strange romantic lands come with her; suggestions of
sandal-wood and spice breathe through the pine-woods; she
is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts; “all
her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory
palaces, whereby they have made her glad.” No wonder
men have loved ships like birds, and that there have been
found brave, rough hearts that in fatal wrecks chose rather
to go down with their ocean love than to leave her in the
last throes of her death-agony.

A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious
poetry ever underlying its existence. Exotic ideas
from foreign lands relieve the trite monotony of life; the
ship-owner lives in communion with the whole world, and is
less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that infest the
routine of inland life.

Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than
that which was to start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage.

Moses had risen while the stars were yet twinkling over
their own images in Middle Bay, to go down and see that
everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in
the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being
ready to go to the launching.

Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy
over the provisions for the ample cold collation that was to

be spread in a barn adjoining the scene, — the materials
for which they were packing into baskets covered with nice
clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat which lay
within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.

It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges
should cross together in this boat with their contributions of
good cheer.

The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent
on their quota of the festive preparations, in which Dame
Kittridge's housewifely reputation was involved, — for it had
been a disputed point in the neighborhood whether she or
Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of course, with
this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had been all
but superhuman.

The Captain skipped in and out in high feather, — occasionally
pinching Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going
as captain or mate upon the vessel after it was launched, for
which he got in return a fillip of his sleeve or a sly twitch
of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father were on romping
terms with each other from early childhood, — a thing
which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting
Mrs. Kittridge.

“Such levity!” she said, as she saw Sally in full chase
after his retreating figure, in order to be revenged for
some sly allusions he had whispered in her ear.

“Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!” she called, “come
back this minute. What are you about? I should think
your father was old enough to know better.”

“Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o' renews one's youth to get
a new ship done,” said the Captain, skipping in at another
door. “Sort o' puts me in mind o' that I went out cap'en in

when I was jist beginning to court you, as somebody else is
courtin' our Sally here.”

“Now, father,” said Sally, threateningly, “what did I tell
you?”

“It 's really lemancholy,” said the Captain, “to think how
it does distress gals to talk to 'em 'bout the fellers, when
they a'n't thinkin' o' nothin' else all the time. They can't
even laugh without sayin' he-he-he!”

“Now, father, you know I 've told you five hundred times
that I don't care a cent for Moses Pennel, — that he 's a
hateful creature,” said Sally, looking very red and determined.

“Yes, yes,” said the Captain, “I take that ar 's the reason
you 've ben a-wearin' the ring he gin you and them ribbins
you 've got on your neck this blessed minute, and why
you 've giggled off to singin'-school, and Lord knows where
with him all summer, — that ar 's clear now.”

“But, father,” said Sally, getting redder and more earnest,
“I don't care for him really, and I 've told him so. I keep
telling him so, and he will run after me.”

“Haw! haw!” laughed the Captain; “he will, will he?
Jist so, Sally; that ar 's jist the way your ma there talked
to me, and it kind o' 'couraged me along. I knew that gals
always has to be read back'ard jist like the writin' in the
Barbary States.”

“Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?”
said his helpmeet; “and jist carry this 'ere basket of cold
chicken down to the landin' agin the Pennels come round in
the boat; and you must step spry, for there 's two more
baskets a-comin'.”

The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward
the sea with it, and Sally retired to her own little room

to hold a farewell consultation with her mirror before she
went.

You will perhaps think from the conversation that you
heard the other night, that Sally now will cease all thought
of coquettish allurement in her acquaintance with Moses,
and cause him to see by an immediate and marked change
her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands thoughtfully
before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety
of laying aside the ribbons he gave her — perhaps she will
alter that arrangement of her hair which is one that he himself
particularly dictated as most becoming to the character
of her face. She opens a little drawer, which looks like a
flower-garden, all full of little knots of pink and blue and
red, and various fancies of the toilet, and looks into it reflectively.
She looses the ribbon from her hair and chooses
another, — but Moses gave her that too and said, she remembers,
that when she wore that “he should know she had
been thinking of him.” Sally is Sally yet — as full of sly
dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of streaks.

“There 's no reason I should make myself look like a
fright because I don't care for him,” she says; “besides,
after all that he has said, he ought to say more, — he ought
at least to give me a chance to say no, — he shall, too,” said
the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in the glass.

“Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge,” called her mother,
“how long will you stay prinkin'? — come down this minute.”

“Law now, mother,” said the Captain, “gals must prink
afore such times; it 's as natural as for hens to dress their
feathers afore a thunder-storm.”

Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and
scarfs, whose bright, high colors assorted well with the ultramarine
blue of her dress, and the vivid pomegranate hue of

her cheeks. The boat with its white sails flapping was balancing
and courtesying up and down on the waters, and in
the stern sat Mara; — her shining white straw hat trimmed
with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink shell
complexion. The dark, even pencilling of her eyebrows,
and the beauty of the brow above, the brown translucent
clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face striking even
with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was unusually animated
and excited, and her cheeks had a rich bloom of that
pure deep rose-color which flushes up in fair complexions
under excitement, and her eyes had a kind of intense expression,
for which they had always been remarkable. All
the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was looking
out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at
times in the silence of eyes.

“Now bless that ar gal,” said the Captain, when he saw
her. “Our Sally here 's handsome, but she 's got the real
New-Jerusalem look, she has — like them in the Revelations
that wears the fine linen, clean and white.”

“Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool
of yourself about no girl at your time o' life,” said Mrs.
Kittridge, speaking under her breath in a nipping, energetic
tone, for they were coming too near the boat to speak very
loud.

“Good-mornin', Mis' Pennel; we 've got a good day, and
a mercy it is so. 'Member when we launched the North
Star, that it rained guns all the mornin'; and the water got
into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the things over, and
made a sight o' pester.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction,
“everything seems to be going right about this
vessel.”

Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with
seats, and Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming
sail. The day was one of those perfect gems of days
which are to be found only in the jewel-casket of October;
a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so clear that every
distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness, and
every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in crystalline
clearness against the sky. There was so brisk a
breeze that the boat slanted quite to the water's edge on one
side, and Mara leaned over and pensively drew her little
pearly hand through the water, and thought of the days
when she and Moses took this sail together — she in her
pink sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with a tin
dinner-pail between them; and now, to-day the ship of
her childish dreams was to be launched. That launching
was something she regarded almost with superstitious awe.
The ship, built on one element, but designed to have its life
in another, seemed an image of the soul, framed and fashioned
with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but
finding its true element only when it sails out into the ocean
of eternity. Such was her thought as she looked down the
clear, translucent depths; but would it have been of any use
to try to utter it to anybody? — to Sally Kittridge, for example,
who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons
beside her, and who would have shown her white teeth all
round at such a suggestion, and said, “Now, Mara, who but
you would have thought of that?”

But there are souls sent into this world who seem to have
always mysterious affinities for the invisible and the unknown
— who see the face of everything beautiful through a thin
veil of mystery and sadness. The Germans call this yearning
of spirit home-sickness — the dim remembrances of a

spirit once affiliated to some higher sphere, of whose lost
brightness all things fair are the vague reminders. As Mara
looked pensively into the water, it seemed to her that every
incident of life came up out of its depths to meet her. Her
own face reflected in a wavering image, sometimes shaped
itself to her gaze in the likeness of the pale lady of her
childhood, who seemed to look up at her from the waters
with dark, mysterious eyes of tender longing. Once or
twice this dreamy effect grew so vivid that she shivered, and
drawing herself up from the water, tried to take an interest
in a very minute account which Mrs. Kittridge was giving
of the way to make corn-fritters which should taste exactly
like oysters. The closing direction about the quantity of
mace Mrs. Kittridge felt was too sacred for common ears,
and therefore whispered it into Mrs. Pennel's bonnet with a
knowing nod and a look from her black spectacles which
would not have been bad for a priestess of Dodona in giving
out an oracle. In this secret direction about the mace lay
the whole mystery of corn-oysters; and who can say what
consequences might ensue from casting it in an unguarded
manner before the world?

And now the boat which has rounded Harpswell Point is
skimming across to the head of Middle Bay, where the new
ship can distinctly be discerned standing upon her ways,
while moving clusters of people were walking up and down
her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity. All sorts of
gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged in
the little world assembling there.

“I ha' n't seen the Pennels nor the Kittridges yet,” said
Aunt Ruey, whose little roly-poly figure was made illustrious
in her best cinnamon-colored dyed silk. “There 's
Moses Pennel a-goin' up that ar ladder. Dear me, what

a beautiful feller he is! it 's a pity he a'n't a-goin' to marry
Mara Lincoln, after all.”

“Ruey, do hush up,” said Miss Roxy, frowning sternly
down from under the shadow of a preternatural black straw
bonnet, trimmed with huge bows of black ribbon, which headpiece
sat above her curls like a helmet. “Don't be a-gettin'
sentimental, Ruey, whatever else you get — and talkin' like
Miss Emily Sewell about match-makin'; I can't stand it; it
rises on my stomach, such talk does. As to that ar Moses
Pennel, folks a'n't so certain as they thinks what he 'll do.
Sally Kittridge may think he 's a-goin' to have her, because
he 's been a-foolin' round with her all summer, and Sally
Kittridge may jist find she 's mistaken, that 's all.”

“Yes,” said Miss Ruey, “I 'member when I was a girl
my old aunt, Jerushy Hopkins, used to be always a-dwellin'
on this Scripture, and I 've been havin' it brought up to me
this mornin': `There are three things which are too wonderful
for me, yea, four, which I know not: the way of an
eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way
of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.'
She used to say it as a kind o' caution to me when she used
to think Abram Peters was bein' attentive to me. I 've
often reflected what a massy it was that ar never come to
nothin', for he 's a poor drunken critter now.”

“Well, for my part,” said Miss Roxy, fixing her eyes
critically on the boat that was just at the landing, “I should
say the ways of a maid with a man was full as particular as
any of the rest of 'em. Do look at Sally Kittridge now!
There 's Tom Hiers a-helpin' her out of the boat; and did
you see the look she gin Moses Pennel as she went by him.
Wal, Moses has got Mara on his arm anyhow; there 's a gal
worth six-and-twenty of the other. Do see them ribbins and

scarfs, and the furbelows, and the way that ar Sally Kittridge
handles her eyes. She 's one that one feller a'n't
never enough for.”

Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore,
and Moses and one or two other young men came to assist in
their landing. Never had he looked more beautiful than at
this moment, when flushed with excitement and satisfaction
he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his black curls
blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally with a look
of frank admiration as she stood there dropping her long
black lashes over her bright cheeks, and coquettishly looking
out from under them, but she stepped forward with a little
energy of movement, and took the offered hand of Tom
Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised rapture,
and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped Mrs. Pennel on
shore, and then took Mara on his arm, looking her over as
he did so with a glance far less assured and direct than he
had given to Sally.

“You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?” said
he.

“Not if you help me,” she said.

Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the
vessel, she ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him.
Moses' brow clouded a little, and Mara noticed it. Moses
thought he did not care for Sally; he knew that the little
hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he wanted,
and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly
with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling
which possesses coquettes of both sexes.

Sally, on all former occasions, had shown a marked preference
for him, and professed supreme indifference to Tom
Hiers.

“It 's all well enough,” he said to himself, and he helped
Mara up the ladders with the greatest deference and tenderness.
“This little woman is worth ten such girls as Sally,
if one only could get her heart. Here we are on our ship,
Mara,” he said, as he lifted her over the last barrier and set
her down on the deck. “Look over there, do you see Eagle
Island? Did you dream when we used to go over there
and spend the day that you ever would be on my ship, as
you are to-day? You won't be afraid, will you, when the
ship starts?”

“I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that
sails in water,” said Mara with enthusiasm. “What a splendid
ship! how nicely it all looks!”

“Come, let me take you over it,” said Moses, “and show
you my cabin.”

Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of
various comments by the crowd of spectators below, and the
clatter of workmen's hammers busy in some of the last
preparations could yet be heard like a shower of hailstones
under her.

“I hope the ways are well greased,” said old Captain
Eldritch. “'Member how the John Peters stuck in her
ways for want of their being greased?”

“Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over
five minutes after she was launched?” said the quavering
voice of Miss Ruey; “there was jist such a company of
thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is now.”

“Well, there was n't nobody hurt,” said Captain Kittridge.
“If Mis' Kittridge would let me, I 'd be glad to go aboard
this 'ere, and be launched with 'em.”

“I tell the Cap'n he 's too old to be climbin' round and
mixin' with young folks' frolics,” said Mrs. Kittridge.

“I suppose, Cap'n Pennel, you 've seen that the ways is
all right,” said Captain Broad, returning to the old subject.

“Oh yes, it 's all done as well as hands can do it,” said
Zephaniah. “Moses has been here since starlight this
morning, and Moses has pretty good faculty about such
matters.”

“Where 's Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily?” said Miss
Ruey. “Oh, there they are over on that pile of rocks;
they get a pretty fair view there.”

Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily were sitting under a cedartree,
with two or three others, on a projecting point whence
they could have a clear view of the launching. They were
so near that they could distinguish clearly the figures on
deck, and see Moses standing with his hat off, the wind
blowing his curls back, talking earnestly to the golden-haired
little woman on his arm.

“It is a launch into life for him,” said Mr. Sewell, with
suppressed feeling.

“Yes, and he has Mara on his arm,” said Miss Emily;
“that 's as it should be. Who is that that Sally Kittridge
is flirting with now? Oh, Tom Hiers. Well! he 's good
enough for her. Why don't she take him?” said Miss
Emily, in her zeal jogging her brother's elbow.

“I 'm sure, Emily, I don't know,” said Mr. Sewell dryly;
“perhaps he won't be taken.”

“Don't you think Moses looks handsome?” said Miss
Emily. “I declare there is something quite romantic and
Spanish about him; don't you think so, Theophilus?”

“Yes, I think so,” said her brother, quietly looking, externally,
the meekest and most matter-of-fact of persons;
but deep within him a voice sighed, “Poor Dolores, be comforted,
your boy is beautiful and prosperous!”

“There, there!” said Miss Emily, “I believe she is starting.”

All eyes of the crowd were now fixed on the ship; the
sound of hammers stopped; the workmen were seen flying
in every direction to gain good positions to see her go, —
that sight so often seen on those shores, yet to which use
cannot dull the most insensible.

First came a slight, almost imperceptible, movement, then
a swift exultant rush, a dash into the hissing water, and the
air was rent with hurrahs as the beautiful ship went floating
far out on the blue seas, where her fairer life was henceforth
to be.

Mara was leaning on Moses' arm at the instant the ship
began to move, but in the moment of the last dizzy rush she
felt his arm go tightly round her, holding her so close that
she could hear the beating of his heart.

“Hurrah!” he said, letting go his hold the moment the
ship floated free, and swinging his hat in answer to the hats,
scarfs, and handkerchiefs, which fluttered from the crowd
on the shore. His eyes sparkled with a proud light as he
stretched himself upward, raising his head and throwing
back his shoulders with a triumphant movement. He
looked like a young sea-king just crowned; and the fact is
the less wonderful, therefore, that Mara felt her heart throb
as she looked at him, and that a treacherous throb of the
same nature shook the breezy ribbons fluttering over the
careless heart of Sally. A handsome young sea-captain,
treading the deck of his own vessel, is, in his time and place,
a prince.

Moses looked haughtily across at Sally, and then passed
a half-laughing defiant flash of eyes between them. He
looked at Mara, who could certainly not have known what

was in her eyes at the moment, — an expression that made
his heart give a great throb, and wonder if he saw aright:
but it was gone a moment after, as all gathered around in a
knot exchanging congratulations on the fortunate way in
which the affair had gone off. Then came the launching
in boats to go back to the collation on shore, where were
high merry-makings for the space of one or two hours: —
and thus was fulfilled the first part of Moses Pennel's Saturday
afternoon prediction.