 | Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
WAITING FOR THE SHIP.
A FORT POINT IDYL.
ABOUT an hour's ride from the Plaza there is
a high bluff with the ocean breaking uninterruptedly
along its rocky beach. There are several
cottages on the sands, which look as if they
had recently been cast up by a heavy sea. The
cultivated patch behind each tenement is fenced
in by bamboos, broken spars, and driftwood. With
its few green cabbages and turnip-tops, each garden
looks something like an aquarium with the
water turned off. In fact you would not be surprised
to meet a merman digging among the potatoes,
or a mermaid milking a sea cow hard by.
Near this place formerly arose a great semaphoric
telegraph with its gaunt arms tossed up against the
horizon. It has been replaced by an observatory,
connected with an electric nerve to the heart of
the great commercial city. From this point the
incoming ships are signalled, and again checked off
at the City Exchange. And while we are here
looking for the expected steamer, let me tell you
a story.
Not long ago, a simple, hard-working mechanic
mines to send home for his wife and two children.
He arrived in San Francisco a month before the
time the ship was due, for he was a western man,
and had made the overland journey and knew
little of ships or seas or gales. He procured work
in the city, but as the time approached he would
go to the shipping office regularly every day. The
month passed, but the ship came not; then a month
and a week, two weeks, three weeks, two months,
and then a year.
The rough, patient face, with soft lines overlying
its hard features, which had become a daily
apparition at the shipping agent's, then disappeared.
It turned up one afternoon at the observatory as
the setting sun relieved the operator from his
duties. There was something so childlike and
simple in the few questions asked by this stranger,
touching his business, that the operator spent some
time to explain. When the mystery of signals and
telegraphs was unfolded, the stranger had one more
question to ask. “How long might a vessel be
absent before they would give up expecting her?”
The operator could n't tell; it would depend on
circumstances. Would it be a year? Yes, it
might be a year, and vessels had been given up
for lost after two years and had come home. The
stranger put his rough hand on the operator's, and
thanked him for his “troubil,” and went away.
Still the ship came not. Stately clippers swept
into the Gate, and merchantmen went by with
colors flying, and the welcoming gun of the steamer
often reverberated among the hills. Then the
patient face, with the old resigned expression, but
a brighter, wistful look in the eye, was regularly
met on the crowded decks of the steamer as she
disembarked her living freight. He may have had
a dimly defined hope that the missing ones might
yet come this way, as only another road over that
strange unknown expanse. But he talked with
ship captains and sailors, and even this last hope
seemed to fail. When the careworn face and bright
eyes were presented again at the observatory, the
operator, busily engaged, could not spare time to
answer foolish interrogatories, so he went away.
But as night fell, he was seen sitting on the rocks
with his face turned seaward, and was seated there
all that night.
When he became hopelessly insane, for that was
what the physicians said made his eyes so bright
and wistful, he was cared for by a fellow-craftsman
who had known his troubles. He was allowed to
indulge his fancy of going out to watch for the
ship, in which she “and the children” were, at
night when no one else was watching. He had
made up his mind that the ship would come in at
night. This, and the idea that he would relieve
the operator, who would be tired with watching all
relieved the operator every night!
For two years the ships came and went. He
was there to see the outward-bound clipper, and
greet her on her return. He was known only by
a few who frequented the place. When he was
missed at last from his accustomed spot, a day or
two elapsed before any alarm was felt. One Sunday,
a party of pleasure-seekers clambering over
the rocks were attracted by the barking of a dog
that had run on before them. When they came
up they found a plainly dressed man lying there
dead. There were a few papers in his pocket, —
chiefly slips cut from different journals of old
marine memoranda, — and his face was turned towards
the distant sea.
| Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches | |