CHAPTER I. START FROM SOUTHAMPTON-STORM IN THE CHANNEL-EXPECTED DINNER AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT-PORTO SANTO-ANOTHER STORM-ARRIVAL AT MADEIRA. Some love to roam O'er the dark sea foam, Where the shrill winds whistle free." SOME are great fools then, and, on the well-advised interposition of friends, should be confined to a private lunatic asylum. And no less fools, in my opinion, are they who, induced or compelled to a sea-voyage, relinquish steam for sails. In the latter predicament I stand; for, on the first day of October in the year of Grace one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the seventysixth, I left Southampton for the Island of Madeira, in the brig "Brilliant," of some two hundred tons burden. It had been particularly commended to me as having been previously the yacht of a lord. Had it been consecrated to the Lord, it had hardly found more favor in the eyes of snobbish John Bull. We started with unpropitious omens. It was on Friday we left our moorings-a day ever disastrous in nautical calends. The preceding day I saw, or imagined I saw, the face of a person who had died a year before; and I thought to have been called by name, and by the voice of a person too distant to be understood by merely human organs. This, according to popular belief, is sure to presage an untimely death. The great 14 ONE DINNER ON BOARD, Dr. Johnson himself was once called in this way; and though the call met with the same fate as Baxter's "Last Call to the Unconverted," i. e., inattention, the philologist's belief in this supernatural summons was only suspended, not annihilated. The experiment failed in his case, but the principle remained the same. Had the mighty Julius been deterred by half such portents, would he not have forborne the Capitol, and thus avoided the ungrateful stroke of Brutus? A steam-tug towed our reluctant keel some miles down the Channel, against wind and tide; and, on the approach of evening, parted companionship, leaving us inert upon the wave. Is it not Horace who says that he who first dared the dangers of the deep must have possessed a heart of brass? He indeed might have been bold at Pharsalia, and yet avoided the sea without reproach to manhood. There is something fearful in the ever-present conviction that but a plank separates you from eternity! On the land there seem a thousand chances for life; on the sea, but one. A hidden rock, an accidental flame, an insignificant leak—and no hope save in God! And beside the heart of brass to go down upon the waters, you require the stomach of an ostrich to endure them. Good digestion never waits on appetite. You never eat a natural meal. I dined once on this voyage-the first day-on cold meats, and with a full table. I recollect it gratefully; for it was the only dinner at which I "assisted" unaffected by sea-sickness, or nausea, or rebellious stomach, the whole voyage. I turned in early that evening-not so much with the desire or from the hope of sleep, as to escape the motion of the vessel, which rocked wearily upon the billows; these becoming each minute more and more agitated by the increasing wind. |