Steamer Atlantic, 4th
March, 1862.
There is nothing like beginning a journal early, so I take
it up where Alice will have left me, on my way to the ship. Cousin Sim1
wouldn't hear of my plan of ordering a carriage for me and my baggage, but
would have a wagon for the trunks, and drive me down. So I dispatched all my
things, bag included, to wait for me at the Atlantic, and followed soon after.
Arrived there, all was bustle and confusion, but our wagon was missing! — gone
probably to some other Atlantic at some other Canal Street, existing in the
driver's fertile brain! Mr. Cary, and William, and Sim, and little Johnny, and
William Russell all started in different directions, while I kept guard in the
drizzling northeaster for the wagon. Baggage and miscellaneous heaps of things
gradually disappeared into the maw of the monster ship, whose wheels were
turning and churning up the water as if impatient for a start. Frantic women,
unprotected females, appealed to the captain and to Mr. E. L. Pierce to let
them go and teach young nigs; others in despair about their traps, some tearful
at parting, the collector busy as a bee swearing in the passengers.
Finally he bundled up his papers, the wharf was emptied, and the ship full. The
captain mounted the paddle-box, and still my precious trunks came not. I
determined to leave them and trust to the captain and Mr. Heard for clothes, —
yet lingered on the ladder to the last. Imagine my “phelinks” at the idea of
not having even a tooth-brush! and at the vision of what Mary's cake would be
when turned out of my trunk a fortnight hence! At last back came Mr. Cary with
the wagoner in his clutches, who protested that he brought all and that it had
gone on board, deep, alas, into that bottomless pit of a baggage hole, now full
to the top. Thankful even for this forlorn hope, I bade our friends good-by,
and took refuge in the cabin, where Mr. Heard’s things were snugly stored in
our little state-room! I leave you to think of the anathemas uttered against
cousin Sim, against the whole race of wagoners, and above all against my own
feeble-minded self for trusting any of them!
Once fairly started I seized the head porter and insisted on
having my trunks, if the whole had to be turned out of their stowage; then by going
down myself I luckily managed to get my sea things, and so that
adventure ended in comedy!
Our passengers consist chiefly of the “villaintropic”
society, as dear little Sarah's friend, the housekeeper in Miss Edgeworth's “False
Keys,” would call it; bearded and mustached and odd-looking men, with
odder-looking women. . . . You would
have doubted whether it was the adjournment of a John Brown meeting or the fag
end of a broken-down phalanstery! Among others Mr. Mack (Stillman's
father-in-law, who says he knew and liked William H.), Ned Hooper and young
Phillips of Will's class, and Fred Eustis and son; an officer stationed at
Beaufort, Captain Eliot, son of the oculist, introduced to me by or through the
Shaws, Tim Walker's sister, whom I have not yet seen; William Bacon and young
Brooks, a scattering naval officer or two, and the usual quantum suff. of nondescripts and nonentities,
valued doubtless by somebody, but offering no salient points to fix the eye.
We made a grand show at dinner, — a terrible waste of good
things for most of them, and then plunged into the fog and drizzle of a dirty
northeaster, which doubtless visited you in snow, and gave you some twinges at
having let me go! Tea and cards in the evening. Mr. Heard seasick, and only a
few of us haunting the long dining-room. A fair night's sleep, variegated with
sore throat and some coughing, and then a bright morning with a westerly gale
blowing. Passengers very scattering. We had an alarm of a countess, but neither
captain nor purser know of her, so it is doubtless a mistake, unless, like a
wolf in sheep's clothing she had smuggled herself into Mr. Pierce's troop of
fifty! I should not forget to tell you of Whist, who was consigned to a porter,
nor of Billy,2 the occupant of a box such as you saw horses hoisted
in. As he was much exposed to wind[.] I luckily found an old sail belonging to
the little boat Mr. Cary sent on board for me, and went and got one end of his
box tented in. The top was already covered, so he seemed pretty well provided
for, although the blanket Luther got for him looked mighty thin and cottony!
This morning after breakfast I was forward by the
pilot-house, watching the old ship pitch into the sea and the gulls following, and
the bright sky and blue and white waves, when an unlucky billow took us at the
wrong time, like a boxer hitting his adversary when down, and instantly the
whole deck below, nine feet down, was full of water; and even where I stood it
came ankle deep, and even found its way, a little of it, down my back as
I clutched at a rope and turned to avoid it! The next moment I looked down upon
poor Billy. His box had been lifted bodily, turned around, and the iron anchor
stock driven through it! Billy had plunged forward and got his fore feet
outside, and was struggling violently among the flukes of the anchor to keep
his footing, and then, with the intelligence of a pony, tried to get back into
his box from the slippery deck, — his box, now shared with the anchor stock and
generally knocked into a cocked hat! They got him out with whole legs, and he
is now standing, or trying to stand, on the deck, while the carpenter is
mending his box. It was for a time a bad sight, and, the water being still
surging about below, I could not without thorough ducking help him, except by
advice and consolation offered through the singing of the gale!
So I have brought you up to the present time. Alice can well
finish the picture, if she remembers our old seat near the captain's end of the
table, where I am sitting, with my feet on the warm steam pipe under the table
and my outer man guarded by a coat stolen from Mr. Heard to replace my wet one,
— the spray still dashing against the saloon square windows, but the sea going
down; and now we are sure of good weather for the rest of our trip.
_______________
1 His cousin, Paul Sieman Forbes, of New York.
2 A little Naushon island horse, taken down as a
charger for Lieutenant W. H. F. Whist was a setter. — Ed.
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