Chapter 7

A Pause

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 Thermopylae.

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.