Chapter 19 - Page 2

starboard anchor was
gone; and a great part of the starboard bulwarks; while every one of the
lower yard-arms had been broken, in the same direction; so that she now
carried small and unsightly jury-yards.

When I looked at this vessel, with the whole of one side thus shattered,
but the other still in fine trim; and when I remembered her gay and
gallant appearance, when she left the same harbor into which she now
entered so forlorn; I could not help thinking of a young man I had known
at home, who had left his cottage one morning in high spirits, and was
brought back at noon with his right side paralyzed from head to foot.

It seems that this vessel had been run against by a strange ship,
crowding all sail before a fresh breeze; and the stranger had rushed
past her starboard side, reducing her to the sad state in which she now
was.

Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night
look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to
become negligent, and nod. And this is not so wonderful, after all; for
though every seaman has heard of those accidents at sea; and many of
them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet,
when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without
having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize
that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible
that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of
the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel
upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another.
But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon
the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things
which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can
only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when
experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day;
inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of
adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too
bright ever to set. And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest
ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been
struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some
lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the
fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster,
suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into
death.