Border and Bastille

CHAPTER I.. A Foul Start.

A FOUL START.

Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed everything--the leaden sky--the bleak, brown shores over against us--the dull graystone work lining the quays--the foul yellow water--shading one into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern. Even where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets, boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the dusky spray, or murky foam.

The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other sounds--a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear--were drowned by the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing. For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough to slight "the admiral's" warning.

It had been gravely discussed, we heard afterwards, by the owners and captain of "The Asia," whether she should venture to sea that day; finally, the question was left to the latter to decide. There are as nice points of honor, and as much jealous regard for professional credit in the merchant service as in any other. Only once, since the line was started, has a "Cunarder" been kept in port by wind or weather--this was the commander's first trip across the Atlantic since his promotion; you may guess which way the balance turned.

We waited on the landing-stage one long cold hour. The huge square structure, ordinarily steady and solid as the mainland itself, was pitching and rolling not much less "lively" than a Dutch galliot in a sea-way; and the tug that was to take us on board parted three hawsers before she could make fast alongside. It was hard to keep one's footing on the shaking, slippery bridge, but in ten minutes all staggered or tumbled, as choice or chance directed, on to the deck of the little steamer. I was looking for a dry corner, when an American passenger made room for me very courteously, and I begun to talk to him--about the weather, of course. It was a keen, intellectual face, pleasant withal, and kindly, and in its habitual expression not devoid of genial humor. But, at that moment, it was possessed by an unutterable misery. No wonder.

"I was ill the whole way over from America," he said, "and then we started with bright weather and a fair wind."

I was much attracted by the voice, betraying scarcely any Transatlantic accent: it was quiet and calm in tone, like that of any brave man on his way to encounter some irresistible pain or woe; but saddened by an agony of anticipation, he presaged, only too truly, "the burden of the atmosphere and the wrath to come."

Another struggle and scramble--and we are on board, at last. It is some comfort to exchange that wretched little wet tug for the deck of the Asia; though a trifle unsteady even now, she oscillates after the sober and stately fashion befitting a mighty "liner." Half an hour sees the end of the long stream of mail-bags, and the huge bales of newspapers shipped; then the moorings are cast loose; there rises the faintest echo of a cheer--who could be enthusiastic on such a morning?--the vast wheels turn slowly and sullenly, as if hating the hard work before them; and we are fairly off.

The waves and weather grew rapidly wilder; as we neared blue water, just after passing the light, we saw a large ship driving helplessly and--the sailors said--hopelessly, among the breakers of the North Sands. She had tried to run in without a pilot, and ours seemed to think her fate the justest of judgments; but to disinterested and unprofessional spectators the sight was very sad, and somewhat discouraging. So with omen and augury, as well as the wind dead against us.

"The Sword went out to sea."

All that day and night "The Asia" staggered and weltered on through the yeasty channel waves, breaking in her passengers rather roughly for a conflict with vaster billows. Thirteen hours of hard steaming barely brought us abreast of Holyhead. The gale moderated towards morning, and we ran along the Irish coast under a blue sky, making Queenstown shortly after sundown.

By this time I had become acquainted with my cabin-mate, in which respect I was singularly fortunate. M. ---- was a thorough Parisian, and a favorable specimen of his class. Small of stature, and slender of proportion--a very important point where space is so limited--low-voiced, and sparing of violent expletives or gestures, delicately neat in his person and apparel, one could hardly have selected a more amiable colleague under circumstances of some difficulty. I can aver that he conducted himself always with a perfect modesty and decorum: he would preserve his equilibrium miraculously, when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily immersing in cold water--a feat not to be accomplished without much toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle--he thought it necessary to simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to incur such needless danger. His endeavors to mislead me on this point, without actually committing himself, were ingenious and wily in the extreme. Sitting in the saloon at the most incongruous hours of day and night, he would exclaim, "J'ai l'idee de prendre bientot mon bain!" or he would speak with a shiver of recollection of the imaginary plunge taken that morning. I don't think I should ever have been deluded, even if my curiosity had not led me to question the steward; but never, by word or look, did I impugn the reality of that Barmecide bath. To his other accomplishments, M. ---- added a very pretty talent for piquet; the match was even enough, though, to be interesting, at almost nominal stakes, and so we got pleasantly through many hours--dark, wet, or boisterous.

We were not a numerous company--only thirty-three in all. Few amateurs travel at this inclement season. I knew only one other Englishman on board, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, returning to Canada from sick-leave. Among the Americans was Cyrus Field, the energetic promoter of the Atlantic Telegraph, then making (I think he said) his thirtieth transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to the freedom of the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of its depth and breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me, afterwards, to see such science and experience yield so easily to the common weakness of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field told me that throughout the fearful weather to which the Niagara and Agamemnon were exposed, on their first attempt to lay down the cable, he never once felt a sensation of nausea; the body had not time to suffer till the mind was relieved from its heavy, anxious strain.

For three days after leaving Queenstown, the west winds met us, steady and strong; but it was not till the afternoon of Christmas day that the sea began to "get up" in earnest, and the weather to portend a gale. Then, the Atlantic seemed determined to prove that report had not exaggerated the hardships of a winter passage. It blew harder and harder all Friday, and after a brief lull on Saturday--as though gathering breath for the final onset--the storm fairly reached its height, and then slowly abated, leaving us substantial tokens of its visit in the shape of shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea, in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but--oh, mine enemy!--if I could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for just one week, the weather that fell to our lot, I would abate much of my animosity, purely from satiation of revenge.

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