Chapter 31

Should a man full of talk be justified? O that ye would altogether hold your peace; and it should be your wisdom.

JOB, CH. XI. 2; XIII. 5.

Voyages across the Atlantic are now performed every day by old and young women and children, and described by them so much more elegantly and scientifically, and with so much more correct knowledge of the technicalities necessary for such descriptions, than it is possible that seafaring men can ever attain, that if one of the latter, in a moment of mental hallucination, was to undertake to convey an idea of the element that has been his home for years, he would be hissed off the stage as another Munchausen. For this reason nautical men, who have laid aside the marlinspike and taken up the pen, very prudently avoid that portion of the literary arena, leaving Daddy Neptune's dominions to be explored and described by landsmen.

It is in obedience to public opinion in this respect, I suppose, that our Secretaries of the Navy are almost uniformly chosen from the "mass of the people," at the greatest possible distance from high-water mark; men who have never seen a piece of water that they could not jump across, or a ship, except in the newspaper, till they came to Washington. "Let the sea make a noise, and the fulness thereof; let the floods clap their hands" for joy, that the Cooks and the Falconers, the Ansons and the Byrons, of olden time, are at length banished from the department of nautical literature, and no _oceanic_ description will be listened to unless said or sung by a _ci-devant_ midshipman or a half-boy, half-woman poet, who lies in his berth, and sees, through the four-inch-plank deadlight of a packet, the full moon rising in the west. James Fenimore Cooper, Esq.--I give the man his entire name and title, as he seems to insist upon it upon all occasions--the "American Walter Scott," is undisputably at the very head of his _trade_ at the present day for nautical descriptions; his terrestrial admirers have pronounced him "a practical seaman;" and, of course, the only man in these United States that can give any, even an approximate idea of the sea, and "those that go down in ships." I have at my pen's end six or eight very desperate "cases" of his knowledge of "practical seamanship" and maritime affairs, which may be found in the "Red Rover" and "Water Witch" _passim_; but those animals, vulgarly called critics, but more politely and properly at present, reviewers, whom the New York Mirror defines to be "great dogs, that go about unchained and growl at every thing they do not comprehend," these dogs have dragged the lion's hide partly off, and ascertained, what every man, to whom the Almighty has vouchsafed an ordinary share of common sense, had all along suspected, that it covered an ass. James Fenimore Cooper, Esquire's "Letter to his Countrymen" was an explosion of folly and absurdity that has blown his name up so high, that there is little or no chance of its coming down again "this king's reign." Whether he was or was not hired to write it to support the present administration, as some folks suspect, is not my affair. I will, therefore, resume the thread of my discourse, which was only "belayed" for a few minutes, to indulge in the rare pleasure of grumbling a little at seeing

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Julia Effingham was embarked on board the large, burthensome, and not alarmingly fast sailing brig Avon--John Burton, master; while the ship under the command of Captain Allerton was called the Hyperion. Both vessels were nearly of the same tonnage, though there was much difference in their rates of sailing, the Hyperion having been built as near the model of a swift American ship as the English naval architect's conscience would let him, which, however, did not allow him any greater latitude than such as made a very obvious difference in their appearance and rate of speed. Miss Effingham was accompanied by her maid, Miss Dolly, alias Dorothea, Hastings. Nothing material occurred for the first six weeks of their voyage, by which time they had nearly reached the equator, except that Allerton improved every opportunity afforded by light breezes and calms to visit the Avon; which visits Captain Burton, honest man! supposed were intended for himself.

But at this period--that is, six weeks after leaving the Lizard Point, and while the two ships were in that peculiarly disagreeable strip of salt water that lies between the southern limits of the north-east trade-wind and the northern edge of the south-east, and is affected by neither--there came on one night one of those very black and threatening squalls, that look as though they would blow the ocean out of its bed, and frequently do not blow at all. Captain Burton, who thought a squall was a squall all over the world, and who was better acquainted with the Grand Banks and the Bay of Biscay than with the tropics, took in all sail, while the Hyperion, with topgallant-sails lowered, ran gallantly before it, and made upwards of fifty miles before the breeze left her. The Avon was in her turn shortly after favored with a fine breeze, but the two ships did not meet again till they had passed Cape Horn.

In the mean time, Mr. Effingham began to discover that Chili was not paradise, nor its inhabitants saints; many thefts, robberies, and frauds, were practised upon him, for which he could obtain no redress from the contemptible magistrates; an earthquake, that did a great deal of damage, was followed by a sweeping epidemic, which, as it affected only the natives, was imputed by the priests to magic art and diabolical witchcraft on the part of the heretical foreign residents. A riot was the consequence, and the foreigners were only able to secure their lives and property by a combination of their numbers, and the most determined firmness of purpose. In short, the harassed merchant found out at last that he had blundered into one of those self-styled republics, so many of which have sprung up and passed away since the commencement of the nineteenth century, where infant Liberty is nursed by mother Mob.

These vexatious circumstances, and the prospect of an approaching revolution, that threatened to be a bloody one, completely changed his sentiments with regard to all South American governments, and he bitterly regretted having sent for his daughter to join him.

It was too late now to remedy that mis-step; but he determined, as soon as she arrived, to re-embark for England as soon as possible, and in consequence he lost no time in disposing of his merchandize, and transmitting his funds to the coast, and thence to the spirit-room of a British frigate. Having thus "set his house in order," and adjusted his Chilian books, he left St. Jago, and took up his abode for the time being in Valparaiso, waiting impatiently for the arrival of the Hyperion and Avon, that were now daily expected.