Ferryman

“ The ferryman asked him what his trade was, and what he know. "I know everything," answered he. "Then you can do me a favour," said the ferryman, "and tell me why I must always be rowing backwards and forwards, and am never set free?" ”

“ If every journey were with a fare the ferryman might be a shade more cheerful, even though the payment is so trifling. Was there ever a rich ferryman? Has a whimsical millionaire ever played at being a ferryman? Has a Carnegie ever left a ferryman a legacy? ”

“ All that the ferryman knows of the true purposes of a river he gains from observation of others, who gaily pass him, pulling with the stream or against it, and singing, perhaps, as they row. Did a ferryman ever sing? ”

“ He has conquered the river, and turns either to the right or to the left. Sometimes when the ferryman is prevented from being at his post, either through illness or more urgent household affairs, then his wife or even his child will come out of the house and fetch the stranger across. They are able to perform this office as well as he—even I could attend to it. The job of the ferryman is an easy one and requires no special capacity or training. ”

“ Down to the boat come the strangers from the great world—young or old, forbidding or beautiful, ardent or pensive—and howsoever the ferryman would like to hold them and talk with them, no sooner does the boat touch the farther bank than they are off again! ”

“ Then Hagen his voice uplifted, and he shouted across the flood:
“Ho! ferry me over, thou boatman,” cried the thane in battle good,
“And I will give thee an armlet of red gold for thine hire.
Sore is my need of the crossing, and eager my desire.”
Now this ferryman nowise needed to ply, so rich was he.
Right seldom a hire he accepted from whosoe’er it might be. ”

“ Crossing the river by ferry boat a long stretch of beach is reached, but the firm white sand will be found to have given place to loose gravelly shingle, along which no great speed can be made by the pedestrian, and yet, as he will learn from the ferryman, it will be needful to put his best foot forward. ”

“ We Dittisham folk live beside Dart river and at what you may call a crossing. For there's a lot of people go back and forth over the water between us and Greenway on t'other bank, and so the ferryman is an important member of the community, and we often date things that happen by such a man who reigned over the ferry at the time, just as we think of what fell out when such a king reigned over the country. ”

“ The ferryman refused at first to take the carriage into his boat; he would undertake, he said, to convey the passengers and the horse safely across, but not the vehicle. The lady, anxious to rejoin her husband, would not descend. She ordered the coachman to enter the boat ”

“ Quite as likely, however, it is somebody who is too early,—because he really belongs to the next boat, and not to the one which is just leaving the dock as he tears into the ferry-house.
There is a good deal of condensed life and human nature to be found at a ferry by one who himself is in no hurry to cross. Take your stand just where you can see up the street and at the same time can command the whole interior. ”

“ Here, where King’s Ferry crossed from bank to bank, lay my greatest chance of danger; and taking the mid-channel for it, I unshipped the oars and let the boat drift as it would in the tideway. So floating, when I was well past the line of the ferry, past all hazard of being discovered by one of our patrol boats, as I imagined, I ventured to step the mast and to hoist the little leg-of-mutton sail with which the boat was provided. The showing of the small triangle of white cloth was my undoing. ”

“ But a ferry could never go to sea. She is built very broad, with very little of her under the water and a great deal above. Big ocean waves would tip her over.
Men have used ferries from the earliest times. Hundreds and even thousands of years ago people and animals were ferried across rivers on rafts. Even today there are raft-like ferries which men guide across our rivers by steel cables.
Train ferries take loaded freight cars across harbors where there are no railroad{80} bridges. In some harbors, the cars travel on flat-bottomed barges which tugboats shove along. ”

“ The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering and tugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loaded with dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hooted and we howled,—the men did,—and the ferry-keeper came out and stared at us in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if we could have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river, which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely to sleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp. ”

“ There is no sight more uninspiring than a ferry-boat crowded with human beings at a quarter of six o’clock in the evening, when the great homeward rush from the offices and commercial houses sets in. At that time, although there are some returning shoppers and women type-writers and clerks, the larger number of the passengers are men, sitting in slanting rows to catch the light on the evening paper, or wedged in an upright mass at the forward end of the boat. ”

“ As a matter of fact the ferry isn’t a boat at all. It is more like a house or a street car or a park full of pretty benches. It doesn’t sail, it only plies, plies between two given points at stated intervals, and could anything be more dull. Nothing is more prosaic than a ferry unless it be an ironing board.
Even a barge is superior, and a barge doesn’t pretend to be a boat. A barge goes somewhere and it gets mussed up by the real salt sea, and so do flat, old scows, honest and rough and sea-going. Any boat in the bay is superior to the effeminate ferry. ”

“ Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chafing or content, you, thus runs the current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow of the ferry-boat ever the same tune. Year after year, so much allowance for the drifting of the boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road that steadily runs away; while you, upon your flowing road of time, are so capricious and distracted. ”

“ By-and-by the steam ferry-boat arrives, bells ring, and the living stream pours and crushes down a covered path, which, stopping suddenly, leaves some thirty or forty paces of open platform, upon which the sun and rain beat uninterruptedly, inconveniencing children, delicate women, old age, invalids, and what not. ”

“ See how the river has changed character again: it is broad now, and the reaches are long and very slow-running. And look, there is a ferry!”
I told her the name of it, as I slowed off to put the ferry-chain over our heads; and on we went passing by a bank clad with oak trees on our left hand, till the stream narrowed again and deepened, and we rowed on between walls of tall reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and warblers were delightfully restless, twittering and chuckling as the wash of the boats stirred the reeds from the water upwards in the still, hot morning. ”

“ The passport returned and the flying bridge arrived, we led our horses on board, during which operation Fanny in gratitude pulled me off the plank into a foot and a half of water. The ferry-boat, unlike the last, was a barge, and had barriers; and during the crossing, which occupied three quarters of an hour, a stone-deaf man beat the flies off, and a blind one played the violin, and sang far from badly. They are friends, and find companionship convenient, each supplying to the other the sense wanting. ”

“ And tho' the Ferry is over an Arm of the Sea, very broad, and sometimes very rough, those fair Ferriers manage themselves with that Dexterity, that the Passage is very little dangerous, and in calm Weather, very pleasant. In short, we made choice of those that best pleased us; who in a grateful Return, led us down to their Boat under a sort of Music, which they, walking along, made with their Oars, and which we all thought far from being disagreeable. Thus were we transported over to Port Passage ”

“ The ferry-boat wheezed and coughed and sidled across the river to a floating wharf, covered, as usual, with that portion of the population, white and black, which has no interest in the arrival of trains, or anything else, excepting meals at the time for them, but which manages to live somehow by looking at other people working. ”

“ My first thought was that the ferry-boat was on the other side; then I perceived a small motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay, and one of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for the ferry, and I said yes, and he said that that was it. [473]
So we clambered down into the boat and started off; and I scarcely think that that trip paid, for we were the only passengers, and the river is wide, and gasolene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men their wages—and the fare is only a penny.
The part of the town which lies east of the river is industrial and unattractive. ”

“ The ferry-boat brushed violently against the side of the slip, and most of the passengers, losing their balance, were compelled to grasp each other unconventionally for support. The engine-room bell clanged furiously; there were more jars and creakings as the boat scraped past the great piles and reached her moorings; then the restless van horses stamped, the chains rattled over the windlasses, and the passengers crowded forward to the bows. The iron gates were opened, and the living sea of people flowed rapidly up the incline toward the railway station. ”

“ At every river we had to cross, a large boat, like a coal barge, without stem or stern, is to be found, and stowing carriole, horses, and everything else connected with them into this huge ferry boat, the driver, by means of a rope made fast and extending from one bank to the opposite one, draws boat and cargo across, and, reaching the shore he desires, remounts his box, and, heeding not from which quarter the next traveller may come, drives off, and leaves the barge where he did not meet with it. ”

“ Innumerable small rivers have to be crossed in ferry-boats, which help to break the monotony of the journey. Reading is next to impossible on Russian roads, and the art of sleeping—when there is nothing better to do—is a most valuable accomplishment to the traveller. We had attained considerable proficiency in this, and I have been ferried across a river amid the hubbub of taking out and putting in horses, and rolling the carriage into and out of the ferry-boat, without suffering any interruption of a profound slumber. ”

“ The ferry makes itself felt long before one gets there. There is a sort of undertow in the city tides far up from the river-front. There is a greater tangle of travel as you approach the streets leading to the ferry. There is a perceptible assimilation of trade to the supposed demands of householders living out of town. ”

“ These Western cars are crammed to overflowing, and, having to cross a wide stream in a ferryboat, the crush was so terrible, that I was nearly knocked down; but as American gentlemen freely use their canes where a lady is in the case, I fared better than some of my fellow-passengers, who had their coat-tails torn and their toes barbarously crushed in the crowd. The steam ferry-boat had no parapet, and the weakest were pushed to the side; the centre was filled up with baggage, carts, and horses ”

“ We were not more than a quarter of an hour on [Pg 291] board the ferry-boat, during which I found time to lay in a good supper in the splendid saloon occupying the upper story of the vessel. Arrived at the Canadian side, there was a general rush to the train; and the carriages were soon filled. There were great complaints amongst some of the passengers that the Pullman's cars were all full, and that no beds were to be had; there being usually a considerable run upon these convenient berths, especially in the depth of winter. ”

“ CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY.
1.Flood-tide below me! I watch you, face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I
see you also face to face.
2.Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes!
how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that
cross, returning home, are more curious to me
than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years
hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations,
than you might suppose. ”

“ I have sometimes sat in this ferry-boat for a couple of hours together, pleased to remain still, and enjoy, without exertion, the cool air, the sparkling redundant waters, and green islands:—amused, meantime, by the variety and conversation of the passengers, English emigrants, and French Canadians; brisk Americans; dark, sad-looking Indians folded in their blankets; farmers, storekeepers, speculators in wheat; artisans; trim girls with black eyes and short petticoats, speaking a Norman patois, and bringing baskets of fruit to the Detroit market ”

“ I determined to take my colt Dandy over the ferry for the first time, as that would give a spice of enjoyment to an otherwise trying day, so had the pole put on the buckboard and Ruth and Dandy put in. He drives charmingly in double harness, but the ferry is a very trying thing at first to a horse—just a long, flat boat, only wide enough to admit of driving in with care, without railing front or back, and propelled across the Black River, which is very deep, by two negroes pulling on a wire slack enough to allow the passage of tugboats and small steamers. ”

“ What if there are no feluccas or painted sails in our harbor; one has but to cross the river on the ferry-boat at sunrise or sunset to see wonderful picturesqueness and beauty in our sloops and schooners, our shipping thronging the piers, all smitten by the glory of the rosy light, or over-canopied by scowling gray masses of storm-driven scud. ”