Longship

“ Deathbringer leads the way. Ravens throng the sky."
A shout rose from the crowded longships, the deep, booming voices of the Orkneymen mingling with the shriller tones of Holdbodi's people and the Manfolk.
"Lead on, Swain! We follow."
"But will Olvir stand to it?" clamored young Jarl Harald excitedly. "Will he stand to it when he sees us, Swain?"
Swain laughed shortly.
"He will stand to it, for we will carry it to him wherever he stands. Erik, get you aboard one of your dragons. I look to you to keep the Manfolk in line. Every sword counts." ”

“ A few miles further, and he may site upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring wave until the troubled spirit sinks to rest, and in the little sail that vanishes on the illimitable sea, we may find the type of the voyage which he is so soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that better state which lies beyond the grave. ”

“ Teach me, too, that wondrous song!"
"Wouldst thou,"--so the helmsman answered,
"Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!"
In each sail that skims the horizon,
In each landward-blowing breeze,
I behold that stately galley,
Hear those mournful melodies ”

“ I always do, somehow, when I see a brave young spirit eager to meet and conquer fortune—a ship setting sail from port, colours all flying, guns firing, crowds cheering. How many reach the harbour? How many founder at sea? ”

“ Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! ”

“ Herein lay my hope; if I could prolong my life for three or four months, then, if the ice was not all gone, it would have advanced far north, serving me as a ship and putting me in the way of delivering myself, either by the sight of a sail, or by the schooner floating free, or by my construction of a boat. ”

“ Sea and shore are at rest, all but one group of men who are welcoming a little ship that comes in upon the tide, fragrant and stately and a little weary, as with folded arms, solemn also as if she were invading, or perhaps bringing mysterious gifts for the ancient, wintry land. ”

“ In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest. ”

“ In short, every spot in the distance [124] seemed to be more sunny and delightful than that which I at the moment occupied. For hours would I lean my forehead against the cold glass of the nursery window, and contemplate the noble hill that swelled in the horizon. There, I had no doubt, was the end of the world. Then would I conjecture whether it were possible to get there and back again, and whether life was long enough for such a voyage. I then fixed my eye on a large beech-tree—which, blessings on it, is still standing—that I conjectured to be placed about midway. ”

“ Have a man aloft to look out for land," cries the captain. For more than eighteen weeks had we been at sea, but, by the mysterious agency of a timepiece and sextant, we knew that land was just before us. ”

“ And now the old ships and their men are gone; the new ships and the new men, many of them bearing the old, auspicious names, have taken up their watch on the stern and impartial sea, which offers no opportunities but to those who know how to grasp them with a ready hand and an undaunted heart. ”

“ Cinq Mars stayed—and before the next morning, every avenue from Narbonne was occupied by the Cardinal’s guard.
CHAPTER XIII.
Containing a journey, a discovery, and a strange sight.
I HAVE known some persons in the world who, gliding quietly through life, have floated on upon the stream of time, like a boat on the waters of a broad and tranquil river, carried on by the unruffled tide of prosperity, and lighted to their journey’s end by the cloudless sun of happiness. ”

“ It takes the fresh-faced young men down past the inner harbour to where lie the tall ships waiting. They and their cargo of exuberance, of hope, of energy, of thirst for the bubble adventure, the rainbow romance, sail away to where these wares have a market. And the quiet men glide away to the North. ”

“ Plied so deftly and so well, That, ere the shadows of evening fell, The keel of oak for a noble ship, Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong Was lying ready, and stretched along The blocks, well placed upon the slip. Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labor well begun, And not perplexed and multiplied, By idly waiting for time and tide! ”

“ I can imagine those old sailors, uneducated and superstitious, on the great ocean waters, watching the sky-lines and the dying sunsets as they dreamed of undiscovered shores, or by night on deck fancied they could hear the breakers beating against the starlit sky-line where loomed the shores of Eternity. Time and science have swept all that away from the sea for ever. ”

“ Of a man shanghaied aboard a ship half a millennium old, for a trip that leads not only to the stars, but across millennia of time. In Space, the ships can move out and back, but it's a one-way road in Time, when you make The Long Trip, and the crews of the ships are strange gatherings of men from across the ages! ”

“ You would ask me what is to follow when this vessel quits the coast and leaves us alone there? How can I answer? We must attempt what others have successfully achieved, and struggle onwards to some settlement. I know—I know, my darling, that the outlook is black and affrighting. But consider what our choice signifies; the fate that awaits us if you remain and I am marooned; or the chances—meagre indeed, but chances, nevertheless—which offer if we escape to the land. And we shall be together, dearest! ”

“ But the seaman of the last generation, brought into sympathy with the caravels of ancient time by his sailing-ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating the naïve seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy, and admiration. For those things, whose unmanageableness, even when represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror, were manned by men who are his direct professional ancestors. ”

“ And so these famous old ships sailed upon their long voyages year after year. Each was a little community complete in itself; the pleasure of the voyage depending largely upon the character of the captain, and the ability and willingness of the passengers to make themselves agreeable to each other; for, like larger communities, they had the same old problems to deal with; births, marriages, deaths, love, devotion, friendship, intrigue, meanness, gossip, and scandal; indeed, all the phases of human nature, which make and have always made the happiness or the misery of life. ”

“ And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins.
PART THE SECOND. I. MANY a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré,
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile,
Exile without an end, and without an example in story. ”

“ They that go down to the sea in ships see both the works of the Lord, and also His wonders in the deep. They see God’s works, regular, orderly, the same year by year, voyage by voyage, and tide by tide ”

“ What we can see of the remote past through the half-darkened twilight of time, is as of a great and unknown sea, on which some solitary ship is afloat, whose course we cannot trace through the shadows which every where deepen around her, nor tell what strange land lies beyond the dim horizon to which she seems bound. ”

“ You26 have another illustration of commerce binding together the ends of the earth. You soon excuse those friends of yours at home who commiserated you on the prospect of a long, monotonous sea-voyage. Where is the monotony? Not in the ship’s clock, which enumerates every hour and half-hour by a system of horology altogether different from shore time-pieces; not in the boatswain’s “Pumpship” at evening, when twelve or fifteen men entertain you with a song. Every tune at the pumps must have a chorus. ”

“ Opportunity, fleet nymph with haunting eyes and shining hair, has disappeared in the recesses of the charmed forest, and we, gazing hopelessly on the shore of life’s ocean, hear from afar the hollow murmur of the maelstrom of Fate—the rhythmic cadence of the tideless waves of eternity. ”

“ The tars love one who does not flinch from their own element.
Truly, I saw that day the works of the Lord and his wonders in the great deep. Imagine yourself in a ship, large among vessels, but a mere cork upon the waters of that mighty main. On every side, turn where you would, a huge mountain of irregular form was rising-dark, smooth, of unbroken surface, but seeming about to burst from over-extension. ”

“ And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free.
So when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow. ”

“ With smiles the Main is overspread,
As if in mockery of the dead;
And upward when he turns his sight,
The unfeeling Sun is shining bright,
And strikes him with a sickening light.
While a fainting-fit his soul bedims,
He thinks that a Ship before him swims,
A gallant Ship, all fill'd with gales,
One radiant gleam of snowy sails—
His senses return, and he looks in vain
O'er the empty silence of the Main! ”

“ In going to look upon the man of this race, you sail, not merely over seas, but over ages, epochs, unknown periods of time,—sail beyond antiquity itself, and issue into the obscure existence that antedates history. ”

“ In search of markets and of goods, of the immortal fame success would bring them, the apt young men set sail for the North, and were left, a little company of isolated Englishmen surrounded by snow and the huts of savages, to make what bargains they could and pick up what knowledge they might before the ships returned in the summer to fetch them home again. ”

“ Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing and scrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rotten hulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that by night I may see some sign of ships less ancient, and so know that I am winning my way a little toward where I would be; and each night finding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have not for two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming down crushingly upon me that I have not advanced at all ”

“ The Journey’s End Steamship Cameronia, September 21.
For some unexplainable reason the ship homeward-bound is always slow. When one leaves his own country on a journey to other lands he is in no hurry. The new pictures that constantly present themselves, the new objects and the talk that suggests new ideas, hopes and plans, make the days go swiftly by and the voyage is never too long or tiresome. ”

“ To tell the truth there is something in the long, slow lift of the ship, and her long, slow slide forwards which makes my heart beat with joy. It is the motion of freedom. To feel her come up—then slide slowly forward, with a sound of the smashing of waters, is like the magic gallop of the sky, the magic gallop of elemental space. ”

“ Who every fifth year from time immemorial have their grand climacterical year, and but last year brake forth in never-imagined ferocity. But if they sail now, 'tis on the dark lake they sail, no earthly seas nor rivers. ”

“ A splendid vision! Time rides with the old
At a great pace. As travellers on swift steeds
See the near landscape fly and flow behind them,
While the remoter fields and dim horizons
Go with them, and seem wheeling round to meet them,
So in old age things near us slip away,
And distant things go with as. ”

“ These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose,—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. ”

“ And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:
For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning's birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth. ”

“ The ferryman and his wife looked, and saw youth in each other's faces beginning to peep out through the furrows of age; each step they took made them grow younger and stronger; years fell from them like worn-out rags as they went down into the valleys of the land of Returning Time. ”

“ Rather let us believe that we have in death a haven and refuge prepared for us. I would that we might sail thither with widespread sails; if not, if contrary winds shall blow us back, still we must needs reach, though it may be somewhat late, the haven where we would be. ”