Adrift on the Pacific: A Boys [sic] Story of the Sea and its Perils. Ellis Edward Sylvester
![Adrift on the Pacific: A Boys [sic] Story of the Sea and its Perils - Ellis Edward Sylvester](limg_read222094.jpg "Adrift on the Pacific: A Boys [sic] Story of the Sea and its Perils - Ellis Edward Sylvester")
drove ahead, cleaving the calm water and leaving a wide wake of foam behind. The black smoke poured out of the broad funnels, and sifted upward through the scant rigging, and was dissipated in the clear air above. The throbbing of the engine made its pulsations felt through the ponderous craft from stem to stern, as a giant breathes more powerfully when gathering his energy for the final effort of the race. A few drifting clouds moved along the sky, while, now and then, a starlike point of light, far away against the horizon, showed where some other caravansary of the sea was moving toward its destination, thousands of leagues away.
Although Captain Strathmore was on duty, and it was against the rules for any passenger to approach or address him, yet there was one who was unrestrained by rules or regulations, no matter how sternly they were enforced in other cases.
The captain was standing on the bridge, when he felt some one tugging at his coat, and he looked down.
There was Inez demanding his attention.
“Take me up, pop,” said she.
“Bless your heart!” laughed the captain as he obeyed the little empress; “you would ruin the discipline of a man-of-war in a month.”
While speaking, he perched her on his shoulder, as was a favorite custom with him.
The day had been unusually warm, and the night was so mild that the steady breeze made by the motion of the steamer was scarcely sufficient to keep one cool. Little Inez had thrown aside her hat with the setting of the sun, and now her wealth of golden hair streamed and fluttered in fleecy masses about her shoulders.
The steamer was plowing straight to the westward, cutting the waves so keenly that a thin parabola of water continually curved over in front of her from the knife-like prow.
Perched aloft on the shoulder of the captain, Inez naturally gazed ahead, and the figure was a striking one of innocence and infancy peering forward through the mists and clouds toward the unknown future. But Inez was too young to have any such poetical thoughts, and the captain was too practical to be troubled by “æsthetic meditations.”
He chatted with her about their arrival in Japan, saying that she would be glad to see no more of him, when she replied:
“If you talk that way, I’ll cry. You must go home and live with us. Uncle Con says papa has a big dog, and if we haven’t room in the house, you can sleep with him, and I’ll feed you each morning–oh, look!”
CHAPTER III
AN ACCIDENT
That which arrested the attention of the little girl in the arms of Captain Strathmore, was a sight–unique, rare and impressively beautiful.
All around the steamer stretched the vast Pacific, melting away into darkness, with here and there a star-like twinkle, showing where some ship was moving over the waste of waters. Overhead, the sky was clear, with a few stars faintly gleaming, while the round, full moon, for whose rising so many on the steamer had been watching, had just come up, its disk looking unusually large, as it always does when so close to the horizon.
Just when the moon was half above the ocean, and when the narrowing path of the illumination stretched from the ship to the outer edge of the world, a vessel under full sail slowly passed over the face of the moon.
The partial eclipse was so singular that it arrested the attention of Inez, who uttered the exclamation we have recorded. It was seen by nearly all the passengers, too, most of whom were looking toward the horizon for the rising of the orb, and expressions of delight were heard from every quarter, for such a sight, we say, is rare.
When observed by the passengers on board the Polynesia, the moon had barely cleared the horizon, as we have stated, and the top of the mainmast just reached the uppermost portion of the periphery, while spars, rigging and hull were marked against the yellow disk as distinctly as if painted in India ink.
Such an obscuration, like a total one of the sun, could last but a few seconds, for the Polynesia and the other ship were moving in opposite directions, while the moon itself was creeping upward toward the zenith. Slowly the black ship glided toward its destination–hull, masts and rigging gradually mingled with the gloom beyond, until the moon, as if shaking off the eclipse, mounted upward with its face unmarred, excepting by the peculiar figures stamped there when it was first launched into space.
When the wonderful exhibition was over there were murmurs of admiration from the passengers, who, grouped here and there, or promenading back and forth, had stood spellbound, as may be said, while it was in progress.
Captain Strathmore and two of his officers had seen the same thing once or twice before, but they had been favored in this respect above others, and could hardly expect anything of the kind again.
The captain now prepared for an interesting and novel ceremony, which he had announced would take place that evening by moonlight.
Descending to the deck, and approaching the stern, where the expectant passengers had gathered together, the group were silent a minute, while he stood among them holding little Inez by the hand. A few minutes later the purser came aft, carrying a parcel in his hand, which he carefully placed upon the taffrail. Then he spoke in a sepulchral voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we all have lost minutes and hours, but it is seldom that we deliberately throw away a day. But we are to do so now. We are about to bury a day. To-day is the Twentieth, to-morrow will be the Twenty-second, and where, then, is the Twenty-first? There it lies” (pointing to the parcel on the taffrail). “Life is short enough, without deliberately casting an entire day into the sea; but there is the consolation of knowing, on your return, that it shall be restored to you, and thus beautifully does nature preserve the equilibrium throughout the world. What more fitting than that the day should be buried by the hands of one whose life is as spotless as the snow upon the peaks of the Sierras we have left behind us?”
All now uncovered their heads–that is, the gentlemen did–and the captain advanced, leading Inez Hawthorne by the hand. Holding her up a short distance from the deck, she called out:
“Good-by, Twenty-first of September!”
She repeated the words correctly, for the captain whispered them in her ear, and as she spoke she gave the parcel a slight shove, and overboard it went, striking the water with a splash, and instantly sinking out of sight. The package was nothing but some old iron, wrapped about with coarse brown paper.
The ceremony of burying a day, as the reader knows, is a common, and it may be said, a necessary, one with vessels sailing westward over the Pacific, as the picking up of a day is necessary on the return. At first sight it seems incongruous, but it is in fact the only way in which the reckoning of time can be kept correctly.
The little ceremony naturally caused the matter itself to become one of discussion, and probably a goodly number of young ladies and gentlemen picked up more knowledge of the matter than they had ever dreamed of before.
Two curious things happened within a half hour of this novel ceremony.
The Polynesia was driving along with that steady motion in which the throbbing of the vessel can only be detected by carefully standing still and watching for it, when every passenger, and especially the captain and his officers, suddenly felt an alarming jar, which shook the steamer from stem to stern. It was noticed that the engine instantly stopped and the enormous ship gradually came to rest upon the long, heaving swell of the Pacific.
In a few minutes it was ascertained that the steamer had broken the shaft of her propeller, thus rendering the all-important screw useless. This necessitated the hoisting of her sails, and a monotonous voyage to her destination, a return to San Francisco, or a long deviation to Honolulu for repairs.
While the necessary investigation was going on, a sail had been sighted bearing down upon them, and in half an hour it came-to, a short distance off, in the hope of being able to afford some assistance–as the sight of a steamer lying motionless on the water meant that something was amiss.
This new craft was the schooner Coral, a stanchly-built, sharp-bowed little vessel of forty tons burden, built for the Honolulu trade. She was about seven years old, very fast, and constructed