The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The memory of the old green settees, and of Hutchinson and Wheeler and
the other Latin-school boys, sustained me beneath the calamity which
impended. Nor do I think at heart the boys felt so bad as their father
about the djins and the devils, the powers of the earth and the powers
of the air. Is there, perhaps, in the youthful mind, rather a passion
for "seeing the folly" of life a little in that direction? None the less
did we join him in rigging out the longest sweep we had aft, lashing it
tight under the little rail which we had been leaning on, and trying
gentle experiments, how far this extemporized rudder might bring the
boat round to the wind. Nonsense the whole. By that time Euroclydon was
on us, so that I would never have tried to put her about if we had had
the best gear I ever handled, and our experiments only succeeded far
enough to show that we were as utterly powerless as men could be.
Meanwhile day was just beginning to break. I soothed the old man with
such devout expressions as heretic might venture. I tried to turn him
from the coming evil to the present necessity. I counselled with him
whether it might not be safer to take in sail and drift along. But from
this he dissented. Time enough to take in sail when we knew what shore
we were coming to. He had no kedge or grapple or cord, indeed, that
would pretend to hold this boat against this gale. We would beach her,
if it pleased the Virgin; and if we could not,--shaking his head,--why,
that would please the Virgin, too.
And so Euroclydon hurried us on to Sybaris.
The sun rose, O how magnificently! Is there anywhere to see sunrise like
the Mediterranean? And if one may not be on the top of Katahdin, is
there any place for sunrise like the very level of the sea? Already the
Calabrian mountains of our western horizon were gray against the sky.
One or another of us was forward all the time, trying to make out by
what slopes the hills descended to the sea. Was it cliff of basalt, or
was it reedy swamp, that was to receive us. I insisted at last on his
reducing sail. For I felt sure that he was driving on under a sort of
fatality which made him dare the worst. I was wholly right, for the boat
now rose easier on the water, and was much more dry.
Perhaps the wind flagged a little as the sun rose. At all events, he
took courage, which I had never lost. I made his boy find us some
oranges. I made them laugh by eating their cold polenta with them. I
even made him confess, when I called him aft and sent Battista forward,
that the shore we were nearing looked low. For we were near enough now
to see stone pines and chestnut-trees. Did anybody see the towers of
Sybaris?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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