A few ladies join a company gathered in the captain’s stateroom this evening, where all, who can, contribute their anecdotes of sea life, of storms and wrecks, and of the traditions, notions, and superstitions of sailors, and snatches of sea-songs—Tom Bowline, Captain Kid, Bay of Biscay, and specimens of the less classical, but more genuine songs of the capstan and falls.
Sunday, March 6.—Cooler. Out of the Gulf Stream. Awnings taken down, clear sky, clear sea, the finest, cheerfullest, wholesomest weather in the world! Poor G⸺ is still alive, and has hopes of getting in. We expect to be in by tomorrow noon. The sea is very smooth, and nearly all are relieved from seasickness. We pass a few vessels floating up the Gulf Stream, with wind and current—a bark, an hermaphrodite brig, and a schooner; but no vessel of size or mark. As I pass G⸺’s room, at ten o’clock tonight, I see the faithful purser and second mate sitting, like brothers, by his bedside, relieving the young man who has come out to Havana from his father’s counting room, to bring him home. The sea is still, and all is favorable to the prolonging of life; yet he is very low, and wandering in his mind, and is talking of getting up a Sunday School.
Monday, March 7.—It is daybreak, the lights of Barnegat were made at four o’clock this morning, and now the heights of Neversink are visible; the long shore of New Jersey is open on our lee; the harbor of New York is but four or five hours off, where the ship may still her pulse, and rest, and friends meet friends. But death has visited us by night. G⸺ has passed away. He breathed his last before midnight, just as we were on the point of sighting the long wished for shore—the haven where he would be.
So mixed and heterogeneous is the company of such a passenger ship, that few seem even to know that there has been a death, and fewer to remember it. The succession of events, the shore, the sails, the pilot, the news, the excitement and expectation, and the sights of home, are too engrossing.
On the low sand-beach of Long Island, are the bones of the Black Warrior, our consort. Far in the eastern horizon, just discernible, is the smoke of the Europa, due from Liverpool. The water far out to sea, twenty or thirty miles from the harbor, is dotted with little boats, fishing for the all-consuming market of New York; and steam tugs, short and low, just breathing out a little steam, are watching, far out at sea, their chances for inward-bound vessels. On the larboard hand, are the twin lights of Neversink. We leave them astern, and are abreast of the low, white spit of Sandy Hook, when a pilot boat comes bobbing over the waves. We heave to, lower the steps, and the pilot jumps on board. In a few minutes, the news is over the ship—the Thirty Millions Bill withdrawn by Mr. Slidell, Congress adjourned, the five cent postage bill defeated, and the Sickles and Key tragedy. A few copies of New York papers are in the hands of the more eager passengers.
No harbor has a more beautiful and noble entrance than New York. The Narrows, Staten Island, the Heights of Brooklyn, the distant view of the Hudson River Highlands, the densely populous outskirts in all directions, the broad bay and its rich tributaries, on the north and the east—and then, the tall spires and lofty warehouses of the city, and the long stretches, north and east and south and west, of the close-packed hulls and entangled spars of the shipping.
There is no snow to be seen over the land scape or on the housetops, yet the leafless trees, the dry grass, the thick overcoats and furs, are in strange contrast with the palm-leaf hats, white linen coats, fluttering awnings, coveted shades, and the sunbaked harvests of five days ago.
We drew in to our dock as silently and surely as everything is done in the Cahawba. A crowd of New York hackmen is gathered on the pier, looking as if they had stolen their coaches and horses, and meant to steal our luggage. There are no policemen in sight. Everybody predicts a fight. The officers of the boat say that the police are of no use if present, for their indifference and nonintervention rather encourage the fighters.
For a few minutes, there is no other inconvenience than noise and crowding for passengers and luggage; but soon they press on the decks, are ordered off—hang back—the crew try to force them ashore—then comes a gathering about the gangway—“I can fight if you can,” says a quartermaster—and they are at it, blow for blow! As soon as the hackmen on the wharf see the fight, they make a breach into the boat, and the quartermaster is driven, with blows and curses, into the engine room—the crew rally, and Rodgers jumps down into the midst, spreads out his arms—“Away with you all, out of the ship!” Capt. Bullock steps down from the wheelhouse, passengers gather round, and the hackmen fall back. Still, a few resist, and one of them is knocked over the head by a marlinespike, falls fainting, on the guards, and is lifted ashore by his companions. The hackmen are slowly but firmly forced ashore. But on the wharf, and leaning on the vessel’s rail, they openly threaten the lives of the crew, and especially of the man who used the marlinespike, if they catch him on shore—“We’ll wait for you!”—“You must come, sooner or later! It will be the last step you’ll take! Your time is up!” etc., etc. The officers of the boat are used to this, and expect to protect ship and passengers by their own force, and at their own peril.
We had been talking high patriotism to some
