Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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The scene on the water was very grand. There were, probably, two hundred sail of wind-bound ships at anchor. Every kind of rig, I think, was there, from the tall spars of the British frigate down to the little, squab, apple-bowed, wallowing hoy. I am writing this in the year 1849. A great change in shipping has happened since 1814. You have men-of-war now with funnels and paddle-wheels; steam has shortened the passage to India from four months to two months and a half, which is truly wonderful. Nay, the Atlantic has been crossed in three weeks, and I may yet live to see the day when the run from Liverpool to New York shall not exceed a fortnight. But the change since 1814 is not in steam only. Many are the structural alterations. Ships I will not deny have gained in speed and convenience; but they have lost in beauty. They are no longer romantic, and picturesque, and quaint. No; ships are no longer the gay, the shining, the castellated, the spacious-winged fabrics of my young days.

Could you possess the memory of the scene of Downs, as it showed on that September afternoon from the forecastle of the Royal Brunswicker, you would share in the affectionate enthusiasm, the delight and the regret with which I recur to it. How am I to express the light, the life, the color of the picture; the fiery flashing of glossy, low, black, wet sides, softly stooping upon the silken heave of the sea; the gleam of storied windows in tall sterns; the radiance of giltwork on the quarter galleries of big West and East Indiamen, straining motionless at their hempen cable and lifting star-like trucks to the altitude of the mastheads of a line-of-battle ship! I see again the long, low, piratic-looking schooner. Her brand-new metal sheathing rises like a strong light, flowing upward out of the water on which she rests to within a strake or two of her covering board. I see the handsome brig with a rake of her lower masts aft and topgallant masts stayed into a scarce perceptible curve forward. There is a short grin of guns along the waist and a brilliant brass-piece pivoted on her forecastle; she is a trader bound to the west coast of Africa. She will be making the Middle Passage anon; but she will take care to furnish no warrant for suspicion while she flies the peaceful commercial flag on this side the Guinea parallels. And I see also the snug old snow, of a beam expanded into the proportions of a Dutchman’s stern, huge pieces of fresh beef slung over the taffrail, a boat triced up to the forestay, and a tiny boy swinging, knife in hand, at the mast.