第99章

For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere with the most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged ahead under the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom that almost concealed the commercial nature of her mission.It seemed--this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillating heavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night--like a pleasure trip."It is the witching hour of half past ten,"said my comrade, "let us turn in." (The reader will notice the consideration for her feelings which has omitted the usual description of "a sunset at sea.")When we looked from our state-room window in the morning we saw land.

We were passing within a stone's throw of a pale-green and rather cold-looking coast, with few trees or other evidences of fertile soil.Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.

I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in his winter overcoat, since four o'clock.He described to me the magnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands and capes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it.He knew all about the harbor.That wooden town at the foot of it, with the white spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching was Eastport.The long island stretching clear across the harbor was Campobello.We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out of our way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that we could not enter by the Lubec Channel.We had been obliged to enter an American harbor by British waters.

We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity and considerable respect.It had been one of the cities of the imagination.Lying in the far east of our great territory, a military and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on the map, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequent in telegraphic dispatches,--we had imagined it a solid city, with some Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.

The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance, with the sun shining on its white houses.When we landed at its wooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, a sprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with a flag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal.It is doubtless a very enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning was that of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensating pictur-esqueness.White paint always looks chilly under a gray sky and on naked hills.Even in hot August the place seemed bleak.The tour-ist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that it would be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking on Campobello Island.It has another advantage for the wicked over other Maine towns.Owing to the contiguity of British territory, the Maine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit.The thirsty citizen or sailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two across the narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Island and land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he is missed.

This might be a cause of war with, England, but it is not the most serious grievance here.The possession by the British of the island of Campobello is an insufferable menace and impertinence.I write with the full knowledge of what war is.We ought to instantly dislodge the British from Campobello.It entirely shuts up and commands our harbor, one of our chief Eastern harbors and war stations, where we keep a flag and cannon and some soldiers, and where the customs officers look out for smuggling.There is no way to get into our own harbor, except in favorable conditions of the tide, without begging the courtesy of a passage through British waters.Why is England permitted to stretch along down our coast in this straggling and inquisitive manner? She might almost as well own Long Island.It was impossible to prevent our cheeks mantling with shame as we thought of this, and saw ourselves, free American citizens, land-locked by alien soil in our own harbor.

We ought to have war, if war is necessary to possess Campobello and Deer Islands; or else we ought to give the British Eastport.I am not sure but the latter would be the better course.

With this war spirit in our hearts, we sailed away into the British waters of the Bay of Fundy, but keeping all the morning so close to the New Brunswick shore that we could see there was nothing on it;that is, nothing that would make one wish to land.And yet the best part of going to sea is keeping close to the shore, however tame it may be, if the weather is pleasant.A pretty bay now and then, a rocky cove with scant foliage, a lighthouse, a rude cabin, a level land, monotonous and without noble forests,--this was New Brunswick as we coasted along it under the most favorable circumstances.But we were advancing into the Bay of Fundy; and my comrade, who had been brought up on its high tides in the district school, was on the lookout for this phenomenon.The very name of Fundy is stimulating to the imagination, amid the geographical wastes of youth, and the young fancy reaches out to its tides with an enthusiasm that is given only to Fingal's Cave and other pictorial wonders of the text-book.