第22章 THE VOYAGE(10)

Saturday,July 6.--This morning our commander,declaring he was sure the wind would change,took the advantage of an ebbing tide,and weighed his anchor.His assurance,however,had the same completion,and his endeavors the same success,with his formal trial;and he was soon obliged to return once more to his old quarters.Just before we let go our anchor,a small sloop,rather than submit to yield us an inch of way,ran foul of our ship,and carried off her bowsprit.This obstinate frolic would have cost those aboard the sloop very dear,if our steersman had not been too generous to exert his superiority,the certain consequence of which would have been the immediate sinking of the other.This contention of the inferior with a might capable of crushing it in an instant may seem to argue no small share of folly or madness,as well as of impudence;but I am convinced there is very little danger in it:contempt is a port to which the pride of man submits to fly with reluctance,but those who are within it are always in a place of the most assured security;for whosoever throws away his sword prefers,indeed,a less honorable but much safer means of avoiding danger than he who defends himself with it.And here we shall offer another distinction,of the truth of which much reading and experience have well convinced us,that as in the most absolute governments there is a regular progression of slavery downwards,from the top to the bottom,the mischief of which is seldom felt with any great force and bitterness but by the next immediate degree;so in the most dissolute and anarchical states there is as regular an ascent of what is called rank or condition,which is always laying hold of the head of him who is advanced but one step higher on the ladder,who might,if he did not too much despise such efforts,kick his pursuer headlong to the bottom.We will conclude this digression with one general and short observation,which will,perhaps,set the whole matter in a clearer light than the longest and most labored harangue.Whereas envy of all things most exposes us to danger from others,so contempt of all things best secures us from them.And thus,while the dung-cart and the sloop are always meditating mischief against the coach and the ship,and throwing themselves designedly in their way,the latter consider only their own security,and are not ashamed to break the road and let the other pass by them.

Monday,July 8.--Having passed our Sunday without anything remarkable,unless the catching a great number of whitings in the afternoon may be thought so,we now set sail on Monday at six o'clock,with a little variation of wind;but this was so very little,and the breeze itself so small,but the tide was our best and indeed almost our only friend.This conducted us along the short remainder of the Kentish shore.Here we passed that cliff of Dover which makes so tremendous a figure in Shakespeare,and which whoever reads without being giddy,must,according to Mr.

Addison's observation,have either a very good head or a very bad,one;but which,whoever contracts any such ideas from the sight of,must have at least a poetic if not a Shakesperian genius.In truth,mountains,rivers,heroes,and gods owe great part of their existence to the poets;and Greece and Italy do so plentifully abound in the former,because they furnish so glorious a number of the latter;who,while they bestowed immortality on every little hillock and blind stream,left the noblest rivers and mountains in the world to share the same obscurity with the eastern and western poets,in which they are celebrated.This evening we beat the sea of Sussex in sight of Dungeness,with much more pleasure than progress;for the weather was almost a perfect calm,and the moon,which was almost at the full,scarce suffered a single cloud to veil her from our sight.

Tuesday,Wednesday,July 9,10.--These two days we had much the same fine weather,and made much the same way;but in the evening of the latter day a pretty fresh gale sprung up at N.N.W.which brought us by the morning in sight of the Isle of Wight.

Thursday,July 11.--This gale continued till towards noon;when the east end of the island bore but little ahead of us.The captain swaggered and declared he would keep the sea;but the wind got the better of him,so that about three he gave up the victory,and making a sudden tack stood in for the shore,passed by Spithead and Portsmouth,and came to an anchor at a place called Ryde on the island.

A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea.While the ship was under sail,but making as will appear no great way,a kitten,one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin,fell from the window into the water:an alarm was immediately given to the captain,who was then upon deck,and received it with the utmost concern and many bitter oaths.He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favor of the poor thing,as he called it;the sails were instantly slackened,and all hands,as the phrase is,employed to recover the poor animal.I was,I own,extremely surprised at all this;less indeed at the captain's extreme tenderness than at his conceiving any possibility of success;for if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives,I concluded they had been all lost.The boatswain,however,had more sanguine hopes,for,having stripped himself of his jacket,breeches,and shirt,he leaped boldly into the water,and to my great astonishment in a few minutes returned to the ship,bearing the motionless animal in his mouth.Nor was this,I observed,a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance,and possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water reader.The kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck,where its life,of which it retained no symptoms,was despaired of by all.