“Come in, sir,” I said, rising to meet him; and he entered, bowing with much courtesy. I stepped down from the desk and offered him a chair by the window, where he seated himself at once, being sadly spent by his climb. I returned to my fixed6 seat behind the teacher's desk, which gave him the lower place of a scholar.
“You ought to have the place of honor, Captain Littlepage,” I said.
“A happy, rural seat of various views,”
he quoted, as he gazed out into the sunshine and up the long wooded shore. Then he glanced at me, and looked all about him as pleased as a child.
“My quotation7 was from Paradise Lost: the greatest of poems, I suppose you know?” and I nodded. “There's nothing that ranks, to my mind, with Paradise Lost; it's all lofty, all lofty,” he continued. “Shakespeare was a great poet; he copied life, but you have to put up with a great deal of low talk.”
I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading; she had also made dark reference to his having “spells” of some unexplainable nature. I could not help wondering what errand had brought him out in search of me. There was something quite charming in his appearance: it was a face thin and delicate with refinement8, but worn into appealing lines, as if he had suffered from loneliness and misapprehension. He looked, with his careful precision of dress, as if he were the object of cherishing care on the part of elderly unmarried sisters, but I knew Mari' Harris to be a very common-place, inelegant person, who would have no such standards; it was plain that the captain was his own attentive9 valet. He sat looking at me expectantly. I could not help thinking that, with his queer head and length of thinness, he was made to hop10 along the road of life rather than to walk. The captain was very grave indeed, and I bade my inward spirit keep close to discretion11.
“Poor Mrs. Begg has gone,” I ventured to say. I still wore my Sunday gown by way of showing respect.
“She has gone,” said the captain,—“very easy at the last, I was informed; she slipped away as if she were glad of the opportunity.”
I thought of the Countess of Carberry, and felt that history repeated itself.
“She was one of the old stock,” continued Captain Littlepage, with touching12 sincerity13. “She was very much looked up to in this town, and will be missed.”
I wondered, as I looked at him, if he had sprung from a line of ministers; he had the refinement of look and air of command which are the heritage of the old ecclesiastical families of New England. But as Darwin says in his autobiography14, “there is no such king as a sea-captain; he is greater even than a king or a schoolmaster!”
Captain Littlepage moved his chair out of the wake of the sunshine, and still sat looking at me. I began to be very eager to know upon what errand he had come.
“It may be found out some o' these days,” he said earnestly. “We may know it all, the next step; where Mrs. Begg is now, for instance. Certainty, not conjecture15, is what we all desire.”
“I suppose we shall know it all some day,” said I.
“We shall know it while yet below,” insisted the captain, with a flush of impatience16 on his thin cheeks. “We have not looked for truth in the right direction. I know what I speak of; those who have laughed at me little know how much reason my ideas are based upon.” He waved his hand toward the village below. “In that handful of houses they fancy that they comprehend the universe.”
I smiled, and waited for him to go on.
“I am an old man, as you can see,” he continued, “and I have been a shipmaster the greater part of my life,—forty-three years in all. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age.”
He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so.
“You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then, Captain Littlepage?” I said.
“I should have been serviceable at least five or six years more,” he answered. “My acquaintance with certain—my experience upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has ever made.”
Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and I asked to hear more with all the deference17 I really felt. A swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry.
“I had a valuable cargo18 of general merchandise from the London docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's Bay,” said the captain earnestly. “We were delayed in lading, and baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel19 and such a crew as I had. They cared for nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I meant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her I can't say so much.”
“I wa'n't caught astern o' the lighter21 by any fault of mine,” said the captain gloomily. “We left Fort Churchill and run out into the Bay with a light pair o' heels; but I had been vexed22 to death with their red-tape rigging at the company's office, and chilled with stayin' on deck an' tryin' to hurry up things, and when we were well out o' sight o' land, headin' for Hudson's Straits, I had a bad turn o' some sort o' fever, and had to stay below. The days were getting short, and we made good runs, all well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint23 of hard driving.”
I began to find this unexpected narrative24 a little dull. Captain Littlepage spoke25 with a kind of slow correctness that lacked the longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but I listened respectfully while he explained the winds having become contrary, and talked on in a dreary26 sort of way about his voyage, the bad weather, and the disadvantages he was under in the lightness of his ship, which bounced about like a chip in a bucket, and would not answer the rudder or properly respond to the most careful setting of sails.
“So there we were blowin' along anyways,” he complained; but looking at me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were unkindly wandering, he ceased to speak.
“It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure,” said I, with redoubled interest.
“It was a dog's life,” said the poor old gentleman, quite reassured27, “but it made men of those who followed it. I see a change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers now, small and poor as 'tis, who once would have followed the sea, every lazy soul of 'em. There is no occupation so fit for just that class o' men who never get beyond the fo'cas'le. I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper. In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They saw the world for themselves, and like's not their wives and children saw it with them. They may not have had the best of knowledge to carry with 'em sight-seein', but they were some acquainted with foreign lands an' their laws, an' could see outside the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o' proportion. Yes, they lived more dignified28, and their houses were better within an' without. Shipping29's a terrible loss to this part o' New England from a social point o' view, ma'am.”
“I have thought of that myself,” I returned, with my interest quite awakened30. “It accounts for the change in a great many things,—the sad disappearance31 of sea-captains,—doesn't it?”
“A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading,” said my companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching air of unreserve. “A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for company's sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know 'most everything about something; one would take to readin' on farming topics, and some were great on medicine,—but Lord help their poor crews!—or some were all for history, and now and then there'd be one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and if you met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible while about their havin' so much information, and the money that could be made out of keepin' 'em. He was one of the smartest captains that ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive. There was old Cap'n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture32 measurements, same's other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all that. No, there's nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no large-minded way of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule everything; we're all turned upside down and going back year by year.”
There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late golden robin34, with the most joyful35 and eager of voices, was singing close by in a thicket36 of wild roses.
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1
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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tinkled
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| （使）发出丁当声，（使）发铃铃声( tinkle的过去式和过去分词 )； 叮当响着发出，铃铃响着报出 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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9
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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10
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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11
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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12
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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19
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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22
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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26
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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35
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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