The Cruise of the Dolphin

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

(1 An episode from The Story of a Bad Boy, the narrator
being Tom Bailey, the hero of the tale.)

Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way
mixed up with his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his
cradle, he hears the dull, far-off boom of the breakers; when he is
older, he wanders by the sandy shore, watching the waves that come
plunging up the beach like white-maned sea-horses, as Thoreau calls
them; his eye follows the lessening sail as it fades into the blue
horizon, and he burns for the time when he shall stand on the
quarter-deck of his own ship, and go sailing proudly across that
mysterious waste of waters.

Then the town itself is full of hints and flavors of the sea.
The gables and roofs of the houses facing eastward are covered with
red rust, like the flukes of old anchors; a salty smell pervades the
air, and dense gray fogs, the very breath of Ocean, periodically
creep up into the quiet streets and envelop everything. The terrific
storms that lash the coast; the kelp and spars, and sometimes the
bodies of drowned men, tossed on shore by the scornful waves; the
shipyards, the wharves, and the tawny fleet of fishing-smacks yearly
fitted out at Rivermouth--these things, and a hundred other, feed the
imagination and fill the brain of every healthy boy with dreams of
adventure. He learns to swim almost as soon as he can walk; he draws
in with his mother's milk the art of handling an oar: he is born a
sailor, whatever he may turn out to be afterwards.

To own the whole or a portion of a rowboat is his earliest
ambition. No wonder that I, born to this life, and coming back to it
with freshest sympathies, should have caught the prevailing
infection. No wonder I longed to buy a part of the trim little
sailboat Dolphin, which chanced just then to be in the market. This
was in the latter part of May.

Three shares, at five or six dollars each, I forget which, had
already been taken by Phil Adams, Fred Langdon, and Binny Wallace.
The fourth and remaining share hung fire. Unless a purchaser could be
found for this, the bargain was to fall through.

I am afraid I required but slight urging to join in the
investment. I had four dollars and fifty cents on hand, and the
treasurer of the Centipedes (1 A secret society, composed of twelve
boys of the Temple Grammar School, Rivermouth.) advanced me the
balance, receiving my silver pencil-case as ample security. It was a
proud moment when I stood on the wharf with my partners, inspecting
the Dolphin, moored at the foot of a very slippery flight of steps.
She was painted white with a green stripe outside, and on the stern a
yellow dolphin, with its scarlet mouth wide open, stared with a
surprised expression at its own reflection in the water. The boat was
a great bargain.

I whirled my cap in the air, and ran to the stairs leading down
from the wharf, when a hand was laid gently on my shoulder. I turned,
and faced Captain Nutter (2 Tom Bailey's grandfather.) I never saw
such an old sharp-eye as he was in those days.

I knew he would not be angry with me for buying a rowboat; but I
also knew that the little bowsprit suggesting a jib and the tapering
mast ready for its few square feet of canvas were trifles not likely
to meet his approval. As far as rowing on the river, among the
wharves, was concerned, the Captain had long since withdrawn his
decided objections, having convinced himself, by going out with me
several times, that I could manage a pair of sculls as well as
anybody.

I was right in my surmises. He commanded me, in the most
emphatic terms, never to go out in the Dolphin without leaving the
mast in the boat-house. This curtailed my anticipated sport, but the
pleasure of having a pull whenever I wanted it remained. I never
disobeyed the Captain's orders touching the sail, though I sometimes
extended my row beyond the points he has indicated.

The river was dangerous for sailboats. Squalls, without the
slightest warning, were of frequent occurrence; scarcely a year
passed that three or four persons were not drowned under the very
windows of the town, and these, oddly enough, were generally
seacaptains, who either did not understand the river, or lacked the
skill to handle a small craft.

A knowledge of such disasters, one of which I witnessed,
consoled me somewhat when I saw Phil Adams skimming over the water in
a spanking breeze with every stitch of canvas set. There were few
better yachtsmen than Phil Adams. He usually went sailing alone, for
both Langdon and Binny Wallace were under the same restrictions I
was.

Not long after the purchase of the boat, we planned an excursion
to Sandpeep Island, the last of the islands in the harbor. We
purposed to start early in the morning, and return with the tide in
the moonlight. Our only difficulty was to obtain a whole day's
exemption from school, the customary half-holiday not being long
enough for our picnic. Somehow, we could not work it; but fortune
arranged it for us. I may say here, that, whatever else I did, I
never played truant ("hookey" we called it) in my life.

One afternoon the four owners of the Dolphin exchanged
significant glances when Mr. Grimshaw announced from the desk that
there would be no school the following day, he having just received
intelligence of the death of his uncle in Boston. I was sincerely
attached to Mr. Grimshaw, but I am afraid that the death of his uncle
did not affect me as it ought to have done.

We were up before sunrise the next morning, in order to take
advantage of the flood-tide, which waits for no man. Our preparations
for the cruise were made the previous evening. In the way of eatables
and drinkables, we had stored in the stern of the Dolphin a generous
bag of hard-tack (for the chowder), a piece of pork to fry the
cunners in, three gigantic apple pies (bought at Pettingil's), half a
dozen lemons, and a keg of spring water--the last-named articles were
slung over the side, to keep it cool, as soon as we got under way.
The crockery and the bricks for our camp- stove we placed in the bows
with the groceries, which included sugar, pepper, salt, and a bottle
of pickles. Phil Adams contributed to the outfit a small tent of
unbleached cotton cloth, under which we intended to take our
nooning.

We unshipped the mast, threw in an extra oar, and were ready to
embark. I do not believe that Christopher Columbus, when he started
on his rather successful voyage of discovery, felt half the
responsibility and importance that weighed upon me as I sat on the
middle seat of the Dolphin, with my oar resting in the rowlock. I
wonder if Christopher Columbus quietly slipped out of the house
without letting his estimable family know what he was up to? Charley
Marden, whose father had promised to cane him if he ever stepped foot
on sail or row boat, came down to the wharf in a sour- grape humor,
to see us off. Nothing would tempt him to go out on the river in such
a crazy clam-shell of a boat. He pretended that he did not expect to
behold us alive again, and tried to throw a wet blanket over the
expedition.

"Guess you'll have a squally time of it," said Charley, casting
off the painter. "I'll drop in at old Newbury's" (Newbury was the
parish undertaker) "and leave word, as I go along!"

"Bosh!" muttered Phil Adams, sticking the boathook into the
string-piece of the wharf, and sending the Dolphin half a dozen yards
toward the current.

How calm and lovely the river was! Not a ripple stirred on the
glassy surface, broken only by the sharp cutwater of our tiny craft.
The sun, as round and red as an August moon, was by this time peering
above the water-line.

The town had drifted behind us, and we were entering among the
group of islands. Sometimes we could almost touch with our boat- hook
the shelving banks on either side. As we neared the mouth of the
harbor, a little breeze now and then wrinkled the blue water, shook
the spangles from the foliage, and gently lifted the spiral
mist-wreaths that still clung alongshore. The measured dip of our
oars and the drowsy twitterings of the birds seemed to mingle with,
rather than break, the enchanted silence that reigned about us.

The scent of the new clover comes back to me now, as I recall
that delicious morning when we floated away in a fairy boat down a
river like a dream!

The sun was well up when the nose of the Dolphin nestled against
the snow-white bosom of Sandpeep Island. This island, as I have said
before, was the last of the cluster, one side of it being washed by
the sea. We landed on the river-side, the sloping sands and quiet
water affording us a good place to moor the boat.

It took us an hour or more to transport our stores to the spot
selected for the encampment. Having pitched our tent, using the five
oars to support the canvas, we got out our lines, and went down the
rocks seaward to fish. It was early for cunners, but we were lucky
enough to catch as nice a mess as ever you saw. A cod for the chowder
was not so easily secured. At last Binny Wallace hauled in a plump
little fellow clustered all over with flaky silver.

To skin the fish, build our fireplace, and cook the chowder kept
us busy the next two hours.

The fresh air and the exercise had given us the appetites of
wolves, and we were about famished by the time the savory mixture was
ready for our clam-shell saucers.

I shall not insult the rising generation on the seaboard by
telling them how delectable is a chowder compounded and eaten in this
Robinson Crusoe fashion. As for the boys who live inland, and know
not of such marine feasts, my heart is full of pity for them. What
wasted lives! Not to know the delights of a clambake, not to love
chowder, to be ignorant of lobscouse!

How happy we were, we four, sitting cross-legged in the crisp
salt grass, with the invigorating seabreeze blowing gratefully
through our hair! What a joyous thing was life, and how far off
seemed death--death, that lurks in all pleasant places, and was so
near!

The banquet finished, Phil Adams drew from his pocket a handful
of sweet-fern cigars; but as none of the party could indulge without
imminent risk of becoming ill, we all, on one pretext or another,
declined, and Phil smoked by himself.

The wind had freshened by this, and we found it comfortable to
put on the jackets which had been thrown aside in the heat of the
day. We strolled along the beach and gathered large quantities of the
fairy-woven Iceland moss, which at certain seasons is washed to these
shores; then we played at ducks and drakes, and then, the sun being
sufficiently low, we went in bathing.

Before our bath was ended a slight change had come over the sky
and sea; fleecy-white clouds scudded here and there, and a muffled
moan from the breakers caught our ears from time to time. While we
were dressing, a few hurried drops of rain came lisping down, and we
adjourned to the tent to wait the passing of the squall.

"We're all right, anyhow," said Phil Adams. "It won't be much of
a blow, and we'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, here in the tent,
particularly if we have that lemonade which some of you fellows were
going to make.

By an oversight, the lemons had been left in the boat. Binny
Wallace volunteered to go for them.

"Put an extra stone on the painter, Binny," said Adams, calling
after him; "it would be awkward to have the Dolphin give us the slip
and return to port minus her passengers."

"That it would," answered Binny, scrambling down the rocks.

Sandpeep Island is diamond-shaped--one point running out into
the sea, and the other looking towards the town. Our tent was on the
river-side. Though the Dolphin was also on the same side, she lay out
of sight by the beach at the farther extremity of the island.

Binny Wallace had been absent five or six minutes when we heard
him calling our several names in tones that indicated distress or
surprise, we could not tell which. Our first thought was, "The boat
has broken adrift!"

We sprung to our feet and hastened down to the beach. On turning
the bluff which hid the mooring-place from our view, we found the
conjecture correct. Not only was the Dolphin afloat, but poor little
Binny Wallace was standing in the bows with his arms stretched
helplessly towards us--drifting out to sea!

"Head the boat inshore!" shouted Phil Adams.

Wallace ran to the tiller; but the slight cockle-shell merely
swung round and drifted broadside on. Oh, if we had but left a single
scull in the Dolphin!

"Can you swim it?" cried Adams desperately, using his hand as a
speaking-trumpet, for the distance between the boat and the island
widened momently.

Binny Wallace looked down at the sea, which was covered with
white caps, and made a despairing gesture. He knew, and we knew, that
the stoutest swimmer could not live forty seconds in those angry
waters.

A wild, insane light came into Phil Adam's eyes, as he stood
knee- deep in the boiling surf, and for an instant I think he
meditated plunging into the ocean after the receding boat.

The sky darkened, and an ugly look stole rapidly over the broken
surface of the sea.

Binny Wallace half rose from his seat in the stern, and waved
his hand to us in token of farewell. In spite of the distance,
increasing every moment, we could see his face plainly. The anxious
expression it wore at first had passed. It was pale and meek now, and
I love to think there was a kind of halo about it, like that which
painters place around the forehead of a saint. So he drifted away.

The sky grew darker and darker. It was only by straining our
eyes through the unnatural twilight that we could keep the Dolphin in
sight. The figure of Binny Wallace was no longer visible, for the
boat itself had dwindled to a mere white dot on the black water. Now
we lost it, and our hearts stopped throbbing; and now the speck
appeared again, for an instant, on the crest of a high wave.

Finally it went out like a spark, and we saw it no more. Then we
gazed at one another, and dared not speak.

Absorbed in following the course of the boat, we had scarcely
noticed the huddled inky clouds that sagged heavily all around us.
From these threatening masses, seamed at intervals with pale
lightning, there now burst a heavy peal of thunder that shook the
ground under our feet. A sudden squall struck the sea, ploughing deep
white furrows into it, and at the same instant a single piercing
shriek rose above the tempest--the frightened cry of a gull swooping
over the island. How it startled us!

It was impossible any longer to keep our footing on the beach.
The wind and the breakers would have swept us into the ocean if we
had not clung to one another with the desperation of drowning men.
Taking advantage of a momentary lull, we crawled up the sands on our
hands and knees, and, pausing in the lee of the granite ledge to gain
breath, returned to the camp, where we found that the gale had
snapped all the fastenings of the tent but one. Held by this, the
puffed-out canvas swayed in the wind like a balloon. It was a task of
some difficulty to secure it, which we did by beating down the canvas
with the oars.

After several trials, we succeeded in setting up the tent on the
leeward side of the ledge. Blinded by the vivid flashes of lightning,
and drenched by the rain, which fell in torrents, we crept, half dead
with fear and anguish, under our flimsy shelter. Neither the anguish
nor the fear was on our own account, for we were comparatively safe,
but for poor little Binny Wallace, driven out to sea in the merciless
gale. We shuddered to think of him in that frail shell, drifting on
and on to his grave, the sky rent with lightning over his head, and
the green abysses yawning beneath him. We suddenly fell to crying,
and cried I know not how long.

Meanwhile the storm raged with augmented fury. We were obliged
to hold on to the ropes of the tent to prevent it blowing away. The
spray from the river leaped several yards up the rocks and clutched
at us malignantly. The very island trembled with the concussions of
the sea beating upon it, and at times I fancied that it had broken
loose from its foundation and was floating off with us. The breakers,
streaked with angry phosphorus, were fearful to look at.

The wind rose higher and higher, cutting long slits in the tent,
through which the rain poured incessantly. To complete the sum of our
miseries, the night was at hand. It came down abruptly, at last, like
a curtain, shutting in Sandpeep Island from all the world.

It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was
something that could be felt as well as seen--it pressed down upon
one with a cold, clammy touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all
sorts of imaginable shapes seemed to start forth from vacancy--
brilliant colors, stars, prisms, and dancing lights. What boy, lying
awake at night, has not amused or terrified himself by peopling the
spaces around his bed with these phenomena of his own eyes?

"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at last, clutching my hand,
"don't you see things--out there--in the dark?"

"Yes, yes--Binny Wallace's face!"

I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for
the last ten minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face
with its angelic hair and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the
nimbus round the dark moon, took shape and grew sharp against the
darkness; then this faded gradually, and there was the Face, wearing
the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to us across
the awful water. This optical illusion kept repeating itself.

"And I too," said Adams." I see it every now and then, outside
there. What wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace
looking in at us! O boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town
without him? I've wished a hundred times, since we've been sitting
here, that I was in his place, alive or dead!"

We dreaded the approach of morning as much as we longed for it.
The morning would tell us all. Was it possible for the Dolphin to
outride such a storm? There was a lighthouse on Mackerel Reef, which
lay directly in the course the boat had taken when it disappeared. If
the Dolphin had caught on this reef, perhaps Binny Wallace was safe.
Perhaps his cries had been heard by the keeper of the light. The man
owned a life-boat, and had rescued several persons. Who could
tell?

Such were the questions we asked ourselves again and again, as
we lay huddled together waiting for daybreak. What an endless night
it was! I have known months that did not seem so long.

Our position was irksome rather than perilous; for the day was
certain to bring us relief from the town, where our prolonged
absence, together with the storm, had no doubt excited the liveliest
alarm for our safety. But the cold, the darkness, and the suspense
were hard to bear.

Our soaked jackets had chilled us to the bone. In order to keep
warm we lay so closely that we could hear our hearts beat above the
tumult of sea and sky.

After a while we grew very hungry, not having broken our fast
since early in the day. The rain had turned the hard-tack into a sort
of dough; but it was better than nothing.

We used to laugh at Fred Langdon for always carrying in his
pocket a small vial of essence of peppermint or sassafras, a few
drops of which, sprinkled on a lump of loaf-sugar, he seemed to
consider a great luxury. I do not know what would have become of us
at this crisis if it had not been for that omnipresent bottle of hot
stuff. We poured the stinging liquid over our sugar, which had kept
dry in a sardine-box, and warmed ourselves with frequent doses.

After four or five hours the rain ceased, the wind died away to
a moan, and the sea--no longer raging like a maniac--sobbed and
sobbed with a piteous human voice all along the coast. And well it
might, after that night's work. Twelve sail of the Gloucester fishing
fleet had gone down with every soul on board, just outside of
Whale's-Back Light. Think of the wide grief that follows in the wake
of one wreck; then think of the despairing women who wrung their
hands and wept, the next morning, in the streets of Gloucester,
Marblehead, and Newcastle!

Though our strength was nearly spent, we were too cold to sleep.
Once I sunk into a troubled doze, when I seemed to hear Charley
Marden's parting words, only it was the Sea that said them. After
that I threw off the drowsiness whenever it threatened to overcome
me.

Fred Langdon was the earliest to discover a filmy, luminous
streak in the sky, the first glimmering of sunrise.

"Look, it is nearly daybreak!"

While we were following the direction of his finger, a sound of
distant oars fell upon our ears.

We listened breathlessly; and as the dip of the blades became
more audible, we discerned two foggy lights, like will-o'-the-wisps,
floating on the river.

Running down to the water's edge, we hailed the boats with all
our might. The call was heard, for the oars rested a moment in the
row-locks, and then pulled in towards the island.

It was two boats from the town, in the foremost of which we
could now make out the figures of Captain Nutter and Binny Wallace's
father. We shrunk back on seeing him.

"Thank God!" cried Mr. Wallace fervently, as he leaped from the
wherry without waiting for the bow to touch the beach.

But when he saw only three boys standing on the sands, his eye
wandered restlessly about in quest of the fourth; then a deadly
pallor overspread his features.

Our story was soon told. A solemn silence fell upon the crowd of
rough boatmen gathered round, interrupted only by a stifled sob form
one poor old man who stood apart from the rest.

The sea was still running too high for any small boat to venture
out; so it was arranged that the wherry should take us back to town,
leaving the yawl, with a picked crew, to hug the island until
daybreak, and then set forth in search of the Dolphin.

Though it was barely sunrise when we reached town, there were a
great many persons assembled at the landing eager for intelligence
from missing boats. Two picnic parties had started down river the day
before, just previous to the gale, and nothing had been heard of
them. It turned out that the pleasure-seekers saw their danger in
time, and ran ashore on one of the least exposed islands, where they
passed the night. Shortly after our own arrival they appeared off
Rivermouth, much to the joy of their friends, in two shattered,
dismasted boats.

The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and
mentally. Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and sent
Kitty Collins for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and fancied
myself still on Sandpeep Island: now we were building our brick stove
to cook the chowder, and, in my delirium, I laughed aloud and shouted
to my comrades; now the sky darkened, and the squall struck the
island; now I gave orders to Wallace how to manage the boat, and now
I cried because the rain was pouring in on me through the holes in
the tent. Towards evening a high fever set in, and it was many days
before my grandfather deemed it prudent to tell me that the Dolphin
had been found, floating keel upwards, four miles southeast of
Mackerel Reef.

Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to
school again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy the
playground was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive face!
One day a folded sheet slipped from my algebra: it was the last note
he ever wrote me. I could not read it for the tears.

What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered
through the town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave
Point--the place where we bathed! We bathed there no more! How well I
remember the funeral, and what a piteous sight it was afterwards to
see his familiar name on a small headstone in the Old South
Burying-Ground!

Poor little Binny Wallace! Always the same to me. The rest of us
have grown up into hard, worldly men, fighting the fight of life; but
you are forever young, and gentle, and pure; a part of my own
childhood that time cannot wither; always a little boy, always poor
little Binny Wallace!