a-voyage was his only hope, and that even in this case the hope was a
very faint one.

There was a ship at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco,--a very
famous clipper, one of those sailors of the sea known as Ocean
Greyhounds. She was built for speed, and her record was a brilliant one;
under the guidance of her daring captain, she had again and again proved
herself worthy of her name. She was called the _Flying Cloud_. Her
cabins were luxuriously furnished; for in those days seafarers were
oftener blown about the world by the four winds of heaven than propelled
by steam. Yet when the _Flying Cloud_, one January day, tripped anchor
and set sail, there were but three strangers on the quarter-deck--a
middle-aged gentleman in search of health, the invalid brother, in his
eighteenth year, and the small, sad boy.

[Illustration: West from Black Point, 1856]

The captain's wife, a lady of Salem who had followed him from sea to
sea for many a year, was the joy and salvation of that forlorn little
company. How forlorn it was only the survivor knows, and he knows well
enough. Forty years have scarcely dimmed the memory of it. Through all
the wear and tear of time the remembrance of that voyage has at
intervals haunted him: the length of it, the weariness of it, and the
almost unbroken monotony stretching through the ninety odd days that
dawned and darkened between San Francisco and New York; the solitary
sail that was blown on and on, and becalmed and buffeted between the
blue waste of waters and the blue waste of sky; the lonesomeness of it
all--no land, no lights flashing across the sea in glad assurance; no
passing ships to hail us with faint-voiced "Ahoy!"--only the
ever-tossing waves, the trailing sea-gardens, the tireless birds of the
air and the monsters of the deep.

Ah, well-a-day! There was a solemn and hushed circle listening to family
prayers that morning,--the morning of the 4th of January. The father's
voice trembled as he opened the Bible and read from that beautiful
psalm:

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. For
He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves
thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths;
their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and
stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry
unto the Lord in their