For half an hour I rowed
and rowed for that mysterious vessel, which was
veiled and unveiled to my sight. Never did so
spectral an object haunt or thwart me. It
seemed to change its position on the water, as
well as in the atmosphere, and I was too busily
employed in trying to reach it to discover in the
darkness that the current, which I could not
distinguish from smooth water, was whirling me
down stream as fast as I would approach the
weird vessel.
Drawing once more from the current, I
followed the marsh until the canoe was opposite
the anchorage of a real ship; then, with hearty
pulls, I shot around its stern, and shouted: "Ship
ahoy!"
No one answered the hail. The vessel looked
like a man-of-war, but not of American build.
Not a light gleamed from her ports, not a
footfall came from her decks. She seemed to be
deserted in the middle of the river, surrounded
by a desolate waste of marshes. The current
gurgled and sucked about her run, as the
ebbtide washed her black hull on its way to the sea.
The spectacle seemed now even more
mysterious than when, mirage-like, it peered forth
from a cloud of mist. But it was real, and not
fantastic. Another hail, louder than the first,
went forth into the night air, and penetrated to
the ship's forecastle, for a sailor answered my
call, and reported to the captain in the cabin the
presence of a boat at the ship's side.
A quick, firm tread sounded upon the deck;
then, with a light bound, a powerfully-built
young man landed upon the high rail of the
vessel. He peered down from his stately ship upon
the little speck which floated upon the gurgling
current; then, with a voice "filled with the fogs
of the ocean," he thundered forth, as though he
were hailing a man-of-war: "What boat's that?"
"Paper canoe Maria Theresa," I replied, in as
foggy a voice as I could assume.
"Where from, and where bound?" again
roared the captain.
"From Quebec, Canada, and bound to sleep
on board your vessel, if I can ever get up there,"
I politely responded, in a more subdued voice,
for I soon discovered that nature had never
intended me for a fog-trumpet.
"Ah, is it you?" cheerily responded the
captain, suddenly dispensing with all his fogginess;
"I've been looking for you this long time. Got a
Charleston paper on board; your trip all in it.
Come up, and break a bottle of wine with me."
"All hands" came from the forecastle, and
Finland mates and Finland sailors, speaking both
English and Russian, crowded to the rail to
receive the paper canoe, which had first been
described to them by English newspapers when
the vessel lay in a British port, awaiting the
charter-party which afterwards sent them to Bull
River, South Carolina, for a load of phosphates.
The jolly crew lowered buntlines and
clewlines, to which I attached my boat's stores.
These were hoisted up the high sides of the
ship, and, after bending on a line to the bow and
stern rings of the canoe, I ascended by the
ladder, while Captain Johs. Bergelund and his
mates claimed the pleasure of landing the paper
canoe on the deck of the Rurik. The tiny shell
looked very small as she rested on the broad,
white decks of the emperor of Russia's old steam
yacht, which bore the name of the founder of
the Russian empire. Though now a bark and
not a steamer, though a freighter and not a
royal yacht, the Rurik looked every inch a
government vessel, for her young captain, with a
sailor's pride, kept her in a thorough state of
cleanliness and order. We went to supper.
The captain, his mates, and the stranger
gathered around the board, while the generous sailor
brought out his curious bottles and put them by
the side of the still more curious dishes of food.
All my surroundings were those of the
country of the midnight sun, and I should have felt
more bewildered than when in the fog I viewed
and chased this spectral-looking ship, had not
Captain Bergelund, in most excellent English,
entertained me with a flow of conversation which
put me at my ease. He discoursed of Finland,
where lakes covered the country from near
Abo, its chief city, to the far north, where the
summer days are "nearly all night long."
Painting in high colors the delights of his
native land, he begged me to visit it. Finally, as
midnight drew near, this genial sailor insisted
upon putting me in his own comfortable
stateroom, while he slept upon a lounge in the cabin.
One mile above the Rurik's anchorage was the
phosphate-mill of the Pacific Company, which
was supplying Captain Bergelund, by lighters,
with his freight of unground fertilizer.
The next morning I took leave of the Rurik,
but, instead of descending the Bull River to the
Coosaw, I determined to save time by crossing
the peninsula between the two rivers by means
of two short creeks which were connected at
their sources by a very short canal near "the
mines" of the Phosphate Company. When I
entered Horse Island Creek, at eleven o'clock,
the tide was on the last of the ebb, and I sat in
the canoe a long time awaiting the flood to float
me up the wide ditch, which would conduct me
to the creek that emptied into the Coosaw.
Upon the banks of the canal three hours were
lost waiting for the tide to give me one foot of
water, when I rowed into the second
watercourse, and late in the afternoon entered the wide
Coosaw.
