The Captain Went Up To Town In The Boat With Mr. H - - -, And Left
Us To Pass Another Night On Board Ship, And To Come Up With The
Morning's Tide Under Command Of The Pilot.
So much did we feel ourselves to be already at home, in anticipation,
that our plain supper of hard bread and salt beef was barely touched;
and many on board, to whom this was the first voyage, could scarcely
sleep. As for myself, by one of those anomalous changes of feeling
of which we are all the subjects, I found that I was in a state
of indifference, for which I could by no means account. A year
before, while carrying hides on the coast, the assurance that in a
twelvemonth we should see Boston, made me half wild; but now that I
was actually there, and in sight of home, the emotions which I had
so long anticipated feeling, I did not find, and in their place
was a state of very nearly entire apathy. Something of the same
experience was related to me by a sailor whose first voyage was
one of five years upon the North-west Coast. He had left home,
a lad, and after several years of very hard and trying experience,
found himself homeward bound; and such was the excitement of his
feelings that, during the whole passage, he could talk and think
of nothing else but his arrival, and how and when he should jump
from the vessel and take his way directly home.
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