And I Was Soon Informed, With Considerable Energy,
That Let The Boat Be Kept There As Long As It Might
By stress of
weather, the beef-steaks and apple jam, light fixings and heavy
fixings, must be supplied at the
Cost of the owners of the ship.
"Your first supper you pay for," my informant told me, "because you
eat that on your own account. What you consume after that comes of
their doing, because they don't start; and if it's three meals a
day for a week, it's their look out." It occurred to me that,
under such circumstances, a captain would be very apt to sail
either in foul weather or in fair.
It was a bright moonlight night - moonlight such as we rarely have
in England - and I started off by myself for a walk, that I might
see of what nature were the environs of Grand Haven. A more
melancholy place I never beheld. The town of Grand Haven itself is
placed on the opposite side of a creek, and was to be reached by a
ferry. On our side, to which the railway came and from which the
boat was to sail, there was nothing to be seen but sand hills,
which stretched away for miles along the shore of the lake. There
were great sand mountains and sand valleys, on the surface of which
were scattered the debris of dead trees, scattered logs white with
age, and boughs half buried beneath the sand. Grand Haven itself
is but a poor place, not having succeeded in catching much of the
commerce which comes across the lake from Wisconsin, and which
takes itself on Eastward by the railway.
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