Hitty, Her First Hundred Years/Chapter 3

Because my clothes had suffered so much from crows, rain, and sharp twigs I was unable to be seen much in polite society. But after my late experiences I was thankful enough to stay in a neat little cradle Captain Preble had made in odd moments. Phœbe’s mother had promised to cut out new garments for me as soon as she could find the time. But time was evidently very hard to find in the Preble house in those days, for the Captain was soon to sail on another long voyage. It was to be a whaling trip this time and he had bought more than half interest in the ship Diana, which was being repaired and fitted out in Boston.

And so it came to be September, with such a shine on sea and leaf and every grass blade that even I experienced a strange springing feeling down to my very pegs. Never since then have I heard crickets make such high and persistent chirpings. All day and all night you might hear them at it in the brown, burnt grass.

“They’re singin’ to keep the cold away,” Andy told Phœbe one night as we three sat on the doorstep, watching the big red fall moon rise behind the seaward islands.

“And can they?” Phœbe was always very curious about such things.

“No,” Andy assured her, “they only think they can. The colder it turns the louder they holler, but the frost always gets ’em. You wait an’ see.”

“I’m glad we’re not crickets,” said Phœbe, hugging me tighter, as if she feared I might turn into one.

That night after the whole house was still and everyone in bed, I lay in my cradle and listened to them and thought of what Andy had said. I, too, felt very glad I was not a cricket.

​Captain Preble was forever riding over to Portland to see if the post that came by stage three times a week from Boston had brought him news of the Diana. There had been many delays about the ship’s outfitting and the Captain was growing impatient.

I lay in my cradle and listened to the crickets chirping.

“Reuben Somes is first-rate at strikin’ whales,” I heard him tell his wife one day, “but he’s no hand at gettin’ a ship overhauled. Guess I’]] have to go up to Boston by the next stagecoach if we expect to weigh anchor before November. This is the last time I put in at Boston. It’ll be Portland for me from now on.”

“Now, Dan’l, don’t you go off fore I get your twelfth pair o’ socks knitted,” his wife begged. “I couldn’t rest easy here at home if I thought you was sloshin’ round in wet feet!”

​“Guess there’s nothin’ for it but to fetch you along to Boston with me day after tomorrow,” he laughed. “You can finish ’em on the way and fit yourself an’ Phœbe out with new winter woolens in style.”

“My goodness, Dan’l, who ever heard of such nonsense?” she answered with a serious head shake. “You always were one for extravagance—two lamps burnin’ an’ no ship at sea!”

Her words puzzled me at the time, but I later learned that this was a phrase often used by wives of whalers and meant that some one was spending what he had not yet earned. I was to hear many such sea terms before very long.

Somehow or other the Captain always got his way. So it came about that one fine fall morning we all set off to catch the Boston stage. The sun had been up only a little while as we went clattering away, leaving the square white Preble house, the red barn, and the ancestral pine behind us. Little did I think as these familiar shapes slipped from view that I was not to see them again in another week. No, not one of us guessed, then, all that lay before us as we turned into the Portland road.

Such a morning as it was, too! I shall never forget the scarlet of the swamp maples by every pond or bit of marshy land, the bright yellow of elms and birches, and the flaming red of woodbine that made the fences look as if they had burst into flame. It was goldenrod and asters all the way to Portland.

“There, Kate,” said the Captain, suddenly pointing with his whip, “that’s the first mountain-ash tree I’ve seen this fall.”

There, sure enough, at the edge of some woods was a slim, tallish tree loaded down with bunches of orange berries. The tree seemed to bend under their weight and they shone like burnished balls.

“That’s Hitty’s tree,” cried Phœbe, “and it’s magic!”

“Hush, child,” reproved her mother, “you mustn’t say such things.”

“But the Old Peddler said so, Mother,” Phœbe insisted. “Don’t you remember when he was making her he said it was a charm against evil?”

​“Well, now, I guess he was just givin’ you a fish story,” put in the Captain hastily, for he saw his wife look rather stern. “Anyhow, it’s what I call a pretty sight. Geddap, Charlie, or we’ll be too late for the stage.”

We were in plenty of time, however. In fact, the Prebles were able to stop for doughnuts, gingerbread, and glasses of cider at Cousin Robinson’s on Congress Street where Charlie and the gig were to be left while we were away.

There are no such stagecoaches nowadays, or such fine, prancing horses to draw them. This one was painted red and yellow, and the four horses were matched in pairs, two grays and two chestnuts. The spokes of the wheels were painted black and when they turned very fast it made one quite dizzy, especially if one hung out of the window and looked down. Perhaps this was the matter with Phœbe, for after we had been jolting and rumbling along for about an hour she complained of not feeling well. Captain Preble and Andy had climbed on top with several other men and boys and the driver. However, there were two or three ladies riding inside with us and they were full of sympathy and advice. One brought out peppermint lozenges, another lemon drops, and I think there were other remedies in the shape of dried licorice roots and homemade spruce beer. Phoebe tried them all. But none made her feel any better. She grew very pale and was glad to lie still with closed eyes as we rolled along at a fine pace.

“I am afraid,” her mother told the other ladies with a doleful head shake, “that she must have inherited a weak stomach. It runs in our family.”

I was happy to think that I was subject to no such discomfort. Though, of course, I had been unable to indulge in the cider and gingerbread at Cousin Robinson’s! I suppose that may have had something to do with it.

Westayed the night at a fine old tavern in Portsmouth and were off again before daylight. Fresh horses were harnessed and the stage was soon rumbling toward Salem.

Phœbe proved herself a better traveler the second day, and her ​mother chatted with two new lady passengers, her needles clicking briskly as she continued to knit the Captain’s socks. So past harbors and headlands, by farms and fields and elm-shaded village streets we came at last to Salem. Here was a fine harbor full of ships and larger houses than I had ever seen before. We walked up and down in the early twilight. Some of the houses were of brick with small square balconies built on their roofs about the chimneys. “Captain’s walks,” Phœbe’s father said they were called, because one could walk there and see what vessels were in the harbor. Her mother kept marveling at the size and grandeur of the homes we passed, admiring the elaborate carving over doors and windows and the handsome furnishings that we caught glimpses of within.

“They can afford it,” her husband explained. “Salem’s ’bout the richest port there is in these parts. If I was to take you down to the wharves, you’d see ’em loaded down with cargoes from India and China and heaven knows where. Maybe if I strike luck this voyage and bring back six or seven hundred barrels of sperm, we can come an’ live here, too. How’d you like that, Kate?”

But his wife shook her head.

“You know well enough I wouldn’t live anywhere except in the State of Maine. But I s’pose there’s no harm in my admirin’ other folks’ front doors and parlor curtains, is there?”

The Captain allowed there wasn’t.

By the next evening we were settled in Boston in a couple of rooms an old lady let out to sailors’ families. The Captain had known her since he was a boy, and she welcomed us warmly. From her upper windows we could see the harbor with a perfect forest of masts where the vessels lay anchored near the wharves.

The Captain had gone at once to his ship, taking Andy with him. Phœbe and I were through supper and in bed by the time he returned. He sounded worried and kept repeating over and over that he should have come before and how they must get off soon if they were to make headway against the autumn gales. Some of his best men were sick or had signed up for other ships; the vessel was only half fitted out and he could not find a proper cook. This ​last difficulty seemed to worry him most of all. Ship’s cooks were apparently scarce that year.

Several more days passed. The Captain was busier than ever down at the wharves. I had a feeling that something was going to happen, so I was not surprised when he came back one night and had a long talk with Phœbe’s mother. I could not hear much of what they said, for Phœbe and I were in bed and they sat with their heads close together by the little glass lamp on the table. Captain Preble had charts spread out before him, besides a great many other papers, and his wife listened to him so intently as he talked and pointed things out to her with his big forefinger that she let her knitting lie idle in her lap.

“Well, Dan’l,” she said at last, “I’ll take the night to think it over and let you know by morning. I never ’lotted on going to sea, least of all to cook for a parcel of hungry men in one of these greasy old ‘blubber-hunters,’ as you call ’em.”

“’T won’t be so bad ’s you think,” he told her, “‘there ain’t another vessel has had so good an overhauling. You can fix your cabin up ’most as nice as if you was at home, and as for the work, why you’ll have some one to do for you hand an’ foot.”

“But when I think of my kitchen at home,” she sighed, “an’ all my jelly there on the table, and our cow with the neighbors, and Charlie eatin’ his head off with oats in Portland, I don’t hardly feel I can.”

“Don’t you mind about that,” he assured her.

“Well, if I do go the name of that ship’s got to be changed to something more Christian.” She spoke very firmly.

“They say it’s bad luck to change a vessel’s name,” the Captain told her. “Not that I hold to that sort o’ thing, but crews get notions and you have to humor ’em.”

But his wife held firmly to her convictions.

“Crew or no crew,” said she, “I don’t set foot on any ship with such a heathen-sounding name.”

So the Captain said he would see what could be done, and by breakfast time the next morning it was all settled that we should go.

​Phœbe and I spent most of the day by ourselves, for the Captain and his wife were both far too busy making last purchases and seeing to all the final preparations on the eve of our departure. We were glad enough when Andy put in his appearance after supper to help a couple of big sailors carry down boxes. Andy acted very important and proud of himself in the new pea-jacket and sea boots that Captain Preble had bought him. He seemed years older than he had a week before and took his new duties as cabin-boy very seriously. I did not think he sounded particularly pleased to have us going along.

“They all say a vessel’s no place for women folks,” he explained to us, “and they don’t want you to go only for the pie and doughnuts.”

“Well, I don’t care what they say,” Phœbe told him with an emphatic shake of her curls, “we’re going. Father said so this morning and he’s Captain.”

It was well after sunset by the time we went down to the wharves, but we could make out the dark outlines of hulls and masts and the shapes of men and piled-up cargoes in the flickering light of lanterns and the thin fall dusk.

“There she is,” said the Captain suddenly, pointing to a looming shape alongside of the wharf. “That’s your new home, Phœbe. Reckon you’re goin’ to like it?”

We were swung aboard like so many parcels. High overhead the masthead lantern gleamed whitely in a circle of paler light it sent out into the darkness. Below us, strapped into a little sling of a seat, a man was whistling as he moved a big brush to and fro.

Captain Preble beckoned us over to watch him.

“There’s Jim,” he said to his wife, “followin’ your orders.” Then as she looked at him blankly he smiled and explained: “He’s paintin’ new letters to her name—she’s goin’ to be the Diana-Kate from now on. Guess you an’ that old heathen lady goddess might ’s well get used to each other, for you’re goin’ to have about eleven months of keepin’ close company there astern.”

And so our voyage began.