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He determined to go to Australia, and secured a berth in a clipper ship bound for Melbourne, but some accident prevented his reaching the pier in season; the vessel sailed without him, and was never heard of afterwards. Then he proposed to buy an estate in Canada; but the owner failed to make his appearance at the time appointed for the negotiation, and the bargain was not completed.
I was then told, to my mortification, that my kind friend, the GENTLEMAN on whose benevolence and protection I had already built hopes of success in life, was neither more nor less than the captain of an armed clipper brig, a SLAVER, anchored in the outer roads, which had been for a fortnight ready for sea, but was detained in consequence of the desertion of three several crews, who had been induced by false representations to ship, and had deserted EN MASSE as soon as they learned the true character of the vessel and the voyage.
Hum! no horses, no vices, no dancers, no yacht; you confound one's notions of nobility, and I ought to know them, for I have to patch them all up a bit just before they go to the deuce." "But I have, Doctor Aberford." "What!" "A yacht! and a clipper she is, too." "Ah! "In the Bay of Biscay she lay half a point nearer the wind than Lord Heavyjib." "Oh! bother Lord Heavyjib, and his Bay of Biscay."
As the hours drew towards midnight, the schooner at length opened communication with the land by means of signal lanterns, and immediately after boats commenced to ply between the clipper and the shore, and continued to do so for several hours.
"You bet!" said the American, humouring this little remaining bit of pride the old seaman had in the ship he had commanded for so many years, a pride that was mingled with a sorrow at her approaching end, which he could foresee and mourn over, as if the vessel had been a living thing "she's been a clipper in her time, and made a smart fit for it; but, the winds and the waves have licked her at last, same as they done me, when they squoze in my durned ribs t'other day."
But at last the benediction would come; and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking how I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen, with high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
My father was chief officer of the old 'Flying Cloud' in the days when American clipper ships beat the world. The gold fever seized him, though, and he quit sailing and went to mining in the early days of San Francisco, and there when I was a little boy of ten he died, leaving mother with not many thousand dollars to take care of herself and me.
Domber selected a cigar after turning several over. "Such poor cigars. I'll be glad when the war is over and I can again import some of my favorite Tampa Perfectos." He snipped the end off the cigar with a gold clipper, then jabbed a full inch of the end into his mouth and rolled the cigar around as though tasting its flavor. "Now," he said, "we will get down to business."
Another showy vessel was the Maria da Gloria a North American clipper; a class of vessels in those days little calculated to do substantial service, being built of unseasoned wood, and badly fastened. Though mounting 32 guns, she was a ship of little force, having only 24-pounder carronades, mixed with short 18-pounder guns.
The one goes as far back as to colonial Pennsylvania for the beginning of its chronicle and the other as far as to Salem in the days of the first clipper ship; and yet by no paraphernalia of languid airs or archaic idioms or strutting heroics does either of the novels fall into the orthodox historical tradition. They have the vivid, multiplied detail of a contemporary record.
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