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Updated: May 2, 2025
The Captain had his sounding-line going, and I was on the upper deck with the signallers. Pretty soon we made out the outlines of a small ship shrouded in darkness. We turned our signalling lamp on her and asked her name. In a moment came the answer "British Warship, don't go into the harbor until daylight."
Livingstone, and Bombay, the headman of my caravan, were the two charged with watching the canoe; but, having imbibed too freely of this intoxicating toddy, they slept heavily, and in the morning the Doctor and I had to regret the loss of several valuable and indispensable things; among which may be mentioned the Doctor's 900-fathom sounding-line, 500 rounds of pin, rim, and central-fire cartridges for my arms, and ninety musket bullets, also belonging to me.
Again Benson played see-saw with his sounding-line over the boat’s gunwale. “If my lead isn’t hitting the ’Farnum,’” declared the young skipper, positively, “then it’s the ’Farnum’s’ ghost. Hold steady, now, Hal.” Immediately afterward, Benson caused the lead fairly to dance a jig on whatever it touched at bottom. “What’s the good of that, anyway?” demanded Jacob Farnum.
I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour. I felt approaching footsteps, I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother.
On he sailed, with his two dusky captives for pilots, seeing with regret the banks of the river gradually draw together and hearing unwelcome word of the freshening of its waters on past the "gorge of the gloomy Saguenay with its towering cliffs and sullen depths, depths which no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck"; on past frowning promontory and wild vineyards, to the foot of the scarped cliff of Quebec, now "rich with heroic memories, then but the site of a nameless barbarism"; thence, after parley with the Indian chief Donnacona and his people, on through walls of autumn foliage and frost- touched meadows to where the Lachine Rapids mocked with unceasing laughter those who dreamed of an easy way to China.
During the time required for jerking a quantity of it, Glover made a boat out of the two hides, scraping them with a hunting knife, sewing them with a sailor's needle and strands of the sounding-line, and stretching them on a frame of green saplings, the result being a craft six feet long by nearly four broad, and about the shape of a half walnut-shell.
At 1 a.m. the sounding-line was not all hauled in. Ten thousand feet remained out, which would take several more hours to bring in. According to the commander's orders the fires had been lighted, and the pressure was going up already. The Susquehanna might have started at once. At that very moment it was 1.17 a.m.
During the half-century and more which has elapsed since this discovery, astronomers have been busily engaged in fathoming the heavenly depths. The nearest star they have been able to find is about 280,000 times the sun's distance. A dozen or a score more are within 1,000,000 times that distance. Beyond this all is unfathomable by any sounding-line yet known to man.
Why should one not explore everything, and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The halt is a matter depending on the sounding-line, and not on the leadsman.
We had a sounding-line with us, which we used at frequent intervals; and by its aid we ascertained that at a distance of one mile from the shore the shallowest water between the ship and Shark Point was about three and a half fathoms at low water. This was at a spot distant some three and a half miles from the point.
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