from the time when they first went to the dame school to learn their letters, jonathan adams and humphrey reynolds spent most of their waking hours in each other’s company. they looked for birds’ nests together in the woods at the edge of the broad susquehanna river, they paddled along its marshy banks, they played absorbing games in that busy, entrancing place, jonathan’s father’s shipyard. or they would stand side by side watching a great ship of war come sailing up the bay, a flying vision of square white sails and darkly outlined rigging, the vessel that was commanded by captain reynolds, humphrey’s father. the two boys talked much of what they would do when they were men; they would sit for long hours on the wharf, their legs dangling above the water, discussing the future.
“i am going into the navy like my father,” humphrey would say, “and i intend to sail in the finest and fastest ship of the whole fleet to the very ends of the world and back again. and i will have you for executive officer, jonathan.”
“no,” jonathan would return seriously, “i get sick when i go to sea and i don’t like hardtack and salt pork. no, i will stop at home in my father’s yards and some day i will build a ship that is a real ship and not just tubs like these.”
they parted when they were seventeen and did not meet again for years, for humphrey went into the navy as he had planned and jonathan, with mallet and chisel in hand and with that sober, earnest air that always clung to him, was already at work in his father’s shipyard. in time he became master of the entire business, while humphrey was scouring the seas, sailing on just those far voyages of which he had so often dreamed. jonathan had his dreams also, but he did not speak of them, only toiled away at building the heavy, sturdy vessels that carried america’s trade overseas early in the last century. honest ships they were and reliable, as sure of coming to port as though they had belonged to the age of steam, but oh, how long it took them to make a voyage! in the privacy of his dingy little office jonathan, with the door fastened, would push aside the clutter of plans and drawings and would get out the model of a strange vessel, sharp, slender and graceful, with a hull like a racing yacht. he would set it upon the bench to carve a little here, to alter a curve by a hair’s breadth there, or merely to stand staring at it sometimes for hours at a time, staring and thinking.
one day when he was so standing, utterly lost in some unspoken vision, there came a knock at the door, followed by an impatient second one and a thunderous third, all during the moment of time that it took the shipmaster to put out of sight his beloved model. when the door was opened there strode in a tall sunburned person in blue uniform, humphrey reynolds come at last to see his old comrade, bringing a roll of government documents under his arm.
“congress has taken a sudden turn toward increasing the navy,” the young officer explained, “and the orders are going out to build twelve ships in haste. one of the contracts is to come to you, if you will take it. they are even in such need that they have not laid down the specifications to the last bolt and rope’s end, so that the man who builds this ship and the officer who superintends the construction, can really have something to say about the design.”
he looked his old friend very steadily in the eye and saw a slow smile of deep, unspoken delight dawn upon the shipbuilder’s face. jonathan adams’ hard hands did not often tremble, but they shook a little now as he reached up to the shelf above the bench and brought down his model.
“i have been thinking about such a design since i was ten years old,” he said, “and the chance to build it has come at last. we will make them a real ship, humphrey, and the whole world will open its eyes when it sees you sail her.”
she grew up quickly on the ways, that ship of their very hearts’ desire, with her bowsprit standing far out over the neighboring street, and with people stopping in the lane to watch jonathan’s whole force of workmen toiling up and down her timbered sides. old navy officers who had seen, some of them, the ships of the revolution, and who had all fought in the war of eighteen-twelve, would come to inspect her and would shake their heads.
“look at that high, sharp bow,” one would say; “such a craft will never be seaworthy in the world. why can’t these young fellows stick to the models we have tried out for them?”
“and see the spread of sail this drawing shows,” another would comment, pointing fiercely with a stubby forefinger; “why, the whole ridiculous affair will capsize in the first good puff of wind! i’m thankful i don’t have to go to sea in her.”
but the two comrades closed their ears and sat, often far into the night, in the cramped little office, poring over drawings and comparing designs.
“you have her thought out to the last ring, block and halyard,” humphrey would say, “and you never even knew if you could build her. what a dreamer you are!”
“it takes dreaming to keep a man at his work,” jonathan would answer. “how do you think i would have had the patience, all these years, to drive wooden pins into cross-timbers, or to mend the rigging of limping coastwise schooners if i had not been thinking of just such a ship as this, and seen her, in my mind’s eye, putting to sea under full sail, to smash every sailing record that has been known?”
the day of the launching came, then the stepping of the giant masts, the completing of the rigging and the bending of the new sails.
“the west wind will be ready for sea in two weeks now,” humphrey said, one morning at breakfast to miranda reynolds—she was my great-grandmother and i was named for her. they had been married only a month and this would be his first cruise since their wedding. she drew her breath quickly, she had not known it was to be so soon.
“people say,” she began hesitatingly, “old sailors and longshoremen and even the naval officers that have been here, say that the west wind will never stand a storm.”
“they are the kind of men,” humphrey scoffed, “who would be sailing vessels of the model of the ark, did not people like jonathan adams have the courage, sometimes, to build something new. no, the west wind is going to teach all the shipmasters something they never knew before, when once she sets sail. and we expect to clear for gibraltar in less than a month. why, miranda, you’re not crying?”
“no,” declared miranda, choking bravely, for tears have no place in a sea captain’s household. she even managed to muster a watery smile. “i wonder what you will leave behind you in foreign parts this time, your gold snuffbox, perhaps.”
it was a longstanding joke that young captain reynolds was so careless of his possessions that he never came home from a voyage without having lost or mislaid by the way everything he had. but the gold snuffbox had survived several cruises, since it was the most valuable thing he owned. it had been presented to him by the citizens of his town when he had come home from sea some years ago, after, so he expressed, “a miserable algerine pirate lay alongside him and insisted on being taken.”
it is probably only a short paragraph in your history book and possibly a very dull one that tells you how, a little more than a hundred years ago, the seas swarmed with pirates whose home ports were the north african cities of algiers, tripoli and tunis. the great nations of europe and, with them, the young united states, used to buy safety from these lawless barbary states by sending them gifts and tribute. but when, finally, the pasha of tripoli sent word to our president that his last gift was not large enough and that more must be sent, the answer was a fleet of american warships and the bombardment of the astonished monarch’s seaports. there were many spirited encounters during that little war, many feats of daring seamanship of which history has lost sight among the greater events that have followed. but for years after the struggle was over, the united states navy still policed that foreign sea with such thoroughness that the pirate craft that dared venture from port were bold and desperate indeed.
it was thither that the west wind was to sail, with dispatches for the commodore of the mediterranean fleet. at last the ship was ready, a rare and beautiful sight with her slim hull, her rows of guns and her towering reach of silvery new canvas.
she sailed with the early tide, at daybreak of a mid-april morning, a ghostly fairy-like thing, slipping away in the gray light and the mist of dawn. miranda stood on the dock to watch her go, with jonathan beside her staring fixedly after his winged dream, flying at last beyond the seas.
“there will be tales to tell when she comes back,” he said at last, “and i look for her to cut down the sailing time by three, four, five days, perhaps. she has borne away the hearts of both of us but she is a good ship and she will bring them back again.”
his stout faith in his ship was matched only by humphrey’s unwavering confidence. others might have said that this maiden voyage of his first command was a heart-breaking one, for many of his men were untrained seamen, grumbling at their narrow quarters and heavy labor, while the art of handling the new vessel was, in itself, not easy to acquire. the weather was boisterous and the winds fitful, but the west wind did not betray the two good friends who had brought her into being. the storms lent her wings so that, at last, anxiety and discontent gave way entirely to pride in the speed that she was making. there was a certain grizzled old sailor, however, who openly discredited all claims of the ship’s prowess, and who even refused to believe the evidence of the day’s reckoning.
“twenty-three days is the best she will do,” he vowed over and over again. “i will stake a year’s pay on it that she can’t make an hour less.”
yet, on the nineteenth day of their passage, a warm, gusty afternoon of early may, when the far horizon swam in haze, it was he who came himself to the captain and broke through all etiquette to report, round-eyed with amazement—
“there’s land been sighted, sir, and i don’t understand it at all. it—it looks like gibraltar!”
so she came through the gates of the mediterranean, a gentle breeze behind her, “sails all filled and asleep” as the seamen said, a swift slender hull under a cloud of snowy canvas. she pushed into the straits where had plied back and forth the daring ph?nician craft, the roman galleys and the high-pooped ships of venice and of spain, but she was no lesser vessel than any one of them, for she was the first of the yankee clipper ships!
i have never seen those north african cities, tangier and tunis and the rest, and i have no doubt that to-day they are very little like what humphrey reynolds saw. but his stories have come down to me so clear and vivid, that i almost feel that i have known those very places with their white houses, their tropical green, the confusion and chatter of foreign tongues in the narrow streets, the hushed silence of the wide, walled gardens. for long months the american warships would lie off these ports, keeping a watchful eye upon the doings of the dusky potentates and arch-pirates who ruled them. the officers and men would go ashore to stare at the strange sights and to bargain for souvenirs among the street vendors, seemingly oblivious of the scowling, hostile faces about them.
it was in tripoli on a day when captain reynolds was walking from one dark cupboard of a shop to another, looking for some fitting gift to take home to miranda, that he was suddenly startled by the sight of a pale face among all those dusky ones. it was not white, but yellow, and belonged to an old chinaman, as dried up and withered as a mummy, who had somehow wandered, a rare thing in those days, to this african city and kept a little shop there among the moors, arabs and berbers of tripoli. his wares were different from the others and very new indeed to humphrey’s eyes, for just such carvings and silks did not often find their way to america. the old man invited the officer to come inside where more articles stood upon the narrow shelves and where humphrey had almost decided upon the purchase of a beautifully carved ivory box for miranda when he spied, in a niche opposite the tiny window, such a thing as he had never seen before.
a little pine tree was growing in a pot, a real, living one, and a miniature of just such a tree, bent and twisted by the sea winds, that grew upon the hill above the susquehanna at home. the art of stunting and pruning these tiny trees, developed in japan perhaps, but known to some chinese, was quite unheard of in the western world so that humphrey could scarcely believe his eyes when they told him it was green and growing and evidently kin to the giant ones in america.
“miranda must have that,” was his instant decision; “she will find that i can manage to bring home the gold snuffbox and something more besides.”
his determined effort to buy the tree, however, had a strange effect. at the first the old shopkeeper merely met all his offers with a determined shake of the head, but, as humphrey insisted, he became more and more excited and at last, wringing his hands, burst into a torrent of jabbering explanation. captain reynolds had cruised along these shores long enough to have learned a little of the mixed dialect of french, spanish and moorish words by which foreigners and natives contrived to understand one another, so that he was able to gather from the chinaman’s flood of talk that the pine tree was the most precious of his possessions, that he had carried it himself all the way from pekin, that it was a hundred years old and that he felt certain the spirits of his ancestors loved to cluster about its twisted little branches. what had caused his banishment from his own land humphrey could not make out, but he did gain some inkling of how the withered old man felt as he looked back upon some frail, small hut on the shore of one of china’s muddy yellow rivers, upon some bit of land that he and his ancestors had tilled patiently for unnumbered generations, upon a tiny garden where the tree had grown. no, it was quite plain that he would not sell it!
so the ivory box was bought for miranda after all. as humphrey prepared to go, a picturesque person came into the shop, a fat, black man, very richly dressed with the silk scarfs, satin cloak and gold embroidered garments of a high court official. the young american glanced at him curiously as he squeezed by in the semi-darkness of the narrow place and was conscious of the penetrating stare of two hard black eyes that he could almost feel boring into his back as he went out. before he had gone far, he thought that he heard a queer, smothered cry of terror in the shop. but the street was so full of noises that, though he paused to listen, he could not be certain and so went on again. in the busy days on board ship that followed, the chinaman and his treasure presently passed completely from his mind.
reports of the west wind’s quick passage had been going about, all this time, through the mediterranean fleet.
“but that was only a trial,” humphrey kept saying, “when we were learning how to handle her. on the voyage home we’ll show you even more plainly what she can do.”
that voyage was now soon to be, for the vessel had been selected to carry back the commodore’s dispatches and reports to washington. on the day before she was to sail, a message came from the pasha of tripoli that he was sending his personal representative to make the ship a visit of ceremonious farewell. captain reynolds sighed deeply when he heard this news, for such overtures from a government elaborately friendly but secretly treacherous, were uneasy occasions. when the stout, dusky minister of state came over the side, gorgeous in his jewels and satins, humphrey, after a moment of doubt, recognized him as the man whom he had met in the old chinaman’s shop. the other gave no sign of recognition, however, but gravely went through the elaborate messages from his august master, inspected the ship with solemn interest and expressed not only surprise, but some doubts when told of the time she had made between america and gibraltar.
“why, it cannot be done!” he cried. not even pirate craft, it seemed, could fly on such swift wings. “there are favorable winds and chances for good luck on the eastern passage, but when your prow is turned toward home again, when you are obliged to go southward to get the trade winds that blow for all ships alike, then you will find that this is an ordinary craft, just like all the rest.”
“we will equal our record or better it,” humphrey replied obstinately, “although, as i own, the westward voyage is a longer and more difficult one. but the west wind, sir, is a ship not like other ships.”
after they had sat some time in the captain’s cabin, partaking of refreshment and exchanging polite assurances of good will, the black visitor, with great ceremony, produced an impressive gift from his master, a richly embroidered scarf which he presented with a long speech that humphrey only half understood. he accepted it unwillingly and made such reply as he could, after which there came an awkward pause in the talk. finally the tripolitan minister, with smooth boldness, remarked that his illustrious master would be willing to accept in return some small gift, merely as a remembrance of the visit of captain reynolds and his beautiful ship. for a moment humphrey was utterly at a loss, since the government that had filled his magazines with powder and shot in case of trouble had quite neglected to provide for any such occasion as this. yet the beady eyes of the african, fixed so steadily upon him, seemed to hint that some present must be forthcoming or serious difficulties would follow. there seemed but one thing to do.
“how miranda will laugh at me, after all,” humphrey sighed as he slowly brought out the gold snuffbox and placed it in the dark hand that was extended so quickly to receive it.
the exchange of gifts should have brought the visit to an end, but for some reason it did not. the african still sat, staring across the table at humphrey, his eyes narrowed to black slits.
“the gift is of great beauty,” he said at last, “but i might explain that the pasha, my master, has especial love for his gardens and is most particularly delighted when he is given any—any small curiosity to add to the treasures he has already gathered there.” seeing humphrey look blank, he explained more clearly. “you and i met, some days since, in the shop of that mad old chinaman who owns, but will not sell, that little pine tree, a hundred years old. the pasha had taken a fancy to own it, so, since the old man would not part with it willingly, he sent some servants to—to fetch it. but they failed. i understand the tree is on board this ship after all.”
“on board the west wind?” echoed humphrey amazed. “i give you my word that it is not here.”
“the tree is on this ship,” insisted the other steadily. “the chinaman heard somehow of our coming and departed, treasure and all; he was seen fleeing through the town; he was seen making his way to this vessel. and the pasha of tripoli desires the little pine tree!”
there was a pause, but humphrey said nothing. the dusky visitor shrugged his shoulders and slipped one sleek hand within his satin robe.
“the american captain wishes further persuasion,” he said with a sly grin. “i have something here for himself alone, which will perhaps make him more generous.”
he drew out a handful of gold coins and laid them upon the table, looked at humphrey narrowly and, seeing no signs of yielding, sighed deeply and drew out another and another. he piled them up in little shining heaps and stood gazing, with an expectant smile across at the american. but, since humphrey did not put out a hand to take them he broke forth petulantly—
“in the name of the prophet, is not that enough? you grasping yankees would have everything! these are not african coins, man, but good english sovereigns, french louis d’or, spanish doubloons such as you can spend like water anywhere you go. and all in exchange for one small thing upon which my master has set his heart. come, you drive a hard bargain.”
“i drive no bargain for what does not belong to me, to be paid for in stolen coin,” humphrey answered hotly. “do you think that i do not know that your pirate vessels have brought in this gold; that, for each of those heaps of coin, there has probably been a good ship sent to the bottom, english, french or spanish? have you not learned once what america thinks of piracy?”
the fat man shrugged his shoulders again.
“america is a forgetful land, and far away,” he commented drily. “news carries thither slowly and judgment comes even slower back again. it is twenty years since your country fought with mine; we believe america is ceasing to watch us. the atlantic is a broad and windy sea!”
“you do not know,” the young officer replied slowly, “that there is a wise man in my country, my comrade and dear friend, who has learned how to make the atlantic a thousand miles less broad. he built this ship with which we have shortened the voyage by four days and will, when we set sail again, lessen it by more than that. your pirate craft are swift but yankee wits are swifter and presently your vessels will bring back a tale—for every sea-coast will ring with it—that jonathan adams’ ship the west wind has crossed the ocean in eighteen days.”
“eighteen days,” scoffed the other, “that is past any man’s belief. ships move by sails, not wings!”
“eighteen days,” repeated humphrey sternly, “i promise you that you will hear of our voyage made in just that time. and when other vessels are built to match or to better her, our country will come a great stride nearer to you, a thousand miles nearer to traitors, murderers and thieves.”
he brought his hand down upon the table with such force that the heaps of gold went rolling and tumbling to the floor, and the dignified arab was forced to go groveling on his hands and knees to pick them up again. when he arose, humphrey was standing by the door which he held open.
“i will send an officer,” he said, “to go with you to search the ship. since you believe that no man speaks the truth, you shall see with your own eyes that the chinaman and his treasure are not here.”
there was no doubt that the man who had the duty of escorting the foreigner over the ship took extreme delight in conducting him through the narrowest, dirtiest recesses of the hold, so that the court official’s fat person was breathless and his silken garments much the worse for grease and tar when he finally expressed himself as satisfied and came once more on deck. his farewells were less stately than his greetings had been, and he turned back for a last word before he went over the side.
“if the west wind sails away, after all, carrying my master’s heart’s desire, may every curse and every evil spirit known to good mohammedans, follow you upon your way. may every hardship that sailors can suffer, fall upon you, may your voyage be such a one as never captain knew before!”
he departed in a great show of dignity and magnificence and was rowed ashore, while humphrey, with a sigh of relief, turned himself to the preparations for getting under way. he had vowed a vow within himself that jonathan adams should not be disappointed and that, on the homeward voyage, they would shorten the passage by the five days for which he had hoped.
it was at daylight next morning, when the west wind had cleared the harbor of tripoli and, leaving behind the palm-clad shore with its minarets and towers and its evil, hostile city, was standing out to sea, that captain reynolds sat down in his cabin to examine the log book which he had sent for, to make certain that wind and weather and the exact hour of weighing anchor had been correctly noted. he smiled as he glanced at the entry of the day before with its record of the visit of state.
“and he had the impudence, even, to curse me,” he reflected, chuckling, “as though any one could hide on my ship without my knowing—”
he stopped abruptly, the page half-turned in his hand. for a strange sound was developing in the locker opposite his bunk, a scratching as though a rat were shut in behind the door, then the clicking of the latch as, out from the narrow space where no one would think a grown man could hide, came tumbling the chinaman, half-smothered, but clutching unharmed his heart’s treasure in its porcelain pot.
the mohammedan’s curse had been thorough and, so it began to seem as the voyage went on, of some effect, but he had forgotten one thing. whatever went wrong, whatever accident, small or great, befell the ship on her race across the atlantic, the wind never failed. the very sprites, afreets and genie known to arab fancy seemed to sit in the hollow of the sail and lend strength with their blowing to the lusty trade winds. lines parted, tackle jammed, and sails carried away, but still the wind held. the oldest but ablest seaman, he who had not believed in gibraltar when he saw it, fell from a yard and was picked up with a broken knee. a falling block, dropping from a height to the deck below, crushed, in its passage, the shoulder of another sailor. but still the wind held and still the ship cut the south-atlantic rollers like an arrow. seven days, eight days, nine days—they were halfway across, and excitement had begun to run breathlessly high.
at the end of the ninth day, while the west wind was wallowing in a cross sea, it was discovered that the water casks had broken loose from their lashings, that two of them were crushed, others injured, and that the greater portion of their precious water had leaked away.
“then we have need to make port all the more quickly,” captain reynolds said grimly, and stood by in person while, to each man including himself, the meager allowance for each day was measured out.
the one who fared worst upon the voyage was the old chinaman. he suffered hideously from sea-sickness for the first few days, although he made shift to stagger on deck, to haul at ropes and to give such service as his feeble strength allowed. when the water failed, he seemed, somehow, to be suffering far more than any of the rest. on the second day after the mishap to the casks, he came to the captain’s cabin, utterly refusing to be driven away. with trembling yellow hands he drew the pine tree from beneath his rags and set it on the table.
“after i die,” he requested calmly, “will you not in justice see that my share of water still goes to keeping my ancestors’ tree alive?”
it seemed that his whole allowance of drinking water had been poured into the pot, since he preferred to perish himself rather than permit his great treasure to droop and wither.
humphrey argued and commanded, but to no purpose. the chinaman merely shook his head obstinately and vowed by all his gods that he would not drink while his tree was thirsty. at last, however, a compromise was made. the little pine was to remain on the captain’s table and every day, in humphrey’s presence, the chinaman was to drink half his allowance of water and pour the other half upon the dry roots.
“if you can keep alive on that, your tree should also,” humphrey said; “there is no other way to do.”
still muttering protests that his tree would die, the old man crawled away. humphrey stood looking silently at the little pine tree, so fresh and vigorous in spite of its hundred years. he took the water that had been set upon his table and drank half of it at one gulp, for he had just come below and the hot quarterdeck was a thirsty place. then he paused a moment, the half-empty cup in his hand.
“i am a soft-hearted fool,” he muttered and poured what was left on the dry earth of the porcelain pot.
the days passed while the men grew weaker and more sluggish at their work, but still the breeze held and the speed of the west wind did not falter. they passed no ship from which they could obtain water, their only hope lay in the making of port. they turned northward, lost the trade winds, seemed for a terrible moment to be hanging becalmed, but a stiff breeze caught them and bore them still toward home. the old chinaman seemed to shrivel away like a dead leaf, but he came stumbling every day to share his mouthful of water with his precious tree. captain reynolds himself looked more worn and haggard than did any of his men. only the chinaman, glancing sideways with his slanting, beady eyes at the lusty green of the little pine, seemed to suspect why. they were like the flitting ghosts of a ship’s crew that morning when the hot, glittering expanse of sea was broken by a wavering line on the horizon and the lookout’s husky call of “land-ho” announced the low green shore of maryland. eighteen days from gibraltar and all records broken at last!
she came into the susquehanna river for repairs, did the worn but triumphant west wind, and jonathan adams came rowing out to board her, his sober face for once all wreathed in smiles.
“by five days you shortened the voyage,” he said, “and i had not really hoped for more than four. i always said she was not a tub, but a real ship at last. there will be others like her, and her children’s children will dare to spread such sail that they will cross the atlantic in half your time.”
as humphrey came up the ladder to where miranda was waiting on the wharf, his first words were—
“i left the snuffbox behind,” while she, laughing shakily, answered—
“i knew you would.”
the whole crew, down to the cabin boy, were hailed as heroes when they left the ship, but there was one who managed somehow to go ashore as mysteriously as he had come aboard. the old chinaman with his treasured pine tree disappeared, no one knew whither, hiding himself, perhaps, lest some emissary from africa should even yet seek him out and rob him. for more than a month humphrey searched and inquired for him all up and down the shore of the bay, but no one had seen him and no one knew where he had gone.
jonathan adams’ ship the west wind sailed on many voyages and was the model for other vessels of her class, bigger and swifter even than herself—the great race of american clippers that once ruled the seas. they gave our country the highest place in the world’s shipping, and they brought her, even as humphrey had said, a thousand miles nearer to her neighbors across the atlantic. but that is not all of the story of this famous voyage. the real end came seven years later, when humphrey had risen to be commodore reynolds and when, between two cruises, he was spending a holiday at home. one summer afternoon, a small, bent figure toiled up the driveway of the big house above the susquehanna. humphrey, with miranda, was sitting in the shade of the high-columned veranda and for a moment did not recognize the strange face, so covered with dust that the yellow skin and slanting eyes were scarcely visible. but the old chinaman walked straight to miranda and laid his offering on her lap.
“for you,” he said. “he wanted to bring it to you from the very first!”
it was not the real pine tree, but the one that you see here, made of jade and enamel with tiny jewels set around the top of the pot. humphrey and his wife exclaimed and admired and examined it on every side.
“but i do not understand,” humphrey kept saying. “how did you come to make it, and to bring it to us after seven years?”
“after seven years!”
the old chinaman smiled patiently.
“you americans are ever in such haste. how long, think you, it takes a true craftsman to carve a tree of jade?”
