Edward Ellis - Adrift on the Pacific - A Boys [sic] Story of the Sea and its Perils

A few hours before the sailing of the steamer Polynesia , from San Francisco to Japan, and while Captain Strathmore stood on deck watching the bustle and hurry, he was approached by a nervous, well-dressed gentleman, who was leading a little girl by the hand.

“I wish you to take a passenger to Tokio for me, Captain Strathmore,” said the stranger.

The honest, bluff old captain, although tender of the feelings of others, never forgot the dignity and respect due to his position, and, looking sternly at the stranger, said:

“You should know, sir, that it is the purser and not the captain whom you should see.”

“I have seen him, and cannot make a satisfactory arrangement.”

“And that is no reason, sir, why you should approach me.”

The captain was about moving away, when the stranger placed his hand on his arm, and said, in a hurried, anxious voice:

“It is not I who wish to go–it is this little girl. It is a case of life and death; she must go! You, as captain, can take her in your own cabin, and no one will be inconvenienced.”

For the first time Captain Strathmore looked down at the little girl, who was staring around her with the wondering curiosity of childhood.

She was apparently about six years of age, and the picture of infantile innocence and loveliness. She was dressed with good taste, her little feet being incased in Cinderella-like slippers, while the pretty stockings and dress set off the figure to perfection. She wore a fashionable straw hat, with a gay ribbon, and indeed looked like a child of wealthy parents, who had let her out for a little jaunt along some shady avenue.

When Captain Strathmore looked down upon this sweet child, a great pang went through his heart, for she was the picture of the little girl that once called him father.

Her mother died while little Inez was an infant, and, as soon as the cherished one could dispense with the care of a nurse, she joined her father, the captain, and henceforth was not separated from him. She was always on ship or steamer, sharing his room and becoming the pet of every one who met her, no less from her loveliness than from her childish, winning ways.

But there came one awful dark day, away out in the Pacific, when the sweet voice was hushed forever, and the rugged old captain was bowed by a grief such as that which smites the mountain-oak to the earth.

The little girl who now looked up in the face of Captain Strathmore was the image of Inez, who years before had sunk to the bottom of the sea, carrying with her all the sunshine, music and loveliness that cheered her father’s heart. With an impulse he could not resist, the captain reached out his arms and the little stranger instantly ran into them. Then she was lifted up, and the captain kissed her, saying:

“You look so much like the little girl I buried at sea that I could not help kissing you.”

The child was not afraid of him, for her fairy-like fingers began playing with the grizzled whiskers, while the honest blue eyes of the old sailor grew dim and misty for the moment.

The gentleman who had brought the child to the steamer saw that this was a favorable time for him to urge his plea.

“That is the little girl whom I wished to send to Tokio by you.”

“Have you no friend or acquaintance on board in whose care you can place her?”

“I do not know a soul.”

“Is she any relative of yours?”

“She is my niece. Her father and mother are missionaries in Japan, and have been notified of her coming on this steamer.”

“If that were so, why then were not preparations made for sending her in the care of some one, instead of waiting until the last minute, and then rushing down here and making application in such an irregular manner?”

“Her uncle, the brother of my wife, expected to make the voyage with her, and came to San Francisco for that purpose. He was taken dangerously ill at the hotel, and when I reached there, a few hours ago, he was dead, and my niece was in the care of the landlord’s family. My wife, who is out yonder in a carriage, had prepared to accompany me East to-morrow. Her brother had made no arrangements for taking the little one on the steamer, so I was forced into this unusual application.”

While the gentleman was making this explanation, the captain was holding the child in his arms, and admiring the beautiful countenance and loveliness of face and manner.

“She does look exactly like my poor little Inez,” was his thought, as he gently placed her on her feet again.

“If we take her to Japan, what then?”

“Her parents will be in Tokio, waiting for her. You, as captain, have the right, which no one would dare question, of taking her into your cabin with you, and I will compensate you in any manner you may wish.”

“What is her name?” asked Captain Strathmore.

“Inez.”

“She shall go,” said the sailor, in a husky voice.

The steamer Polynesia was steaming swiftly across the Pacific, in the direction of Japan–bravely plunging out into the mightiest expanse of water which spans the globe, and heading for the port that loomed up from the ocean almost ten thousand miles away.

Although but a few days out, little Inez had become the pet of the whole ship. She was full of high spirits, bounding health–a laughing, merry sprite, who made every portion of the steamer her home, and who was welcome wherever she went.

To the bronzed and rugged Captain Strathmore she was such a reminder of his own lost Inez that she became a second daughter to him, and something like a pang stirred his heart when he reflected upon his arrival at his destination and his parting from the little one.

Inez, as nearly as the captain could gather, had been living for several years with her uncle and aunt in San Francisco, from which port her parents had sailed a considerable time before. The stranger gave a very common name as his own–George Smith–and said he would await the return of the Polynesia with great anxiety, in order to learn the particulars of the arrival of his niece in Japan.

However, the captain did not allow his mind to be annoyed by any speculations as to the past of the little girl; but he could not avoid a strong yearning which was growing in his heart that something would turn up–something possibly in the shape of a social revolution or earthquake–that would place the little girl in his possession again.

And yet he trembled as he muttered the wish.

“How long would I keep her? I had such a girl once–her very counterpart–the sweet Inez, my own; and yet she is gone, and who shall say how long this one shall be mine?”

The weather remained all that could be wished for a number of days after steaming out of the Golden Gate. It was in the month of September, when a mild, dreamy languor seemed to rest upon everything, and the passage across the Pacific was like one long-continued dream of the Orient–excepting, perhaps, when the cyclone or hurricane, roused from its sleep, swept over the deep with a fury such as strews the shores with wrecks and the bottom with multitudes of bodies.

What more beautiful than a moonlight night on the Pacific?

The Polynesia was plowing the vast waste of waters which separates the two worlds, bearing upon her decks and in her cabins passengers from the four quarters of the globe.

They came from, and were going to, every portion of the wide world. Some were speeding toward their homes in Asia or Africa or the islands of the sea; and others living in Europe or America, or the remote corners of the earth, would finally return, after wandering over strange places, seeing singular sights, and treading in the footsteps of the armies who had gone before them in the dim ages of the past.