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- 1428
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 1365
- text
- beautiful fresh mossy hill-sides; oh! then I would have given any thing
if instead of sailing _out of_ the bay, we were only coming _into_ it;
if we had crossed the ocean and returned, gone over and come back; and
my heart leaped up in me like something alive when I thought of really
entering that bay at the end of the voyage. But that was so far
distant, that it seemed it could never be. No, never, never more would
I see New York again.
And what shocked me more than any thing else, was to hear some of the
sailors, while they were at work coiling away the hawsers, talking
about the boarding-houses they were going to, when they came back; and
how that some friends of theirs had promised to be on the wharf when
the ship returned, to take them and their chests right up to
Franklin-square where they lived; and how that they would have a good
dinner ready, and plenty of cigars and spirits out on the balcony. I
say this kind of talking shocked me, for they did not seem to consider,
as I did, that before any thing like that could happen, we must cross
the great Atlantic Ocean, cross over from America to Europe and back
again, many thousand miles of foaming ocean.
At that time I did not know what to make of these sailors; but this
much I thought, that when they were boys, they could never have gone to
the Sunday School; for they swore so, it made my ears tingle, and used
words that I never could hear without a dreadful loathing.
And are these the men, I thought to myself, that I must live with so
long? these the men I am to eat with, and sleep with all the time? And
besides, I now began to see, that they were not going to be very kind
to me; but I will tell all about that when the proper time comes.
Now you must not think, that because all these things were passing
through my mind, that I had nothing to do but sit still and think; no,
no, I was hard at work: for as long as the steamer had hold of us, we
were very busy coiling away ropes and cables, and putting the decks in
order; which were littered all over with odds and ends of things that
had to be put away.
At last we got as far as the Narrows, which every body knows is the
entrance to New York Harbor from sea; and it may well be called the
Narrows, for when you go in or out, it seems like going in or out of a
doorway; and when you go out of these Narrows on a long voyage like
this of mine, it seems like going out into the broad highway, where not
a soul is to be seen. For far away and away, stretches the great
Atlantic Ocean; and all you can see beyond it where the sky comes down
to the water. It looks lonely and desolate enough, and I could hardly
believe, as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or
any place like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world.
It seemed too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that
there could really be cities and towns and villages and green fields
and hedges and farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of
sea, and away beyond the place where the sky came down to the water.
And to think of steering right out among those waves, and leaving the
bright land behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and
foolhardy; and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by
me, who could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered,
how many times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I
had never dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought
him a marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who
could not by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how
could I credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered;
had ever sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky
and water line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and
Marseilles. It was too wonderful to believe.
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