Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 16

On the next morning, we exercised one of the most enjoyable prerogatives of the houseboater, one that belongs to him as to but few other travellers--that of changing his mind and his destination. We sat down to breakfast with the intention of moving on up the James to Eppes Creek; we rose from the table with the determination to make a run up Powell's Creek, which was a little above us on the other side of the river.

We always enjoyed these changes of mind. They added so much the more to our sense of freedom and independence. There were no bits of cardboard with the names of stations printed on them to predestine our way; no baggage checks to consign our belongings to fixed destinations. Even at the last moment a change of mind, a change of rudder, and a new way and a new destination would lie before us.

Now, our thoughts headed toward Powell's Creek, because up that stream was another colonial church, called Merchants' Hope Church; and the next day would be Sunday.

Necessarily, such houseboat voyagers as we, that the Sundays usually found up forgotten bits of tidewater, were a trifle irregular in the matter of church-going. Our houseboat would have had to have a church-boat for a consort to make it otherwise. Yet, as Sunday after Sunday Gadabout lay in her quiet creek harbours, the spirit of the day seemed to find her there without the call of church chimes.

Though it was morning when we changed our minds and determined to seek a high-backed pew in old Merchants' Hope Church, it was evening by the time we got under way. And in this case, changing our minds did not work well. We should have come just as near getting to a church and should have saved ourselves trouble, if we had clung to our first intention and had spent that Sat.u.r.day in moving on up the James.

As we crossed the river on the way to Powell's Creek, a closer study of the sounding-marks on the chart showed a depth of but one half foot at several places on the flats at the mouth of the stream. Evidently, getting into that creek was bound to be a problem in fractions; and Gadabout was not good at fractions and the day was waning and the tide was setting out.

It seemed that the way to get the best depth of water would be to go to the lower side of the wide, shallow creek-mouth, and then to enter the stream in that affectionate style of navigation called "hugging the sh.o.r.e."

And that is the way we did it. But with all the affection that could be put into the matter, we could not find along that sh.o.r.e any such water as the chart indicated; and Gadabout was beginning to need it sorely.

So, we sent the sailor out to see where it had gone to. He found it over on the other side of the creek. Our confidence in the chart had been betrayed. Depending upon it, we had been hugging the wrong sh.o.r.e.

At first, we thought little of the matter; for, our side of the stream having played us false, we felt no hesitancy in transferring our affections to the other side. But we found that poor Gadabout took things much more seriously. She could not so lightly "off with the old love and on with the new." For her the affair had already gone too far; already, for the side she was now on, she had formed a serious, a hopeless, a lasting attachment.

Our craft aground, our prospects of attending church next day vanished.

Slowly the tide went down; slowly the moon came up; and Nautica made some candy. By the time it was ready to be put out on the guard to cool, even what little we had found of Powell's Creek had disappeared--all about us was just moonlight and mud. And ahead of us and behind us (sticking down a little way in the mud, but sticking up more in the moonlight) were the two anchors that we had put out to hold us in position when the tide should rise in the night. They looked like great crabs sitting there and watching us.

Of course, sometime in the darkness, Gadabout rose on the flood tide, and perhaps was even ready to cross to the other side of the creek and proceed to church. But n.o.body else was ready then; and so, finding all asleep, she slowly settled down once more, and we found her in the morning again hard aground. The good minister of Merchants' Hope Church must surely have reached "Seventhly, my brethren," before our houseboat was afloat.

Now, we moved her out in deeper water (for it would not do that she should be aground next day when we ought to be starting for Eppes Creek); and it was gratifying this time when we cast our anchors, to see them go plumping out of sight as anchors should, instead of looking so distressingly unnautical with flukes sticking up in the air.

But mooring a boat (securing her between two anchors, one ahead and one astern) is rather unsatisfactory at the best. Often it is necessary so to hobble your floating home where there is danger of her swinging upon hidden obstructions; but it is hard on the poetry of houseboating. To be held in one position, with unvarying scenes in your windows, is too much like living in a prosaic land home set immovable in sameness.

Your gypsy craft should ride to a single anchor; free to swing to wind and tide in the rhythm of the river. It is of the essence of home life afloat to sit down to dinner heading up-stream, and to rise from table heading down-stream; to open a favourite book with a bit of sh.o.r.e-view in the cas.e.m.e.nt beside you, and to close the chapter with the open river stretching from under your window, your half-drawn shade perhaps cutting the topsail from a distant schooner.

Monday morning dawned bright and fair (as we afterward learned from the sailor); and bright and fair it certainly was when we made its acquaintance. The day was yet young when everything was ready for the trip up the river, and the sh.o.r.es of the little creek were echoing the harsh clicks of our labouring windla.s.s.

"She's hove short, and all ready to start whenever you are, sir,"

announced the sailor at the bow door.

Nautica snipped a thread and laid down her sewing; the Commodore tossed his magazine aside. A moment more and we were off. When well out in the river, we headed toward the left bank, for we were to make a landing at the pier above Westover to take on two boxes of provisions that had been left there for us by the Pocahontas. The steamer had gone; everybody about the wharf had gone; but we had arranged to have the boxes left out for us, and there they stood on the end of the pier.

Aboard Gadabout was the stir and bustle usually incident to the making of a landing. Clear and sharp rose the voice of the Commodore; now issuing his orders, now taking them back again. When he could think of nothing more to say, he went below and relieved Nautica at the wheel as our good ship swung beautifully in toward the wharf.

It must be remembered that a houseboat does not come up to piers like a steamboat, always finding men waiting to catch lines and to help in making landings. Often, as was the way of it that morning, the wandering houseboat comes along to find only an empty pier; and if she wishes to establish any closer relations with it, she must make all the advances herself.

The wind may be blowing strong; the tide running strong--everything strong but the qualifications of the commanding officer; in which case, it is well that preparations for the landing begin early. There should be a coil of rope made ready at either end of the boat, and also a light line with a grapnel attached to It. What is a grapnel? How strange that question sounds to us now, mighty mariners that we have become! But of course we should remember that there was a time when we did not know ourselves. Well, a grapnel is much like one of those fish-hooks that have five points all curving out in different directions, only it usually weighs several pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OFTEN ... THE WANDERING HOUSEBOAT COMES ALONG TO FIND ONLY AN EMPTY PIER."]

The value of the grapnel was shown that day at the pier above Westover.

Though Gadabout swung to the landing finely, a strong off-sh.o.r.e wind caught her; our ropes fell short; and we should have made but sorry work of it if a grapnel had not shot out into the air and saved the day. As it fell upon the wharf, the line attached to it was hauled in hand over hand; and though the grapnel started to come along with it, sliding and hopping over the pier, soon one of its points found a crack or a nail or a knot-hole to get hold of; and the houseboat was readily drawn up and made fast to the pilings.

The boxes aboard, our lines were cast off and Gadabout moved on up the James.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TRAPPER'S HOME BY THE RIVERBANK.]

Soon we were approaching one of the most historic points on the river.

We could tell that by a deserted old manor-house occupying a fine, neglected site on the left bank of the stream.

While the main structure still stood firm, and would for generations to come as it had for generations gone, yet the verandas about it had been partially burned and had collapsed, and the place looked dilapidated and forlorn. In front, the s.p.a.cious grounds, once terraced gardens, stretched wild and overgrown down to the river, where the straggling ruins of a pier completed the picture of desolation.

But, even neglected and abandoned, this st.u.r.dy colonial home, nearly two centuries old, still wore a n.o.ble air of family pride; still looked bravely out upon the river. And why should it not? What house but old Berkeley is the ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and of two Presidents of the United States?

This plantation became the colonial seat of the elder branch of the Harrison family about the beginning of the eighteenth century. It pa.s.sed to strangers less than half a century ago.

From its founding, Berkeley was the home of distinguished men. Here lived Benjamin Harrison, attorney general and treasurer of the colony; and his son, Major Benjamin Harrison, member of the House of Burgesses; and his son, Benjamin Harrison, member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and his son, William Henry Harrison, famous general and the ninth President of our country; whose grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became our twenty-third President--a striking showing of family distinction, and including the only instance, except that of the Adamses, of two members of the same family occupying the presidential chair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BERKELEY. (The ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and of two Presidents of the United States.)]

Very different from the Berkeley that we saw, was that fine old plantation of colonial times. Imagine it, perhaps upon a summer's day in that memorable year of 1776. There are the great fields of tobacco and grain, the terraced gardens gay with flowers, the boats at the landing, and the manor-house standing proudly, "an elegant seat of hospitality."

The master of Berkeley, that tall, dignified colonial, Colonel Benjamin Harrison, is not at home. He is at Philadelphia attending the Continental Congress. Perhaps even now he is affixing his signature, with its queer final flourish, to the Declaration of Independence. In the meantime, in front of the old home, a pretty woman in quaint taffeta "Watteau" and hooped petticoat and dainty high-heeled slippers is playing with a little boy, among the sweet old shrubs and the English roses upon the terraces.

That little boy is to bring added honour to old Berkeley; and one day, as General William Henry Harrison, president-elect of the United States, his love for this mother shall bring him back to this home of his boyhood to write, amidst the tender a.s.sociations of "her old room,"

his inaugural address.

After pa.s.sing Berkeley, we left the buoyed course and ran the rest of the way to Eppes Creek in a narrow side channel that threads among the shallows close along sh.o.r.e. It is what the river-men call a "slue channel"; and we had to take frequent soundings to follow it. Looking back at dejected old Berkeley, we were glad to know that a new owner of the place was about to restore it.

Gadabout soon approached an opening in the river bank that we knew was the wide mouth of Eppes Creek. We were going to turn into this stream, not merely for the stream itself, but for a convenient anchorage from which to reach the last of the noted river homes that we should visit--Shirley, the colonial seat of the Carters. Our chart showed the mansion as standing just around the next bend of the James. But we were not going around that bend, because the chart showed also this little creek cutting across the point of land lying in the elbow of the river and apparently affording an inside route to Shirley. We should soon learn whether or not Gadabout could navigate it and how near it would take her to the old home.

As we moved slowly into the creek it was between banks in strange and attractive contrast. The starboard side (that from which we hoped to find a way to Shirley) was high and covered with trees of many kinds.

The bank to port was low and covered with a marsh forest of cypresses.

It was a dark and gloomy forest, but the spell of its sombre depths drew our eyes quite as often as the cheerfuller charm of the woodland on the other side; and so was equally responsible for the zigzag course that Gadabout was taking.

But it was the high bank that, after a while, was responsible for Gadabout's ceasing to take any course at all. We came about a bend and saw, just ahead, a little cove. There were trees crowding close, rich pines and cedars and bright-beaded holly. One tree leaned far out over the water, and beneath it two row-boats were drawn up to the bank. We thought it must surely be the landing-place for Shirley. Gadabout sidled to starboard, and grapnels were thrown up into the trees to hold her alongsh.o.r.e.

Stepping out on the bank we went up the hill through the woods. On the way we turned and glanced down upon the houseboat. She looked pretty enough, little white and yellow cottage, snuggling close to the bank with a holly tree at her bow and her flags stirring gently in the warm sunny air.

At the top of the hill, we came out upon the edge of a cornfield.

Everything was cornfield as far as we could see. No house, no road in sight. Back aboard Gadabout, we got under way again. But the creek soon lost even its one solid bank and, finding ourselves running between two lines of marsh woods, we turned about and headed back for the place where we had stopped, "Leaning Tree Landing," as we called it.

We had gone but a little way when our rudder-cable snapped, the steering-wheel turned useless, and Gadabout headed for the marsh woods.

She minded none of our makeshift devices to shape her course; and we were forced to stop the engine and resort to a more primitive motive power.

The sailor dropped an end of a long pole into the water at the bow of the houseboat and, bending heavily upon the other end, slowly pushed her forward as he walked aft along the guard. Steadily back and forth he paced the rail; steadily, silently, we floated down the stream.

And the silence of our going took hold of us, as we sat lazily in the bow. How in keeping it all seemed with the quiet of the day, the calm of the stream, and the stillness of the woods! And how out of keeping now seemed Gadabout's noisy entrance into that tranquil scene!

"I feel quite apologetic," said Nautica. "Look at these great solemn trees, just like an a.s.semblage of forest philosophers in the hush of silent deliberation."

"We must have stirred them up a bit," replied the Commodore, "with our puffing and ringing. But I don't think they are deliberating. I believe they are asleep. It seems more like the hush of poppy-land in here to me."

"Yes, that is just it." And the answer really came quite dreamily.

"This is the hush of poppy-land, and we are drifting on the quiet brown waterway that leads through the sleepy, endless afternoon."