Bessie on Her Travels

Hapless little Maggie! Half an hour more, and the “bobbly” head lay in mamma’s lap, hands and feet hung helplessly, chattering tongue was still, save for an occasional piteous, “O mamma!” and the merry dancing eyes, usually so wide-open and quick to notice all around them, were closed as though they never cared to lift their lids again. Even the new satchel had lost its charm, and hung unheeded at her side. Its cherished contents, which she had intended to be of so much use to others, proved of none to herself. Lemons, smelling salts, hartshorn, and many other remedies, were tried without success; and it would have been hard to find a more wretched little girl than was poor Maggie, for the next twenty-four hours. Belle and Lily were too ill themselves to feel at all inclined to triumph over the failure of Maggie’s “determination;” though I do not think they would have been unkind enough to do so, had they been ever so well.

As for Bessie, she made what the captain called “a capital little sailor,” and to her fell the part of nurse, which Maggie had intended to fill. And never was a more gentle, tender, thoughtful young nurse than our little “princess,” handy and knowing enough for seven-and-twenty instead of seven years old. Now she was rubbing Maggie’s cold hands, now bathing Belle’s dizzy, aching head with such soothing fingers; now coaxing Lily to take one of those oranges which were to work such wonders; now amusing baby, for Mammy was in a bad way too, and mamma’s attention was pretty well taken up with her poor Maggie; now showing a picture-book to some fretful child whose mother was too ill to attend to it. Always ready not only to do, but to see where and how she could do, some small service for a sufferer, she went about from one to another like some dainty little fairy, with a mission of healing and kindness. So long as she could keep her feet, which was not always possible, the rolling of the ship only troubled her by the distress it brought to others, especially Maggie; but all her pleasure in her beloved sea was lost in her sympathy for her sister. It was so strange and unusual to see Maggie lying helpless and subdued, with no thought or care for any thing about her, that it made Bessie herself very miserable; and she could scarcely believe her father’s assurances that Maggie was not going to die, and would probably soon feel better.

But she thought despair and misery could go no farther upon the following morning, when, having dressed Margaret Bessie Marion and Margaret Colonel Horace Rush in the new travelling suits Aunt Annie had made for them, and combed their “real live hair,” she brought them and placed one on each side of Maggie, as she lay among the pile of pillows and shawls papa had arranged for her upon the deck.

“Maggie dear,” she said coaxingly, “would it not comfort you a little to hold Bessie Margaret Marion? She looks so sweet.”

“No,” moaned Maggie, without opening her eyes: “I never want her again, Bessie, never. You can have her.”

“Oh, no!” said Bessie, cheerily: “you’ll want her when you feel better, and I hope that will be pretty soon.”

“No,” said Maggie again: “I’ll never be better. And, Bessie, I think I’d better tell you my will. I’m too sick to write it myself, but you can remember.”

“But you’re not going to die,” answered Bessie, dropping the doll upon her lap and looking at Maggie in fresh dismay.

“Yes, I feel it,” said Maggie, with a tragic whisper and shake of her head.

“Oh, no, dear! Papa said not, and the doctor said so too. They said people hardly ever died of seasickness.”

“Then I’m one of the ‘hardly evers,’ Bessie,” persisted Maggie, seeming, poor child, to find some relief in the idea; “and I’d better make my will, and tell you who I want my playthings and other possessings to go to.”

Bessie did not know whether to be most alarmed at Maggie’s words, or consoled by her belief that her father and the doctor must know best; and she listened in silence while Maggie went on, speaking slowly and with many pauses.

“You can have all my dolls, Bessie, ’cept Josephine Matilda, and she’ll be good for Baby, ’cause she’s Indian rubber and can’t be broken; and mamma my prize writing-desk, and papa my new satchel; and my doll’s tea set, the white and gilt one for you, and the blue one for Lily; same with the dinner-sets – only, red for Belle – and my tin kitchen too – oh! I can’t tell any more – oh! mamma – mamma!” and here poor Maggie’s will came abruptly to an end.

But things brightened towards the latter part of that day, for they came into smoother waters; and Maggie, as well as all the other seasick passengers, began to feel easier.

“Hallo!” said the captain, pausing as he came by to look at the little, pale, tired face upon the pillows: “is this the jolly little woman who came on board yesterday afternoon? Why, this will not do. I shall have to take her in hand myself, Mrs. Bradford: will you let me turn doctor?”

“Most certainly, Captain, if you can do any thing to relieve her. Every thing seems to fail except time and patience, and of the last my poor child has shown a fair sample,” answered the anxious mother.

With a nod to Maggie, who, at the sound of his hearty, cheery voice had half opened her eyes to look at him, and another to Bessie, who sat upon the edge of her sister’s couch, he walked away; coming back after a little while, followed by the steward carrying a small tray. On the tray were two plates, the one holding a crisp slice of brown toast; the other, something which Bessie thought very uninviting, a dry, rather black-looking herring.

“I wonder if he is going to ask Maggie to eat that thing,” she said to herself. “Idea of it! I know she never can do it. I’m afraid he’s not so very nice as he looks, and that he has very poor sense.”

But the captain asked Maggie nothing about the herring; but, sitting down beside her, he took the tray from the steward, and cutting a small bit from the fish, he held it to Maggie’s lips. Maggie turned away her head in disgust, in which Bessie sympathized.

“Come, come,” said the captain, “every one has to do as I say on this ship, especially when I turn doctor.”

He did not smile, though he looked as good-natured and pleasant as ever; and, doubtful if he were in joke or in earnest, Maggie reluctantly took the bit of fish from the fork, and then a mouthful of the toast, which she swallowed with the same martyr-like air. Another and another followed, taken with less and less reluctance; till at last Bessie was surprised to see Maggie’s eyes remain open, and fix themselves rather longingly upon the plate, as if she wished the captain would make the intervals shorter. He took no notice, however, but fed her slowly, till fish and toast had both entirely disappeared, when he said, —

“I think we shall do now. I’ll be back in half an hour, Mrs. Bradford, to see how my patient here is getting on,” and walked away.

“Maggie,” said Bessie, as soon as he had gone, “wasn’t that meal very nas – , I mean rather disagreeable?”

“Why, no,” said Maggie, “it was delicious; and I think that captain is lovely, Bessie. He’s the best doctor ever I saw. The next time I come to sea – which I hope I never will again – I’ll put herring in my satchel ’stead of lemons. They never did me a bit of good.”

Bessie privately thought this worse than the “pickle arrangement;” but since the captain’s prescription had done Maggie so much good, she had nothing more to say against it or him; and when he came back at the promised time it was to find his little patient beginning to look like herself, and talking and smiling with something of her accustomed brightness.

This was the last of Maggie’s seasickness, and by the next morning she was nearly as lively and well as usual; though she now and then fell into a fit of thought, as if she were considering some knotty question; and she was observed to regard Margaret Bessie Marion with more than usual interest, and to give her a great amount of petting and tending. At length the question which was weighing on her mind found words.

“Papa,” she said, “don’t lawyers know about wills?”

“They ought to, Maggie,” answered Mr. Bradford. “Why, you don’t want to make yours, do you?”

“I have made it, papa,” said Maggie, with all the gravity of a judge. “I told Bessie about it, but I want to know if it’s against the law to undo the things you’ve willed, if you don’t die when you thought you were going to.”

“Not at all,” said papa, laughing: “you may make your will, and ‘undo it’ as often as you please, while you are living.”

“For the people won’t be disappointed as long as they don’t know you’ve willed them the things,” said Maggie, meditatively. “Anyhow, I s’pose my people would be more disappointed to have me die, than not to have my things.”

“They would indeed, little daughter,” said her father, drawing her tenderly to him: “to lose our Maggie would be to take a great deal of sunshine out of the lives of ‘your people.’”

“And I know Bessie don’t care for my dollies so long as we can play with them together: do you, Bessie?”

“Oh, no! Maggie; and if I hadn’t you, I should never play again, but be sorrowful all my life;” and Bessie put on an air of extreme melancholy at the bare idea of such a possibility.

So this matter being settled to the satisfaction of all, and Maggie feeling like her own self once more, she and Bessie were free to enjoy all the new pleasures about them.

They were a merry, happy party, those four little girls, Maggie, Bessie, Belle, and Lily; always pleasant and good-natured with one another; never fretting or quarrelling in their play. As for Maggie, her new friend the captain used to call her “Little Make-the-best-of-it;” for her sunny temper found so much good in all things, and so many reasons why all that was, was best.

He escorted the young quartette all over the steamer, taking them down into the machine rooms, where they saw the great furnaces glowing with hot coals, and tended by strong men in scarlet shirts, with their sleeves rolled up to the shoulders; where the iron beam and pistons went up and down, up and down, without a moment’s pause or irregularity; where each little wheel and joint went steadily on doing its appointed work, without which the huge machinery must have stood motionless and useless.

The sympathies of the children, especially those of Maggie, were greatly excited in behalf of a man whom they saw watching the steam dial plates at the upper end of the engine room. There were three of these plates, the centre one very large, the other two smaller; and the man paced up and down the narrow platform in front, almost without a moment’s pause, turning his eyes every now and then to the dials.

“What funny clocks,” said Bessie, “and how that man watches them! Why is he so anxious about the time?”

“Only one of them is a clock,” said the captain; “the others are to show how much steam we have on, and how it is working, and if all is right.”

Bessie did not understand, and said so; and the captain, taking her up in his arms, tried to explain the use and working of the dials to the little girls; but it was rather a difficult matter for them to take in, and I do not know that he made it very clear to them.

“But I want to know about that man,” said Maggie: “does he have to walk here and look at these things all the time?”

“All the time,” said Captain Brooks.

“Doesn’t he eat and sleep?” asked Belle.

“Oh! to be sure,” said the captain. “I said he was here all the time; but I should have said a man was here all the time; for there is another who takes his turn while this one rests.”

“But are you not tired sometimes?” Bessie asked of the man, who just then came to the end of the platform where she was.

He nodded assent as he turned, but made no answer in words, did not even smile, being a grum-looking man, and seeming altogether intent on his dials.

“He’s not very polite just to nod at you and not speak,” said Lily.

“It is against the rule of the ship for him to talk while he is on duty, and he always keeps the rule,” said the captain.

“Oh!” said Maggie, her pity more than ever roused for the object of her interest: “does he have to walk on this little bit of a place with nothing to amuse him, and can’t even talk? I think that is pretty hard: I never could do it.”

“But if he were talking and chatting with every one who came along, and thinking only of his own amusement, he would forget his work and have his attention taken off from those plates which it is his business to watch constantly,” said the captain.

“And then we’d be blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” said Maggie.

“Not as bad as that, I hope,” said Captain Brooks, smiling; “but something might readily go wrong before he perceived it.”

“It seems like watching conscience all the time for fear we do something naughty,” said Bessie, who had been thoughtfully regarding the man since she last spoke. “If we forget conscience, or don’t pay attention where it points, we can be naughty before we know it.”

“Just so,” said the captain, looking at her half in amusement, half in surprise; “but tell me, little one, do you find some moral lesson in every thing?”

“I don’t know what ‘moral’ is, sir,” said Bessie, demurely; “but I think that man is a pretty good lesson to us.”

Here roguish Lily, for whom the prospect of being “blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” did not seem to have any terrors, and who had been all this time trying to distract the watchman’s attention by shaking her head and finger at him, flirting her pocket-handkerchief, and giving little squeaks and “hems,” all without any avail, suddenly astonished him and accomplished her object, by firing a paper pellet which hit him directly between the eyes. The gruff old fellow only gave her a growl in return, however, and recommenced his pacing up and down; but Lily went capering about in an ecstasy of delight at her unlooked-for success, till the captain, who could not help laughing, called her to order with, —

“Here, here, you elf! have done with your monkey tricks, or I shall shut you up in a cage till we get to shore.”

“You’ve none large enough,” said laughing Lily.

“There are plenty of hencoops on board,” said the captain, pretending to look fierce, “and carpenters too, to make any sized cage I may order. You had better look out.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to tease the poor man,” said Bessie, “he has to be so stupid all the time, and he is so dutiful too. Let’s go away, Captain Brooks, and not let him be teased any more.”

So the captain took them away in search of other novelties; but Maggie and Bessie did not forget “the poor, stupid man,” as the latter called him, meaning only that she thought he passed his time in such a dull, uninteresting manner; and they set their young wits to work to see if they could not do him some kindness.

“I don’t see the good of it,” said Lily. “The captain said he was a surly old fellow, any way, and didn’t care to talk much when he could. I guess we’d better just let him alone.”

“We oughtn’t to judge by appearances,” said Maggie, gravely. “Bessie and I have learned that.”

“But not till we’d performed some pretty bad mistakes,” said Bessie: “so take a lesson of us.”

“Tell us about them,” said Belle; and accordingly Belle and Lily were much interested in hearing of Lem and the silver cup, and of Aunt Patty; Maggie also confessing how she had for a long time misjudged Mrs. Jones, of Quam Beach, because she had a disagreeable manner.