A Ship of '49 Page #2

"A Ship of '49" by Bret Harte is a vivid and engaging novella that captures the spirit of the Gold Rush era in California. Through the eyes of its characters, Harte explores themes of adventure, ambition, and the complexities of human relationships in a rapidly changing society. The story revolves around the experiences of a ship's crew during this tumultuous time, highlighting the struggles and hopes of those drawn to the promise of fortune and new beginnings. With Harte's trademark wit and rich descriptive style, the narrative offers a compelling glimpse into the lives of those who sought their fortunes on the windswept shores of the Pacific.

• Novel

								

place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten
she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in
quantity. After the first surprise of admiration her father's lodgers
ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,--partly
respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous
supervision of the paternal Nott. She seldom penetrated the crowded
center of the growing city; her rare excursions were confined to the
old ranch at Petaluma, whence she brought flowers and plants, and even
extemporized a hanging-garden on the quarter-deck.

It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased to a gale, was
dashing the drops against the slanting cabin windows with a sound like
spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat before a table seriously engaged with his
accounts. For it was "steamer night,"--as that momentous day of
reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
known to commercial San Francisco,--and Mr. Nott was subject at such
times to severely practical relapses. A swinging light seemed to bring
into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the
low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of
space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a
characteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin communicated
with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a
small passage that led to the open starboard gangway, where a narrow,
enclosed staircase built on the ship's side took the place of the
ship's ladder under her counter, and opened in the street.

A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift her eyes from
her book.

"It's much nicer here than at the ranch, father," she said coaxingly,
"even leaving alone its being a beautiful ship instead of a shanty; the
wind don't whistle through the cracks and blow out the candle when
you're reading, nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the
wall. And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own--ship--you
know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders."

Vague and general as Miss Rosey's compliment was, it had its full
effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his
hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings. "Yes," he
said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude;
"yes, in course it's more bang-up style, but it don't pay--Rosey--it
don't pay. Yer's the Pontiac that oughter be bringin' in, ez rents go,
at least three hundred a month, don't make her taxes. I bin thinkin'
seriously of sellin' her."

As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious contemplation on
the first of every month for the last two years, and cheerfully ignored
it the next day, she only said, "I'm sure the vacant rooms and lofts
are all rented, father."

"That's it," returned Mr. Nott thoughtfully, plucking at his bushy
whiskers with his fingers and thumb as if he were removing dead and
sapless incumbrances in their growth, "that's just what it is--them's
ez in it themselves don't pay, and them ez haz left their goods--the
goods don't pay. The feller ez stored them iron sugar kettles in the
forehold, after trying to get me to make another advance on 'em, sez he
believes he'll have to sacrifice 'em to me after all, and only begs I'd
give him a chance of buying back the half of 'em ten years from now, at
double what I advanced him. The chap that left them five hundred cases
of hair dye 'tween decks and then skipped out to Sacramento, met me the
other day in the street and advised me to use a bottle ez an
advertisement, or try it on the starn of the Pontiac for fireproof
paint. That foolishness ez all he's good for. And yet thar might be
suthin' in the paint, if a feller had n*gger luck. Ther's that New York
chap ez bought up them damaged boxes of plug terbakker for fifty
dollars a thousand, and sold 'em for foundations for that new building
in Sansome Street at a thousand clear profit. It's all luck, Rosey."

The girl's eyes had wandered again to the pages of her book. Perhaps
she was already familiar with the text of her father's monologue. But
recognizing an additional querulousness in his voice, she laid the book
aside and patiently folded her hands in her lap.

"That's right--for I've suthin' to tell ye. The fact is Sleight wants
to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty
vara lots she stands on."

"Sleight wants to buy her? Sleight?" echoed Rosey incredulously.

"You bet! Sleight--the big financier, the smartest man in 'Frisco."

"What does he want to buy her for?" asked Rosey, knitting her pretty
brows.

The apparently simple question suddenly puzzled Mr. Nott. He glanced
feebly at his daughter's face, and frowned in vacant irritation.
"That's so," he said, drawing a long breath; "there's suthin' in that."

"What did he say?" continued the young girl, impatiently.

"Not much. 'You've got the Pontiac, Nott,' sez he. 'You bet!' sez I.
'What'll you take for her and the lot she stands on?' sez he, short and
sharp. Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would
hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain't my style. I
just looked at him. 'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer
day,' sez he, and off he goes like a shot. He's awfully sharp, Rosey."

"But if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy the ship,"
returned Rosey, thoughtfully, "it's only because he knows it's valuable
property, and not because he likes it as we do. He can't take that
value away even if we don't sell it to him, and all the while we have
the comfort of the dear old Pontiac, don't you see?"

This exhaustive commercial' reasoning was so sympathetic to Mr. Nott's
instincts that he accepted it as conclusive. He, however, deemed it
wise to still preserve his practical attitude. "But that don't make it
pay by the month, Rosey. Suthin' must be done. I'm thinking I'll clean
out that photographer."

"Not just after he's taken such a pretty view of the cabin front of the
Pontiac from the street, father! No! He's going to give us a copy, and
put the other in a shop window in Montgomery Street."

"That's so," said Mr. Nott, musingly; "it's no slouch of an
advertisement. 'The Pontiac,' the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St. Jo,
Missouri. Send it on to your aunt Phoebe; sorter make the old folks
open their eyes--oh? Well, seem' he's been to some expense fittin' up
an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide. But as to that
d----d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs
and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's regularly gouged
me in that ere horsehair spekilation."

"How can you say that, father!" said Rosey, with a slight increase of
color. "It was your own offer. You know those bales of curled horsehair

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