Weeks passed, their monotony broken only by the sight of an
occasional sail; days piled on end, morning and night, night and morning,
until weeks had become months. In the fullness of time we rounded Good
Hope, and now swiftly with fair winds, now slowly with foul, we worked up
to the equator, then home across the North Atlantic.
On the afternoon of a bright day in the fall, more than a year after we
first had set sail, we passed Baker Island and stood up Salem Harbor.
Bleak and bare though they were, the rough, rocky shores were home. To
those of us who hailed from Salem, every roof and tree gave welcome after
an absence of eighteen months. Already, we knew, reports of our approach
would have spread far and wide. Probably a dozen good old captains,
sweeping the sea, each with his glass on his "captain's walk," had sighted
our topsails while we were hull down and had cried out that Joseph Whidden
was home again. Such was the penetration of seafaring men in those good old
days when they recognized a ship and its master while as yet they could spy
nothing more than topgallantsails.
We could see the people gathering along the shore and lining the wharf and
calling and cheering and waving hands.
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