Chapter VI (5)

“I will stir with my staff the embers from which the glow is well-nigh perished, that my child may feel in her sleep its comfortable influence, for evil dreams may come of unrest, and evil dreams make evil thoughts, and when they have once taken possession of the heart, how hardly are they charmed away.” So, having taken the fleece from her knees and laid it over a wooden stool at her feet, she arose, and fumbling in the chimney-corner opposite to that where the child slept, produced a great knotty staff, the lower end of which was blackened and charred. With this she stirred the gray ashes from the fiery log that lay beneath, and beating and breaking it into coals, gathered the dry cinders together that were scattered about, and having spread them over the freshly-broken coals, a blaze sprung up, slight and blue at first, but reddening and deepening till the rafters over-head, and the oak slabs below, the walnut bedstead in the corner, with its antique carving, and elaborately wrought tester, and the huge chest with its iron padlock, the wrinkled visage of the old woman, and the pale hair and plump, naked feet of the child, were all distinctly visible.

“Charity, my pretty darling,” called the old woman, as she resumed her seat and the fleece of wool, “Wake, and betake thee to thy wheel for an hour, and I will tell thee of the plan I have made to keep our house full of cheer and music all the while, even when thou weariest of the wheel, and thy tongue prattlest not.”

The child rubbed her eyes, lifted her head from the stone jam, saying in a voice sweet and plaintive, as we sometimes hear a bird’s—

“I have spun my task, grandam—six wisps of flax into as many hanks of thread, and thou seest my distaff is naked—but I will wind it with another wisp and spin, at least till thy task is done.”

Her naked feet pattered across the slab floor, and climbing on a ladder, she took from a peg in the rafter a fresh wisp, and as she wound the distaff peered through the south window at the half-moon, or rather at the yellowish color in the clouds behind which the half-moon was concealed.

“It wears near the midnight, good grandam,” she said, shoving her wheel aside: “I will pick on the fleece, and so thy voice will not be drowned as thou tellest the plan thou hast mused of.”

“As thou sayest,” answered Margery, “it wears near the midnight, as is told by the shrill cry of the cricket, to say nothing of the aching in my bones, and the dizzy feeling that creeps along my forehead now and then;” and laying her skinny fingers over the wrinkles on her brow, she bowed her head forward for a minute, looking more like a witch making some unholy incantation, than a live human being, and a woman as she was. Her dress, summer and winter, was composed of cow-hide shoes, clasped over the ankles with buckles of brass, a gown of dark woolen stuff, made in a straight, stiff fashion peculiar to herself, and she wore over her shoulders a small circular cape, that had once been part of a tiger’s hide. On her head she wore no cap or other covering, and her gray hair was parted on the crown and combed either way, one half being cut in a straight line above her forehead, and the other on her neck.

She seemed seventy, or thereabout—nevertheless, her hair was neither thin nor very white.

“Thou hast wrought too hardly, grandam, mayhap,” said the child. “Fold up thy hands now, and the portion of the fleece that remaineth be mine to do;” as she spoke, she wound her arm about the neck of Margery, for she loved her, albeit she looked so repelling.

“Nay, child,” answered the dame, “it is not often we have so pleasant a light, and pity ’twere to lose it. We must improve the advantages we have, little one, else want will be staring us in the face, and reproaching us with negligence when it is too late. I cannot work as I could with forty years less weighing me down, so I must do what I may.”

“I saw,” said the child, “when I went to Farmer Jocelin’s, for the measure of meal thou wottest of, three good tallow-candles alight in one room. The noonday sun were scarce brighter,” she continued in amazement, both at the wondrous light and the prodigality. “He must have great estates, grandam, to maintain such indolent and luxurious life. True, Mistress Jocelin was at work with some knitting, but not heedfully nor diligently, but more attentive to the reading of a book, which, indeed, to look upon was very beautiful, for as Farmer Jocelin held it near the light, the edges of the leaves glittered like gold, and the leathern cover was bright as the bosom of the bird that sings in the peach-tree, here, in summer. But Master Lawrence—what, think you, he did by all that flood of light? Why, nothing for thrift; for he sat on the matting of the floor, cutting pieces of smooth brown paper into a kite. Yet he had a sweet smile, and seemed to have a good heart withal,” added Charity, and her fingers flew more nimbly through the wool, “for as he served round a salver of apples, at his mother’s bidding, he urged me to take one so earnestly, yet kindly, that I might scarce refuse, and when I did—for that I might not rob Farmer Jocelin of his substance, giving him nothing in turn—he forced one into my lap and ran laughingly aside, so that I might not return it.”

“Alas! alas!” said Margery, “have I reared thee thus carefully in vain, that when thou escapest from my sight, but for a moment, thou yieldest to sinful temptation, eating the fruit thou hast not earned.”

“Nay, grandam, thy conclusion is over-hasty. I kept the fruit unbruised and untasted, though its sweet fragrance made it hard to resist, and when the maid brought in the measure of meal, I gave it to her hand, and she restored it to the salver; but when Master Lawrence saw it, he looked as though he would have cried, even in such beautiful light, and with so much fair brown paper, to fashion as he would.”

“I am glad thou hast wit to serve thee upon occasion,” spoke Margery, her fingers flying nimbly as the child’s; “and if Farmer Jocelin burns three good tallow-candles at one time, and that at no merry-making or gala-night, his children will be the likelier to sit in the light of fagots—and Master Lawrence was wastefully cutting smooth brown paper. I am glad thou hadst wit to refuse the apple, but thou shouldst have frowned smartly the while. If I see the young scapegrace this way, as belike he may come, with further temptations, I will make my tongue as a chisel, cutting such a lesson of wisdom and reproof upon his heart, as he hath never heard, mayhap.”

“But Master Lawrence meant kindly,” said Charity, and casting down her eyes, she continued, “if we cannot burn tallow-candles, we, at least, may have the light of dry sticks—shall I not gather more to keep light as thou tellest the plan thou hast? I would it could make our home cheery as good candle-light, and a salver of apples, with rinds all russet and red and yellow.”

“It were good thou hadst not seen the apples,” spoke the dame, querulously; “better still thou hadst not seen the boy.”

“But the plan, grandam—thou forgettest the plan. Is it that the famous chopper, Patrick Malony, is to come and fell one of the great hickory or maple trees of which the wood is full; and are we to have a huge log, and big, smoothly split sticks to fill the great empty fire-place every night with light and warmth; or meanest thou once more to saddle Lily-lace, the mare, and ride to the mill with a full bag of wheat; and am I to go to the market-town once more, in my black kirtle and straw hat, and bring home in exchange, for my basket of eggs, butcher’s meat to broil on the coals, and fragrant tea to fill the little china cups, with tobacco for thy long empty pipe—in faith, grandam, have I not guessed shrewdly?”

“My pretty darling, I see thou hast thy head filled with the wildest extravagance; thou wilt be teasing next for a farthingale of dimity, ruffles of lace, and blue ribbons for thy hat, or other such like gear. Thy guesses tally not with prudence, Charity; thou mayest guess again.”

“Ay, then,” said the girl, sorrowfully, “I was wrong from the saddling of Lily-face to the full pipe of tobacco;” and casting her eyes about the cold, empty room, she continued, with greater energy—“I have the very pith of thy thought. Thou wilt unlock the great chest, and take thence the dainty linen sheets and the thick wool blankets thy hands have wrought from fleece and flax, and make the bed—wherein we now shiver the night through, ridden with nightmares and plagued with ugly dreams—into beauty and comfort. Surely I have guessed thy plan, for the moth is more wasting than the wear.”

“Foolish child, thy extravagance would be the ruin of me, though I gave thee management of my affairs but for a day. Were the sheets of linen and blankets of wool to be used as thou sayest, the chest would soon be empty, and then how should we fare?”

“As well as now,” thought Charity, but she spoke not, save to say—“that she should guess no more.”

“Once more, little one,” and Margery patted the child on the head with one hand, and taking the great staff in the other, she stirred open the coals vigorously, and as the light flashed upon the girl’s cheek, tears, large and bright, were seen to stand there, like drops of dew on a lily.

But the old woman urged her to renew her guess with such earnestness and tenderness that, brushing away the tears, she essayed once again; but the fervor was gone from her tone, and the light from her glance, as she said—

“Thou hast planned the mending of the door and window, that the snow may not drive to great ridges across the floor, and the wind and the rain beat against us as we sleep.”

“Not so,” answered Margery. “While the winter blows the larger crevices may be stopped with straw, and the smaller ones with clay, both of which may be easily removed when the May Queen is dancing on the hills, and our house be the pleasanter for free air and streaks of sunshine.”

“It may all do very well,” said Charity, “but to-night I can see nothing so pleasant as great log-fires, tallow-candles, and a salver of red apples; and, mayhap, it would take Master Lawrence to complete the picture.”

“Burned not thy cheek to speak it?” continued Margery, peevishly: and the two wrought at the fleece for a time in silence.

“Thou knowest Lily-face?” said the ancient dame, at length, “that she groweth old and stiff of limb; thou canst not remember the time when she nibbled not in my pastures; I think belike, also, she fadeth in the sight of her right eye, for when, at the last Christmas time, I rode her to the mill, my old bones were jeopardized by her stumbling, and often turning of her head to one side, betrayed her defect of vision. But though she were sound as the silver coin that lieth in the bottom of the chest, yonder, I must needs barter her away, for that she eateth more than she earneth, since I may no more buckle round her the girth.

“Thou requirest much exercise in thy growing, Charity, to keep supple thy joints—thou canst sometimes walk to the market-town for our absolute wants, which are not many, and as for the wheat-grist, thou shalt have a mortar and beat it into flour; so Lily-face would but burden us now, and the corn and the oat-sheaves, and the hay that have been heaped in her manger, may be sold.

“One beast is enough for a poor body like me, and thou knowest I will neither barter nor sell Wolf-slayer till the time cometh for the nailing of the boards to my coffin. And forget not, Charity, that they lie in the loft, well-seasoned for the using, and for thy life, let them not buy others in their stead.”

“Far away be the time, good grandam,” sighed the girl. “But the young die, too; and should I need them first, wilt thou not keep a light, at least of fagots, the whiles I am dead in the house?”

Foolish child! though it were darker than tempest may make it, and I the while slept never so sound, no harm could come to thy white corse, if Wolf-slayer lay by thy coffin.

At the sound of her name, a great black beast, with eyes burning like coals, and lean and shaggy, crept from the darkest corner of the room, and laying her head in the lap of Margery, licked her jaws and whined piteously. “Away with thee, saucy image,” growled the mistress, “thou hadst the third part of a corn-ear at the sunset, and thinkest thou, black wench, I will give thee more?” and crouching and whining the hungry beast slunk back to the corner, and curling herself together, filled the room presently with her snore.

“Poor Lily-face!” said the child, speaking as it were to herself, “how can I let thee go! Morning and evening, since I could toddle, I have put my arms around thy glossy neck, broken the ears of corn into small bits, and pressed the golden oat-sheaves through thy manger—and thou hast neighed and put thy face against mine, for thou lovest me, as I thee. Poor Lily-face! I cannot let thee go!”

“What if thou mightst look in the corner here and see the bright, shining face of a pretty clock instead of the cobwebs and the hanks of yarn—if thou couldst hear the pleasant tick, and ever and anon the musical ring of the hours—a clock, bethink thee, bright of color as the autumn oak-leaves, and tall as thy grandam.”

“It would be pretty and comforting, surely,” said the child, “for the ticking and the stroke of the hours would be company in the lonesome nights, but I would not give Lily-face, that knows me when I speak, and looks at me and loves me, to have a clock bright as the oaken autumn leaves, and tall as thou, grandam, in place of the hanks of yarn and the cobwebs.”

“Thou knowest not thy own mind,” said Dame Margery; “the clock will neither eat nor drink, but will tell us the time of day and night; which Lily-face hath not wit to do. By the light of the last sunset, I have no mind that she shall longer stamp in that stall of hers.

“The miller hath a clock,” she continued, “which ticked at his grandfather’s funeral, and hath kept the time of many funerals, and marriages, too, since; a pretty piece of mechanism, as I saw with my own eyes, and taller than I; and the miller wanteth the mare for the tread-wheel, and to have her his own, will barter the pretty clock.”

“It must be as thou sayest, but I have little pleasure in the plan,” said Charity. “Hath not the miller a milch cow that he would barter in place of the clock?”

“Thou growest officious,” answered the dame. “Would not the cow eat oats and corn as well as Lily-face? And have we not hitherto drunken water and flourished, and must we needs have milk?”

Charity spoke no more, but sat turning the wheel for pastime—for the fleece was finished, and the mind of the dame was not to be altered by childish fancies, as was manifest from her rising and removing the hanks of yarn to another peg, and brushing with her hand the cobwebs.

The wind kept moaning along the woods and rattled the broken door and window—the coals grew fainter and fainter and died, and the gray ashes blew over the feet of Margery and the child as they sat silently musing—the one of the pretty clock that it would cost nothing to keep, the other of poor Lily-face; haply at times there came a thought of the log-fire and the tallow-candles, and the salver of red apples which Master Lawrence had served with such a sweet grace.

The next day came the miller, and wrapt in a great bed-quilt and laid in the bottom of his cart was the clock. Margery clapt her hands in glee when she saw it, but Charity sighed as she sat close on the hearth-stone for the sake of its little warmth, though she felt not the cold now. Faster and faster spun round the wheel, and lower and lower she bowed down her head to conceal the tears—but it would not do. When she heard the neigh of poor Lily-face, and knew that her hands would never feed her any more, she hurried to the window, and pressing her face against the pane, she could see her dear pet shrinking consciously from the hand that tied the strong rope about her neck and led her away. Margery was busy with dusting the bright face of her pretty clock, and looked not forth even when the long-drawn howl of Wolf-slayer (who, lifting her fore paws on the clapboard gate, manifested her sorrow as a dumb brute may) smote dismally upon her ears.

The days came and went and Charity spun on the same, but Margery brought forth no new fleece. Scarcely had she stirred or spoken since the treasure came—even when the girl heaped on dry sticks and broken branches till the warmth filled all the house, she did not reprove.

Then Charity bethought her that the old dame had scarcely tasted food for days, and looking upon her, she saw that her eyes waxed dim and her countenance pale, and a great fear came over the child’s heart; and setting aside her wheel, she ran fast to farmer Jocelin’s, and begged a cup of honey and a pitcher of sweet milk, telling of the strange disorder that possessed Dame Margery.

As she went homeward, Master Lawrence ran from his work in the field and bore the pitcher of milk, and comforted her with hopes that her grandam was less ill than she feared.

Without question Margery partook of the milk and honey; and when Lawrence brought sticks and logs and heaped the fire, she laid her withered hand on his head and said, “Thou art a kind boy and good.” She then took a key from her bosom and told Charity to unlock the chest and bring forth blankets—as many as would keep her warm.

“Surely, grandam, thou art distraught,” said Charity, as she hastened to obey. But the sweet smile of intelligence that met her inquiring glance belied her fears; and as she wrapt the warm covering about the withered form, she said, “Nay, child, I am sane at last—but too late.”

At midnight she ceased to speak or to be conscious. Kind hands presently removed the thick covering, and spread over her a dainty white sheet; but she was warm enough; others brought from the loft the boards of seasoned walnut wood, and the next midnight Charity and Wolf-slayer—the one at the head and the other at the feet, watched by the old dame’s coffin.

The following day came the miller with Lily-face harnessed in his little cart; he went forward, and a train of neighbors followed—amongst them Charity, sorrowfulest of all.

When the summer came, she planted bright blossoming shrubs about the grave, and never in her life had Margery half so pretty a house as this narrow one.

The old house was given up to the rats and the winds, after the removal of the cheat, and the clock, and the hanks of yarn that hung all along the rafters. In course of time it fell into a heap; and one day, as Charity, who dwelt not far away, sat on the heap of stones where the hearth-stone had been, she saw a fair-faced youth searching up and down the lanes, over the meadows, and through the hedges hard-by, as though he missed something; but when he saw the girl, he left searching and bent his steps toward her, and as he came near she knew him for Master Lawrence—well grown, but with something of the boyish look and manners yet. The prettiest of all the lambs of the flock was gone, and though he had gone over all the pastures, he could not find it. The heart of Charity was touched, and leaving her sorrowful musing, she joined in the search.

Whether the stray lamb was found I know not, but as Charity crossed the fields to go homeward under the twilight’s reddening wing, her hair was full of daffodils and daisies, and a flush of wildering happiness was on her cheek, that had never been there before.

When the harvest was gathered and the orchard fruits weighing down the boughs, Charity rode to the market-town on a pretty brown jennet of her own; and as she went homeward the horns of her saddle were hung with great bundles; she had bought a white ribbon instead of a blue for the new straw hat her fingers had been braiding so busily—a muslin gown, that was white, too; a pair of pretty slippers, and a dozen other things that I have not time to enumerate—enough, that the next full moon shone upon Mistress Lawrence Jocelin.

Not a village maiden that would not have envied her but for her own happiness, for all joined in the merry-making; a dozen tallow-candles were burned at once, and more than one salver of red apples was served round, with loaf-cakes and sweetmeats, and ripe broken nuts. Workmen were employed to clear away the rubbish that had once been Dame Margery’s house, and a pretty new cottage soon rose in its place; and the next summer sweet shrubbery hedged it in, and myrtles and honeysuckles curtained the windows; bees made honey from the flowers, sleek cattle fed in the pastures, and in all the neighborhood there was no home so full of comfort and plenty.

The hanks of yarn which Charity had spun long ago were taken to the weaver’s and came back in rolls of damask and bright-flowered carpets; the linen was taken from the chest, and the wool blankets; and after being washed white as snow, and dried in the sun, were spread upon beds soft as down could make.

When the second winter came round, the cottage was a-glow with wood-fires and tallow-candles; and in place of the starved Wolf-slayer, there lay before the hearth, in a cradle of white willows, the plumpest and fairest baby that ever Lawrence and Charity Jocelin had seen.

* * * * *

THE PHANTOM FIELD.

BY O. I. VICTOR.

The snow lies deep upon the ground,
All icy is the air;
The trees a winding-sheet have found
By the wild wind’s care.

The beast stands trembling in his shed—
The sheep within his fold:
Without, all life is stiff and dead—
Within, all chill and cold.

Why is the air so cold to-night?
The owl shrinks in his nest!
Why does the moon gleam out so bright?
The traveler is at rest!

O, keen the wind and cold the air
Above the Phantom Field!
Yet ghostly forms are stalking there,
Armed with a sword and shield.

And gathering slow in serried rank,
They turn toward the west:
Five thousand coffins guard each flank—
Five hundred stand abreast.

In battle rank, with noiseless tread,
They hurry to the height,
Where stand ten thousand other dead,
Uncoffined for the fight.

O, cold the wind and keen the air
Around the Phantom Height!
Yet spectre men are battling there
In fierce, exultant fight.

And shields are rent, and swords are bent,
And limbs bestrew the ground,
Yet skeletons, with strength unspent,
Strike where a breast is found.

And skulls are cleft on right and left
Till shines the morn o’erhead—
Till twice five thousand coffins stand
Alone, flanking the dead.

O, keen the wind and cold the air
That sweeps above the plain!
Yet must the hollow coffins bear
The skeletons again.

O’er the silent field they haste,
To gather limb and bone:
Though skulls and limbs are wide displaced,
Each coffin knows its own.

Soon every limb is gathered in—
Soon every lid is fast—
And falling into rank again
They turn toward the East.

And marching o’er the frozen plain,
With swift and gliding tread,
They stand beside the graves again
Where sleep the evil dead.

Two death’s-heads stand above each mound;
A fearful watch they keep!
The coffins sink into the ground,
Another year to sleep.

But when another year is fled—
When comes St. Stephen’s night,
The death’s-heads shall unloose their dead
To battle on the height.

And when five hundred years have passed,
The penance shall be done;
The skeletons shall sleep at last,
And moulder, limb and bone.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE.

BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH.

What more extolling from the tongue of Fame
Can Shakspeare need than his suggested name;
Who, in a volume so compactly writ,
Has hived the honey of all human wit.
Praise suits where merit in a corner lies,
But seems uncomely to th’acknowledged wise—
Praise suits where laboring art at times succeeds,
And the shrewd reader pardons as he reads;
But fails—in wonder—where the leaves dispense
Infinite resource of intelligence—
Where the great player, at his game of chess,
Frolicks through all to glorious success;
Thrids, with exulting ken, a boundless maze,
Plays with his kings, and kings it in his plays.
Swan of the Avon—genius of the Thames,
“That so didst take Eliza and [king] James;”
Muse of so vast a flight, so ample pinion,
Whose name is as the name of a dominion!
Though kings be great, give glory to the pen,
A whole-souled poet is the king of men.
King and high-priest one bard, at least, has been
Lo! where we lesser Levites pause and quail.
How grandly goes before, within the vail,
Our great Melchisedek, without compeers,
Without progenitor nor end of years.

* * * * *

THE MASTER’S MATE’S YARN.

BY H. MILNOR KLAPP.

(_Concluded from page 539._)

“They—the rats, of course—were a strange, heathenish set, and no respecters of persons, but first chased the cat on shore, and then made a hurra’s nest of the cabin—polishing their long whiskers with spermaceti—planning surprise-parties in the pantry—running to’gallant races over your nose in the sleeping-berths, and gauging every hollow vessel in the ship, with tails a fathom long, from the oil-casks and the scuttle-butt down to the pickle-jars and the captain’s barrel of New England. They were a sleek, long-bodied race, as black as imps of darkness, and as fearless as if they possessed as many reputed lives as grimalkin herself. I was weary of watching their capers, and of the sound of Catherton’s tread, expecting him every moment to call me up; when turning in my berth, I noticed that the after-cabin door was standing open. While I was wondering at this, a feeling of awe stole over me, thinking of the conversation I had overheard among the men the night before, and that very moment, as I was looking intently at the spot, a figure in white passed swiftly and silently out of the store-room into the cabin, closing the door behind it. I would afterward have given worlds to have been able to pursue it, but could not, for the power to move a limb was dead for the time being, and I lay still staring after it, with mouth agape and the cold drops on my forehead, palsied, as it would seem, by that sort of instinctive abhorrence with which humanity revolts against a disembodied spirit that has assumed, for some mysterious end, the form and garniture of its house of clay. It was a woman’s shape—the head bare, and the long dark hair hanging down to the waist, and, before the door closed, the light for an instant flickered on the face, ghastly and white—as the man-of-war’s man had said—with the mouth closed and the lips drawn tightly in. Its back was toward my berth, until it turned into the after-cabin, and it seemed to me that it had something clutched in its hand; but the hollow look of the sunken eyes froze my very heart’s blood, as they glared back at the lamp, from behind the bloodless and bony cheek. I was first roused from my trance by the sound of some one coming down the companion-way, and it was not until Catherton had thrice called me, laying his hand upon my shoulder, the third time, that I started at last to my feet, when he must have noticed my looks, as I still stared past him at the cabin-door.

“‘It wants but a few moments of the time, Mr. Miller,’ was all he said, and if I had died for it, I could not have answered, but huddling on my clothes in silence, mechanically followed him on deck. All was there as still as death. The moon had not yet risen, and you heard the sound of the ebb plashing against the Tartar’s bows, and rippling and gurgling in the eddies astern, as it swept through the strait.

“‘The watch are asleep in the galley,’ the captain whispered, as I prepared to go over the side; ‘you remember the place and the signal—a plover’s whistle twice repeated?’

“Nodding my head, I descended into the canoe; he cast off the warp, and keeping in the shade of the ship, with my brain in a whirl, I paddled close to the starboard shore. I had little time to think, for the current ran strongly round the points, and I seemed blindly impelled by the hand of fate to stem its force, even while my frame still shook like a frightened child’s.

“I had hardly a thought of my purpose; nevertheless, instinctively plying my paddle, I passed through the passage, and reached the rift of sand under the castle without being challenged.

“High above me, concealed from my eyes by the rocky steep, was the stronghold where, according to report, the sultan kept both his harem and his treasures. The danger, in some measure, restored my presence of mind, and the canoe had hardly hung for a moment on the hot, glassy tide, when I heard the signal, and immediately upon my answering it, an Arab arose from the sand, and two others appeared coming hastily down a narrow gully, along which a sort of causeway ran from the stables of the sultan’s stud to the beach. Seeing more figures than I had been taught to expect, as another appeared from behind a rock, leading two saddled horses, I was about to back farther off, when the chief’s voice called out to me in a low tone to be quick, and forcing the bow of the canoe upon the sand, not another word was exchanged, until Halil had placed the slender form of the Circassian, vailed as she was from head to foot, under the awning.

“The chief then seized my hand and carried it to his head, pointing with his right in the direction of the ship.

“Wishing him ‘God speed,’ I wrung his hand; he pushed off the canoe, and I paddled round for the ship. Glancing back, I saw him spring into the saddle, with one attendant, both sitting as motionless as statues while the canoe kept them in sight.

“Heavily armed, and mounted on a splendid charger, from what I knew of his strength and spirit, it struck me forcibly that in his present enterprise he was more than a match for most men. There was little chance, however, of the conspiracy succeeding, unless the assassination of the sultan were the first overt act, as he was greatly beloved by his people. However, I had previously understood that the Oualé of Muscat, and all the principal chiefs at Moutrah—the last a considerable town in the vicinity—were implicated, which showed that the party of the old Imaum, the sultan’s deceased uncle, was much more extensive than I had ever deemed.

“It was not with thoughts like these that I approached the ship, for the recent horror oppressed me so strongly, that I hardly knew what I was doing when the captain received Zuma from my arms at the stern-post. After this I fastened the canoe in its place, and looking, as it were by the mere force of habit, into the binnacle, found that I had been absent but twelve minutes. I then went for’ard where the two fellows who held the anchor-watch were sleeping soundly. As I kicked them up, the old carpenter came out of the steerage, rubbing his eyes, and muttering imprecations on the rats.

“‘They’re a considerable spry set, Mister Miller,’ said he, as I made some remark to divert his attention, ‘and, cuss me, if I half like the ways on ’em—rattlin’ past my berth atween decks, as if every beggar on ’em had shoes on his feet, and turnin’ the’r varmentish heads to listen, with more life in the slack of their tails than there is wit in the for’ard part of the ship. They comed aboard, sir, in my opinion, at an island where the ship touched on the Japan coast, and jist tuk full command of the ship at once, trampoosin’ her from the ground-tier to the tops, and crawlin’ out of the bunts of the old courses, when sail was made at daylight, or jumpin’ from the boats, when a rush was made to lower away. Hows’iver,’ he added, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, without which he was never seen on deck in these latitudes, ‘I hope, sir, they’ll stick to the ship, if it’s only for luck’s sake.’ As he said this he gave me an oblique glance of his cold, fishy eye, and then looked earnestly at the bowl of his pipe, fussing with a paper of cut tobacco.

“In the humor which I was in at the time, the most trifling incident that occurred in the ship seemed to leave an impression upon my mind never to be forgotten; however, I was not to be sounded by old Charley Toppin, cunning as he thought himself; so I answered him at random: ‘I hope not, carpenter; and as for luck—why—’

“‘Hist! sir,’ interrupted he, in a startled voice, pointing aft—‘what tale does that tell?’

“Turning quickly round, I saw them dropping from the poop by the dozens—one steady plump! plump! plump! till the deck was black with them, creeping in a living mass on the forecastle, down the cable, as it seemed, into the water, where we could see them swimming for the island across a broad patch of starlight, until the last of them disappeared. Captain Catherton was standing aft, looking at the frigate through his night-glass. He never stirred, and, as I thought, did not notice them. The sight seemed to shake old Kennebunk wonderfully.

“‘Mister Miller,’ said he fearfully, ‘this be a doomed craft.’

“‘You’re wrong,’ said I, ‘they’re swimming off to the shore to fill their stomachs with something green, if they can find it. They’ll be back presently, and then, if you cover the hatchways, you can call all hands to a rat-hunt.’

“The carpenter looked at me, and then at the poop, significantly enough; a look of intelligence suddenly crossed his blank, weather-beaten face, as he moved close to my side, with his hand to his mouth and his eye still fixed aft: ‘Do you know, sir,’ he whispered, bending his brows and looking me hard in the face, ‘do you know who are your shipmates in this here craft?’

“At that moment the captain called out in his deep, calm voice, and I went up on the poop, where, pointing to the frigate, which lay now within half a pistol shot of us, outside of the passage, he put the glass in my hands, without saying a word. The first look I took through the instrument explained his meaning. The frigate’s starboard broadside was sprung to bear on us, and the long tiers of guns frowning full upon the ship. They were even lighting their battle-lanterns, and groups of turbans and pointed caps were visible in every part of the upper deck.

“I dropped the glass from my eye and looked at my companion.

“‘I understand it,’ said he composedly, in reply to my look—‘wait a couple of hours longer, and the scene will change. In the meantime come below, and let us have a glass of grog.’

“He swept the harbor carefully with his glass, dwelling some time on the landing-place, which is at the mouth of a drain, or sort of canal; the town itself being hidden from our sight by the lofty castle-crowned crags to the north and east. The Soliman Shah, after changing her old berth, had anchored off Fisher’s rock, a small islet lying off the north point of Muscat Island.

While Catherton was thus engaged, the thought of what Halil and the rest of the conspirators could be doing at that moment, together with my adventures that night, whirled a confused crowd of images before my mind, in the midst of which black Hadji’s face was preëminent. The stories which I had heard of his craft and cruelty occurred to me so strongly that it was a relief when the captain closed his glass with a snap, and led the way to the cabin.

“‘Steward,’ said he to the mulatto, who seemed to make it a rule never to be caught in his hammock when his master was up, ‘set out the liquor-case, and a bottle of that old Bourbon whisky we got out of the Frenchman—and then be off to your roost.’

The fellow obeyed in his usual deferential way, and placing a lighted joshstick and a bundle of sheroots on the table withdrew.

“‘To-morrow,’ said Catherton, ‘we’ll tow out into the bight of the current, go how things may; and here,’ he added, pouring out a tumbler of grog, and pushing me the bottle, ‘here’s good-bye, forever and a day, to the key of the Persian Gulf.’

“I pledged him accordingly, and he went on in a very frank, easy way, I thought, considering the case in which we stood.

“‘A troublesome coast this to clear, Mr. Miller; the currents hereabouts are as treacherous as the heart of woman. Why,’ said he, seeming a good deal at his ease, as he poured out another glass, though I was in the other case, my eye stealing to the cabin doors in spite of me, ‘I’ve been drifted in this old ship forty miles in-shore, in a thick fog and a calm, between sunset and dawn, and no signs of a set on the surface any more than there is on this deck.’

“‘Yes, sir,’ said I, compelling my attention to answer him, ‘in clear weather they keep you continually taking observations—and in a fog, as you say, why—’

“‘Try that case-bottle of Bourbon whisky,’ interrupted he, ‘you don’t seem to relish the brandy. Here’s to the sultan! And may he wake up to-night in Paradise.’

“Here he went on in a discursive way to talk of the cholera, saying that he had had a touch of it himself on the Malabar coast.

“‘However,’ said he, filling up his glass a third time, ‘hang care—here’s luck!’

“‘The fact is, Mr. Miller,’ he continued, setting down his glass, ‘I’ve taken a great fancy to you, during the little time we’ve been together. If it lasts out to the end, depend upon me, I’ll put something handsome in your way.’

“I bowed over my glass without speaking, and he kept on in the same confidential manner, as if he made up his mind to see how we stood at once.

“‘I’ve made one prime voyage for my present owners in these seas, and this one—mark you—I intend for myself. Now I want a friend whom I can trust, body and soul, and, if I am not far out of my reckoning, you are the very man.’

“I met his sharp, scrutinizing glance as he said this, and remembering the carpenter’s words in the galley, I now felt sure that the captain had some scheme of villainy in his head in which he wished me to become a partner. There was the more reason to be careful of the grog, since I could not mistake his manner, and the sharp, sinister look full as deep as the occasion called for, whatever that might be. However, I thought it best to affect to do so, and answered accordingly, that I had no fears of further trouble with the crew when we were once clear of the coast.

“His fierce eyes watched mine as a tiger might a stag’s, and with a dark smile which seemed to say, ‘You’re a deep one, I see.’ He nodded his head and touched his glass again. Still he seemed to hesitate, and to be fast losing his self-possession, as if either the liquor he had drank, or something in the way I received his first hint, had flustered him. I did not think at the time that he doubted me, either; so I sat still, smoking my sheroot, and watching the traces of irresolution gleaming across his sun-seared face, until, making a strong effort to control himself, he suddenly asked if I was a married man. On my replying in the negative, he tacked ship again, asking me if I ever read poetry, alluding particularly to Moore’s Lallah Rookh.

“‘I don’t care a rope’s end for the Veiled Prophet or Nourmahal,’ he said, while I wondered again what he was driving at, ‘but I always admired certain descriptive parts of the Fire-Worshipers, which I always thought Byron must have touched up for Moore—for instance

‘—’Mid damp and gloom and crash of boughs,
And fall of loosened crops that rouse
The leopard from his hungry sleep,
Who, starting, thinks each crag a prey,
And long is heard, from steep to steep,
Chasing them down their thundering way.’

“‘Muscat, you know,’ continued he, ‘is the poet’s Oman.’

“‘Yes,’ I answered, hardly knowing what to say, ‘and a wretched place enough it is, in spite of Moore’s fancy.’

“‘Why,’ he said, still beating the bush about me, ‘there is some difference between the sultan’s palace, plain as its outside is, and the emir’s porphyry walls which the little Irish nightingale sang about—not so much though, to my mind, as between a merchant dreaming of a full cargo to-night, and waking to hear of a wrecked ship and no insurance in the morning—ay, or a captain making two good voyages and finding himself still in debt—ay, deep as the fathomless sea in debt—to his owners.’

“‘That, I suppose, you would call a species of blank-verse, Captain Catherton,’ said I.

“‘Ay,’ he answered, with a fierce, tiger-like gleam of his dark eyes, ‘but the beauty of the thing is, this cargo will balance accounts, and it’s a long back stretch from ‘Oman’s green water’ to the sandy shores of Bedford Bay.’

“This was starting the devil with a vengeance, so I determined that he should show his purpose clearly before I gave any reply to the hints he had thrown out.

“‘Captain Catherton,’ said I, fixing my eyes firmly upon him, ‘I am no greenhorn to rush into any man’s schemes blindfolded. If you wish my services in any thing that is to my taste, you must speak out.’

“He emptied his glass again, in a way which showed that he was hardly sensible of the action, and, ‘Mr. Miller,’ said he, ‘there is that about you which reminds me of old days, and that, perhaps, is one reason I’ve taken a fancy to you. It doesn’t matter a rope-yarn whether you join me or not; my mind is fixed to its course. You shall hear the whole, however, and judge for yourself before you decide—which is more than I would care to reveal to any other man that breathes.’ He flung his sheroot on the deck as he spoke, and mechanically setting his foot upon it, bared his sinewy arm to the elbow, in the lamp-light. ‘Do you see those initials?’ he said, in a tone of unnatural calmness. Sure enough there they were—his wife’s, I had no doubt—E. S. B., dotted in India ink, and two hearts, worked one within the other, under them. As I looked in his face for the explanation which was to follow, I saw that it was fearfully changed; and although his eyes met mine, at first steadily enough, a strange sort of a spasm contorted the muscles of his jaw, as if he looked, as it were, through me at some horrible sight, with his teeth set, and his thin nether lip drawn tightly in. The truth, or at least an inkling of it, I had had already from the second mate, and in spite of the terrible doubts in my mind, and the rascally scheme he had hinted at, I confess I could not help feeling somewhat softened toward the man. Perhaps he noticed this in my looks, for, with a shivering sigh, he placed his elbows on the table, and covering his eyes with his hands, although not a groan or a moan escaped from his lips, I knew by the tears which forced their way through his fingers, and the quiver of his strong frame, that some hard struggle was going on. I sat still in pure wonder at this sudden outbreak of feeling—the initials, as it were, staring me full in the face, and the man’s damp forehead, with its mass of dark curls within reach of my hand—until a strange thought that I had seen him before in some old, familiar place, came slowly thrilling into mind. Where this might have been I could not, at the moment, conjecture; but as he removed his hands and I looked anxiously at his features, I felt almost sure that it had been years before, in some scene of summer-revelry, with trees and horses in front, and woman’s soft eyes on the background. Perhaps it was the altered look of Catherton himself, which brought the last into my mind in the cabin of the old Tartar, to be associated in some unaccountable way with that tall, muscular frame, and that dark, gloomy face, frowning as if ashamed of his emotion, though it might be, the tears had done him good. At any rate, the idea oppressed me so forcibly that, before he composed himself to speak again, I glanced nervously round the cabin, taking in every object as well as I could by the smoky light—from the state-rooms, on the larboard side, with their musty, sickening smell, to the rack in the recess between the cabin doors, and thence from the starboard ones up to the chart-rack and the broad transom, where the two models, one of a whale-ship, the other of a first-rate, both made of a sperm whale’s jaw—guns, boats, spars, and even the miniature brail-blocks, all fashioned out of glistening white bone, were resting on their mimic ways. Of course I saw nothing there to account for the impression, faint as it grew again while I gazed, and half deeming it the delusive trace of some forgotten likeness, or of something which I had read of or dreamed, I turned my eyes again upon Captain Catherton.

“‘Mr. Miller,’ said the man, as calmly as if he were sitting at home, it might be, in his nursery, his wife within reach of a whisper, and something in the subdued, moist look of his eyes in devilish accordance with the drowsy quiet of a domestic scene, ‘we are not all as philosophic as Cato—nor as vile as the man made immortal in infamy by Horace—_non omnibus dormis_—you remember the satires.’

“As I stared again at this, a forlorn ghost of a smile flitted over his face, and with his next breath the mystery of the thing vanished. I have often wondered since what it was that kept me fixed to my seat like stone; perhaps it was the reflection that my own accursed folly had been the wreck of us three—him, the wretch—myself, and _her_—perhaps it was the awful suddenness of the shock which stunned me like a heavy blow; I cannot say; but stifling the groan which rose to my lips as the horrible truth flashed upon me, while the very air seemed to thicken before my gaze, and his words to come with terrible distinctness through the gloom, I sat still on my seat and heard him out.

“‘I was born,’ he said, ‘at the village of ——, a few miles from Philadelphia, and abandoned my home, like a fledged petrel, as soon as I could comprehend the map of the world with its thousand ports and its endless stretch of sea. It is a strange thing, Mr. Miller, this young fancy of ours for being blown about by the wild winds, and rocked out of a life of ease by the cunning waves of the deep. To my mind there was once nothing so joyous in life as the roar of the gale at its height, when you slid from the top of a sea to the trough—the dripping dash of a head sea on the prow—or the rush of cleft waters astern, as you sat conning the chart.’ Little did that careful old pedagogue dream, as, day after day he chuckled over my progress in this department of knowledge, what restless longings disturbed the breast of his pupil, like the instinct of the unfledged albatross when it hears the sound of the sea from its nest on some sheltering cliff.

“‘It was but last night,’ he continued, in a tone of melancholy widely at variance with the usual sound of his voice, ‘that I dreamed of the old man—his thin, white hairs brushed back from his brow—his spectacles set straight on his nose, as he traced out on the revolving globe the voyages of Columbus and Vasco de Gama, pausing, with his rod stayed at some particular point, to enlarge on the daring spirit of each. It was little wonder that I early yearned for the sea; and yet, as I afterward learned, great was his astonishment, not unmixed with chagrin akin to remorse, when he found that I had cut and run. However,’ he said, putting his hand to his forehead, ‘we met again, and the matter was thoroughly cleared up between us.’

“Here he paused in thought, his eyes fixed in a troubled way on my face, while the changes wrought by time and the sea seemed to disappear from his own, and I wondered that I ever could have been so blind as not to have known him at once: a triple sense of condemnation oppressed me; and the soft eyes and the sweet face came vividly up, until I actually shuddered to think, as the whole name, Ellen Symington Blount, was as plain as day; what terrible tale which linked her fate with his might be still lurking behind. I could well understand, too, his allusion to Lallah Rookh, which was her favorite poem, and how it was that he had no recollection of me, having never seen me but once, and that for a moment by starlight. Old Charley’s riddle was read, though it was hard to tell how he became master of it, and stifling my feelings as I best could, I awaited in silence for the captain to resume.

“His eyes dropped to the floor, where the rats were again creeping about unheeded: presently they scampered off, and I heard the hasty _pit-pat_ of naked feet as one of the anchor-watch came aft to the binnacle, when the ship’s bell struck one. The stroke was instantly followed by a clang from the Arab frigate, and then by a sort of stir, which loomed up as it were on the sultry gloom of night, in the midst of which you seemed to hear the cries of the sentries on shore, calling from tower to tower, through the pestilential air; and when these died away, with the nearer echoes of the bells in the harbor, you heard again the sound of the man’s feet pattering along the deck, as if he, too, had paused to listen before rejoining his watch-mate, who perhaps, like myself, was spinning some old yarn.

“When all was still again, the silence seemed to press on my ears like the distant splurge of a tide, while the lamp drowsed and the rats crept to Catherton’s very feet, scuttling off, however, as soon as he stirred, breaking abruptly out of his reverie.

“‘I made a trading voyage round the globe, and returning to the village twenty-six months after I left it, was received like one from the dead. I was bent upon giving old Blount, the schoolmaster, a surprise—as much so, it seems to me now, as if I had run away from school for that sole end.