Chapter VI (7)

“Directing Parker to keep a bright look-out, I dove down into the forecastle where the poor wretch was now lying in the cook’s bunk. I almost started as I looked upon him by the lamp burning at the beam over his head. His face seemed shrunken to half its usual size; the cheek-bones stood out, the eyes were pulled in, and the lips blue and puckered. His hand was clammy, cold as ice, and shriveled like a bomboat-woman’s who washed for the fleet. Though he felt no pain, there was a look of anxiety in his dim, sunken eyes, as he turned restlessly round, which, with his fluttering pulse and exhausted look, told that his hour was come. In fact, he was sinking fast into the long sleep of death, worn out, like the elements, by the fierce convulsions which had racked him. His mind was clear, and he spoke more calmly than might have been expected, though his head tossed from side to side like a dying billow. His voice was small and choked, hoarse as it seemed, from the agony which had wrung the sweat like rain from his pores. Anxious as I was to hear what the wretch had to communicate, it was with a strong feeling of repugnance that I approached my ear to his lips, for a film was vailing his eyes and the death-stupor already clouding his brain. He roused himself when spoken to, and recognizing me, confessed in a few broken words which one of the crew took down, that the mate and he after agreeing with the captain to drown Ellen, had made up their minds to secrete her in the run, and suffer her to escape from the ship at the first port they visited. In order to deceive Catherton the steward had prepared a figure when the boats were off and thrown it into the sea on the night on which Ellen was supposed to be lost. He said nothing could have tempted him to murder her, although the captain and the mate had both sworn to him that she was false. He was certain that Catherton had lost the mate’s boat intentionally, and added, that fearful of a similar fate he had not slept in his hammock more than an hour at a time since the day of the mate’s death. Immediately afterward he sunk into a lethargy from which it was useless to attempt to rouse him. From what I had heard, coupled with the sights I had seen, I had no doubt that, either from the difficulty of conveying her food, or the intention of the mulatto to starve her, she had sometimes been reduced to the necessity of seeking food for herself at night in the cabins. As the after one was generally kept locked, with the keys in the steward’s charge, she must have lived there part of the time, more than a fortnight having elapsed since the night she was thought to have gone overboard from the stern. This,” said the master’s mate, solemnly, “may account, gentlemen, for the man-of-war’s man’s story of the shriek; but nothing will ever dissuade me from the belief that it was a moving corpse which I saw that night in the cabins. That she was locked in the starboard state-room when I tried the door on the day when the sultan and his party went through the ship, I have not the least doubt now—so inscrutably mysterious is the course of fate! However, to resume my tale—for the watch is nearly out. I went on deck just as a boat from the shore was reported to be making for the ship on the long, angry swells which still dashed heavily on the western shore, impressing your mind with a vague yet overawing intimation of their might, as you heard them break half-mast high, without a breath of wind, whitening the dark range of bare rock, and leaving great gouts of foam hanging in the clefts and ledges far above the sweep of the back-wash. However, it was easy to see, watching them steadily for a few moments as you listened to their heavy, monotonous roar, and watched the birds hovering over the rocks, that in less than an hour more it would be calm enough to tow out with the tide; so I hailed the boat as soon as it came near enough, directing the man in her to go to the palace with the message that we intended to send Hadji and his party on shore as soon as the sea fell. (As I mentioned before, we had secured all the boats on the cross-beams over the quarter-deck, so that we lost none of them when the swell boarded us.) Hadji attempted to speak, advancing to the break of the deck as the messenger was cautiously turning his boat’s head in-shore, but the second mate blew his match, while a party of musket-men, whom he had placed under the high bulwarks, lest one of the soldiers might slip over the stern and swim on shore, leveled their pieces at his turban. He walked back to the taffrail sullenly enough, and I now gave orders to prepare the boats for the attempt to tow the ship out into the current, which at this season runs at the rate of about four knots an hour, thinking on the low, sandy point which we had to double. We soon found that they had collected a fleet of small boats and catamarans in the drain, evidently for the purpose of coming off to the ship, and strings of horses had been attached to the bailitas, while we could see the Bedouin Arabs galloping about near the spot, and the divan crowded with the sultan’s attendants, no doubt watching every movement in the ship.

“At ten, we dropped six boats containing thirty-six men, and as soon as they were in range of the hawsers—the ship being stern off to her anchors on the first of the ebb—as I expected, a shot from the fort on the main whistled past her bow just as the axes were lifting to cut the cables. Down they came in quick, effective strokes, and the men gave a long pull together as the heavy chains rattled out of the hawse-holes, and once more the old Tartar was in motion seaward.

“‘Frank, my man,’ said I to the man-of-war’s man, whom I retained on board with some of the steadiest of the men, ‘jump aft and hoist a red rag of some sort at the gaff—their own colors, you know—if it’s only to puzzle them. Stand by, carpenter, to sweep the poop when I give you the word.’ When a shot better aimed than the last struck the mizzen-rail, narrowly missing a shroud, and scattering the splinters right and left among the Arabs. Down they went on their faces, out of the way of their friends’ balls, all except Hadji, who stood it without flinching, while my hands itched, I confess, for a chance to send an ounce bullet from the barrel in my hand through his heart.

“‘Hurrah!’ shouted Frank from the midst of them, as up went the cook’s shirt, tacked to pieces of bamboo to give it spread. I saw them pointing their glasses at it from the veranda of the palace, and shouted to the mates to give way strong, for they were launching their rafts and a whole fleet of boats, filled with soldiers, whose spears and long match-locks glistened in the sun now rising over the rocks to the north-east. The castles and the forts began now to fire in earnest, sending their iron about the cove in every direction, though the ship in some measure shielded the boats from the few guns which bore upon them. Many balls hurtled through the air past us, but only four struck her hull, doing no particular damage. I looked at every flash to see some of the sticks go, and ten minutes more would have brought the Arabs down on us with a force which it would have been worse than useless to resist. In fact, when I saw them training their match-locks on the boats, though we were then clear of the passage in the eddy of the current, I gave up the game as lost, thinking of calling the men on board, with the desperate notion of fighting it out to the last on board, when looking over the side at the ship’s way, I saw Muscat Tom’s broad flukes and glistening back, within fifty feet of the sternmost boat. The soldiers now opened their fire to drive the men from their work—I caught the second mate’s flushed, hopeless look, as he turned his head from tugging at his steering-oar, and then the black fiend’s triumphant grin, with a malicious glance from the whites of his eyes, as much as to say: ‘you’re in for it for a good long spell, my lads’—when the sight of the whale in the desperate emergency of the case, seemed to put it into my brain what to do.

“‘Mr. Parker,’ I hailed, ‘have you lines and harpoons in the boats?’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered, while the men looked up at the ship as if they wondered what next.

“‘Cast off the larboard hawser, then,’ I shouted, ‘bend irons on to the starboard one, and strike that whale. Let the other boats come alongside.’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered again, just, it seemed, as he would have done had I ordered him to fasten to the moon, supposing that it had been shining to seaward. However, the five boats were alongside and hoisted up in no time, and Parker, as soon as he was up to the dodge, wild as it seemed, did the thing in true whaleman’s style, bending triple plies of the line to the hawser, driving both irons socket up in the whale’s back, as he lay like a log on the sea. For one single instant the enormous animal remained motionless, while the boat backed off from his flukes; then I saw his mighty, flexible tail, with its million stripes of freckled gray, heave up until his whole back was plainly to be seen to the dorsal fin, when down it came like a dark mass of iron, driving a cloud of spray in the air, and off he headed to sea, the water being too shallow for him to sound. The hawser stood the surge, and away the old ship went to her tug, the second mate giving a chase, while the men echoed back the yells of the disappointed Arabs amid the crack of match-locks and the bellowing thunder of the cannon. We soon had Parker’s boat towing astern, and Tom, if any thing, increased his speed, stretching the hawser—which, like the rest of her gear, was bran new that voyage, as _taut_ as a harp-string. Every time he raised the edge of his flukes for a downward stroke of his tail, the men cheered; in fact, the fellows danced about the deck like wild men round a war-post, or negroes under a tamarind-tree; it was no manner of use to try to restrain them; while the poor devils of Arabs, with the black at their head, stood looking their last—with Allah’s name on their lips—at castle, rock and tower. However, the thought of what was lying in the cabins seemed to strike the crew all at once; and then, as they ceased capering and pitching their hats at each other, fixing their eyes upon me as one man’s, the old, desolate feelings came back to my heart all the heavier for the contrast.

“Still the whale held right on off the coast, and we had nothing but to fold our arms and look on, wondering when the tough, pliable irons would break or draw out—or looking for him to sound, which, you know, would cause us to cut the tow-line. The axe was ready in the second mate’s hands, and we were already in the strength of the current, which he took tail on, increasing his speed, of course, toward some old sleeping haunt of his, as I thought, possibly in the Gulf of Mageira, under the lee of some low island or coral reef. The oldest whaleman in the ship could not wonder enough at the strength of the monster—a hundred feet long, as he was, and more. He neither yawed nor slackened his pace, but kept straight on to double the sandy point broad on our larboard bow by this time. It was a strange thing, to be sure, to feel the ship slipping along, stern on to the current, with a man standing soberly at the wheel to steady it, all her sails furled, and the whale’s flukes kicking up a white dust ahead, like one of Loper’s screw-propellers. Parker told me a story of a vessel in the Greenland seas being towed by a ‘right whale’ for an hour and a half, in the teeth of a strong breeze, with the yards brailed aback; so that, at that rate, there was no estimating the powers of a full-grown ‘finner,’ a much larger and more powerful fish of the two; he might tow us entirely clear of the coast, provided the harpoons did not break off at the ‘withers,’ or ‘draw,’ which last, the mate said, was the way in which the matter was likely to end. Indeed, the event proved his knowledge of the habits and resources of this species, as we doubled the point safely enough, at the distance of two miles, in sight of a body of horsemen, who pulled up from their useless chase, on the very edge of the strand.

“A hundred wild thoughts of things which I had read of or seen, flashed across my mind, as I caught a view of the interminable blue expanse before me; now it was Mazeppa on his wild horse swimming the ‘bright, broad river’—now a Gaucho scouring the pampas—now the naked trapper running for life from the Blackfeet, over the plains of prickly pear—or, last of all, the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, which coming up, as they did, from the days of my boyhood, when the wreck of the only woman I ever loved was lying thus strangely in the cabin, with the eunuch’s black face glooming over it, oppressed me like some monstrous dream. I was aroused from this by a voice calling out that there was a large ship right in the whale’s track. Accordingly, after a little we made her out with our glasses, rolling on the long ground-swell, a frigate-built ship, which I took, from the whiteness of her canvas, to be either French or American, though the leanness of her dark hull, with its single tier of guns, as she rose on the swell when we drove nearer to her, and the improbability of one of our own cruisers being upon this coast, made me almost certain she was the first. Accordingly, when we were within gunshot, up went the old Bourbon colors at the mast, as the smoke of a gun puffed out of one of her midship ports, and you had a notion what sort of a stir was on her decks at the moment, at the sight of a large ship bearing down on her in a stark calm, with more than twice her drift; then you heard the roll of her drum beating to quarters, as if they thought ’twas Sathanas himself afloat. To ease their minds, I ordered the red rag to be hauled down, and the stars and stripes to be run up at half-mast in their stead.

“All was still as death, except the surge of the Tartar’s bows to the strain of the hawser and the creak of her hamper aloft, as the whale sheered to port, and we passed within half a pistol shot of the corvette’s broadside—her crew at quarters staring at us in a queer enough sort of a way, as if catching a sight of the American flag, and the whale-boats at the cranes, they made sure all was right, strange as the sight was—until, as if to break the spell, their little mad-eyed captain jumped on the hammock-netting and hailed.

“‘_Bon voyage au diable, mes amis!_’ he shouted, waving his cap round and round, as if he meant to jerk it into the sea, to the glorification of some Yankee invention or other, the moment we slipped past him—when Hadji’s turban and the scarlet cape on the poop caught his eye, and he sung out something which I did not hear, for the whale went down like a flash, burying the Tartar’s bows to the forecastle, deep as she was, before Parker, taken by surprise, could cut the hawser, which, after all, he had no occasion to do, as you knew by the feel of the deck, as the ship rose, that the whale was free. We hauled the slack of the hawser, looking for Tom to rise, when one of the harpoons was found broken off at the head, and the other drawn out. I never saw Muscat Tom again; and it is likely, as the old hands said, that he never rose from his dive. My yarn, gentlemen,” continued the master’s mate, “is nearly spun. The frigate’s boats boarded us, of course, when part of the tale was rehearsed to her captain. He was bound to Mocha to look after some atrocities which had been committed upon subjects of France, during a recent revolt, and at once offered to land the eunuch and his men there, and to protect the Circassian, and carry her back with him to France. However, when we entered the cabin, it was found that she was beyond the reach of mortal arm, whether to shield or destroy. She lay by the side of her lover, dead by poison, as it seemed, yet still so beautiful in death as to surprise the Frenchman. In the end he took charge of all the prisoners, as the crew of the Tartar in a body stoutly refused to do duty while Catherton remained in the ship. The French captain promised to hand him over to the American authorities on the first occasion that offered, and the remainder of the day was spent in clearing up the cabins and taking depositions in French and English.

“Just before sunset the bodies were removed to the frigate, that of Ellen in my boat, while Parker took charge of Zuma’s and the chief’s. At my request Ellen was buried immediately. Both crews were mustered in the gangways, and the ensigns hanging at half-mast as the French chaplain read the service. The last glimmer of day was fading from the west as we listened to the prayer, and a star shot its beams on the spot where the corpse went down.”

Here the master’s mate made a brief pause, during which seven strokes on the frigate’s ponderous bell proclaimed that the watch was nearly out. Before the vibrations had ceased on the ear we heard the schooner’s, like the reverberations of an echo, faintly sounding, far to leeward. The moon had sunk; the sails flapped heavily in the dying breeze, and entranced as we were, that distant clang seemed to strike a chord in each listener’s soul. In a low voice the mate resumed. “A breeze ruffled the water up as they piped down, and bidding farewell to the Frenchman, we hastened on board, and made sail on the ship.

“It was a terrible passage—such as every man in that ship will remember to his dying day—from the cape latitudes to Pernambuco, where I put in to recruit.

“The very next morning after we anchored, an agent of Don Jose Maria came on board to inquire after Captain Catherton. You may swear that he departed, with his sallow visage considerably lengthened, when he heard the news. I learned privately from the American consul, in the course of his investigations, that Don Jose was a man of great wealth and influence in the province—your very worthy and hospitable _Senhor de Engenho_ in the country, and merchant, slave-dealer and broker in any kind of business, in which a _mil reis_ was to be turned up in the city. I never saw the old gentleman myself, as he did not do me the honor to show his powdered head, and the long cue, which the carpenter particularly instanced, in the ship while I commanded her, although the second mate was careful that the counter-skipper whom he sent to ask after his worthy associate, should take on shore with him the exact value of the cargo on board, so far as we had advices respecting the market at home. In fact, from some estimates which I found among Catherton’s papers, I had no doubt that old Charley’s suspicions were correct, and it had been settled, when the ship touched here on her outward passage, that Don Jose should become the purchaser of the ship and cargo. Upon questioning the carpenter in private, I found that years before he had got hold of a portion of my history, from a shipmate of his, who had known me in ——, and whom I recollected to have met in the West Indies, on the very voyage, when he pointed me out at the door of a cafe to Toppin. Singular as it may appear, too, it was not until we had run up the S. E. Trades, that Parker showed me the letter which he had found in his jacket in the Persian Gulf, and which I now discovered was addressed to myself. The perusal of it had nearly driven me to share her grave in the waters, victim as it clearly showed her to have been to Catherton’s arts from the first, and, as I had supposed, murdered at last by an infernal conspiracy of his mate’s, or rather of his wife’s, as was discovered when we reached the States. It was shown that some resemblance existed between Ellen and the woman-fiend; and, from her own confession in the prison, to which she was consigned for the rest of her life, that she had been played off on Catherton for his wife, by the connivance of Jinney. The motive for the victim’s ruin did not appear so clearly, the woman herself declaring that she knew not why she hated and had sworn to destroy her. There was not a single creature in the smallest degree acquainted with the facts, who doubted Ellen’s innocence; and the tears which was shed over her unhappy fate, and the execrations poured upon her destroyers, were the best evidences of this. An undue intimacy between the ship’s owner and the mate’s wife was proved on the woman’s trial; and out of this, it was supposed, in some way the accursed plot had its origin.

“However, for myself; as soon as the news of Catherton’s escape from the French frigate reached the States by another ship, I started again, with a vow on my soul to roam the world, until I should hunt him down. Year in and year out, wherever there was a prospect of meeting him—on the African and Brazilian coasts—on the Spanish Main—and in the sea-ports of the East, I sought him with a hatred which gathered intensity from time. Twice I heard of him in command of a free-cruising craft, and once in Port Royal he narrowly escaped me. The third time, as sailors say, is lucky—the saw lied though, in this instance,” said the mate, hoarsely, “for I found him three days ago, cut in two by a round-shot, on the quarter-deck of yonder schooner.”

We started to our feet as he said this, partly from surprise, and partly because we heard the boat-swain’s mates at the hatchways.

The second day after that the Constitution was lying at anchor with her prize in the bay of Naples; and to have seen Harry Miller gazing out of a port at the world renowned shores which environ it—or turning his back on a crowd of chattering officials, whom curiosity brought off to the schooner—or in a shore-boat, with a party on leave of absence, you never would have supposed, from the look and bearing of the man, that he had been the relator of that wild yarn.

* * * * *

THE ACTUAL.

Away! no more shall shadows entertain;
No more shall fancy paint and dreams delude;
No more shall these delusions of the brain
Divert me with their pleasing interlude:
Forever ere ye banished, idle joys;
Welcome stern labor-life—this is no world for toys!

* * * * *

THE PLEDGE.

BY JOHN NEAL.

Sampson was a Nazarite. He drank no wine nor strong drink; and so long as he kept the pledge and the secret of his strength, was indeed a giant. Read the scripture narrative.

“Then went Sampson down. . . . And behold a young lion roared
against him.

“And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent
him as he would have rent a kid; and he had nothing in his
hand.” Judges xiv. 5, 6, etc.

Brothers! we have pledged ourselves,
Like the mighty man of old,
By a vow that bindeth fast,
By the Future! by the Past!
By their banners now unrolled!

That the secret of our strength,
Unacknowledged—unrevealed—
Setting us apart from others,
Undefiled, O, Giant Brothers!
Shall forever be concealed:

Never to be told on earth,
Never breathed aloud in prayer—
Never written—never spoken—
Lest our awful vow, if broken,
Bring us bondage and despair.

Brothers! let us all remember,
How that Strong Man self betrayed;
He that with a heart of iron;
Where he journeyed, heard the lion
Roar against him—undismayed:

He, the mightiest of the land,
By the harlotry of Sense,
Blind and fettered, came to be
A jester at a jubilee,
A proverb for his impotence!

And though his strength came back anew
When he bowed himself in prayer,
Until he had avenged the wrong
That called him up with shout and song
And jeer and scoff—he perished there.

* * * * *

TO A BEAUTIFUL GIRL.

BY J. R. BARRICK.

I do not love thee—yet my heart is filled
With a sweet spirit of the beautiful,
Whene’er I sit alone to muse upon
Thy dark eye beaming in a sea of light,
Thy cheek all flush with summer’s rosy glow,
Thy pure, high brow, so beautiful and calm,
O’er which the light and glory of thy thoughts
Beam like the tints of summer’s genial sky
Above a waveless lake—the low, sweet tones
Thy gentle voice breathes on the evening breeze—
Thy pure, high heart, the paradise of peace,
Where lovely flowers spring up in beauty wild,
And blossom into hope—where angels come
On missioned wings from their far homes in heaven,
To chant their Eden songs.
I love thee not
With the wild, wayward love of earth, and yet
If worship be that deep idolatry
The heathen pays in homage to the sun,
Then I have worshiped thee, for I have bowed
In passions deep and holy hour to thee,
And at thy shrine of beauty offered up
The tribute of affection.
I have mused
On Nature in her morning light, when first
The sun looks out upon a world of peace,
When the glad air was vocal with the songs
Of many warblers in their morning joy,
And thou wast there in all of sight and sound,
Thyself the spirit of the beautiful
In all to eye and ear. And I have gone
At evening ’mid the shadows of the wood
To view the glories of the bursting spring,
And hear the thousand sweet and joyous strains
That thrilled each warbler in his evening praise,
And thou wast there, thy beauty dearer far
Than aught in nature seen, and thy sweet voice,
Than all earth’s melodies. I’ve gazed upon
The sunset sky in its last glowing tint,
And felt the spirit of the twilight hour
Stealing upon the scene with potent spell,
Yet thou wast there, and in those happy hours
Thy spirit, like the rainbow o’er a cloud,
Was spanning o’er my bosom.
Thou hast been
A rainbow set above my wildest storm,
A star within my else all darkened sky,
A lovely flower beside my desert path,
A gentle spirit in my heart of hearts,
To bless me with its presence.
From the waves,
And from the winds, and from the gentle streams,
Thy voice hath caught a spell, whose lightest tone
Is very love and sweetness. From the stars,
And from the sky, and from the sunset hues,
That glow like spirits of the beautiful
Along the western world, thine eyes have caught
A brightness and a glory that outvie
The glowing dreams of fancy. From the heaven
From whence thou sprang all perfect at thy birth,
And from all love, and from all passion sweet,
From thought and sense, and from the wide green earth
And from the sky, and from the glorious stars,
Thy mind and heart have stolen their brightest tints,
Till they are but a mirror of the whole,
The sum end substance of all lovely things,
Thyself the Spirit of the Beautiful!

* * * * *

THE FIRST AGE.

BY H. DIDIMUS.

(Concluded from page 546.)

BOOK FOURTH.