Chapter XXXVII: Monte DI Faccio (2)

Among the many strange objects which an Englishman meets with in India, there are few which tend so much to upset his equanimity as a visit from a wandering faquir.

The advent of one of these gentry in an English settlement is regarded with much the same sort of feeling as a vagrant cockroach, when he makes his appearance unannounced in a modern drawing-room. If we could imagine the aforesaid cockroach brandishing his horns in the face of the horrified inmates, exulting in the disgust which his presence creates, and intimating, with a conceited swagger, that, in virtue of his ugliness, he considered himself entitled to some cake and wine, perhaps the analogy would be more complete.

The faquir is the mendicant friar of India. He owns no superior; wears no clothing; performs no work; despises every body and every thing; sometimes pretends to perpetual fasting; and lives on the fat of the land.

There is this much, however, to be said for him, that when he does mortify himself for the good of the community, he does it to some purpose. A lenten fast, or a penance of parched peas in his shoes, would be a mere bagatelle to him. We have seen a faquir who was never "known" to eat at all. He carried a small black stone about with him, which had been presented to his mother by a holy man. He pretended that by sucking this stone, and without the aid of any sort of nutriment, he had arrived at the mature age of forty; yet he had a nest of supplementary chins, and a protuberant paunch, which certainly did great credit to the fattening powers of the black stone. Oddly enough, his business was to collect eatables and drinkables; but, like the Scottish gentleman who was continually begging brimstone, they were "no for hissel, but for a neebor." When I saw him he was soliciting offerings of rice, milk, fish, and ghee, for the benefit of his patron Devi. These offerings were nightly laid upon the altar before the Devi, who was supposed to _absorb_ them during the night, considerately leaving the fragments to be distributed among the poor of the parish. His godship was very discriminating in the goodness and freshness of these offerings; for he rejected such as were stale, to be returned next morning, with his maledictions, to the fraudulent donors.

Sometimes a faquir will take it into his head that the community will be benefited by his trundling himself along, like a cart-wheel, for a couple of hundred miles or so. He ties his wrists to his ankles, gets a _tire_, composed of chopped straw, mud, and cow-dung, laid along the ridge of his backbone; a bamboo-staff passed through the angle formed by his knees and his elbows, by way of an axle, and off he goes; a brazen cup, with a bag, and a _hubble-bubble_, hang like tassels at the two extremities of the axle. Thus accoutred, he often starts on a journey which will occupy him for several years, like Milton's fiend,

"O'er bog, or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, feet, or wings, pursues his way."

On arriving in the vicinity of a village, the whole population turn out to meet and escort him with due honors to the public well or tank; the men beating drums, and the women singing through their noses. Here his holiness unbends, washes off the dust and dirt acquired by perambulating several miles of dusty road; and, after partaking of a slight refreshment, enters into conversation with the assembled villagers just as if he were an ordinary mortal; making very particular inquiries concerning the state of their larders, and slight investigations as to their morals. Of course every one is anxious to have the honor of entertaining a man so holy as to roll to their presence doubled up into a hoop; and disputes get warm as to who is to have the preference. Whereupon the faquir makes a speech, in which he returns thanks for the attentions shown him and intimates that he intends taking up his quarters with the man who is most capable of testifying his appreciation of the honor. After some higgling, he knocks himself down, a decided bargain, to be the guest of the highest bidder, in whose house he remains, giving good advice to the community, and diffusing an odor of sanctity throughout the whole village. When the supplies begin to fail, he ties his hands to his heels again, gets a fresh tire put on, and is escorted out of the village with the same formalities as accompanied his entrance.

Like other vermin of his class, he is most apt to attach himself to the "weaker vessels" of humanity, with whom he is generally a prodigious favorite. He is not, certainly, indebted to his personal advantages for this favor, for a more hideously ugly race of men is seldom met with. As if nature had not made him sufficiently repulsive, he heightens his hideousness by encircling his eyes with bands of white paint; daubing his cheeks a rich mustard yellow: a white streak runs along the ridge of his nose, and another forms a circle round his mouth: his ribs are indicated by corresponding bars of white paint, which give a highly venerable cross-bones effect to his breast. When I add, that he wears no clothes, and that the use of soap is no part of his religion, some idea may be gained of the effect the first view of him occasions in the mind of a European.

On the afternoon of a very sultry day in June, I had got a table out in the veranda of my bungalow, and was amusing myself with a galvanic apparatus, giving such of my servants as had the courage, a taste of what they called _Wulatee boiujee_ (English lightning), when a long gaunt figure, with his hair hanging in disordered masses over his face, was observed to cross the lawn. On arriving within a few paces of where I stood, he drew himself up in an imposing attitude--one of his arms akimbo, while the other held out toward me what appeared to be a pair of tongs, with a brass dish at the extremity of it.

"Who are you?" I called out.

"Faquir," was the guttural response.

"What do you want?"

"Bheek" (alms).

"Bheek!" I exclaimed, "surely you are joking--a great stout fellow like you can't be wanting bheek?"

The faquir paid not the slightest attention, but continued holding out his tongs with the dish at the end of it.

"You had better be off," I said; "I never give bheek to people who are able to work."

"We do Khooda's work," replied the faquir, with a swagger.

"Oh! you do--then," I answered, "you had better ask Khooda for bheek." So saying, I turned to the table, and began arranging the apparatus for making some experiments. Happening to look up about five minutes after, I observed that the faquir was standing upon one leg, and struggling to assume as much majesty as was consistent with his equilibrium. The tongs and dish were still extended--while his left hand sustained his right foot across his abdomen. I turned to the table, and tried to go on with my work; but I blundered awfully, broke a glass jar, cut my fingers, and made a mess on the table. I had a consciousness of the faquir's staring at me with his extended dish, and could not get the fellow out of my head. I looked up at him again. There he was as grand as ever, on his one leg, and with his eyes riveted on mine. He continued this performance for nearly an hour, yet there did not seem to be the faintest indication of his unfolding himself--rather a picturesque ornament to the lawn, if he should take it into his head--as these fellows sometimes do--to remain in the same position for a twelvemonth. "If," I said, "you stand there much longer, I'll give you such a taste of boinjee (lightning) as will soon make you glad to go."

The only answer to this threat was a smile of derision that sent his mustache bristling up against his nose.

"Lightning!" he sneered--"your lightning can't touch a faquir--the gods take care of him."

Without more ado, I charged the battery and connected it with a coil machine, which, as those who have tried it are aware, is capable of racking the nerves in such a way as few people care to try, and which none are capable of voluntarily enduring beyond a few seconds.

The faquir seemed rather amused at the queer-looking implements on the table, but otherwise maintained a look of lofty stoicism; nor did he seem in any way alarmed when I approached with the conductors.

Some of my servants who had already experienced the process, now came clustering about with looks of ill-suppressed merriment, to witness the faquir's ordeal. I fastened one wire to his still extended tongs, and the other to the foot on the ground.

As the coil machine was not yet in action, beyond disconcerting him a little, the attachment of the wires did not otherwise affect him. But when I pushed the magnet into the coil, and gave him the full strength of the battery, he howled like a demon; the tongs--to which his hand was now fastened by a force beyond his will--quivered in his unwilling grasp as if it were burning the flesh from his bones. He threw himself on the ground, yelling and gnashing his teeth, the tongs clanging an irregular accompaniment. Never was human pride so abruptly cast down. He was rolling about in such a frantic way that I began to fear he would do himself mischief; and, thinking he had now had as much as was good for him, I stopped the machine and released him.

For some minutes he lay quivering on the ground, as if not quite sure that the horrible spell was broken; then gathering himself up, he flung the tongs from him, bounded across the lawn, and over the fence like an antelope. When he had got to what he reckoned cursing distance, he turned round, shook his fists at me, and fell to work--pouring out a torrent of imprecations--shouting, screeching, and tossing his arms about in a manner fearful to behold.

There is this peculiarity in the abuse of an Oriental, that, beyond wishing the object of it a liberal endowment of blisters, boils, and ulcers (no inefficient curses in a hot country), he does not otherwise allude to him personally; but directs the main burden of his wrath against his female relatives--from his grandmother to his grand-daughter--wives, daughters, sisters, aunts, and grand-aunts inclusive. These he imprecates individually and collectively through every clause of a prescribed formulary, which has been handed down by his ancestors, and which, in searchingness of detail, and comprehensiveness of malediction, leaves small scope to additions or improvements.

Leaving me, then, to rot and wither from the face of the earth, and consigning all my female kindred to utter and inevitable death and destruction, he walked off to a neighboring village to give vent to his feelings and compose his ruffled dignity.

It so happened, that a short time after the faquir had gone, I incautiously held my head, while watching the result of some experiments, over a dish of fuming acid, and consequently became so ill as to be obliged to retire to my bedroom and lie down. In about an hour, I called to my bearer to fetch me a glass of water; but, although I heard him and some of the other servants whispering together behind the purda, or door-curtain, no attention was paid to my summons. After repeating the call two or three times with the same result, I got up to see what was the matter. On drawing aside the purda, I beheld the whole establishment seated in full conclave on their haunches round the door. On seeing me, they all got up and took to their heels, like a covey of frightened partridges. The old kidmudgar was too fat to run far; so I seized him just as he was making his exit by a gap in the garden fence. He was, at first, quite incapable of giving any account of himself; so I made him sit a minute among the long grass to recover his wind, when he broke out with, "Oh! _re-bab-re-bab_!" and began to blubber, as only a fat kidmudgar can, imploring me to send instantly for the faquir, and make him a present; if I did not, I would certainly be a dead man before to-morrow's sun; "For," said he, "a faquir's curse is good as _kismut-ke-bat_" (a matter of fate). Some of his fellows now seeing that the murder was out, ventured to come back, and joined in requesting me to save my life while there was yet time.

A laugh was the only answer I could make. This somewhat reassured them, but it was easy to see that I was regarded by all as a doomed man. It was to no purpose that I told them I was now quite well, and endeavored to explain the cause of my sickness. They would have it that I was in a dying state, and that my only salvation lay in sending off a messenger with a kid and a bag of rupees to the faquir. The durdzee (tailor), who had just come from the village where the faquir had taken refuge, told me, that as soon as the faquir heard that I was ill, he performed a _pas seul_ of a most impressive character, shouting and threatening to curse every body in the village as he had cursed me and mine. The consequence was that pice, cowries, rice, and ghee were showered upon him with overwhelming liberality.

Without saying a word, I armed myself with a horsewhip, set out for the village, and found the faquir surrounded by a dense crowd of men and women; to whom he was jabbering with tremendous volubility; telling them how he had withered me up root and branch, and expressing a hope that I would serve as a lesson to the other children of Sheitan who ventured to take liberties with a faquir. The crowd hid me from him till I broke in upon his dreams with a slight taste of my whip across his shoulders. His eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets when he turned round and saw me. Another intimation from my thong sent him off with a yell, leaving the rich spoil he had collected from the simple villagers behind. What became of him I can not tell. I heard no more of him.

A few such adventures as these would tend to lessen the gross, and, to them, expensive superstitions under which the natives of India at present labor.

LOVE AND SMUGGLING.--A STORY OF THE ENGLISH COAST.

My name is Warneford--at least it is not very unlike that--and I was born at Itchen, a village distant in those days about a mile and a half, by land and ferry, from Southampton. How much nearer the, as I hear and read, rapidly-increasing town has since approached I can not say, as it will be twenty-nine years next July since I finally quitted the neighborhood. The village, at that time, chiefly inhabited by ferry and fishermen, crept in a straggling sort of way up a declivity from the margin of the Itchen river, which there reaches and joins the Southampton estuary, till it arrives at Pear-Tree Green, an eminence commanding one of the finest and most varied land-and-water views the eye of man has, I think, ever rested upon. My father, a retired lieutenant of the royal navy, was not a native of the place, as his name alone would sufficiently indicate to a person acquainted with the then Itchen people--almost every one of whom was either a Dible or a Diaper--but he had been many years settled there, and Pear-Tree church-yard contained the dust of his wife and five children--I and my sister Jane, who was a year older than myself, being all of his numerous family who survived their childhood. We were in fair circumstances, as my father, in addition to his half-pay, possessed an income of something above a hundred pounds a year. Jane and I were carefully, though of course not highly or expensively educated; and as soon as I had attained the warrior-age of fifteen, I was dispatched to sea to fight my country's battles--Sir Joseph Yorke having, at my father's request, kindly obtained a midshipman's warrant for me; and not many weeks after joining the ship to which I was appointed, I found myself, to my great astonishment, doubling the French line at the Nile--an exploit which I have since read of with far more satisfaction than I remember to have experienced during its performance.

Four years passed before I had an opportunity of revisiting home; and it was with a beating as well as joyful heart, and light, elastic step, that I set off to walk the distance from Gosport to Itchen. I need hardly say that I was welcomed by Jane with tears of love and happiness. It was not long, however, before certain circumstances occurred which induced my worthy but peremptory father to cut my leave of absence suddenly and unmercifully short. I have before noticed that the aborigines of my native place were for the most part Dibles or Diapers. Well, it happened that among the former was one Ellen Dible, the daughter of a fisherman somewhat more prosperous than many of his fellows. This young lady was a slim, active, blue-eyed, bright-haired gipsy, about two years younger than myself, but somewhat tall and womanly for her age, of a light, charming figure, and rather genteel manners; which latter quality, by-the-by, must have come by nature, for but little education of any kind had fallen to her share. She was, it may be supposed, the _belle_ of the place, and very numerous were her rustic admirers; but they all vanished in a twinkling, awestruck by my uniform, and especially by the dangling dirk which I occasionally handled in a very alarming manner; and I, sentimental moon-calf that I was, fell, as it is termed, deeply and earnestly in love with the village beauty! It must have been her personal graces alone--her conversation it could not be--which thus entangled me; for she seldom spoke, and then in reply only, and in monosyllables; but she listened divinely, and as we strolled in the evening through the fields and woods between Itchen and Netley Abbey, gazed with such enchanting eloquence in my face, as I poured forth the popular love and nonsense poetry of the time, that it is very possible I might have been sooner or later entrapped into a ruinous marriage--not by her, poor girl! she was, I am sure, as guileless as infancy, but by her parents, who were scheming, artful people--had not my father discovered what was going on, and in his rough way dispelled my silly day-dreams at once and forever.

The church-yard at the summit of Pear-Tree Green, it used to be commonly said, was that in which Gray composed his famous "Elegy," or at all events which partially inspired it. I know not if this be correct; but I remember thinking, as I sat one fine September evening by the side of Ellen Dible upon the flat wooden railing which then inclosed it, that the tradition had great likelihood. The broad and tranquil waters of the Southampton and Itchen rivers--bounded in the far distance by the New Forest, with its wavy masses of varying light and shade, and on the left by the leafy woods, from out of which I often think the gray ruins of the old abbey must in these days look grimly and spectre-like forth upon the teeming, restless life which mocks its hoary solitude--were at the full of a spring tide. It was just, too, the hour of "parting day;" and as the sun-tipped spires of the Southampton churches faded gradually into indistinctness, and the earlier stars looked out, the curfew, mellowed by distance into music, came to us upon the light air which gently stirred fair Ellen's glossy ringlets, as she, with her bonnet in her hand--for our walk had tired her--looked with her dove-innocent, transparent eyes in mine, while I repeated Gray's melodious lines. The Elegy was concluded, and I was rapturizing even more vehemently than was my wont, when, whack! I received a blow on my shoulder, which sent us both off the rail; for Ellen held me by the arm, and it was quite as much as I could do to keep my feet when I reached them. I turned fiercely round, only to encounter the angry and sardonic countenance of my father. "I'll have no more of this nonsense, Bob," he gruffly exclaimed. "Be off home with you, and to-morrow I'll see you safe on board your ship, depend upon it. As for this pretty minx," he continued, addressing Ellen, who so trembled with confusion and dismay that she could scarcely tie her bonnet-strings, "I should think she would be better employed in mending her father's shirts, or darning her brother's stockings, than in gossiping her time away with a brainless young lubber like you." I was, of course, awfully incensed, but present resistance, I knew, was useless; and after contriving to exchange a mute gesture with Ellen of eternal love, constancy, and despair, we took our several ways homeward. Before twelve o'clock the next day I was posting to Gosport, accompanied by my father, but not till after I had obtained, through the agency of my soft-hearted sister, a farewell interview with Ellen, when we of course made fervent vows of mutual fidelity--affirmed and consecrated, at Ellen's suggestion, by the mystical ceremony of breaking a crooked sixpence in halves--a moiety to be worn by each of us about our necks, as an eternal memorial and pendant protest against the flinty hearts of fathers.

This boyish fancy faded but slowly and lingeringly away with the busy and tumultuous years which passed over my head, till the peace of 1815 cast me an almost useless sea-waif upon the land, to take root and vegetate there as I best might upon a lieutenant's half-pay. My father had died about two years before, and the hundred a year he left us was scarcely more than sufficient for the support of my sister, whose chances of an eligible marriage had vanished with her comeliness, which a virulent attack of small-pox had utterly destroyed, though it had in nothing changed the patient sweetness of her disposition, and the gentle loving spirit that shone through all its disfiguring scars and seams. I had never heard directly from Ellen Dible, although, during the first months of separation, I had written to her many times; the reason of which was partially explained by a few lines in one of Jane's letters, announcing Ellen Dible's marriage--it seemed under some kind of moral compulsion--to a person of their own grade, and their removal from Itchen. This happened about six months after my last interview with her. I made no further inquiries, and, Jane thinking the subject might be a painful one, it happened that, by a kind of tacit understanding, it was never afterward alluded to between us.

The utter weariness of an idle shore life soon became insupportable, and I determined to solicit the good offices of Sir Joseph Yorke with the Admiralty. The gallant admiral had now taken up his permanent residence near Hamble, a village on the river of that name, which issues into the Southampton water not very far from opposite Calshot Castle. Sir Joseph was drowned there about eight or nine years after I left the station. A more perfect gentleman, let me pause a moment to say, or a better seaman, than Sir Joseph, never, I believe, existed; and of a handsome, commanding presence too--"half-way up a hatchway" at least, to use his own humorous self-description, his legs scarcely corresponding in vigorous outline to the rest of his person. He received me with his usual frank urbanity, and I left him provided with a letter to the secretary of the admiralty--the ultimate and not long-delayed result of which was my appointment to the command of the _Rose_ revenue-cutter, the duties attached to which consisted in carefully watching, in the interest of His Majesty's customs, the shores of the Southampton river, the Solent sea, the Wight, and other contiguous portions of the seaboard of Hants and Dorset.

The ways of smugglers were of course new to me; but we had several experienced hands on board, and as I zealously applied myself to the study of the art of contraband, I was not long in acquiring a competent knowledge of the traditional contrivances employed to defraud the revenue. Little of interest occurred during the first three or four weeks of my novel command, except that by the sharpened vigilance of our look-out, certain circumstances came to light, strongly indicating that Barnaby Diaper, the owner of a cutter-rigged fishing-vessel of rather large burden, living near Hamble Creek, was extensively engaged in the then profitable practice of running moonshine, demurely and industriously as, when ashore, he appeared to be ever-lastingly mending his nets, or cobbling the bottom of the smack's boat. He was a hale, wiry fellow this Barnaby--Old Barnaby, as he was familiarly called, surnames in those localities being seldom used--with a wooden stolidity of countenance which utterly defied scrutiny, if it did not silence suspicion. His son, who was a partner in the cutter, lived at Weston, a beautifully-situated hamlet between Itchen and Netley. A vigilant watch was consequently kept upon the movements of the Barnabys, father, son, and grandson--this last a smart, precocious youngster, I understood, of about sixteen years of age, by which family trio the suspicious _Blue-eyed Maid_ was, with occasional assistance, manned, sailed, and worked. Very rarely, indeed, was the _Blue-eyed Maid_ observed to be engaged in her ostensible occupation. She would suddenly disappear, and as suddenly return, and always, we soon came to notice, on the nights when the _Rose_ happened to be absent from the Southampton waters.

We had missed her for upward of a week, when information reached us that a large lugger we had chased without success a few nights previously would attempt to run a cargo at a spot not far from Lymington, soon after midnight. I accordingly, as soon as darkness had fallen, ran down, and stood off and on, within signal-distance of the shore-men with whom I had communicated, till dawn, in vain expectation of the promised prize. I strongly suspected that we had been deceived; and on rounding Calshot Castle on our return, I had no doubt of it, for there, sure enough, was the _Blue-eyed Maid_ riding lightly at anchor off Hamble Creek, and from her slight draught of water it was quite evident that her cargo, whatever it might have consisted of, had been landed, or otherwise disposed of. They had been smart with their work, for the summer night and our absence had lasted but a few hours only. I boarded her, and found Old Barnaby, whom I knew by sight, and his two descendants, whom I had not before seen, busily engaged swabbing the cutter's deck, and getting matters generally into order and ship-shape. The son a good deal resembled the old man, except that his features wore a much more intelligent and good-humored expression; and the boy was an active, bold-eyed, curly-headed youngster, whose countenance, but for a provoking sauciness of expression apparently habitual to him, would have been quite handsome. I thought I had seen his face somewhere before, and he, I noticed, suddenly stopped from his work on hearing my name, and looked at me with a smiling but earnest curiosity. The morning's work had, I saw, been thoroughly performed, and as I was in no humor for a profitless game of cross questions and crooked answers, I, after exchanging one or two colloquial courtesies, in which I had by no means the advantage, returned to the _Rose_ more than ever satisfied that the interesting family I had left required and would probably repay the closest watchfulness and care.

On the evening of the same day the _Blue-eyed Maid_ again vanished: a fortnight slipped by, and she had not re-appeared; when the _Rose_, having slightly grazed her bottom in going over the shifting shingle at the northwest of the Wight, went into Portsmouth harbor to be examined. Some of her copper was found to be stripped off; there were other trifling damages; and two or three days would elapse before she could be got ready for service. This interval I spent with my sister. The evening after I arrived at Itchen, Jane and I visited Southampton, and accompanied an ancient female acquaintance residing in Bugle-street--a dull, grass-grown place in those days, whatever it may be now--to the theatre in, I believe, the same street. The performances were not over till near twelve o'clock, and after escorting the ladies home, I wended my way toward the Sun Inn on the quay, where I was to sleep--my sister remaining for the night with our friend. The weather, which had been dark and squally an hour or two before, was now remarkably fine and calm; and the porter of the inn telling me they should not close the house for some time longer, I strolled toward the Platform Battery, mounted by a single piece of brass ordnance overlooking the river, and pointing menacingly toward the village of Hythe. The tide was at the full, and a faint breeze slightly rippled the magnificent expanse of water which glanced and sparkled in the bright moon and starlight of a cloudless autumn sky. My attention was not long absorbed by the beauty of the scene, peerless as I deemed it; for unless my eyes strangely deceived me, the _Blue-eyed Maid_ had returned, and quietly anchored off Weston. She appeared to have but just brought up; for the mainsail, three new patches in which chiefly enabled me to recognize her, was still flapping in the wind, and it appeared to me--though from the distance, and the shadow of the dark back-ground of woods in which she lay, it was difficult to speak with certainty--that she was deeply laden. There was not a moment to be lost; and fortunately, just in the nick of time, a boat with two watermen approached the platform steps. I tendered them a guinea to put me on board the smack off Weston--an offer which they eagerly accepted; and I was soon speeding over the waters to her. My uniform must have apprised the Barnabys of the nature of the visit about to be paid them; for when we were within about a quarter of a mile of their vessel, two figures, which I easily recognized to be Old Barnaby and his grandson, jumped into a boat that had been loading alongside, and rowed desperately for the shore, but at a point considerably further up the river, toward Itchen. There appeared to be no one left on board the _Blue-eyed Maid_, and the shore-confederates of the smugglers did not show themselves, conjecturing, doubtless, as I had calculated they would, upon my having plenty of help within signal call. I therefore determined to capture the boat first, and return with her to the cutter. The watermen, excited by the chase, pulled with a will; and in about ten minutes we ran alongside the Barnaby's boat, jumped in, and found her loaded to the gunwale with brandy kegs.

"Fairly caught at last, old fellow!" I exclaimed exultingly, in reply to the maledictions he showered on us. "And now pull the boat's head round, and make for the _Blue-eyed Maid_, or I'll run you through the body."

"Pull her head round yourself," he sullenly rejoined, as he rose from the thwart and unshipped his oar. "It's bad enough to be robbed of one's hard arnings athout helping the thieves to do it."

His refusal was of no consequence: the watermen's light skiff was made fast astern, and in a few minutes we were pulling steadily toward the still motionless cutter. Old Barnaby was fumbling among the tubs in search, as he growled out, of his pea-jacket; his hopeful grandson was seated at the stern whistling the then popular air of the "Woodpecker" with great energy and perfect coolness; and I was standing with my back toward them in the bow of the boat, when the stroke-oarsman suddenly exclaimed: "What are you at with the boat's painter, you young devil's cub?" The quick mocking laugh of the boy, and the words, "Now, grandfer, now!" replied to him. Old Barnaby sprang into the boat which the lad had brought close up to the stern, pushing her off as he did so with all his strength; and then the boy, holding the painter or boat-rope, which he had detached from the ring it had been fastened to, in his hand, jumped over the side; in another instant he was hauled out of the water by Old Barnaby, and both were seated and pulling lustily, and with exulting shouts, round in the direction of the _Blue-eyed Maid_, before we had recovered from the surprise which the suddenness and completeness of the trick we had been played excited. We were, however, very speedily in vigorous chase; and as the wind, though favorable, and evidently rising, was still light, we had little doubt of success, especially as some precious minutes must be lost to the smuggler in getting under weigh, neither jib nor foresail being as yet set. The watermen bent fiercely to their oars; and heavily laden as the boat was, we were beginning to slip freely through the water, when an exclamation from one of the men announced another and more perilous trick that the Barnabys had played us. Old Barnaby, in pretending to fumble about for his jacket, had contrived to unship a large plug expressly contrived for the purpose of sinking the boat whenever the exigences of their vocation might render such an operation advisable; and the water was coming in like a sluice. There was no help for it, and the boat's head was immediately turned toward the shore. Another vociferous shout rang in our ears as the full success of their scheme was observed by the Barnabys, replied to of course by the furious but impotent execrations of the watermen. The boat sank rapidly; and we were still about a hundred yards from the shore when we found ourselves splashing about in the water, which fortunately was not more than up to the armpits of the shortest of us, but so full of strong and tangled seaweed, that swimming was out of the question; and we had to wade slowly and painfully through it, a step on a spot of more than usually soft mud plumping us down every now and then over head and ears. After reaching the shore and shaking ourselves, we found leisure to look in the direction of the _Blue-eyed Maid_, and had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her glide gracefully through the water as she stood down the river, impelled by the fast-freshening breeze, and towing the watermen's boat securely at her stern.

There were no means of pursuit; and after indulging in sundry energetic vocables hardly worth repeating, we retreated in savage discomfiture toward Weston, plentifully sprinkling the grass and gravel as we slowly passed along; knocked up the landlord of a public house, and turning in as soon as possible, happily exchanged our dripping attire for warm blankets and clean sheets, beneath the soothing influence of which I, for one, was soon sound asleep.

Day had hardly dawned when we were all three up, and overhauling the mud and weeds--the tide was quite gone out--for the captured boat and tubs. They had vanished utterly: the fairies about Weston had spirited them away while we slept, leaving no vestige whatever of the spoil to which we had naturally looked as some trifling compensation for the night's mishap, and the loss of the watermen's boat, to say nothing of the sousing we had got. It was a bad business certainly, and my promise to provide my helpmates with another boat, should their own not be recovered, soothed but very slightly their sadly-ruffled tempers. But lamentations were useless, and, after the lugubrious expression of a dismal hope for better luck next time, we separated.

This pleasant incident did not in the least abate my anxiety to get once more within hailing distance of the Barnabys; but for a long time my efforts were entirely fruitless, and I had begun to think that the _Blue-eyed Maid_ had been permanently transferred to another and less vigilantly watched station, when a slight inkling of intelligence dispelled that fear. My plan was soon formed. I caused it to be carelessly given out on shore that the _Rose_ had sprung her bowsprit in the gale a day or two before, and was going the next afternoon into Portsmouth to get another. In pursuance of this intention, the _Rose_ soon after noon slipped her moorings, and sailed for that port; remained quietly there till about nine o'clock in the evening, and then came out under close-reefed storm canvas, for it was blowing great guns from the northward, and steered for the Southampton river. The night was as black as pitch; and but for the continuous and vivid flashes of lightning, no object more than a hundred yards distant from the vessel could have been discerned. We ran up abeam of Hythe without perceiving the object of our search, then tacked, stood across to the other side, and then retraced our course. We were within a short distance of Hamble River, when a prolonged flash threw a ghastly light upon the raging waters, and plainly revealed the _Blue-eyed Maid_, lying-to under the lee of the north shore, and it may be about half a mile ahead of us. Unfortunately she saw us at the same moment, and as soon as way could be got upon her she luffed sharply up, and a minute afterward was flying through the water in the hope of yet escaping her unexpected enemy. By edging away to leeward I contrived to cut her off effectually from running into the channel by the Needles passage; but nothing daunted, she held boldly on without attempting to reduce an inch of canvas, although, from the press she carried, fairly buried in the sea. Right in the course she was steering, the _Donegal_, a huge eighty-gun ship, was riding at anchor off Spithead. Old Barnaby, who, I could discern by his streaming white hairs, was at the helm, in his anxiety to keep as well to windward of us as possible, determined, I suppose, to pass as closely as he prudently could under the stern of the line-of-battle ship. Unfortunately, just as the little cutter was in the act of doing so, a furious blast of wind tore away her jib as if it had been cobweb; and, pressed by her large mainsail, the slight vessel flew up into the wind, meeting the _Donegal_ as the huge ship drove back from a strain which had brought her half way to her anchors. The crash was decisive, and caused the instant disappearance of the unfortunate smuggler. The cry of the drowning men, if they had time to utter one, was lost amid the raging of the tempest; and although we threw overboard every loose spar we could lay hands on, it was with scarcely the slightest hope that such aid could avail them in that wild sea. I tacked as speedily as possible, and repassed the spot; but the white foam of the waves, as they leaped and dashed about the leviathan bulk of the _Donegal_, was all that could be perceived, eagerly as we peered over the surface of the angry waters. The _Rose_ then stood on, and a little more than an hour afterward was safely anchored off Hythe.

The boy Barnaby, I was glad to hear a day or two afterward, had not accompanied his father and grandfather in the last trip made by the _Blue-eyed Maid_, and had consequently escaped the fate which had so suddenly overtaken them, and for which it appeared that the smuggling community held me morally accountable. This was to be expected; but I had too often and too lately been familiar with death at sea in every shape, by the rage of man as well as that of the elements, to be more than slightly and temporarily affected by such an incident; so that all remembrance of it would probably have soon passed away but for an occurrence which took place about a month subsequently. One of the officers of the shore-force received information that two large luggers, laden with brandy and tobacco from Guernsey, were expected the following night on some point of the coast between Hamble and Weston; and that as the cargoes were very valuable, a desperate resistance to the coast-guard, in the event of detection, had been organized. Our plan was soon arranged. The _Rose_ was sent away with barely enough men to handle her, and with the remainder of the crew, I, as soon as night fell, took up a position a little above Netley Abbey. Two other detachments of the coast-guard were posted along the shore at intervals of about a mile, all of course connected by signal-men not more than a hundred yards apart. There was a faint starlight, but the moon would not rise till near midnight; and from this circumstance, as well as from the state of the tides, we could pretty well calculate when to expect our friends, should they come at all. It was not long before we were quite satisfied, from the stealthy movements of a number of persons about the spot, that the information we had received was correct. Just after eleven o'clock a low, peculiar whistle, taken up from distance to distance, was heard; and by placing our ears to the ground, the quick jerk of oars in the rullocks was quite apparent. After about five minutes of eager restlessness, I gave the impatiently-expected order; we all emerged from our places of concealment, and with cautious but rapid steps advanced upon the by this time busy smugglers. The two luggers were beached upon the soft sand or mud, and between forty and fifty men were each receiving two three-gallon kegs, with which they speeded off to the carts in waiting at a little distance. There were also about twenty fellows ranged as a guard, all armed as efficiently as ourselves. I gave the word; but before we could close with the astonished desperadoes, they fired a pistol volley, by which one seaman, John Batley, a fine, athletic young man, was killed, and two others seriously wounded. This done, the scoundrels fled in all directions, hotly pursued, of course. I was getting near one of them, when a lad, who was running by his side, suddenly turned, and raising a pistol, discharged it at my head. He fortunately missed his mark, though the whistle of the bullet was unpleasantly close. I closed with and caught the young rascal, who struggled desperately, and to my extreme surprise, I had almost written dismay, discovered that he was young Barnaby! It was not a time for words, and hastily consigning the boy to the custody of the nearest seaman, with a brief order to take care of him, I resumed the pursuit. A bootless one it proved. Favored by their numbers, their perfect acquaintance with the hedge-and-ditch neighborhood, the contrabandists all contrived to escape. The carts also got off, and our only captures were the boy, the luggers, which there had been no time to get off, and their cargoes, with the exception of the few kegs that had reached the carts.

The hunt after the dispersed smugglers was continued by the different parties who came in subsequently to our brush with them, so that after the two wounded seamen had been carried off on litters, and a sufficient guard left in the captured boats, only two men remained with me. The body of John Batley was deposited for the present in one of the luggers, and then the two sailors and myself moved forward to Itchen with the prisoner, where I intended to place him in custody for the night.

The face of the lad was deadly pale, and I noticed that he had been painfully affected by the sight of the corpse; but when I addressed him, his expressive features assumed a scornful, defying expression. First ordering the two men to drop astern out of hearing, I said: "You will be hanged for your share in this night's work, young man, depend upon it."

"Hanged!" he exclaimed in a quick, nervous tone; "hanged! You say that to frighten me! It was not I who shot the man! You know that; or perhaps," he added with a kind of hysterical cry, "perhaps you want to kill me as you did father."

"I have no more inclination, my poor boy," I answered, "to injure you than I had to harm your father. Why, indeed, should I have borne him any ill-will?"

"Why should you? Oh, I know very well!"

"You know more than I do then; but enough of this folly. I wish, I hardly know why, to save you. It was not you, I am quite aware, that fired the fatal shot, but that makes no difference as to your legal guilt. But I think if you could put us on the track of your associates, you might yourself escape."

The lad's fine eyes perfectly lightened with scorn and indignation: "Turn informer!" he exclaimed. "Betray them that loved and trusted me! Never--if they could hang me a thousand times over!"

I made no answer, and nothing more was said till we had reached and were passing the Abbey ruins. The boy then abruptly stopped, and with quivering voice, while his eyes filled with tears, said: "I should like to see my mother."

"See your mother! There can be no particular objection to that; but she lives further on at Weston, does she not?"

"No, we have sold off, and moved to Aunt Diaper's, at Netley, up yonder. In a day or two we should have started for Hull, where mother's father's brother lives, and I was to have been 'prenticed to the captain of a Greenlander; but now," he continued with an irrepressible outburst of grief and terror, "Jack Ketch will, you say, be my master, and I shall be only 'prenticed to the gallows."

"Why, if this be so, did your mother permit you to join the lawless desperadoes to whom you owe your present unhappy and degraded position?"

"Mother did not know of it; she thinks I am gone to Southampton to inquire about the day the vessel sails for Hull. Mother will die if I am hanged!" exclaimed the lad with a renewed burst of passionate grief; "and surely you would not kill _her_?"

"It is not very likely I should wish to do so, considering that I have never seen her."

"Oh yes--yes, you have!" he sharply rejoined. "Then perhaps you do not know! Untie or cut these cords," he added, approaching close to me and speaking in a low, quick whisper; "give me a chance: mother's girl's name was Ellen Dible!"

Had the lad's fettered arm been free, and he had suddenly dealt me a blow with a knife or dagger, the stroke could not have been more sharp or terrible than these words conveyed.

"God of mercy!" I exclaimed, as the momently-arrested blood again shot through my heart with reactive violence, "can this be true?"

"Yes, yes--true, quite true!" continued the boy, with the same earnest look and low, hurried speech. "I saw, when your waistcoat flew open in the struggle just now, what was at the end of the black ribbon. You will give me a chance for mother's sake, won't you?"

A storm of grief, regret, remorse, was sweeping through my brain, and I could not for a while make any answer, though the lad's burning eyes continued fixed with fevered anxiety upon my face.

At last I said--gasped rather: "I can not release you--it is impossible; but all that can be done--all that can--can legally be done, shall be--" The boy's countenance fell, and he was again deadly pale. "You shall see your mother," I added. "Tell Johnson where to seek her; he is acquainted with Netley." This was done, and the man walked briskly off upon his errand.

"Come this way," I said, after a few minutes' reflection, and directing my steps toward the old ruined fort by the shore, built, I suppose, as a defense to the abbey against pirates. There was but one flight of steps to the summit, and no mode of egress save by the entrance from whence they led. "I will relieve you of these cords while your mother is with you. Go up to the top of the fort. You will be unobserved, and we can watch here against any foolish attempt at escape."

Ten minutes had not elapsed when the mother, accompanied by Johnson, and sobbing convulsively, appeared. Roberts hailed her, and after a brief explanation, she ascended the steps with tottering but hasty feet, to embrace her son. A quarter of an hour, she had been told, would be allowed for the interview.

The allotted time had passed, and I was getting impatient, when a cry from the summit of the fort or tower, as if for help to some one at a distance, roused and startled us. As we stepped out of the gateway, and looked upward to ascertain the meaning of the sudden cry, the lad darted out and sped off with surprising speed. One of the men instantly snatched a pistol from his waist-belt, but at a gesture from me put it back. "He can not escape," I said. "Follow me, but use no unnecessary violence." Finding that we gained rapidly upon him, the lad darted through a low, narrow gateway, into the interior of the abbey ruins, trusting, I imagined, to baffle us in the darkness and intricacy of the place. I just caught sight of him as he disappeared up a long flight of crumbling, winding steps, from which he issued through a narrow aperture upon a lofty wall, some five or six feet wide, and overgrown with grass and weeds. I followed in terrible anxiety, for I feared that in his desperation he would spring off and destroy himself. I shouted loudly to him for God's sake to stop. He did so within a few feet of the end of the wall. I ran quickly toward him, and as I neared him he fell on his knees, threw away his hat, and revealed the face of--Ellen Dible!

I stopped, bewildered, dizzy, paralyzed. Doubtless the mellowing radiance of the night softened or concealed the ravages which time must have imprinted on her features; for as I gazed upon the spirit-beauty of her upturned, beseeching countenance, the old time came back upon me with a power and intensity which an hour before I could not have believed possible. The men hailed repeatedly from below, but I was too bewildered, too excited, to answer: their shouts, and the young mother's supplicating sobs--she seemed scarcely older than when I parted from her--sounded in my ears like the far-off cries and murmurs of a bewildering, chaotic dream. She must have gathered hope and confidence from the emotion I doubtless exhibited, for as soon as the confusion and ringing in my brain had partially subsided, I could hear her say: "You will save my boy--my only son: for my sake, you will save him?"

Another shout from the men below demanded if I had got the prisoner. "Ay, ay," I mechanically replied, and they immediately hastened to join us.

"Which way--which way is he gone?" I asked as the seamen approached.

She instinctively caught my meaning: "By the shore to Weston," she hurriedly answered; "he will find a boat there."

The men now came up: "The chase has led us astray," I said: "look there."

"His mother, by jingo!" cried Johnson. "They must have changed clothes!"

"Yes: the boy is off--to--to Hamble, I have no doubt. You both follow in that direction: I'll pursue by the Weston and Itchen road."

The men started off to obey this order, and as they did so, I heard her broken murmur of "Bless you, Robert--bless you!" I turned away, faint, reeling with excitement, muttered a hasty farewell, and with disordered steps and flaming pulse hurried homeward. The mother I never saw again: the son at whose escape from justice I thus weakly, it may be criminally, connived, I met a few years ago in London. He is the captain of a first-class ship in the Australian trade, and a smarter sailor I think I never beheld. His mother is still alive, and lives with her daughter-in-law at Chelsea.

AMERICAN NOTABILITIES.[11]

PROFESSOR AGASSIZ.