THE RETURN
THE breeze had fallen during the night so that it was nearly daylight
when the schooner came to anchor off Norfolk. The captain sent the
mate directly to carry the news of the young lady’s return to Colonel
Parker’s schooner. Colonel Parker himself was not on board, but the
lieutenant came at once out of his cabin, half dressed as he was, and
the mate told him the news. Mr. Maynard at once sent word ashore to
Colonel Parker, and then had himself rowed aboard the schooner on which
the young lady was.
Within an hour Colonel Parker came off from the town. The first man he
met when he stepped aboard the coaster was Lieutenant Maynard. “Why,
Maynard, is that you?” he said, and Mr. Maynard had never seen him
so overcome. He grasped the lieutenant’s hand and wrung it and wrung
it again. His fine, broad face twitched with the effort he made to
suppress his emotions. “Where is she?” he said, turning around almost
blindly to Captain Dolls, who, with his mate, had been standing at a
little distance looking on. “This way, your honor,” said the captain
with alacrity.
He led the way across the deck to the great cabin; Lieutenant Maynard
did not accompany them. “She’s in my cabin here, your honor,” said the
captain. “I let her have it, for ‘twas the best aboard. Her ladyship’s
asleep yet, I do suppose. If your honor’ll sit down here I’ll send my
wife into the cabin to wake her and to help her dress.”
“Never mind,” said the colonel, “where is she—in here?” He opened the
door and went into the cabin. She was lying upon the berth sleeping.
She had only loosened her clothes when she lay down the night before,
and she was lying fully dressed. “Nelly!” said Colonel Parker, leaning
over her, “Nelly!” She did not stir. He had not entirely closed the
door, and it stood a little ajar. Captain Dolls, in the great cabin
beyond, stood looking in, and for the moment Colonel Parker did not
notice him. “Nelly!” he said again. “Nelly!” and he laid his hand upon
her shoulder.
She stirred; she raised her arm; she drew the back of her hand across
her eyes; she opened her eyes and they looked directly into his face as
he leaned over her. “What is it?” she said, vacantly.
Colonel Parker was crying. “’Tis I—’tis thy poor father, Nelly.” The
tears were trickling down his cheeks, but he did not notice them.
Suddenly her vacancy melted and dissolved, and she was wide awake.
“Papa! O papa!” she cried, and instantly her arms were about his neck
and she was in his arms.
She cried and cried. Colonel Parker, still holding her with one arm,
reached in his pocket and drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes
and his cheeks. As he did so he caught sight of Captain Dolls standing
without in the great cabin looking in at them. The captain moved
instantly away, but Colonel Parker reached out and closed the door.
Presently she looked up into his face, her own face wet with tears.
“Mamma,” she said,—“how is poor mamma?”
“She is well—she is very well,” he said. “My dear! my dear!”
Once more she flung her arms about his neck. She pressed her lips to
his again and again, weeping tumultuously as she did so. “O papa, if
you only knew what I’ve been through!”
“I know—I know,” he said.
“Oh, but you can’t know all that I’ve been through—all the dreadful,
terrible things. They shot poor Mr. Dred, and he died. I saw them shoot
him,—I was in the boat,—I saw him die. Oh, papa! I can’t tell you
all. Oh, it was so terrible. He lay on the sand and died. There was
sand on the side of his face, and the young man, Jack, did not see it
to brush it off, and I could not do it, and there it was.”
“There! there!” said Colonel Parker, soothingly. “Don’t talk about it,
my dear. Tell me about other things. The sailor who came to bring me
off told me there was a young man—a lad—with you when they picked you
up down at the capes.”
“Yes,” she said, “that was late yesterday afternoon.”
“But the young man; is he the young man you call Jack?”
“Yes, that is he.”
“He is aboard here now, is he not? Who is he?”
So they talked together for a long time. She had lain down again, and
she held his hand in hers as he sat upon the edge of the berth beside
her. As they talked she stroked the back of his hand, and once she
raised it to her lips and kissed it.
A while later Jack was awakened from a sound sleep by some one shaking
him. He opened his eyes and saw that a rough, red face was bending
over just above him. In the first instant of waking he could not
remember where he was, or what face it was looking down at him. Then
he recognized Captain Dolls. He was, first of all, conscious of a
throbbing, beating pain in the palms of his hands. It seemed to him
that he had been feeling it all night.
[Illustration: “COLONEL PARKER REACHED AND LAID HIS HAND UPON JACK’S
SHOULDER. ‘AY,’ SAID HE, ‘TIS A GOOD HONEST FACE.’”]
“What is it?” he said. “What do you want?”
“Well,” said Captain Dolls, “we’re at Norfolk, and have been here for
three hours and more.”
“Norfolk!” said Jack, vaguely. “Are we, then, at Norfolk? How came we
there?” His mind was still clouded with the fumes of sleep.
Captain Dolls burst out laughing. “We got there by sailing,” he said.
“How else? But come! get up! Colonel Parker’s aboard, and he wants to
see you. He’s out in the great cabin now.”
Then Jack was instantly wide awake. “Very well,” he said, “then I’ll
go to him directly. Have you a bucket of water here that I may wash
myself? I’m not fit to go as I am.”
He stood lingering for a moment before he entered the cabin. He could
hear Colonel Parker’s voice within, and he shrank from entering, with a
sudden trepidation.
“Go on,” said Captain Dolls, who had followed him. “What d’ ye stop
for?” Then Jack opened the door and went in.
Some one rose as he entered; it was Colonel Parker. In a swift look
Jack saw that the young lady had been sitting beside her father. She
had been holding her father’s hand, and she released it as he arose.
Captain Doll’s wife was also in the cabin busily packing the young
lady’s clothes ready for her departure. Jack knew that Eleanor Parker
was looking at him, and he also saw in the glance that she had been
crying. Colonel Parker was gazing at him also. “Was it, then, one so
young as you,” he said, “who would dare to bring my Nelly away from
the villains? Come hither,” and as Jack came lingeringly forward
Colonel Parker reached out and laid a hand upon his shoulder, holding
it firmly. He looked long and steadily at Jack’s face. “Ay,” said he,
“’tis a good, honest face.” Jack was very conscious of the presence
of the captain’s wife, and it made him feel more embarrassed than he
would otherwise perhaps have been. He could not look up. “Ay,” said
Colonel Parker again, “’tis a good, honest face, and the face of an
honest young man. I am glad ‘twas such a good, honest soul that brought
our Nelly back to us. We shall never, never forget what you have
done—never forget it.”
His mood was still very warm with the emotions that had melted him.
“And that other preserver,” he said, “that other noble preserver who
gave his life that he might save my girl; never can I forget him. But
he is beyond anything that I can do to reward him and to bless him now.
I would that he were here, that I might show him, as I shall show you,
that we shall never forget what you have done for us—never forget
it.” In his softened mood, still holding Jack by the shoulder, he drew
out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and his face. Jack, knowing
that there were tears running down from the great man’s eyes, had not
dared to look up into his face, but it suddenly came into his mind to
remember how it was Dred who had shot and killed this man’s only son.
“Well,” said Colonel Parker, “we are just making ready to leave this
and to go aboard of my own vessel, and so back to Marlborough. If you
have anything to get ready you had better do so, for of course you go
along with us.”
“I have nothing to get ready,” said Jack. “There were two overcoats we
brought with us,—they belong to Captain Teach,—but I left them in the
yawl last night.”
“What does your ladyship intend doing with this petticoat?” said the
captain’s wife, holding up a mud-stained skirt. “Shall I bundle this up
with the others?”
“No,” said the young lady, “you need not do so, for I sha’n’t need
that any longer. Do you know, papa,” she said, “that was a part of
the clothes I wore when I tried to run away by myself down in North
Carolina, and ran into the swamp. ’Tis the mud from the swamp that
stains it so.”
Jack had sat down on the bench opposite to Colonel Parker and the
young lady. Every moment he was growing happier and happier. He had an
indefinable feeling that some great good was coming to him. His hands
hurt him very much. He awoke from his golden thoughts to hear Colonel
Parker saying to his daughter, “And now, my dear, if you are quite
ready, we will go.”
Lieutenant Maynard stood waiting at the open gangway as the three came
up out of the cabin. He took off his hat as the young lady approached.
“This is my daughter, Lieutenant Maynard,” said Colonel Parker. And the
lieutenant bowed low to her with a fine air, to which she replied with
as fine a courtesy. “And this,” said Colonel Parker, “is the young man
who brought her back—a fine, noble fellow, and a good, honest, comely
lad, too.”
“Why, then,” said the lieutenant, “I shall ask you to let me take your
hand. Give me your hand.” Jack reached out his throbbing palm to the
lieutenant, who took the hand and shook it firmly. “By zounds! you are
a hero,” he said. “See, sir,”—to Colonel Parker—“that is the boat
they escaped in—such a little open boat as that to come all the way
from Bath Town and through a storm, they tell me, in the lower sound.
We are going to tow it over to the schooner.”
He pointed down at the yawl as it lay alongside, fastened to the other
boat by the bow-line. Colonel Parker looked down into the empty boat.
There was the stain of blood still upon the seat where Dred had sat
when he was shot. The very emptiness of the boat as it lay there seemed
to speak all the more vividly of the tragedy that had been enacted in
it.
As they left the coaster, Jack sat in the stern of the boat not far
from Colonel Parker and the young lady. As he looked back he could
see the figures of Captain Dolls and his wife, of the barefoot mate
with his knit cap, and of Mr. Jackson standing at the gangway. The
yawl was towing behind them. His smarting palms throbbed and burned in
pulsations of pain, and he looked furtively down into one of his hands.
“Why, what is the matter with your hand, my lad?” Colonel Parker asked,
suddenly.
Jack blushed red and shut his fist tight. “I flayed them rowing, your
honor,” he said.
“While you were helping Nelly away?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Jack held it out reluctantly, conscious of the rough knuckles and
nails, and Colonel Parker took it into his soft, white grasp. “Why,”
he exclaimed, “what a dreadful, terrible sore hand is this! Let me
see t’other. And did you suffer this in helping Nelly get away? Look,
lieutenant, at the poor boy’s hands. They must be salved and dressed as
soon as we get him aboard the schooner.”
“Let me see, my lad,” said the lieutenant.