HUTTON OF THE ISLES.
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong,
As earth’s first kings—the Argo’s gallant sailors—
Heroes in history, and gods in song.
_—Halleck._
The Huttons, proprietors by pre-emption right of St. Clara’s town, bay,
and isle for more than two hundred years, had settled among the islets
of the bay many years previous to the date of that patent by which James
I. granted the province of Maryland to George Calvert.
At the commencement of the American Revolution a certain Captain Hugh
Hutton, the then representative and head of the family, fired with an
enthusiastic passion for liberty, or—fighting! sold a great portion of
his patrimony, and purchased, fitted out, and manned a privateer, and
sailed against the British flag.
He served gallantly and with various success during the whole period of
the war.
At the glorious close of the revolutionary struggle, ruined in fortune
and riddled with wounds, Captain Hugh Hutton, the sailor-patriot and
martyr, retired to the last foothold of his once kingly estate, to the
little island of St. Clara’s, otherwise called Hutton’s Island—there to
die in obscurity.
A few days previous to his death he called his only son, Hugh, to his
bedside, and enjoined him never to demand—never even to accept
compensation from Congress for his services and his losses during the
war.
“My fortune, my labor, my life-blood were not sold, but given to the
cause of liberty and of my country,” he said, and these were the last
words of the sailor-patriot.
Hugh Hutton, the son, and now the sole representative of the family, was
at this time about eighteen years old. Having lost his mother at an
early age he had been taken by his father as a companion in all his sea
voyages.
He had sailed with him in his first privateering expedition against the
British ships. At first as a childish and innocent spectator, afterward
as a youthful and enthusiastic actor, he had figured in all the
sea-fights in which his father’s ships had been engaged during the whole
course of the war.
Thus all education, except that exclusively of the sailor and soldier,
had been denied him. And thus Hugh Hutton, though tall, strong,
handsome, and gallant, like all his race, was yet rude, unschooled, and
unpolished.
He was faithful to the dying injunctions of his father. With many claims
upon his country’s remembrance and gratitude he set forth none.
Loving the ocean with the passionate enthusiasm of all his father’s
nature, he took to it as his natural element.
First he engaged in the humble capacity of mate on board the _Little
Agnes_, a small schooner plying between Hutton Town and Baltimore or
Alexandria, as the freight or market demanded.
After serving many years in this situation, an unexpected turn in the
wheel of fortune gave him the means of purchasing a larger vessel of his
own, and of extending the area of his trade and the length of his
voyages. This was the death of the old ship-owner and captain with whom
he had sailed for many years, and who, dying, left him all his moderate
possessions on condition of his marrying his only daughter, then a mere
child of fifteen years of age, and constituted him her guardian until
the marriage. The heart of the brave young sailor had seldom or never
turned on love or marriage—it was not the nature of his free, wild,
adventurous race. But when he had buried his old captain in Baltimore,
where he died, and taken the command of the little schooner to return
home to Hutton Town to find his little ward and wife—then—ah! then all
sorts of strange, sweet, solemn, and tender thoughts of beauty, and
love, and home, and repose swarmed about his heart.
It was late in the afternoon of a glorious October day that the
schooner, with her crew, put into the harbor of Hutton’s Inlet. In
striking contrast to the warm-hued, deep-toned, refulgent natural
scenery was the cold, white front of a mansion house standing upon a
distant hill against the western horizon, and girt around with its old
ancestral trees. This was Mount Calm, the seat of General Aaron Garnet.
The little schooner, with its white sail, glided swiftly and smoothly
into the inlet, and cast anchor near the hamlet. Leaving the vessel in
charge of the mate, Captain Hutton took a boat and went on shore. A
crowd of villagers, as usual, thronged the beach, anxious to hear and to
tell the news, and hearty greetings and noisy questions met him as he
stepped upon the strand, such questions as:
“How is the old captain? How is old Seabright? Why don’t he come
ashore?—though there is evil news enough to meet him when he does come!
Where is the jolly old dog, then? I guess he’s wanting up at home
there?” were some of the storm of words hailed upon him.
“Friends,” replied the young sailor, shaking hands right and left as he
pushed on, “our old captain is outward bound to that distant seaport
whence no voyager ever returns. Permit me now to go on and break the sad
news to his child.”
“Stay! Poor old man, when did he die? What ailed him?” exclaimed two or
three of the most persevering, detaining him.
“To-night, friends—to-night at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ I will tell you
all about it. Permit me now to pass on and take his last letter to his
daughter,” said the skipper good-humoredly, elbowing and pushing his way
through the crowd.
“Stop! What’s to become of the young girl—pretty Agnes Seabright? How
did he leave his bit of property?”
“To-night, comrades—to-night, at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ I will meet you.
You shall have a supper, and drink to the memory of the outward-bound
while I tell you all about it. I must go now!” impatiently exclaimed the
captain, shaking off the pertinacious, and hastening away up the
straggling street of the hamlet.
Hugh Hutton, like all his fathers, was far above the usual height of
men—indeed, all his characteristics were not only marked, but
extravagant; thus he was very tall, broad-shouldered and deep-chested,
very muscular and thin, with a very dark complexion, with black hair and
eyes, and very high, commanding features. Honest, brave, and frank even
to rashness, generous even to extravagance, unselfish to the degree that
the worldly-wise would call fatuity; yet he had never known a mother’s
care, a sister’s companionship, and his indifference to home joys was as
profound as his ignorance of love and of woman. Brought up on a ship’s
deck by a rough sailor father, he learned to love the ocean and wild
liberty with a profound and passionate enthusiasm.
But now he had a little girl left to him. He must make a home for her,
take care of her, and make her happy if he could. This was a very novel
duty indeed, and set him very keenly to thinking. The first natural,
strange, sweet fancies that had been awakened by the idea of this lovely
living legacy had fallen asleep again, and left him to his normal, free,
glad, but hard, unloving nature. And now the thought of pretty Agnes
Seabright fretted him like a fetter.
He pursued his walk up through the village, up over the hills rising one
beyond the other, until he came to the arm of the forest stretching
around the base of that tallest distant hill, upon which stood the
white-fronted mansion house of Mount Calm. He pursued his walk on
through this arm of the forest, ascending the hill until he came to a
small cleared space, in which was a little cot inclosed within a narrow
garden and nearly hidden with trees. He opened the small gate and passed
up the narrow walk between rows of marigolds, crimson, white, and yellow
chrysanthemums, scarlet verbena and other bright fall flowers, to the
little door at which he rapped.