THE OLD FAMILIAR FLAG.
When spring and sunshine came again, Justin began to lay out new garden
beds and to put in the seeds for early vegetables.
And Judith, to her heart’s delight, began what she called her “spring
claning.” But first of all, as their boxes of hard brown soap had nearly
given out, Judith showed her skill in the manufacture of soft soap from
lye made of wood ashes, and grease melted from kitchen fat.
When she had succeeded in this, she commenced her “claning.” Every
housekeeper knows what that process is in the hands of a skillful woman;
so it is enough to say that Judith accomplished the task in the best
possible manner; and that at the end of a week’s work, the house and all
within and around it was as clean and neat as human skill and human
hands could make it. White curtains replaced the red ones at all the
windows; and the winter carpets were stowed away and the floors were
covered with the matting that Justin had manufactured from the long
fibres of the palm leaves during the winter months.
While Judith had been engaged in the housecleaning Britomarte had
employed herself in laying out the front yard in parterres and planting
them with flower seeds.
And Justin, in the intervals of his field and garden work, built a neat
cover over a clear spring at a short distance from the house; he built
it of stone for coolness, and dug a channel for the spring to flow
through, and paved and cemented it, so that the pans of milk and cream
and pots of butter could be set in the running water. Adjoining the
dairy was a temporary shed, where the cow could be driven to be fed and
milked in bad weather.
“Sure, it’s all beautiful entirely; and I wish Crummie could go on
giving millik foriver, so I do! But that can’t be expicted, and sure she
must go dhry some day, and thin whativer shall we do? Och-hone!” cried
Judith, as she contemplated her new dairy, and felt herself divided
between delight in its acquisition and dread of the calamity she had
foreshadowed.
“Never mind, Judith. ‘Sufficient unto the day,’ you know. And we cannot
tell what may happen before Crummie goes dry. We may all be safe at home
in our dear native land by that time,” said Justin, soothingly.
“Ah! Lord send that same! But aven so, all our labor here will be lost!
Och-hone! whichiver way one looks it’s heartbreaking, so it is!”
“Nonsense! whichever way one looks the prospect is encouraging! If we
are to spend our days here, we shall grow more and more comfortable
every day of our lives; if we are to be rescued from here, we shall
return to our own country. Be reasonable, Judith.”
“Yes, all that’s aisy said! But if Crummie goes dhry, what thin?”
whimpered Judith.
“We must do without milk. But Crummie is not dry yet, Judith,” laughed
Britomarte.
And then all returned from their inspection of the dairy and walked
toward the house.
On their way thither they stopped at the sheepfold to look at a young
lamb whose advent Justin had announced that morning. When they had
sufficiently admired the pretty little creature, they went on a little
further and paused at the poultry yard to see the broods of young
chickens newly hatched that were the especial care of the Irish girl.
“The darlints! look at thim! iviry little teeny roly-poly looking like a
little pod of cotton wool! forbye they are gold-colored instead of
white! And to think afther watching and feeding and caring for thim all
the summer, I shall maybe have to wring their necks in the autumn. Faix
meself thinks I shall niver have the heart to do it at all, at all!”
laughed Judith, as she gazed upon her favorites with a strange blending
of pride, pity and affection.
They turned from the poultry yard and continued their walk toward the
house.
As they went on Britomarte noticed that Justin kept his eyes fixed
uneasily upon the southwestern quarter of the heavens, where a few wild
feathery black clouds flecked the burning crimson of the sunset.
“What is it, Justin?” she inquired.
“I think we shall have a tornado to-night,” he answered, gravely.
And, even as he spoke, the clouds were driven up higher and blacker, and
the moans of the rising wind swept over the sea and land.
“Yes, we shall certainly have a tornado! Hurry on to the house, dear
Britomarte! I must go back and put the animals under cover,” said
Justin, suddenly turning back and hastening toward the sheepfold.
“And sure I must go and see if all the little chicks are safe in the
henhouse, and lock the door and stop the hole to keep them in it,” said
Judith, as suddenly hastening after him.
Britomarte, left alone, pursued her way toward the house, while darker
grew the sky and deeper moaned the wind.
In the few minutes that passed before she reached the house, the heavens
had grown black as night and formed a wild contrast to the ocean, which,
as far as the eye could see, was one mass of boiling snow-white foam,
across which the rising wind moaned and wailed as a prophetic spirit
lamenting the woe to come.
Britomarte hurried into the house and began to let down the windows and
close the shutters, hoping and praying all the time that Justin and
Judith might return before the storm should burst.
When she had securely fastened up the house, as it was now pitch dark,
she lighted the lamp and sat down to wait for the return of her friends.
The thunder rolled and broke, crash upon crash, like the explosion and
fall of a world overhead, at the same instant that the lightning shot
like shafts of fire through every crevice in the house, and the rain
came down as if the “windows of heaven” had been opened for another
flood.
“Heaven protect them!” exclaimed Britomarte, clasping her hands and
thinking of her friends.
Then she suddenly started up and ran to the door to listen for their
coming.
As she got there she heard rapid steps and hurried speech, followed
immediately by loud knocks.
She tore the door open, and they rushed in, Justin, Judith and—the
pirate captain—followed by the raving storm.
Justin, exerting all his great strength, closed and barred the door
against the wind and then turned to Britomarte and whispered hurriedly:
“Dear sister, go into your parlor. I will join you there presently and
explain.”
Britomarte followed his advice, and went back to the parlor, attended by
Judith.
“Judith,” as soon as they had reached the room and closed the door,
“tell me how Mr. Rosenthal came to bring that man here to-night? I am
glad that he has done so, but I wish to know how he happened to do it.”
A blinding flash of lightning that shot arrows of fire through every
crack and seam of the house, and a deafening crash of thunder, like the
explosion of a planet overhead, interrupted Judith in her answer.
Instead of replying, she muttered a pater and told her beads. And it was
not till all was temporarily silent again, and Miss Conyers had repeated
her question, that Judith answered:
“Divil a bit iv me knows at all, at all. Sure I was running back to the
house as fast as me two heels could fetch me, to get out iv the storm,
when I fell over thim both, close to the door here. And nivir a worrd
was spoken anyther side. And now, ma’am, wid your lave, I’ll just go and
change me clothes, for divil’s a dhry thread is on me at all, at all,
wid the rain that came down by bucket fulls.”
“Go at once, Judith. Hurry, or you may catch cold.”
“And so I will hurry, ma’am. Sure it’s a fray shower bath I’ve had
entirely—Glory be to Moses!”
This last exclamation was struck from Judith by a thunderbolt so much
more tremendous than anything which had preceded it, that there is no
simile to be found for it in heaven or on earth.
“That must have struck very near us,” said Britomarte, as the thunder
rolled down the abyss of space and died away.
“Mary, Star iv the Say! * * *S’int Pater, pray for us sinners!” * * *
muttered Judith, invoking all the saints she could think of in an
emergency.
“I think you are in more danger from damp clothing than from the
thunderbolts, Judith. Go and change,” said Miss Conyers.
“If we had only a blessed candle itself, this haythen iv a storm
couldn’t hurt us,” whimpered Judith.
“You have your Heavenly Father, who is the Lord of the heavens and the
earth. Appeal to Him. It is an awful storm!” said Miss Conyers, as
another blinding flash of lightning pierced every crevice of the closed
house, and another peal of thunder rolled and crashed over their heads,
and died away in the distance.
Judith told her beads as fast as she could pass them through her
fingers. She was shivering alike with terror of the tempest and
chilliness from her wet clothes. And Britomarte again urged her to go
and change them.
“Sure I daresn’t lave the room. If I’m to be sthruck down dead, I’d like
to be wid some one to pick me up and spake a good worrd to me parting
sperrit,” moaned the panic-stricken girl.
“Come, Judith, if you are afraid to go alone, I will attend you with
pleasure,” said Miss Conyers, kindly.
But just as she spoke Justin Rosenthal opened the door and entered the
room.
“I have come to explain to you how I happened to bring this man home,”
he said.
Before Britomarte could answer, another thunderbolt fell, seeming to
shake the very island from its foundation. When the noise of the report
had rolled away, Justin repeated his words, and Britomarte answered:
“Oh, Justin! as if the humane act of bringing a wretched man in out of a
storm like this required any explanation among Christians.”
“But has it not occurred to you that I might have put him into one of
the caverns?”
“Perhaps you came upon him at some distance from the mountain.”
“Yes, that was just the case. I met him near the house, just before I
met Judith. He was wet to the skin, shivering with cold, and tottering
with weakness. I think that he is very ill. I have brought him in, taken
off his fetters and his wet garments, and given him a change of dry
clothes and put him on my bed.”
“You did right, dear Justin, quite right. I could not like you if you
could treat even a bad man badly,” said Miss Conyers.
“Sure the wicked should be thrated according to their wickedness,” put
in Judith.
“If that were the rule, which of us would go unpunished?” inquired Miss
Conyers.
Again a blaze of lightning, a crash of thunder, a blast of wind and a
torrent of rain suspended their conversations. When this burst of the
storm was over, Justin said:
“Now, as soon as possible, I want Judith to prepare some gruel, or
panado, or broth, or whatever is good for a sick man.”
“Troth, Judith, will set him up with it, and you, too. Divil a bit iv me
will stir a fut to go nigh the iron stove in this baste of a storm, for
any cause, at all, at all, let alone to make gruel for a murthering
divil like that, which same would be a timpting iv Providence,” said
Judith, obstinately.
“I will go,” said Miss Conyers, and she arose to leave the room,
followed by Justin.
“Och-hone! Ow-oo!” howled Judith, running after them. “Sure will the two
iv ye lave me here, to be sthruck down alone wid the lightening, and all
for the sake iv a haythen iv a pirate? Faix, if ye must return good for
avil to yer enemies, ye needn’t do it by returning avil for good to yer
friends, sure.”
Britomarte, unmindful of the storm that must have iron stove, went to
work and prepared a bowl of nice hot gruel, which Justin took to the
sick man.
After that, Justin, with the help of Judith, moved the sofa from the
parlor into his room, for his own accommodation, while the pirate
occupied his bed.
And then, though the storm was still raging with tremendous violence,
Justin persuaded Britomarte and Judith to retire, assuring them that
they would be safer from the lightning in bed than anywhere else.
The storm raged through all the night.
The two women suffered great disturbance in their sleep.
At one moment they thought the tremendous thunderbolts that fell so near
must crash through roof and ceiling, and bury them in the ruins of their
dwelling; at another, that the wild wind which howled along the heavens
must lift their frail house, with all its inhabitants, and hurl it away
before the furious hurricane; at another, that the heavy sea which
cannonaded the rocks below must rise and overwhelm their home, and bear
it off to destruction.
But the mad night of tempest and terror passed at last.
Neither Judith nor Britomarte knew exactly when they dropped asleep,
except that it must have been near day, when the storm had expended its
violence, and they had exhausted their strength with watching.
It was late in the morning when Britomarte awoke. She arose without
disturbing Judith, who was still sleeping. She opened the blinds and
looked out. The sky was clear and bright, and the sun was shining down
upon a green and smiling land. The sea, indeed, was still high and
foaming. But a thousand birds were singing their morning songs of joy at
the passing of the storm.
At first, dazzled by the brilliancy of the scene, Britomarte saw nothing
of the damage that had been done. But as her vision cleared, she saw
that trees had been torn up by the roots, or blown down, or shred of
their branches that strewed the ground. Their outhouses and fences,
indeed, for their very lowliness, had escaped the fury of the storm, and
were standing safe. Such was the aspect of the land.
The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was one vast expanse of foam;
but it was evidently subsiding.
While Britomarte gazed from the window, Judith awoke with a start,
exclaiming:
“Lorrd forgive me, ma’am, are you up, and meself snoring away here in
bed? Why didn’t ye call me, sure?”
And with that she jumped up and began to dress herself in great haste.
“There was no such imminent need to break your rest after such a night
of disturbance, Judith,” said Miss Conyers, leaving the window and
beginning her own morning toilet.
“Sure it was a storm to be remimbered all the days of one’s life, so it
was,” said Judith.
“It is past,” answered Britomarte.
When they were dressed Britomarte went into the parlor to open the
windows and set the table, and Judith into the kitchen to make the fire
and get the breakfast.
Soon Justin came out of his room.
“Good-morning, sister! The dreadful night is over, thank Heaven! How did
you pass it?” he inquired of Britomarte.
“As Macbeth passed the night of Banquo’s murder, in ‘starts and flaws,’”
said Britomarte, smiling. “How is your sick man?”
“In a fever. We shall have to keep him here for a few days until he gets
better. I hope that Miss Riordan will not object to giving him a cup of
tea and a round of dry toast this morning.”
“Oh, no! Now that Judith’s panic has passed, she has come to her
senses,” said Miss Conyers, going into the kitchen to give the requisite
orders.
“I’ll jist tell ye what, ma’am! There was only eight barrels iv flour
saved out’n the wreck, and for nearly two years we three people have
been eating of it; and for more than six months we four, counting the
pirate, have been using it! And, though I’ve eked it out as well as I
could, wid using male and rice and vigitables, still it is getting low!
We’ve opened the last barrel, and this is the last loaf iv bread made
out iv it; and I want it to last till to-morrow, so I do! And now you
want to throw away a lot iv it in dhry toast for that haythen!” said the
indignant Irish girl, as soon as she had received Miss Conyers’ orders.
“Judith, I am ashamed of you! If it was our last loaf we should divide
with a sick man, though that sick man were the greatest miscreant on
earth! And with a whole barrel of flour, and when the flour gives out, a
whole hogshead of wheat in the grain.”
“Yis; but how is the whate to be ground at all, at all? Sure it will be
slow work grinding it in the coffeemill! Troth it’s to your own
interests I’m spaking—not mine!”
“I know it, Judith. But now do an act of charity, and procure the tea
and toast for the suffering sinner.”
“Sure I’ll do it to plaze ye, and for no other raison in life,” said
Judith, as she went about to execute the order.
When this refreshment was ready, Justin took it in to the sick man and
served him carefully before coming to his own breakfast.
Britomarte waited for Justin, and when he returned, the coffee, rice
muffins and broiled birds were brought in and they sat down to the table
to enjoy their morning meal.
After it was over, Justin took some books and carried them in to the
sick man, who seemed to be suffering from a severe cold and debility
more than any other illness. And then Justin went out to his work, which
upon this day consisted of clearing away the litter strewn all over the
ground by the storm of the past night.
Britomarte went into her chamber and sat down at her favorite window to
sew and to watch the sea.
She was turning a dress for Judith, and she pinned the end of it to her
apron while running up a long seam. Every time she found it necessary to
change the place of the pin, she raised her head and looked out at the
ocean.
How monotonous and solitary looked that ocean! No change ever came over
it except the change from storm to calm or from day to night, and _vice
versa_. No living thing ever appeared on it or above it except the
plunging fish and the sailing water fowl. But she loved it; and she
watched its gradual subsidence from passion to peace as she would have
watched the falling to sleep of some sufferer who was dear to her.
All the long forenoon she sat sewing and watching the ocean. Towards
noon it had become wonderfully calm, considering the recent storm.
Once, on changing the place of the pin that held her work, she looked up
and gazed far out to sea—far out to where the western horizon touched
the water. She held her breath—she strained her eyes—and then with a cry
she started up, threw down her work, ran into the parlor, caught up the
pocket telescope, rushed back to the window, kneeled down, drew out the
cylinders, rested it upon the window sill, trained it toward the western
horizon, and put her eye to the glass.
“Yes, it was a ship!—a ship of war; for she could see the guns—a ship of
the Union, for she could see the Stars and Stripes! And it was standing
in directly for the island!”
With a great cry of joy she dropped her head upon her hands and thanked
God.
Then she sprang up and ran out of the house to look for Justin. She ran
up and down, and all about, calling him at the top of her voice—calling
him as if she had lost her senses!—calling him until he heard her from
his distant post of labor; and came rushing in great alarm to meet her.
“What is it, Britomarte? Compose yourself, dear sister! I am here at
your side! You are safe. But what has happened? Has that man——”
“It is a ship!—it is a national ship!—bearing our own Stars and Stripes!
And she is steering for our own Cove! Oh, Justin!”
And Britomarte threw herself upon her brother’s breast and burst into
tears of rapture.
Justin pressed her to his heart again and again. Not even the arrival of
the long-desired, long-prayed-for ship could make him release her until
Judith came flying toward them to know if her young lady had gone mad or
what had gone wrong.
“It is a ship, Judith! Oh, Judith, it is a ship! And it bears our Stars
and Stripes!” said Britomarte, raising her head from Justin’s breast,
and releasing herself from his embrace.
“Praised be to all the saints!” piously ejaculated Judith.
“Praise be to the merciful lord of heaven and earth!” said Britomarte,
reverently.
Justin lifted his hat and said “Amen.”
And then all three hurried down to the beach by the cove to look for the
ship.
She was coming very fast. She was entering the cove! They could see her
colors well with the naked eye. When she had got a little into the cove,
where the water was smooth, she dropped anchor and let down a boat,
which was soon manned by an officer in the naval uniform of the United
States. A flagstaff, bearing the Stars and Stripes, was planted in the
stern. And the oarsmen pulled stoutly for the beach.
As the boats neared them, Justin raised his hat to salute the colors.
Britomarte waved her handkerchief; Judith followed suit, and all three
simultaneously cried out:
“Hail! hail! hail! to the flag!”
Their salutation was answered from the boat. The men rested on their
oars a moment, while they raised their hats and shouted:
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” three times three. And then they pulled faster
than ever for the shore.
The excitement of our party verged upon the madness of joy.
Britomarte’s rapture burst forth in song—the glorious “Star-Spangled
Banner!” and when she came to the chorus her companions by her side
joined her in singing:
“’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
And the men in the coming boat responded:
“’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long _shall_ it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
And the next instant the boat touched the strand, the officer sprang on
shore, and the men waved their hats with another prolonged:
“Hurrah!”