“Poor Lily-face!” said the child, speaking as it were to herself, “how

can I let thee go! Morning and evening, since I could toddle, I have put

my arms around thy glossy neck, broken the ears of corn into small bits,

and pressed the golden oat-sheaves through thy manger—and thou hast

neighed and put thy face against mine, for thou lovest me, as I thee.

Poor Lily-face! I cannot let thee go!”

“What if thou mightst look in the corner here and see the bright,

shining face of a pretty clock instead of the cobwebs and the hanks of

yarn—if thou couldst hear the pleasant tick, and ever and anon the

musical ring of the hours—a clock, bethink thee, bright of color as the

autumn oak-leaves, and tall as thy grandam.”

“It would be pretty and comforting, surely,” said the child, “for the

ticking and the stroke of the hours would be company in the lonesome

nights, but I would not give Lily-face, that knows me when I speak, and

looks at me and loves me, to have a clock bright as the oaken autumn

leaves, and tall as thou, grandam, in place of the hanks of yarn and the

cobwebs.”

“Thou knowest not thy own mind,” said Dame Margery; “the clock will

neither eat nor drink, but will tell us the time of day and night; which

Lily-face hath not wit to do. By the light of the last sunset, I have no

mind that she shall longer stamp in that stall of hers.

“The miller hath a clock,” she continued, “which ticked at his

grandfather’s funeral, and hath kept the time of many funerals, and

marriages, too, since; a pretty piece of mechanism, as I saw with my own

eyes, and taller than I; and the miller wanteth the mare for the

tread-wheel, and to have her his own, will barter the pretty clock.”

“It must be as thou sayest, but I have little pleasure in the plan,”

said Charity. “Hath not the miller a milch cow that he would barter in

place of the clock?”

“Thou growest officious,” answered the dame. “Would not the cow eat oats

and corn as well as Lily-face? And have we not hitherto drunken water

and flourished, and must we needs have milk?”

Charity spoke no more, but sat turning the wheel for pastime—for the

fleece was finished, and the mind of the dame was not to be altered by

childish fancies, as was manifest from her rising and removing the hanks

of yarn to another peg, and brushing with her hand the cobwebs.

The wind kept moaning along the woods and rattled the broken door and

window—the coals grew fainter and fainter and died, and the gray ashes

blew over the feet of Margery and the child as they sat silently

musing—the one of the pretty clock that it would cost nothing to keep,

the other of poor Lily-face; haply at times there came a thought of the

log-fire and the tallow-candles, and the salver of red apples which

Master Lawrence had served with such a sweet grace.

The next day came the miller, and wrapt in a great bed-quilt and laid in

the bottom of his cart was the clock. Margery clapt her hands in glee

when she saw it, but Charity sighed as she sat close on the hearth-stone

for the sake of its little warmth, though she felt not the cold now.

Faster and faster spun round the wheel, and lower and lower she bowed

down her head to conceal the tears—but it would not do. When she heard

the neigh of poor Lily-face, and knew that her hands would never feed

her any more, she hurried to the window, and pressing her face against

the pane, she could see her dear pet shrinking consciously from the hand

that tied the strong rope about her neck and led her away. Margery was

busy with dusting the bright face of her pretty clock, and looked not

forth even when the long-drawn howl of Wolf-slayer (who, lifting her

fore paws on the clapboard gate, manifested her sorrow as a dumb brute

may) smote dismally upon her ears.

The days came and went and Charity spun on the same, but Margery brought

forth no new fleece. Scarcely had she stirred or spoken since the

treasure came—even when the girl heaped on dry sticks and broken

branches till the warmth filled all the house, she did not reprove.

Then Charity bethought her that the old dame had scarcely tasted food

for days, and looking upon her, she saw that her eyes waxed dim and her

countenance pale, and a great fear came over the child’s heart; and

setting aside her wheel, she ran fast to farmer Jocelin’s, and begged a

cup of honey and a pitcher of sweet milk, telling of the strange

disorder that possessed Dame Margery.

As she went homeward, Master Lawrence ran from his work in the field and

bore the pitcher of milk, and comforted her with hopes that her grandam

was less ill than she feared.

Without question Margery partook of the milk and honey; and when

Lawrence brought sticks and logs and heaped the fire, she laid her

withered hand on his head and said, “Thou art a kind boy and good.” She

then took a key from her bosom and told Charity to unlock the chest and

bring forth blankets—as many as would keep her warm.

“Surely, grandam, thou art distraught,” said Charity, as she hastened to

obey. But the sweet smile of intelligence that met her inquiring glance

belied her fears; and as she wrapt the warm covering about the withered

form, she said, “Nay, child, I am sane at last—but too late.”

At midnight she ceased to speak or to be conscious. Kind hands presently

removed the thick covering, and spread over her a dainty white sheet;

but she was warm enough; others brought from the loft the boards of

seasoned walnut wood, and the next midnight Charity and Wolf-slayer—the

one at the head and the other at the feet, watched by the old dame’s

coffin.

The following day came the miller with Lily-face harnessed in his little

cart; he went forward, and a train of neighbors followed—amongst them

Charity, sorrowfulest of all.

When the summer came, she planted bright blossoming shrubs about the

grave, and never in her life had Margery half so pretty a house as this

narrow one.

The old house was given up to the rats and the winds, after the removal

of the cheat, and the clock, and the hanks of yarn that hung all along

the rafters. In course of time it fell into a heap; and one day, as

Charity, who dwelt not far away, sat on the heap of stones where the

hearth-stone had been, she saw a fair-faced youth searching up and down

the lanes, over the meadows, and through the hedges hard-by, as though

he missed something; but when he saw the girl, he left searching and

bent his steps toward her, and as he came near she knew him for Master

Lawrence—well grown, but with something of the boyish look and manners

yet. The prettiest of all the lambs of the flock was gone, and though he

had gone over all the pastures, he could not find it. The heart of

Charity was touched, and leaving her sorrowful musing, she joined in the

search.

Whether the stray lamb was found I know not, but as Charity crossed the

fields to go homeward under the twilight’s reddening wing, her hair was

full of daffodils and daisies, and a flush of wildering happiness was on

her cheek, that had never been there before.

When the harvest was gathered and the orchard fruits weighing down the

boughs, Charity rode to the market-town on a pretty brown jennet of her

own; and as she went homeward the horns of her saddle were hung with

great bundles; she had bought a white ribbon instead of a blue for the

new straw hat her fingers had been braiding so busily—a muslin gown,

that was white, too; a pair of pretty slippers, and a dozen other things

that I have not time to enumerate—enough, that the next full moon shone

upon Mistress Lawrence Jocelin.

Not a village maiden that would not have envied her but for her own

happiness, for all joined in the merry-making; a dozen tallow-candles

were burned at once, and more than one salver of red apples was served

round, with loaf-cakes and sweetmeats, and ripe broken nuts. Workmen

were employed to clear away the rubbish that had once been Dame

Margery’s house, and a pretty new cottage soon rose in its place; and

the next summer sweet shrubbery hedged it in, and myrtles and

honeysuckles curtained the windows; bees made honey from the flowers,

sleek cattle fed in the pastures, and in all the neighborhood there was

no home so full of comfort and plenty.

The hanks of yarn which Charity had spun long ago were taken to the

weaver’s and came back in rolls of damask and bright-flowered carpets;

the linen was taken from the chest, and the wool blankets; and after

being washed white as snow, and dried in the sun, were spread upon beds

soft as down could make.

When the second winter came round, the cottage was a-glow with

wood-fires and tallow-candles; and in place of the starved Wolf-slayer,

there lay before the hearth, in a cradle of white willows, the plumpest

and fairest baby that ever Lawrence and Charity Jocelin had seen.

* * * * *

THE PHANTOM FIELD.

BY O. I. VICTOR.

The snow lies deep upon the ground,

All icy is the air;

The trees a winding-sheet have found

By the wild wind’s care.

The beast stands trembling in his shed—

The sheep within his fold:

Without, all life is stiff and dead—

Within, all chill and cold.

Why is the air so cold to-night?

The owl shrinks in his nest!

Why does the moon gleam out so bright?

The traveler is at rest!

O, keen the wind and cold the air

Above the Phantom Field!

Yet ghostly forms are stalking there,

Armed with a sword and shield.

And gathering slow in serried rank,

They turn toward the west:

Five thousand coffins guard each flank—

Five hundred stand abreast.

In battle rank, with noiseless tread,

They hurry to the height,

Where stand ten thousand other dead,

Uncoffined for the fight.

O, cold the wind and keen the air

Around the Phantom Height!

Yet spectre men are battling there

In fierce, exultant fight.

And shields are rent, and swords are bent,

And limbs bestrew the ground,

Yet skeletons, with strength unspent,

Strike where a breast is found.

And skulls are cleft on right and left

Till shines the morn o’erhead—

Till twice five thousand coffins stand

Alone, flanking the dead.

O, keen the wind and cold the air

That sweeps above the plain!

Yet must the hollow coffins bear

The skeletons again.

O’er the silent field they haste,

To gather limb and bone:

Though skulls and limbs are wide displaced,

Each coffin knows its own.

Soon every limb is gathered in—

Soon every lid is fast—

And falling into rank again

They turn toward the East.

And marching o’er the frozen plain,

With swift and gliding tread,

They stand beside the graves again

Where sleep the evil dead.

Two death’s-heads stand above each mound;

A fearful watch they keep!

The coffins sink into the ground,

Another year to sleep.

But when another year is fled—

When comes St. Stephen’s night,

The death’s-heads shall unloose their dead

To battle on the height.

And when five hundred years have passed,

The penance shall be done;

The skeletons shall sleep at last,

And moulder, limb and bone.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE.

BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH.

What more extolling from the tongue of Fame

Can Shakspeare need than his suggested name;

Who, in a volume so compactly writ,

Has hived the honey of all human wit.

Praise suits where merit in a corner lies,

But seems uncomely to th’acknowledged wise—

Praise suits where laboring art at times succeeds,

And the shrewd reader pardons as he reads;

But fails—in wonder—where the leaves dispense

Infinite resource of intelligence—

Where the great player, at his game of chess,

Frolicks through all to glorious success;

Thrids, with exulting ken, a boundless maze,

Plays with his kings, and kings it in his plays.

Swan of the Avon—genius of the Thames,

“That so didst take Eliza and [king] James;”

Muse of so vast a flight, so ample pinion,

Whose name is as the name of a dominion!

Though kings be great, give glory to the pen,

A whole-souled poet is the king of men.

King and high-priest one bard, at least, has been

Lo! where we lesser Levites pause and quail.

How grandly goes before, within the vail,

Our great Melchisedek, without compeers,

Without progenitor nor end of years.

* * * * *

THE MASTER’S MATE’S YARN.

BY H. MILNOR KLAPP.

(_Concluded from page 539._)

“They—the rats, of course—were a strange, heathenish set, and no

respecters of persons, but first chased the cat on shore, and then made

a hurra’s nest of the cabin—polishing their long whiskers with

spermaceti—planning surprise-parties in the pantry—running to’gallant

races over your nose in the sleeping-berths, and gauging every hollow

vessel in the ship, with tails a fathom long, from the oil-casks and the

scuttle-butt down to the pickle-jars and the captain’s barrel of New

England. They were a sleek, long-bodied race, as black as imps of

darkness, and as fearless as if they possessed as many reputed lives as

grimalkin herself. I was weary of watching their capers, and of the

sound of Catherton’s tread, expecting him every moment to call me up;

when turning in my berth, I noticed that the after-cabin door was

standing open. While I was wondering at this, a feeling of awe stole

over me, thinking of the conversation I had overheard among the men the

night before, and that very moment, as I was looking intently at the

spot, a figure in white passed swiftly and silently out of the

store-room into the cabin, closing the door behind it. I would afterward

have given worlds to have been able to pursue it, but could not, for the

power to move a limb was dead for the time being, and I lay still

staring after it, with mouth agape and the cold drops on my forehead,

palsied, as it would seem, by that sort of instinctive abhorrence with

which humanity revolts against a disembodied spirit that has assumed,

for some mysterious end, the form and garniture of its house of clay. It

was a woman’s shape—the head bare, and the long dark hair hanging down

to the waist, and, before the door closed, the light for an instant

flickered on the face, ghastly and white—as the man-of-war’s man had

said—with the mouth closed and the lips drawn tightly in. Its back was

toward my berth, until it turned into the after-cabin, and it seemed to

me that it had something clutched in its hand; but the hollow look of

the sunken eyes froze my very heart’s blood, as they glared back at the

lamp, from behind the bloodless and bony cheek. I was first roused from

my trance by the sound of some one coming down the companion-way, and it

was not until Catherton had thrice called me, laying his hand upon my

shoulder, the third time, that I started at last to my feet, when he

must have noticed my looks, as I still stared past him at the

cabin-door.

“‘It wants but a few moments of the time, Mr. Miller,’ was all he said,

and if I had died for it, I could not have answered, but huddling on my

clothes in silence, mechanically followed him on deck. All was there as

still as death. The moon had not yet risen, and you heard the sound of

the ebb plashing against the Tartar’s bows, and rippling and gurgling in

the eddies astern, as it swept through the strait.

“‘The watch are asleep in the galley,’ the captain whispered, as I

prepared to go over the side; ‘you remember the place and the signal—a

plover’s whistle twice repeated?’

“Nodding my head, I descended into the canoe; he cast off the warp, and

keeping in the shade of the ship, with my brain in a whirl, I paddled

close to the starboard shore. I had little time to think, for the

current ran strongly round the points, and I seemed blindly impelled by

the hand of fate to stem its force, even while my frame still shook like

a frightened child’s.

“I had hardly a thought of my purpose; nevertheless, instinctively

plying my paddle, I passed through the passage, and reached the rift of

sand under the castle without being challenged.

“High above me, concealed from my eyes by the rocky steep, was the

stronghold where, according to report, the sultan kept both his harem

and his treasures. The danger, in some measure, restored my presence of

mind, and the canoe had hardly hung for a moment on the hot, glassy

tide, when I heard the signal, and immediately upon my answering it, an

Arab arose from the sand, and two others appeared coming hastily down a

narrow gully, along which a sort of causeway ran from the stables of the

sultan’s stud to the beach. Seeing more figures than I had been taught

to expect, as another appeared from behind a rock, leading two saddled

horses, I was about to back farther off, when the chief’s voice called

out to me in a low tone to be quick, and forcing the bow of the canoe

upon the sand, not another word was exchanged, until Halil had placed

the slender form of the Circassian, vailed as she was from head to foot,

under the awning.

“The chief then seized my hand and carried it to his head, pointing with

his right in the direction of the ship.

“Wishing him ‘God speed,’ I wrung his hand; he pushed off the canoe, and

I paddled round for the ship. Glancing back, I saw him spring into the

saddle, with one attendant, both sitting as motionless as statues while

the canoe kept them in sight.

“Heavily armed, and mounted on a splendid charger, from what I knew of

his strength and spirit, it struck me forcibly that in his present

enterprise he was more than a match for most men. There was little

chance, however, of the conspiracy succeeding, unless the assassination

of the sultan were the first overt act, as he was greatly beloved by his

people. However, I had previously understood that the Oualé of Muscat,

and all the principal chiefs at Moutrah—the last a considerable town in

the vicinity—were implicated, which showed that the party of the old

Imaum, the sultan’s deceased uncle, was much more extensive than I had

ever deemed.

“It was not with thoughts like these that I approached the ship, for the

recent horror oppressed me so strongly, that I hardly knew what I was

doing when the captain received Zuma from my arms at the stern-post.

After this I fastened the canoe in its place, and looking, as it were by

the mere force of habit, into the binnacle, found that I had been absent

but twelve minutes. I then went for’ard where the two fellows who held

the anchor-watch were sleeping soundly. As I kicked them up, the old

carpenter came out of the steerage, rubbing his eyes, and muttering

imprecations on the rats.

“‘They’re a considerable spry set, Mister Miller,’ said he, as I made

some remark to divert his attention, ‘and, cuss me, if I half like the

ways on ’em—rattlin’ past my berth atween decks, as if every beggar on

’em had shoes on his feet, and turnin’ the’r varmentish heads to listen,

with more life in the slack of their tails than there is wit in the

for’ard part of the ship. They comed aboard, sir, in my opinion, at an

island where the ship touched on the Japan coast, and jist tuk full

command of the ship at once, trampoosin’ her from the ground-tier to the

tops, and crawlin’ out of the bunts of the old courses, when sail was

made at daylight, or jumpin’ from the boats, when a rush was made to

lower away. Hows’iver,’ he added, knocking the ashes out of his pipe,

without which he was never seen on deck in these latitudes, ‘I hope,

sir, they’ll stick to the ship, if it’s only for luck’s sake.’ As he

said this he gave me an oblique glance of his cold, fishy eye, and then

looked earnestly at the bowl of his pipe, fussing with a paper of cut

tobacco.

“In the humor which I was in at the time, the most trifling incident

that occurred in the ship seemed to leave an impression upon my mind

never to be forgotten; however, I was not to be sounded by old Charley

Toppin, cunning as he thought himself; so I answered him at random: ‘I

hope not, carpenter; and as for luck—why—’

“‘Hist! sir,’ interrupted he, in a startled voice, pointing aft—‘what

tale does that tell?’

“Turning quickly round, I saw them dropping from the poop by the

dozens—one steady plump! plump! plump! till the deck was black with

them, creeping in a living mass on the forecastle, down the cable, as it

seemed, into the water, where we could see them swimming for the island

across a broad patch of starlight, until the last of them disappeared.

Captain Catherton was standing aft, looking at the frigate through his

night-glass. He never stirred, and, as I thought, did not notice them.

The sight seemed to shake old Kennebunk wonderfully.

“‘Mister Miller,’ said he fearfully, ‘this be a doomed craft.’

“‘You’re wrong,’ said I, ‘they’re swimming off to the shore to fill

their stomachs with something green, if they can find it. They’ll be

back presently, and then, if you cover the hatchways, you can call all

hands to a rat-hunt.’

“The carpenter looked at me, and then at the poop, significantly enough;

a look of intelligence suddenly crossed his blank, weather-beaten face,

as he moved close to my side, with his hand to his mouth and his eye

still fixed aft: ‘Do you know, sir,’ he whispered, bending his brows and

looking me hard in the face, ‘do you know who are your shipmates in this

here craft?’

“At that moment the captain called out in his deep, calm voice, and I

went up on the poop, where, pointing to the frigate, which lay now

within half a pistol shot of us, outside of the passage, he put the

glass in my hands, without saying a word. The first look I took through

the instrument explained his meaning. The frigate’s starboard broadside

was sprung to bear on us, and the long tiers of guns frowning full upon

the ship. They were even lighting their battle-lanterns, and groups of

turbans and pointed caps were visible in every part of the upper deck.

“I dropped the glass from my eye and looked at my companion.

“‘I understand it,’ said he composedly, in reply to my look—‘wait a

couple of hours longer, and the scene will change. In the meantime come

below, and let us have a glass of grog.’

“He swept the harbor carefully with his glass, dwelling some time on the

landing-place, which is at the mouth of a drain, or sort of canal; the

town itself being hidden from our sight by the lofty castle-crowned

crags to the north and east. The Soliman Shah, after changing her old

berth, had anchored off Fisher’s rock, a small islet lying off the north

point of Muscat Island.

While Catherton was thus engaged, the thought of what Halil and the rest

of the conspirators could be doing at that moment, together with my

adventures that night, whirled a confused crowd of images before my

mind, in the midst of which black Hadji’s face was preëminent. The

stories which I had heard of his craft and cruelty occurred to me so

strongly that it was a relief when the captain closed his glass with a

snap, and led the way to the cabin.

“‘Steward,’ said he to the mulatto, who seemed to make it a rule never

to be caught in his hammock when his master was up, ‘set out the

liquor-case, and a bottle of that old Bourbon whisky we got out of the

Frenchman—and then be off to your roost.’

The fellow obeyed in his usual deferential way, and placing a lighted

joshstick and a bundle of sheroots on the table withdrew.

“‘To-morrow,’ said Catherton, ‘we’ll tow out into the bight of the

current, go how things may; and here,’ he added, pouring out a tumbler

of grog, and pushing me the bottle, ‘here’s good-bye, forever and a day,

to the key of the Persian Gulf.’

“I pledged him accordingly, and he went on in a very frank, easy way, I

thought, considering the case in which we stood.

“‘A troublesome coast this to clear, Mr. Miller; the currents hereabouts

are as treacherous as the heart of woman. Why,’ said he, seeming a good

deal at his ease, as he poured out another glass, though I was in the

other case, my eye stealing to the cabin doors in spite of me, ‘I’ve

been drifted in this old ship forty miles in-shore, in a thick fog and a

calm, between sunset and dawn, and no signs of a set on the surface any

more than there is on this deck.’

“‘Yes, sir,’ said I, compelling my attention to answer him, ‘in clear

weather they keep you continually taking observations—and in a fog, as

you say, why—’

“‘Try that case-bottle of Bourbon whisky,’ interrupted he, ‘you don’t

seem to relish the brandy. Here’s to the sultan! And may he wake up

to-night in Paradise.’

“Here he went on in a discursive way to talk of the cholera, saying that

he had had a touch of it himself on the Malabar coast.

“‘However,’ said he, filling up his glass a third time, ‘hang

care—here’s luck!’

“‘The fact is, Mr. Miller,’ he continued, setting down his glass, ‘I’ve

taken a great fancy to you, during the little time we’ve been together.

If it lasts out to the end, depend upon me, I’ll put something handsome

in your way.’

“I bowed over my glass without speaking, and he kept on in the same

confidential manner, as if he made up his mind to see how we stood at

once.

“‘I’ve made one prime voyage for my present owners in these seas, and

this one—mark you—I intend for myself. Now I want a friend whom I can

trust, body and soul, and, if I am not far out of my reckoning, you are

the very man.’

“I met his sharp, scrutinizing glance as he said this, and remembering

the carpenter’s words in the galley, I now felt sure that the captain

had some scheme of villainy in his head in which he wished me to become

a partner. There was the more reason to be careful of the grog, since I

could not mistake his manner, and the sharp, sinister look full as deep

as the occasion called for, whatever that might be. However, I thought

it best to affect to do so, and answered accordingly, that I had no

fears of further trouble with the crew when we were once clear of the

coast.

“His fierce eyes watched mine as a tiger might a stag’s, and with a dark

smile which seemed to say, ‘You’re a deep one, I see.’ He nodded his

head and touched his glass again. Still he seemed to hesitate, and to be

fast losing his self-possession, as if either the liquor he had drank,

or something in the way I received his first hint, had flustered him. I

did not think at the time that he doubted me, either; so I sat still,

smoking my sheroot, and watching the traces of irresolution gleaming

across his sun-seared face, until, making a strong effort to control

himself, he suddenly asked if I was a married man. On my replying in the

negative, he tacked ship again, asking me if I ever read poetry,

alluding particularly to Moore’s Lallah Rookh.

“‘I don’t care a rope’s end for the Veiled Prophet or Nourmahal,’ he

said, while I wondered again what he was driving at, ‘but I always

admired certain descriptive parts of the Fire-Worshipers, which I always

thought Byron must have touched up for Moore—for instance

‘—’Mid damp and gloom and crash of boughs,

And fall of loosened crops that rouse

The leopard from his hungry sleep,

Who, starting, thinks each crag a prey,

And long is heard, from steep to steep,

Chasing them down their thundering way.’

“‘Muscat, you know,’ continued he, ‘is the poet’s Oman.’

“‘Yes,’ I answered, hardly knowing what to say, ‘and a wretched place

enough it is, in spite of Moore’s fancy.’

“‘Why,’ he said, still beating the bush about me, ‘there is some

difference between the sultan’s palace, plain as its outside is, and the

emir’s porphyry walls which the little Irish nightingale sang about—not

so much though, to my mind, as between a merchant dreaming of a full

cargo to-night, and waking to hear of a wrecked ship and no insurance in

the morning—ay, or a captain making two good voyages and finding

himself still in debt—ay, deep as the fathomless sea in debt—to his

owners.’

“‘That, I suppose, you would call a species of blank-verse, Captain

Catherton,’ said I.

“‘Ay,’ he answered, with a fierce, tiger-like gleam of his dark eyes,

‘but the beauty of the thing is, this cargo will balance accounts, and

it’s a long back stretch from ‘Oman’s green water’ to the sandy shores

of Bedford Bay.’

“This was starting the devil with a vengeance, so I determined that he

should show his purpose clearly before I gave any reply to the hints he

had thrown out.

“‘Captain Catherton,’ said I, fixing my eyes firmly upon him, ‘I am no

greenhorn to rush into any man’s schemes blindfolded. If you wish my

services in any thing that is to my taste, you must speak out.’

“He emptied his glass again, in a way which showed that he was hardly

sensible of the action, and, ‘Mr. Miller,’ said he, ‘there is that about

you which reminds me of old days, and that, perhaps, is one reason I’ve

taken a fancy to you. It doesn’t matter a rope-yarn whether you join me

or not; my mind is fixed to its course. You shall hear the whole,

however, and judge for yourself before you decide—which is more than I

would care to reveal to any other man that breathes.’ He flung his

sheroot on the deck as he spoke, and mechanically setting his foot upon

it, bared his sinewy arm to the elbow, in the lamp-light. ‘Do you see

those initials?’ he said, in a tone of unnatural calmness. Sure enough

there they were—his wife’s, I had no doubt—E. S. B., dotted in India

ink, and two hearts, worked one within the other, under them. As I

looked in his face for the explanation which was to follow, I saw that

it was fearfully changed; and although his eyes met mine, at first

steadily enough, a strange sort of a spasm contorted the muscles of his

jaw, as if he looked, as it were, through me at some horrible sight,

with his teeth set, and his thin nether lip drawn tightly in. The truth,

or at least an inkling of it, I had had already from the second mate,

and in spite of the terrible doubts in my mind, and the rascally scheme

he had hinted at, I confess I could not help feeling somewhat softened

toward the man. Perhaps he noticed this in my looks, for, with a

shivering sigh, he placed his elbows on the table, and covering his eyes

with his hands, although not a groan or a moan escaped from his lips, I

knew by the tears which forced their way through his fingers, and the

quiver of his strong frame, that some hard struggle was going on. I sat

still in pure wonder at this sudden outbreak of feeling—the initials,

as it were, staring me full in the face, and the man’s damp forehead,

with its mass of dark curls within reach of my hand—until a strange

thought that I had seen him before in some old, familiar place, came

slowly thrilling into mind. Where this might have been I could not, at

the moment, conjecture; but as he removed his hands and I looked

anxiously at his features, I felt almost sure that it had been years

before, in some scene of summer-revelry, with trees and horses in front,

and woman’s soft eyes on the background. Perhaps it was the altered look

of Catherton himself, which brought the last into my mind in the cabin

of the old Tartar, to be associated in some unaccountable way with that

tall, muscular frame, and that dark, gloomy face, frowning as if ashamed

of his emotion, though it might be, the tears had done him good. At any

rate, the idea oppressed me so forcibly that, before he composed himself

to speak again, I glanced nervously round the cabin, taking in every

object as well as I could by the smoky light—from the state-rooms, on

the larboard side, with their musty, sickening smell, to the rack in the

recess between the cabin doors, and thence from the starboard ones up to

the chart-rack and the broad transom, where the two models, one of a

whale-ship, the other of a first-rate, both made of a sperm whale’s

jaw—guns, boats, spars, and even the miniature brail-blocks, all

fashioned out of glistening white bone, were resting on their mimic

ways. Of course I saw nothing there to account for the impression, faint

as it grew again while I gazed, and half deeming it the delusive trace

of some forgotten likeness, or of something which I had read of or

dreamed, I turned my eyes again upon Captain Catherton.

“‘Mr. Miller,’ said the man, as calmly as if he were sitting at home, it

might be, in his nursery, his wife within reach of a whisper, and

something in the subdued, moist look of his eyes in devilish accordance

with the drowsy quiet of a domestic scene, ‘we are not all as

philosophic as Cato—nor as vile as the man made immortal in infamy by

Horace—_non omnibus dormis_—you remember the satires.’

“As I stared again at this, a forlorn ghost of a smile flitted over his

face, and with his next breath the mystery of the thing vanished. I have

often wondered since what it was that kept me fixed to my seat like

stone; perhaps it was the reflection that my own accursed folly had been

the wreck of us three—him, the wretch—myself, and _her_—perhaps it

was the awful suddenness of the shock which stunned me like a heavy

blow; I cannot say; but stifling the groan which rose to my lips as the

horrible truth flashed upon me, while the very air seemed to thicken

before my gaze, and his words to come with terrible distinctness through

the gloom, I sat still on my seat and heard him out.

“‘I was born,’ he said, ‘at the village of ——, a few miles from

Philadelphia, and abandoned my home, like a fledged petrel, as soon as I

could comprehend the map of the world with its thousand ports and its

endless stretch of sea. It is a strange thing, Mr. Miller, this young

fancy of ours for being blown about by the wild winds, and rocked out of

a life of ease by the cunning waves of the deep. To my mind there was

once nothing so joyous in life as the roar of the gale at its height,

when you slid from the top of a sea to the trough—the dripping dash of

a head sea on the prow—or the rush of cleft waters astern, as you sat

conning the chart.’ Little did that careful old pedagogue dream, as, day

after day he chuckled over my progress in this department of knowledge,

what restless longings disturbed the breast of his pupil, like the

instinct of the unfledged albatross when it hears the sound of the sea

from its nest on some sheltering cliff.

“‘It was but last night,’ he continued, in a tone of melancholy widely

at variance with the usual sound of his voice, ‘that I dreamed of the

old man—his thin, white hairs brushed back from his brow—his

spectacles set straight on his nose, as he traced out on the revolving

globe the voyages of Columbus and Vasco de Gama, pausing, with his rod

stayed at some particular point, to enlarge on the daring spirit of

each. It was little wonder that I early yearned for the sea; and yet, as

I afterward learned, great was his astonishment, not unmixed with

chagrin akin to remorse, when he found that I had cut and run. However,’

he said, putting his hand to his forehead, ‘we met again, and the matter

was thoroughly cleared up between us.’

“Here he paused in thought, his eyes fixed in a troubled way on my face,

while the changes wrought by time and the sea seemed to disappear from

his own, and I wondered that I ever could have been so blind as not to

have known him at once: a triple sense of condemnation oppressed me; and

the soft eyes and the sweet face came vividly up, until I actually

shuddered to think, as the whole name, Ellen Symington Blount, was as

plain as day; what terrible tale which linked her fate with his might be

still lurking behind. I could well understand, too, his allusion to

Lallah Rookh, which was her favorite poem, and how it was that he had no

recollection of me, having never seen me but once, and that for a moment

by starlight. Old Charley’s riddle was read, though it was hard to tell

how he became master of it, and stifling my feelings as I best could, I

awaited in silence for the captain to resume.

“His eyes dropped to the floor, where the rats were again creeping about

unheeded: presently they scampered off, and I heard the hasty _pit-pat_

of naked feet as one of the anchor-watch came aft to the binnacle, when

the ship’s bell struck one. The stroke was instantly followed by a clang

from the Arab frigate, and then by a sort of stir, which loomed up as it

were on the sultry gloom of night, in the midst of which you seemed to

hear the cries of the sentries on shore, calling from tower to tower,

through the pestilential air; and when these died away, with the nearer

echoes of the bells in the harbor, you heard again the sound of the

man’s feet pattering along the deck, as if he, too, had paused to listen

before rejoining his watch-mate, who perhaps, like myself, was spinning

some old yarn.

“When all was still again, the silence seemed to press on my ears like

the distant splurge of a tide, while the lamp drowsed and the rats crept

to Catherton’s very feet, scuttling off, however, as soon as he stirred,

breaking abruptly out of his reverie.

“‘I made a trading voyage round the globe, and returning to the village

twenty-six months after I left it, was received like one from the dead.

I was bent upon giving old Blount, the schoolmaster, a surprise—as much

so, it seems to me now, as if I had run away from school for that sole

end.

“‘Accordingly, I was out of the stage and bang into his garden, where he

sat smoking his pipe, with his back toward the walk, before he had the

least notion of what had turned up.

“‘Hillo! old ship! What cheer?’ said I, and round he swung to my hail,

dropping his merschaum and staring at me in the summer-twilight, as I

stood rigged out in a full suit of blue, swinging my cynet-hat, until I

could stand it no longer, but just broke out into my old laugh, which

brought his daughter tripping out from the back-porch, when, of course,

the recognition took place. After the old man was over the heat of his

surprise, and I took time to notice that Ellen had grown, in proportion,

quite as much as myself, and how beautiful she was—and that she had

been the first to divine that I had gone to sea—my heart beat quickly

again with a feeling strange as sweet, and somehow I was not so much

shocked as I might have been, when her father, taking off his spectacles

and sobering his face, informed me that my uncle had died a year before.

To be sure, I had never known a parent’s care, and Colonel Catherton,

living as he did, almost alone with his books, was a man rather to be

feared than loved by a child. Besides, I cannot remember ever to have

had strong feelings for a human being before I became aware of my

attachment to Ellen. I rather loved to lie behind some hill which shut

out all but the sky from view, and dream of the sea—or to sit under the

lee of the woods in a gale, with a book of voyages in my hand, intent

upon scenes of battle and wreck, with the last year’s leaves under my

feet, and the wild roar in my ears.

“‘It was in the whole stock, and, in fact, I have heard that my father

and two of my uncles, at different times, had all been lost at sea.

However, the colonel, who had been a great merchant in his time, had

left some property—not so much though as was supposed from his style of

living—and as I was his only heir, they persuaded me from taking

another cruise until the estate was settled. This, of course, only left

me leisure to fall all the deeper in love—the rock, Mr. Miller, on

which, it seems, the gentlest as well as the roughest of us must split.

Many were the consultations I had with old Blount, and strongly he urged

me to settle at home as a professional man, never dreaming—old proser

as he was—that the thing was too deeply grained in, ever to be coaxed

out, even by Ellen’s eyes. The upshot of it was that I remained at home

for two years longer, until the property was sold, doing nothing but

reading nautical works and growing more and more enamored of Ellen.

There was a soul in that girl’s voice like the sound of the surf as it

breaks upon some enchanted shore, off which it might be, you lay waiting

for day to dawn—a spell in her dark eyes more like the ideal dreams of

old, than the influence of woman over man in these degenerate days. If

ever mortal had fair excuse for anchoring his faith on the sandheads

of—but, excuse me, Mr. Miller, they are all of a piece, as you may have

discovered before this—some one says to be rated only by their

different capacities for mischief.

‘Helen laid thousands on the shelf,

Dido only burned herself:

As Helen’s beauty was the rarer,

Her claim to mischief was the fairer—

A rule in courts that firm hath stood

Before and ever since the flood.’’

“As he ran on in this wild way, eating his heart, as it were, in sheer

desperation of feeling, something in my look, as I felt my soul

struggling to rise against the mendacious wretch, sent him from his vile

sneers and accursed Hudibrastic lines, back to his narrative. Garbled

and imperfect as that was, I was mad to hear it to the end; for while

bitterly rueing the ruin which my own folly had wrought, I could not

help burning to know by what damnable arts or eloquence she had ever

been persuaded to yield her hand to _him_.

“His eyes sunk before mine and he moved restlessly on his seat as a

sound, so like to a sigh that it made me start, came apparently from the

door of the closed state-room; it might have been the Circassian—or the

rats in their ramblings—and drinking off a brimmer of grog, he resumed

in a different tone.

“‘At the end of the time I spoke of, the old man fell sick, and somehow

his friends had dropped off, so that I spent most of my time almost

alone with him. At last he consented that we should be married at his

bedside. He had been growing weaker day by day, and I was the more

anxious for the match, as his house was close to a place of fashionable

resort, and Ellen had, somehow or other, become acquainted with some of

the young blades from the city. There was some talk about her and one of

them, while I was absent on a tour to the great lakes, that had like to

have set me mad on my return. However, the youngster—who was, by all

accounts, to the full as deeply in love and as fiery as myself, besides

being, at least, my equal in fortune and connexions—had got himself

involved in a quarrel with an acquaintance about this same report,

which, in the end, sent one man to his grave and the other out of the

country. As the duel made a great noise in the city, I determined to

marry Ellen privately, and to remove from the village altogether as soon

as her father died.

“‘Well,’ continued he, in a husky tone, ‘the thing was done, and when we

rose from our knees, after the prayer, the old man was dead. We had no

idea that he was so near his end, and I leave you to imagine, Mr.

Miller, the horror of my bridal-night.

“‘However, when this was over, and we were alone together in the world,

Ellen seemed to cling the closer to me, and it was not long, as you may

suppose, before we left —— behind. I directed my course to Boston

where I had made arrangements to enter into business with an old

shipmate, a son of one of the firm in whose employ I had sailed on my

first voyage. In the course of a few weeks I found myself comfortably

settled at last, with most of my funds invested in the purchase of a

ship and a brig, engaged in a trade to the Spanish Main. I commanded the

ship myself, and for several years things went well—when by the

villainy of my partner, suddenly as a whirlwind strips a ship, the house

went by the board. After this I commanded vessels on the African and

Brazil coasts, until the last ship was sold to a whaling house at New

Bedford. I had agreed to deliver her into her new owners’ hands, and, as

my wife’s health was rather unsettled at the time, I took her with me

for the sake of the jaunt. It was then that I received offers from the

man who had purchased the ship, which first directed my attention to

this particular service. It was true that I knew nothing of the

business, and had a sailor’s prejudice against it; but the man treated

us with such considerate kindness, and made me offers so tempting to a

broken man, pointing out how easily the difficulties might be obviated

in time, and enlarging on the importance of having good navigators in

the Indian seas, that, in an evil hour, I consented to take charge of my

old ship.

“‘I removed from the hotel to a house in the upper part of the town, and

after making the necessary arrangements for a protracted absence, and

three weeks from the time I went into the Wisemans’ employ, I found

myself at sea. The first voyage—and it was a short one, not exceeding a

twelvemonth—put me up to the business, and investing all I had cleared

in the ship, after a stay of six weeks on shore, leaving my wife to

mingle in the best society which the place could afford, I put again to

sea. It was on the homeward bound passage, in a full ship, after an

absence of little more than fifteen months, that within a degree or two

of the line I spoke a clean ship, with letters on board from my wife and

the owners. Before I could board her, however, we were separated by a

sudden squall, and night coming on lost sight of her altogether. We did

not see her again, and it was when giving way to some natural vexation

at the accident that I received the first intimation from Mr. Jinney, my

mate, of the secret intimacy which had long existed between Ellen and

the younger Wiseman. The man’s tale was a straight one, corroborated by

several circumstances too trivial for notice at the moment of their

occurrence, yet of sufficient importance, when taken together in

connection with his story, to darken the past and cast an ominous shadow

over the time to come.

“‘Though I had thought to strike her dead at first sight, with the

stretch of sea between us, yet old ocean, wiser than a thousand

graybeards, played the soother again, even in this great sorrow—the

faster it bore me toward her, as the ship heeled to the trades—the

wilder the gale I encountered off the very shores where she breathed,

the more it seemed to uplift its voice against the tempest of fury which

must have inevitably involved me in the ruin it brought down. It was

well done,’ he exclaimed fiercely, ‘here’s to thee, old theme of the

poets—broad pathway for spirits like mine to sweep! Neither the frailty

of woman nor the malice of man’—here his voice grew too hoarse for

utterance, and drinking off the liquor like water, he dashed the glass

to the deck, walking the cabin with hasty strides, like a tiger chafing

in his cage—while I, with a curse on my lips for what, as God is my

judge, in spite of the man’s emotion, I believed to be a lie, sat

chained to my seat, as by some predestined spell.

“Although my faith in the innocence of Ellen was as strong as in the

angels of heaven, still he plainly believed all he avouched of her

guilt; and still, as I clung to the one redeeming thought that nothing

on earth could have tempted a spirit like hers astray, still something

would whisper that she might have changed toward _him_, or have been

made the victim of some infernal conspiracy, with woman’s malice,

perhaps, at the bottom of the scheme. Strange stories in the history of

the Cathertons, before they came over from England—which I had heard

years before—flashed across my mind, and I felt sure—I knew, it must

have been the circumstances growing out of my unfortunate duel—which,

no doubt, he had twisted to the furtherance of his own purposes, which

had induced her to marry him when her heart was elsewhere.

“I had little time to think of this at the moment, as you may suppose;

for the sight I had seen that night, and the story of the second mate’s,

with the frightful thought of what she must have endured to the end, was

enough to craze my brain, until Catherton, breaking out into a laugh

more like a fiend’s than a man’s, and halting directly in front of me,

said—‘You look wild, Mr. Miller—perhaps you, too, have trusted woman.

I tell you,’ he hissed through his teeth, as I arose and leaned against

the mast, as it were, from pure weariness—staring at him in a blank

way, while the blood seemed congealing to ice in my veins, ‘I tell you

she was false—false as the whole sex—false as the hollowest heart of

them all—though the oaths I had sworn, and the plans of revenge we had

laid, kept me still.’

“‘No! no!’ reiterated he, laughing again in his horrid way, ‘by that

time I had learned something of endurance; and, as I had no

children—for I was spared that misery—it was not worth my while to

thrust my neck in a halter for the sake of a profligate woman. Ha! ha! I

thought better of it—it was a sweeter and safer revenge to have her

here in the ship, while she knew that I was cruising the seas to beggar

her paramour—for, fool-like, his money went at the gaming-table faster

than it came, and I had persuaded him, in conjunction with the mate, to

invest his all in the purchase of this ship—to see her, amid the

healthful breezes of ocean, dying a death to which the direst of Eastern

tortures are mercy—’

“‘Devil!’ I broke out at last, striking him full in the face with one

hand, as I snatched a cutlass from the rack with the other, sending the

iron scabbard, in my fury, straight across the cabin against the door of

a state-room; he reeled a pace or two, laying his hands upon a half-pike

at the mast. ‘Fool!’ I exclaimed, seeing that he still hesitated, ‘come

on—I am S——!’

“He shortened the pike and darted at my face on the instant, but

catching the thrust on the edge of my blade, I threw the point up into

the deck-beam; that instant had been his last, for his defenseless head

was within fair sweep of my sword, when from that very state-room, the

door of which had been forced open by the flying scabbard, the same

figure which I had seen before that night, again appeared, gliding now

swiftly and noiselessly between.

“The cutlass fell with a clank on the deck, and I stood with

outstretched arm, my soul riveted to my gaze, striving in vain to speak,

while Catherton staggered back against the mast, covering his eyes with

his hands. In the rigid and ghastly lineaments of death I saw, as my

heart stood still, the likeness of Ellen; the frozen eyes seemed to hush

my very breath; the thin, clay-like lips moved, and, like sigh from a

coffin-lid, the whispered words met my ears, ‘Not thus—not thus!’

“‘What—what art thou?’ I gasped out—when old Charley’s voice sounded

on deck; a sort of scuffle appeared to get up in the companion-way, and

Halil Ben Hamet and his attendant, both sprinkled with blood and covered

with soil-stains from sandal to turban, suddenly appeared on the scene.

“I stared from the apparition to the chief, and when I looked again, the

place where it had stood was vacant.

“‘All is lost, my friend,’ said Halil; ‘they are hard on my track, and I

have come hither to die with Zuma.’

“At these words the captain recovered himself, and stepping from behind

the mast, waved me on deck.

“By a sort of instinct I felt compelled to obey him, as it seemed, for a

space longer; and making mechanically for’ard, I roused out the

anchor-watch, who, as usual, were caulking it in the galley, and not a

soul else on deck, though the heat was so great, that I wondered how it

was possible for a living thing to sleep. After this I again went aft to

the binnacle, glancing at the watch to see if the last bell had been

struck, and looking over the side, wondering if the boat in which the

chief had come off, had gone adrift. I then walked to the waist again,

where, hardly knowing what I was doing, I stood looking up into the dark

blue where the stars were burning, until, as I gazed, a feeling of the

utter vanity of earthly hopes came over me, as I thought that these same

stars which had shone so calmly on men’s deeds for thousands of years,

would shine the same on my grave. It seemed to me, then, that not only

the feelings involved in the fate of Ellen, but all the experience of

the past, all the changes of time and clime, faded away into nothingness

before those twinkling, far-away lights; and a something of peace which

I had never known before, swiftly as the thought seemed to travel

through space to the winking planets, slid into my soul on the slant of

the star-beams. Then my ear caught the splurge of the tide—a faint air

from the sea fanned my cheeks—and a low growl of thunder came rumbling

up into the cove. I remember, too, to have noticed lights moving on

shore, while a stir arose on the beach close to the landing, but in the

mood I was in at the time, I paid little attention to this.

“The Tartar lay moored stem and stern just within the entrance of the

strait, midway between the island and the main, shut out by the rocks on

the larboard hand from the walled town and the castles which kept the

restless Arabs in awe. One or two of the little round towers, said to

have been built at their gloomy and apparently inaccessible altitudes,

by the old Portugese, might be seen looming thrice its real size above

the hot outline of the topmost crags, over which the moon was rising,

casting a strong yet dubious light on Muscat Island, which, with the

bats wheeling continually about it—the patches of sand in its narrow

gulleys, and the rough stones standing out of them, with here and there

a stunted cypress, reminded me strangely enough of a Turkish grave-yard,

and did not greatly tend to remove the impression, now uppermost in my

mind, that something you’d give the world to avoid was soon going to

take place. I looked intently at the Arab frigate, while the moonlight

stole upon her rigging, creeping slowly down the _taut_ sticks and

back-stays to the spar-deck, where twenty red-caps and turbans were

visible over the side, showing that her quarter-watch at least were wide

awake, when, my thoughts wandering again, I fancied some desperate,

wild-eyed wretch—such as I had often seen creeping about the

slave-market and the narrow lanes of the bazaar—stealing, step by step,

to her magazine, blowing the slow match in his fingers, and staring by

its lurid glow at the hammocks which he passed, until I actually caught

myself grasping a shroud, and watching for the upward shoot of her

masts, in the broad red glare and the shock that was to follow. Then I

recalled the image of Ellen as she once was, and the unsated fury burned

again in my breast, fed by my belief in her innocence; then came her

spirit gliding across my bewildered mind, ghastly as I had seen in the

cabin; then the thought of what Catherton could be doing, until I was no

longer capable of thinking at all, but just walked on the forecastle

again, for the mere purpose of diverting my mind from the horrid tangle

it was in. It was some relief to enter into a conversation with one of

the watch—a strong, heavy-headed fellow, as green as a

parade-ground—about his home among the hills of the Hudson, and the old

story of the trouble which sent him to sea, which, no doubt, I listened

to intently at the time, although I never afterward could remember a

syllable, except something about a certain Sukey Fairlamb, who turned

out to be a jilt, and one Jonas Weatherby, who took the wind out of his

(the Tartar-man’s) sails. I also recollect his remarking how much hotter

it had got within the past ten minutes, and looking aloft, I saw the

light scud flying across the stars, though the flutter of air on deck

had already died away. A noisome steam was rising out of the

forecastle-scuttle enough to choke one, while a dog which we had on

board lay on the fore-hatches, panting for breath, without so much as

looking at the bucket of water, which some one had placed within a foot

of his nose. All at once I heard the sound of oars, followed by a hubbub

of voices—and a large boat, filled with men, appeared in sight, pulling

from the landing toward the ship. As I started aft I saw the captain

disappearing down one hatchway, as the carpenter and the cooper came up

another, and as soon as the boat came alongside, I hailed. Receiving no

answer, I hailed again in Arabic, when a voice answered in the same

tongue, ‘Be silent, we are coming on board in the sultan’s name.’ I

ordered the carpenter to make fast the warp which they threw, when the

first person that appeared over the side, I knew at once to be a little

French renegade, the captain of Syed’s guards; the next was the accursed

eunuch himself; and if the one glance which I had of his face by

moonlight had not been enough, the sight of the two Zanzibar mutes who

followed him—the stealthy, cat-like looks of their eyes fore and aft

the deck, and the rush of the soldiers behind, would have convinced me

at once that Halil Ben Hamet’s time was come.

“‘Have de goodness, Monsieur Capitaine Miller,’ said the renegade, who

knew me well, ‘to make de muster of de sailors on de forecastle, by de

sultan’s orders, sare.’

“As it was useless to refuse, I ordered the two men of the anchor-watch

to call the people for’ard, while the cooper and his crony roused out

the boat-steerers in the steerage, the noise having already awakened the

mates, who were sleeping in the house under the poop. The whalemen

seemed bewildered enough, as they tumbled up the scuttle, and gathered

for’ard of the windlass, although I noticed that they collected the

handspikes in a heap—some of old Charley’s party, headed by the wild

man-of-war’s man, showing signs of a determination to clear the decks.

This, within half a pistol shot of the frigate’s batteries would have

been sheer madness; accordingly I spoke to one or two of the men by

name, ordering them to keep quiet, when two sepoys came for’ard, with

drawn sabres in their hands, and ordered me into the cabin. Armed

sentries were posted at all the hatchways, and naked cimiters glanced

round the eunuch and the captain of the guard, seated at the table in

the long cabin, where Catherton stood leaning leisurely against the

bulkhead, cool and collected, with his arms folded across his breast,

the imminence of the danger having apparently restored his presence of

mind.

“‘This is my mate,’ said he, to the Frenchman, as I entered; ‘you may

examine him, if you see fit.’

“Hadji Hamet turned his turbaned head, recognizing me by a doubtful

smile, while the French renegade, bowing to the deck, asked me, in his

broken English, if I had commanded the watch that night.

“‘No, monsieur,’ I answered, rather sullenly, ‘it is not customary—in

_Christian_ ships, at least—for the chief officer of a ship to head an

anchor-watch.’

“‘_Certainement non_, sare,’ he replied, with something of the ineffable

polish of his nation, ‘we know dat—have de goodness, monsieur, to show

me de visitors in de ship—de runavays, if you please, Monsieur Miller.’

“I felt the eunuch’s devouring eyes creeping, in their slow, malevolent

way, from the deck up to my face, as I answered.

“‘That is easy enough, monsieur—provided any such be in the ship. You

cannot suppose us such fools as to receive deserters in a full ship,

with plenty of idlers already on board. If the men are in the Tartar,

they must have been concealed by the people for’ard, and I advise you to

look in the fore-peak.’

“He interpreted what I said to the eunuch; Hadji then made some remark

in an under tone, and the renegade, shrugging his shoulders, addressed

me again.

“‘Monsieur Capitaine Miller,’ said he, decidedly, yet still with as much

suavity as before, ‘you will confer de grand obligation to make de plain

answer, sare, vidout de bagatelle. _C’est bien malapropos à present_,’

muttered he, taking snuff out of a gold box, and glancing aside at the

two mutes, as they stood near Hadji’s seat, their small, serpent eyes

never off of his face for a moment, and their jetty, tattooed arms

folded across their naked breasts. Before I could devise an answer,

groping in the dark as I was, upon gaping ground, two Arabs pushed into

the throng, leading the mulatto by the collar. The fellow was terribly

frightened, and looked round as if for some one to address, when his

eyes lighting on the captain of the Tartar, he seemed to turn dumb as a

mute at once. However, the fatal moment was not to be staved off longer,

for Hadji, with a look of devilish cunning, drew a small golden whistle

from the folds of his _juma_, and blew it till the cabin rang again; I

started to hear a sort of scratching, struggling noise in the

after-cabin, and the next moment some sort of an animal, between a rat

and squirrel, ran through the crowd, cowering at the eunuch’s sandaled

feet. A smile of triumphant malice played upon Hadji’s face, and the

Frenchman, snatching up his sword, rushed through the group to the

cabin-door. At that instant the thick gloom, which had been setting

bodily down on deck for the last ten minutes, was rent by an awful glare

of lightning, and, as the parted air collapsed, with a crash which made

the ship tremble to her keel, I saw the Arab chief, standing, pistol in

hand, at the door; the renegade reeled back against one of his men,

while the redder flash of the pistol again illumined the cabin, and

bounding like a tiger in its leap, cimiter in hand, Halel sprang over

the table at the eunuch. The lamp was extinguished in the fray, and had

it been the chief’s intention to escape on deck, perhaps he might have

done so in the confusion which followed; for the lightning glared

incessantly through the stern-ports, while the thunder, reverberated by

the rocks, crashed over our heads in one continuous peal, till you’d’ve

thought the hoary granite was piling over you. The first rush of the

swell in the cove broke over the ship, deluging her fore-and-aft, as it

heaped up in the strait in one tremendous surge, which tore the frigate

from her anchor, and dashed her high against the rocks. The lighter

craft fared no better, being swept from their moorings like drift wood;

however, while the horrible work was going on below, the second mate had

let go a second anchor, while the stern-hawser parted like pack-thread,

and showing the head of the foretopmast-staysail, while some of them aft

managed to get the spanker-gaff partly hoisted, and others jammed the

helm hard down, the ship brought up with a surge which shook her in

every timber; and, as you drew another breath in the melee below, where

one man was contending with fifty, you heard the hurricane roaring over

her mast-heads, like the rush of Milton’s legions to the field.

“I was thrust hither and thither, splashing in the water, nearly

knee-deep on the deck, amid the clash of steel and the shrinking back of

the Arabs, until a blade whizzed past my ear, falling with a dull ring

on the head of some unhappy wretch, whose hot blood spouted in my face.

Half blinded, I stumbled over a prostrate body, clearing my eyes as I

brought up against my own berth, when another flash showed every object

distinctly, and I saw the two mutes throw themselves before the eunuch

upon Halil; then followed a deadly struggle from the mast through the

cabins to the transom, during which Hadji’s shrill voice screamed to the

executioners to use dagger or bowstring—then a heavy fall and a

gasp—woman’s fearful shriek—and again you heard over all, the defying

roar of the tempest.

“Torches, which had been extinguished by the wind on deck, were now

relighted in the cabin, revealing a sight which was terrible to look

upon. Three dead bodies lay on the deck, or across the table, besides

that of the Arab chief, who had been thrice stabbed, and afterward

strangled. Scarlet caps, cleft turbans, and pieces of rent apparel were

washing about, with the fragments of the swinging lamp; while the table

and the cabin partitions were reeking with gore.

“The Frenchman was dead as a door-nail when they raised him up, which

was some comfort, though the three blacks had escaped without a scratch,

except one of the mutes, whose hands were gashed with a dagger. The

soldiers now closed the doors between the cabins, having first dropped

the dead-lights, and after the eunuch came out, the bodies were removed

out of sight in the sail-room, all except that of the chief, which was

laid on the table, a dreadful sight, after the fever of the thing was

past, since you could not keep from looking at the blackened face, with

the eyes staring out of it, as if he were ready to start up again—the

frown being still on the brow, though the orbs were glazed, and the arm

hung nervelessly down.

“I shall never forget the feeling of satisfaction which arose within

me—when some one threw the folds of a turban over the face—as I

thought that every blow he struck had been home; only if he had cloven

the eunuch’s hard head to the jaw, I had been almost happy, in a sort of

religious submission to fate, as if all who loved too well on earth,

must pay the penalty in some shape or other, at last.

“It appeared that the cabins had been twice searched before I was

brought down, but Catherton had hidden the fugitives under a false

bulkhead, so artfully contrived, that had not Hadji and the guard been

so hard on Ben Hamet’s track after the attempt to assassinate the sultan

had failed, they might have escaped detection. The little animal, which

had revealed their presence, after all, was a pet of Zuma’s, a flying

lemur from one of the Indian archipelago: woman-like, she had brought it

away in her dress, and by the knowledge which black Hadji had of its

habits, it was thus made instrumental in betraying the pair.

“Neither Catherton nor the steward were to be found below, after the

murderous fracas was over. I had no particular desire to remain myself,

as you may suppose, and no opposition being offered to the movement,

accordingly I went on deck.

“The wind was now at its height, having blown every thing moveable off

the poop into the seat which was breaking in awful rollers at the bottom

of the cove, the squall having come from the north-west. The ship, with

two anchors down under the lee of Muscat Island, rode safely enough

after the first danger was over; but the Arab frigate was lying

broadside on to the rocks, grinding to pieces, with nothing standing but

her lower masts. She could plainly be seen, not only by the flashes, but

by a strong phosphorescent gleam which pervaded the atmosphere,

reflected, perhaps, from the sea, each gigantic surge sparkling with

living fire, heaped up in the smothering foam of its crests, as it

rolled down on the wreck. I could even see the brine pouring from her

lower deck-ports, as she lifted bodily against the rocks, and fancied I

could hear the despairing cries of her crew, as one by one, her heavy

guns, torn from their tackles, were hurled across the decks.

“I had little time, however, to dwell on the sight, terrible as it was,

for the carpenter and man-of-war’s man came driving the length of the

deck before the blast, when old Charley shouted in my ear that the

steward was taken with the cramp in the forecastle, and thinking he was

going to die, wished to see me. Accordingly, I struggled for’ard, with a

foreboding that the horrors of the night were not yet over. A knot of

our men were standing in the waist, and I passed the Arabs crouching

under the booby-hatches and the fife-rails, from the fury of the wind,

which howled fore-and-aft the deck. I was about to descend into the

forecastle, when Captain Catherton, with his Indian boat-steerer and

three of the mates, came up on the other side. He waved me aft,

shouting, at the full pitch of his strong voice, to the mates behind

him, who held on to the windlass, and looked from him to me without

moving a finger. However, the boat-steerer lifted a handspike, and his

superior—who was now grown desperate, having received an inkling of my

errand from the Indian—presented a pistol at my head, and pulled the

trigger. It flashed in the pan; and before he could level another I

closed with him, pitching him back into the scuppers, where old Charley

and Frank lashed him to a spar, hands and feet. One word to the mates

about his plan of running away with the ship, and I sprung down in the

forecastle, where the mulatto lay on his back, raving for them to keep

the captain back, while two of the men were rubbing his writhing body

with whale-oil and hartshorn.

“The second mate and most of the starboard watch were standing around,

looking on helplessly enough, though the moment the steward’s eye caught

mine he ceased to struggle, moaning and mumbling, like a dog, till I got

my ear close to his mouth, when he muttered something about searching

the run under the after-cabin, where the powder was kept. The violence

of the spasms interrupted him, and although there was an urgent meaning

in his wild eye, and he pointed repeatedly aft, in his agony, I was

awfully at a loss what to make of it, until, looking up, I encountered

old Charley’s curious glance, and the ghost flitted, as it were, across

the maze in a moment. The second mate must have seen the same thing

himself, for without a word on either side, our eyes met in one

startling flash of intelligence, and he followed me close, as snatching

up a heaver, I drove along the deck, knocking the Arabs to the right and

left, tumbling down the narrow stairs from the poop in my haste, with

two-thirds of the ship’s company at my back—mates, boat-steerers,

forecastle-men, and all—though the most of them tramped down the

companion-way into the for’ard cabin, where we heard them battering at

the doors and cursing the Arabs; the carpenter and myself ripped up the

table and the scuttle under it. Parker stood by with a torch; I jumped

down, lowering the light, and you may guess gentlemen, what I saw; for

it seems,” said the master’s mate, passing his rough hand to his brow,

“that long years, spent in trying to drown the sight, has hardly given

me nerve to tell.

“It was Ellen, herself,” continued he, after a pause, “lying,

motionless, on a heap of old bunting; but whether life had gone, or no,

it was impossible for me to answer, as I took her up—staggering under

my burthen, light enough, God knows, as it was. The second mate caught

her from me, and I stumbled, helpless as a child, about the mouth of

that horrid hole, hardly noting its secrets, until the men burst into

the cabin, and I heard old Charley say she was dead.

“‘Where is Mr. Miller?’ said Frank, with an oath.

“‘Here,’ I answered, leaping out among them, every vein in my body

running with liquid fire—the one thought of revenge on her murderers

raging in my heart, and upon my tongue. However, the mates—aroused from

their stupor at last—threw themselves upon me, as I glared round for a

weapon. A wild uproar began to rise among the men, crowding upon each

other to catch a look at her face, hanging over the second mate’s

shoulder, with a look of mute appeal, as he told me afterward, on the

wasted features set in death, by the red torch-light.

“In the midst of this, Hadji summoned his soldiers from deck: I saw his

malignant purpose, and my calmness came back, as I made up my mind that,

at all hazards, he should not approach the corpse. Breaking from those

who held me, I burst through the throng, and pointing to the half-pikes

leveled against his party, ordered him, in Arabic, to clear the cabin of

his scum. He laid his hand on the hilt of his _krungar_, scowling like a

fiend of darkness upon me from a crowd of his men; but the menacing look

of the mass in front of him—all of whom had armed themselves—not to

speak of the tone of my own voice, admonished him, devil as he was, to

think better of it.

“‘That’s the sort, mates,’ said the carpenter; ‘if they don’t top their

booms at a minute’s warning, we’ll spit the heathens to the beams, and

then hang Jonas to the yard-arm.’

“‘Silence, there!’ said I. ‘One minute more,’ looking at the eunuch, and

grasping the weapon which some one had thrust into my hand, ‘and it will

be too late.’

“He felt that he was overmatched, and turning slowly round, still

keeping his baleful glance fixed on my face, ordered his followers on

deck, retiring last himself, just as I caught Frank’s pike traveling in

his rear to freshen his way.

“As soon as the cabins were cleared of the Arabs, I took the second mate

a little aside from the rest.

“‘Now, Mr. Parker,’ said I, ‘you will take charge of the Tartar. All I

ask is, that you will not give up the female that Hadji Hamet has

confined in that state-room, to the tender mercies of the sultan, if you

can possibly avoid it—and a cast home for myself, if you can get an

offing for this ship, and I am allowed to leave Muscat in her. I will

pay my passage in Persian rupees, or if you prefer it, in Spanish

dollars. One thing more,’ said I, seeing that he was about to interrupt

me, ‘I know something of the country: if you would save yourself a mint

of trouble with the sultan’s divan, you will put Catherton at once in

double-irons, and keep him secure, at least, until you are clear of the

land.’

“‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I, for one, am content to obey your orders till the

v’yage is up. What say you, my lads, is Captain Catherton fit to be

trusted with the ship, after what has happened?’

“‘No, no!’ was the universal answer, mingled with execrations and oaths

of vengeance.

“‘Who, then, shall take charge?’ asked the second mate.

“‘Mister Miller,’ they answered, with one voice, ‘for he only can take

the Tartar off this coast.’

“‘Well, my lads,’ said I, wonderfully moved, I confess, seeing that I

had something to live for yet, although, a moment before, I had thought

that my hold on life was slackened for ever, ‘if you will have it so,

I’ll do my best. I tell you fairly that the captain confessed to me last

night, in this cabin, that he intended to sell ship and cargo, on the

passage home, in return for some private wrong which, he said, one of

the owners had done him—though,’ said I, solemnly, ‘as surely as God’s

eye beheld this accursed deed, yon pale clay was as innocent as the

angels of heaven of aught like crime toward him.’

“‘We know it, captain—we knew it all along!’ they answered, even those

whom I had considered the most hardened, shedding tears, while curses

and vows of vengeance were freely vented around.

“‘She was too good for the bloody-minded villain,’ said the carpenter;

‘and, so help me, if there is nobody else—’

“It was time to stop this, as we had quite enough of blood for that

night, so I checked old Charley in his oath, and called back the Indian

boat-steerer, who, at first, had seemed disposed to side with the

captain, but who was now stealing up the companion-way, in an

empty-handed, errandless way, though I saw the thing in his eye, and the

gleam of a knife in the sleeve of his shirt.

“‘My lads,’ said I, ‘we will leave him to the law. He shall not escape,

I promise you. Mr. Parker, you will have Captain Catherton put in

double-irons, and placed in the steerage for the present.’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered, and accordingly the villain was well

secured, with one of the trustiest men in the ship standing sentry over

him.

“After this, the cabin was cleared of all but a strong guard, armed to

the teeth, and I went on deck, leaving Zuma, who had recovered from her

swoon of terror, kneeling in silence by the body of the chief. I had

resolved to save her as soon as I could see any possible way, though I

knew that her life and my own, perhaps, depended upon our getting under

weigh, as soon as the weather would permit.

“The fury of the squall was over. One of the mates told me that it had

been raining a perfect deluge a few moments before I came up, and, in

fact, though it was slackening off, the decks were all afloat, and I

could even see by the great flashes of waste lightning which still

illumined the passage, the spherical shape of the rain-drops, as they

fell. I mention this, gentlemen, to show how deeply the most trivial

incident in that terrible night was impressed upon my mind, never to be

forgotten while memory lives with me.

“The wind soon freshened again, blowing fiercely in gusts over the

rugged top of Muscat Island, but gradually sunk as the atmosphere

cleared; the stars showing themselves, here and there, in patches of

clear sky, before the day dawned. Then, as the sun rose behind the lofty

rocks to the east, the wind failed altogether, and it seemed fast

growing as hot as before, while a vague notion got into my head, looking

at the Arab soldiers on the poop, that the events of the past night,

terrible as they seemed, were now but the ghosts of things that had

been.

“A sort of calm, too, prevailed in the ship, as the heavy swells began

to subside in the cove. The cook was in his galley, attending to his

usual duties, the blue smoke rising from the funnel, straight as a pine

tree, half-way to the top. The people hung in knots about the

forecastle, apparently waiting for eight bells to summon them to

breakfast, while the mates stood together on the larboard gangway, with

a glass among them, examining the shore and the wreck of the Arab

frigate, now firmly wedged in between two precipitous rocks.

“The black dog of a eunuch, secure, as it seemed, in the shadow of his

master, walked the poop with as proud a stride as if his foot was

already on our necks—not a muscle of his grim, relentless face moving

beneath his showy turban, flecked, as it was, with blood, while, as I

met his deadly, sinister glance every time he turned, I fancied to

myself—as, indeed, I had done on former occasions—what a hell of

secrets must lie hidden, from all but God’s eye, in the black pit of his

soul. The pagan wretch was said to delight in shedding human blood, and

in every variety of torture, having been cognizant of many acts of

atrocious cruelty in the time of the old Imaum. His only qualities were

a brutish devotion to the sultan, and a species of slow, long-breathed

cunning, of which report said Syed Ben Seeyd had often availed himself

in penetrating the secret designs of his enemies.

“However, when I thought of Catherton’s villainy, it could not be

denied, that black or white, Christian or heathen, human nature devoid

of a regulating principle, was essentially the same, differing only in

the modifications of climes; and, singular as it may seem to you,

several passages of the New Testament illustrative of the same idea

occurred to me at the time, and I could not help feeling that it was

utterly impossible for me, even if I had been differently brought up, to

deny for a moment—thinking of the wisdom of the parables—that it was

truly God who had spoken on earth with the lips of man: reflecting that

the thirst for vengeance for a supposed wrong had made Catherton even

more wicked than Hadji himself, who would probably, under any

circumstances, have disdained such a dastardly scheme of revenge as the

former had partially broached, thinking to have bribed me to join him,

in the situation I was in at the time, partly by offers of pecuniary

advantage, and partly by his tale, which had so puzzled me at first,

little dreaming that he was the man who had married Ellen. I was almost

confident now that the whole diabolical story of her guilt had been one

of the mate’s own planning—he, I mean, who had gone to his account—and

horrible as the thing seemed, I had no doubt _now_ Parker’s notion was

correct, and that the captain either in fear, remorse, or hate, or from

some curious commingling of the three, had sacrificed the entire boat’s

crew to get rid of his accomplice. How the body of Ellen, dreadfully

emaciated as it was, came to be found in the run after the second mate’s

account of her loss, was yet a mystery to me, unless Catherton, with the

assistance of the steward, had palmed that story on the crew, while he

secretly held her confined in the hold to starve by slow degrees.

However, as I had no wish that the matter should be cleared up in the

sultan’s divan, after my recent promise to the crew, I aroused myself to

make the attempt to get the ship to sea.

“The cove of Muscat is less than a mile in depth from its entrance at

Fisher’s Rock, but how to get out of it into the current, with no wind,

against the heavy swell, was the puzzle. The two forts were to be

counted as nothing when the ship was once under weigh, as they merely

commanded the passage, and the risk we ran from the one on the western

shore was not to be thought of, if we had a chance, when it fell calm

enough, to tow the ship out into the currant setting from the Persian

Gulf. The land-wind was almost certain not to blow before sunset, and

the Arabs were sure to board the ship from the shore before that time,

although not a single craft or boat of any kind was to be seen afloat,

as I swept the harbor with my glass, and I had not the least doubt but

the Soliman Shah, the corvette which had anchored off Fisher’s Rock the

day before, had been driven from her anchors with the frigate.

“Another hour passed, as I anxiously watched for the swell to go down,

when we saw them making preparations to get off two _balitas_, lying

aground on a spit of sand nearly in front of the palace. As I turned to

look at some persons who had appeared on the divan, a large and airy

veranda, overlooking the sea, the second mate exclaimed that one of the

Arabs was making signals to the shore with his turban. In the desperate

case we were in, it was neck or nothing; so, as I really began to have

some hopes of getting to sea in the want of crafts to board us, I

instantly ordered two guns to be run in and pointed aft; the carpenter

clapped a bag of musket-balls in the muzzle of each, and while Parker

and the man-of-war’s man stood by with matches lit, I hailed the Arabs

in their language, giving Hadji notice, that at the smallest sign of a

repetition of the act I would sweep the poop. This seemed to appal them.

A few moments after, while part of the people were taking their

breakfast on deck, word was brought me that the steward was easier and

wished to see me again.

“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!