Brings the Holidays of the Little People and the Story
of the Old Man to an End.
Again the Mariner's Rest receives the little people; again the Ancient
Mariner is there to welcome them. But a shade of sadness is upon the old
man's face, and the children are not so gay as is their wont; for all
things must have an end, and holidays are no exception to the rule.
"Isn't it too bad," said William, looking very sober,--"isn't it too bad
that this is to be the last of it?"
"Not so bad for you as for me," replied the Ancient Mariner; and the old
man looked as gloomy and forsaken as if he had been cast away in the
cold again. But he soon cheered up, and in a much livelier way he said,
"Well now, my hearties, since this is to be the last of it, suppose we
close the story in the 'Crow's Nest,' where we first began it; for you
see, if the Dean and I were rescued from the desolate island and the
savages, we were not home yet. Now, what do you say to that, my dears?"
"The Crow's Nest! Yes, yes, the Crow's Nest!" cried the children all at
once; and away they scampered to it, as light and merry as if they had
never for an instant been sad at thought of the parting that was so soon
to come.
And now once more our little party are together in the dear old rustic
vine-clad arbor, and, as on the first day of meeting there, the old man
takes his long clay pipe out of his mouth, and sticks it in a rafter
overhead; then around little Alice he puts his great, big arm, and he
draws the fair-haired, bright-eyed child close to his side, and thus
"ballasted," as he says, he "bears away for port."
* * * * *
"Now, to bring our story to an end," ran on the Captain, "I must say
first that the _Rob Roy_ was a good, stout ship; the master a bluff,
good-hearted Scotchman; the mate a kindly man, and altogether different
from the red-faced mate that was on the _Blackbird_; and the people were
all just as good and kind to us as the savages had been. But they gave
us right away so much coffee and ship's biscuit and other things to eat
and drink (none of which had we tasted for three years and more), that
we got a dreadful colic, and had like to have died. But the next day we
were quite well again, and then we related to the Captain and everybody
on board the story of our adventures. The worst was, they would make us
tell our story over and over again, as I have been telling it to you,
until we almost wished we had never been rescued at all. It is, indeed,
a fearful thing in anybody's life ever to have met with any adventure
that is at all peculiar; for to the end of his days people will never
get done asking him about it; and most likely their questions are of the
most ridiculous kind, like, 'Hardy, wasn't it cold there?' just as if
anybody could be cast away in the cold, and find it anything else; or,
'How did you feel, Hardy?' as if _feeling_ has anything at all to do
with you when you are trying to save your life.
"The captain of the _Rob Roy_ took a great fancy to our odd-looking fur
clothes, especially our underclothing, which was made of birds' skins;
and he gave us civilized garments out of the ship's stores. You may be
sure that we were glad enough to get these nasty fur clothes off, and
be rid of them forever. The captain offered to keep them for us, but we
said 'No, no,' for we had had quite enough of them.
"So we went after whales, and made a 'good catch,' as the whale-fishers
call a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, only
stopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.
"When we reached Aberdeen, which occurred on the 29th of October, there
was a great talk made about us, and, when we walked through the streets,
people stuck out their fingers, and said, 'There they go! look!' so we
were great lions there, and had to tell our story so often that we found
out what they liked most to hear, and this we repeated over and over
again; and by this method we saved much time and talk.
"The very first thing the Dean did, after landing, was to write a letter
to his mother, sending it off right away by post. It was just like the
little fellow to do it, and what he wrote was like him too. It began
thus: 'Through the mercy of Providence I have been saved, and am coming
back to you, mother dear.'
"Then we were shipped on board an American vessel, by the American
Consul, for New York, where we arrived after a prosperous voyage, in
good health, and without anything happening to us worth mentioning. This
was on the 22d day of December, which made just three years, nine
months, and nineteen days since we sailed from New Bedford.
"As soon as we had landed, we set out for the hospital to find the
Dean's mother. The Dean had directed his letter there, thinking that if
she had got well and gone away, they would know where; and this they
did, so we took down the address and hurried on. It was in a little
by-street, and we had much trouble to find it; but by and by we came
upon a tumble-down old house, and were shown into a little tumble-down
old room, with a tumble-down old bed in it, and a tumble-down box for a
chair, and a small tumble-down table, and right in the middle of the
floor stood a little woman that was more tumble-down than all. It was
the Dean's poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had been
washing clothes, and she held a scrap of paper in both her hands, which,
bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, were
trembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of the
Dean's letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deep
wrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letter
had arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just made
out that it was from the Dean, and we could see that this had started
great tears rolling down her cheeks.
[Illustration: The Dean's Mother.]
"But there was no use to puzzle more now. There was her darling,
bright-haired boy, whom she 'always felt sure,' she said, 'would come
back again,'--never losing hope; and now you can imagine how she was not
long in recognizing him, and how she greeted him, and cried over him,
and called him pretty names, and all that,--or, rather, I mean to say,
you can't imagine it at all, for I never saw the like of it. It seemed
to me as if she would never let him go out of her arms again, for fear
she should lose him; and, seeing how matters stood, I went outside,
where after a while the Dean joined me, and having some money in our
pockets, that we had earned on board the _Rob Roy_ and the American
packet-ship, we went right off and bought the best supper we could get,
and had it brought into the tumble-down room and spread out upon the
tumble-down table; and never was any poor woman so glad in all the world
as the Dean's mother, and never were any two boys so happy as the Dean
and I. The Dean's mother would sometimes laugh for joy, and sometimes
cry for the same excellent reason; and, when neither of these would do,
nor both together even, she would fly at the Dean with open arms, and
hug and kiss him until she was quite exhausted, and temporarily quieted
down. Meanwhile the Dean, besides eating his supper, was trying to tell
his mother what he had been doing all the time,--to neither of which
purposes were these maternal interruptions peculiarly favorable.
"So now you see we were at home at last, safe in body and thankful in
spirit. Transported with delight, we could hardly believe our senses.
After so many years' absence, and such hardships and dangers as we had
passed through, New York seemed like another world. So accustomed had we
been to exposure that we could hardly sleep in-doors. The confined air
of the house greatly troubled us. Everything we saw seemed new, and we
were in a constant state of wonder. We did not, however, forget the
obligation we owed to our Heavenly Father for our deliverance; and we
lost no time in going to a church, and there, in secret, we poured out
our hearts to Him who rules the winds and the waves, and never forgets
any of the creatures he has made.
"'And now,' said the Dean, 'I am going to further show my gratitude by
making my mother comfortable for the rest of her days,'--which he did by
getting her into a better house, where she did not have to work any
more,--the Dean declaring that he would hereafter make all the money
that was necessary for her support; and he kept his word, too.
"As for the money the Dean had when we came home, that was soon all
gone, and mine too, for that matter, since I helped the Dean, of course.
Then we looked about us for a good ship to go to sea in, as we felt that
we should make better sailors now than anything else; indeed, neither of
us knew what else to do.
"The story of our remarkable adventures getting abroad, we found many
friends, so you may be sure, when we shipped again, it was not in such a
crazy old hulk as the _Blackbird_, nor did we go any more whale or seal
fishing, having got enough of that to last us during the remainder of
our lives. Still, I have been back to the Arctic regions once since
then; but it was not with a red-faced mate to torment me.
"I did not feel like coming up to Rockdale yet, being very much ashamed,
not having made anything, as I could see, by running away. Besides, I
learned that my father had given me up for dead long ago, and had moved
with all my brothers and sisters to Ohio, where I wrote to him, telling
all about my voyage and shipwreck,--the best I could, that is; for,
having neglected my studies when at school, I could not write very well.
"So now I came to be a regular sailor, going away first with the Dean on
a voyage to the Mediterranean in a fine bark, where we got moderately
good wages, and, being both rather ambitious, we grew in favor and saved
our money. When we returned, I proposed to the Dean that we should make
a common stock of our earnings, and get ourselves a nice little home,
which we did; and remembering the Rock of Good Hope, we called it Good
Hope Cottage, of which the Dean's mother took possession, of course,
while off we went to sea again, this time to Rio de Janeiro, in the same
bark; then afterwards we went to the Mediterranean twice more, and on
the last voyage I got to be mate; and, afterward, when we stopped at
Barcelona, the Dean was made second mate. Then, in course of time, the
Dean got to be a Captain, and prospered greatly, while his mother lived
at Good Hope Cottage, and the Dean and I were always happy to come back
and have a home like that to go to. After a while we were separated, for
I was a Captain as well as the Dean, and we could no longer be together
in the same ship; but still we both had a home together, and a place
always to hail from, you see.
"But I go too fast and too far. I must stop now, for I have given you
the story that I promised, of how I was _cast away in the cold_,--and it
is high time too; for, as you have said, the holidays are at an end, and
see there! the sun is sinking down behind the trees, and once more, as
on the first day we met and parted in this pleasant little arbor, the
shadows trail their ghostly length across the fields. But to me the
shadows have another meaning now. They will lie there heavy on the
ground until you come to lift them, and I shall be very, very sad and
lonely now without my little friends. The night is closing in, my dears,
as if it were a curtain dropped purposely to hide what we would gladly
see again; and the dew is falling heavy on the grass, my dears, and so
'good by' is the word."
* * * * *
The Captain paused and bent his eyes upon the golden light that lay
far-off behind the trees, as if he would divine something of the future
that was before himself and the little children by his side, and which
he thought the golden sunlight held; but, while he looked, it seemed as
if some tender chord within his gentle heart had snapped asunder and had
been badly tied again, for he said quite hurriedly, "Well, well, my
hearties, we must pass the word, and get it over. Good by,--there it is!
God bless you, and good by!"
"Good by, dear Captain Hardy," said William, putting out his hand,--a
hand that promised to be a very manly one indeed some day,--"good by,
and thank you for all your goodness to us," and the little fellow could
not keep a tear from coming out upon his plump and rosy cheek.
"Good by," said Fred, and, as he said it, there were two tears at the
very least on his.
"Good by," dear little Alice would have said, though she didn't; but
instead she threw her arms about the old man's neck and kissed his
sunburnt cheek.
"Good by," the Captain was about to say again, but (he was always good
at getting out of scrapes) at that very moment he contracted a suspicion
that something moist was getting up into his own big hazel eyes; and so
he began to whistle briskly, and then to cry out, loud enough to call
all hands to close reef the topsails in a gale of wind: "Port and
Starboard! Port and Starboard! come here, old curs and landlubbers that
you are,--come, bear a hand and be lively there, and say 'good by.'"
And along Port and Starboard came, bounding at a tremendous rate,
barking "good by" at every bound, and with their great bushy tails
wagging "good by" besides.
The foreign ducks stopped shovelling and spattering mud, and quacked
"good by."
The chickens stopped stuffing themselves with grasshoppers, and, while
the hens cackled "good by," the roosters crowed it.
And, lastly, Main Brace came waddling along on his sausage legs, and
from his plum-duff head let off "good by" at intervals, as a revolving
gun lets off its balls, without appearing to have any more idea of what
it was all about than the gun itself, until he reached the arbor, when
he broke out into a loud "boo-hoo," which was the only "good by" he was
now equal to; and as the first "boo-hoo" let loose a second, and the
second a third, and the third a deluge and an earthquake all in one,
there is no knowing what might have happened, had not the children
scampered off and stopped the outburst,--Fred running on ahead, and
William following after, leading his sister Alice by the hand, while
the gentle little girl turned every dozen steps to throw back through
the tender evening air, from her dainty little fingertips, a loving
kiss (there was no laughing now) to the Ancient Mariner, whose face
beamed brightly on her from the arbor door, and whose lips were saying
plainly, "Good by, and God bless you till you come again!"