LITTLE NED AND HIS MOTHER.
WHEN Walter Griffin flung down the yard-stick, and jumped over Fred
Williams’s counter for the last time, he went directly on board the
Casco, and made several voyages to Cadiz with Isaac Murch, who valued
his services highly, and offered him promotion to remain with him;
but arriving from a voyage while the “Arthur Brown” was building,
the temptation to go in her on shares, and engage in all the perils
and excitements attendant upon running the gauntlet of the enemy’s
cruisers, proved perfectly irresistible to a boy of Walter’s sanguine,
fearless nature; and, as the vessel would be launched and away before
he could make another voyage and return, he resolved to wait for her.
In order to make the most of his time, he went over to Elm Island to
study navigation with Lion Ben, and then, by Captain Rhines’s advice,
to Salem, where was a French family, who, having fled from their native
country, during the revolution, in poverty, leaving their property
behind, supported themselves by teaching French, giving music lessons,
and employing themselves in any way which would bring the means of
subsistence. They also found no lack of sympathy among the inhabitants,
who, being a seafaring community, not only shared in the universal good
will at that time felt towards the French, but also were naturally
touched by the miseries of those who, having seen better days, and
accustomed to every comfort, found themselves, in old age, poor and in
a strange land.
Fred Williams had an uncle in Salem, a tanner. Walter boarded with him,
doing work enough in the tan-yard to defray the expense of his board.
Thus, under the instruction of persons of culture, and in daily contact
with them, he not only obtained a knowledge of the language, but
learned to speak it properly, and in a manner quite different from the
patois of Peterson, which, picked up from the lower class of people,
was, however, fluent, coarse, and vulgar.
Salem, as our readers will recollect, was the home of Ned Gates, who,
ready to like anybody who came from the neighborhood of Pleasant Cove,
received Walter with open arms, insisted upon having him at his house
to tea, and to stay all night, about half the time, and spent every
spare moment he could get with him.
Ned would go down to the yard and help Walter break bark, pull hides
out of the pits, take out the spent tan, and hang up the sides of
leather to dry, in order that his friend might have more time to study
French, and stuck to him like his skin. Were they not going to be
shipmates together, and share in perils?
Ned’s parents never wanted him to go to sea, and did all in their
power to prevent it; but finding his heart set upon it to such an
extent that he was utterly indifferent to everything else, and
unhappy, they yielded with the best grace possible. But when he was
shipwrecked, and came so near perishing with hunger on the raft, they
were greatly encouraged, thinking it would incline him to comply with
their wishes and abandon the sea. Ned’s mother was not only a most
affectionate parent, but a warm-hearted Christian woman. Like all
Christian mothers, she had been accustomed to hear her little boy say
his prayers, and continued the practice after he came to be a large
boy. Ned would leave the light burning, and his mother would come up,
sit by his bedside, hear him repeat the Lord’s Prayer, then kneel down
beside the bed and pray herself. Ned was a good boy, and loved his
mother dearly, but was full of life, and sometimes would do something
out of the way, so much so, that his mother, after hearing him say his
prayer, would get up, take the candle in her hand as though about to
leave the room, observing, “Edward, you have been a bad boy, to-day; I
don’t know as I ought to pray with you to-night.” This never failed to
bring Ned to terms. He would own up, if it was any concealed mischief,
confess, and promise amendment, for he could not bear to go to sleep
till his mother had prayed with him; yet he was nearly sixteen years
old, as smart a boy as ever went aloft to furl a royal or reeve signal
halyards. When the crew abandoned the sinking ship, Ned, as we have
before stated, preferred to stick by the captain.
Who says vulgarity, coarseness, and profanity are necessary
concomitants of courage?
“Edward,” said his mother, as he took the candle to go to bed, the
first night after getting home from Pleasant Cove, “leave the light;
I’ll come and get it.”
“Mother,” said he, after saying his prayers, “how nice it seems to be
once more in the old bed, and say my prayers to you, as I used to do!”
“I hope, Edward, you didn’t forget them while you were away from me.”
“I never turned in a night without it; but I didn’t have any mother to
come and get the light and kiss me when I got through.”
“I hope, my child, you did more than that. I hope, when you were
undergoing such misery on that dreadful raft, you prayed to God in your
own words, and out of your own heart.”
“No, I didn’t, mother.”
“Not pray, when there seemed nothing but death before you—a child
instructed as you have been?”
“No, mother. I suppose you want me to tell you just as it was.”
“Certainly, my child; but didn’t the captain, James Watts, or Arthur
Brown?”
“The captain was swearing part of the time, and crying the rest. One
minute he’d say he knew some vessel would come along and take us off,
and seem quite cheerful; the next minute he would wring his hands,
and swear, and cry, and say we should all starve to death on that
raft. After the little water and provision the men left us was gone,
he took to drinking salt water. It made him crazy, just as Mr. Brown
told him it would, for he said he had heard his father say so. Then
he ran off on the idea that we were going to kill and eat him. If he
saw us talking together, he would say we were plotting to kill him
and drink his blood. Mr. Brown said the second mate told him that he
passed a crew of men once on a wreck, and wouldn’t take any notice of
their signals, though they hoisted a signal of distress, and now he was
getting his pay for it. I suppose it was the idea he took in his head,
that we would kill and eat him, that made him jump overboard in the
night, when we were all asleep.”
“That was awful; but didn’t Arthur Brown or James Watts ever call upon
God?”
“Not as I know of; what they did inside I don’t know, but I never heard
them.”
“It seems very strange to me that a boy brought up to know and respect
all good things taught in the Catechism, and who never went to bed a
night in his life, till he went from home, without saying his prayers,
and having his mother pray with him, should be on a raft in the ocean,
starving, death staring him in the face, and not call upon God. I can’t
understand it; I should think that would be just the time, if ever in
the world.”
“Well, it ain’t, mother, though it may seem strange to you. It seems
strange to myself now; but I suppose, if I was in the same place, I
should do just so again. I did think of my prayers, and said them, as I
told you; but whenever I thought of doing anything more, it seemed to
me so mean to pray to God because I was in a hard place, when I never
did it when I wasn’t, that I couldn’t—I didn’t dare to. Then I was
thinking, most of the time, about being taken off, watching for some
vessel, or dreaming and thinking about eating and drinking.”
“Dreaming about eating?”
“O, yes, mother, that was the worst of it; when my tongue was so
swelled, as big as two tongues, and I was so weak from hunger that I
could hardly move, I’d fall into a doze, and dream that there was a
great table set full of everything that I loved, and then wake up, and
find it all a dream. One time I dreamed I was travelling on a road in
a real hot day, and saw a little wood on the side of a hill. I went to
it, and right between two great maple trees was a barrel sunk down in
the ground, and full of clear, cold water. It was a boiling spring, and
a flat stone right beside it. I thought I knelt down on the stone, and
looked way down into the clear, beautiful water, saw grains of sand
rolling over and over in it, and tried to drink; but whenever I got my
parched lips close to the water, it went away, and in my struggles to
reach it I woke; and there right before me was poor James Watts’s dead
face, and Mr Brown looking so pale and ghostly I thought he was dead,
and I all alone on the wide ocean. When I saw it was all a dream, I
burst into tears; after that, began to grow stupid and wandering, and
didn’t sense anything more till I found myself in a bed, and somebody
putting water in my mouth; and don’t you think, mother, I went right
back where I left off in my dream, and thought I was drinking out of
that spring? but it was Charlie Bell’s wife putting water in my mouth.
I tell you what it is, mother; people may think so who don’t know; but
if they were in such a place, they would find it wasn’t a very nice
time to be good.”
“My dear boy,” replied his mother, affected to tears by the narration,
“now that God has restored you to us, you have suffered so much, and
seen what the life of a sailor is, and what they are exposed to, I hope
you will never leave us again. You are all the son I have got—do stay
with us and your sisters. You have had a good education; your father
will take you right into the store with him, or he will set you up in
business, when you are old enough. There is Henry Bradshaw, that you
used to sit with in school; your old playmate; you used to love him,
and was just like a brother with him. He is going into business soon.
You can go with him, or you can learn a trade. Your father will send
you to college—he will do anything for you to keep you at home. If you
could only know what we underwent, after we heard the vessel was lost,
and thought you were lost in her, and what a thanksgiving there was in
the house after we got Captain Rhines’s letter, you certainly never
would leave us again.”
Ned was not taken by surprise, for he knew his mother’s heart, and
loved her. It was no easy task to deny the plea of such a mother, under
such circumstances, and the very first night of getting home, too. He
lay a long time silent, with eyes shut fast. His mother saw the tears
come out from under the closed lids, and, as she wiped them away, began
to hope her desires were to be realized.
“Mother,” at length he said, “you will think I am the worst, most
hard-hearted boy that ever was in the world.”
The mother trembled, but made no reply.
“Mother, I must go to sea. I can’t, indeed, I can’t stay at home.”
“But only think what you suffered, and how near you were to death.”
“But I didn’t die, mother. I’m all right now, and heavier than I ever
was in my life. I was weighed in Mr. Williams’s store the day before I
left, and weighed ten pounds more than I ever did before, without my
coat or waistcoat. Only think of that.”
“But only think what you suffered!”
“Don’t people suffer at home, mother? Just see what Will Webb has
suffered, all tied up in knots with rheumatism; and Tom Savage, with
the spine complaint. I do believe, if I knew I should go through all I
have been through the next voyage, I should have to go. Ain’t I a fool,
mother?”
“I think you are very foolish to leave a good home and kind parents
without any necessity for such hardships. Only think of your cousin,
poor James Ross, who fell from the main-mast and was killed, the very
first day out.”
“Well, mother, perhaps he would have died if he had been at home.
Captain Rhines says, when God wants a man, he’ll call him; and anybody
is just as safe on the royal yard as on deck, or at home in his bed.
Isn’t that so, mother?”
“I don’t know, my dear; I think I should a great deal rather have you
at home in this bed. Suppose you are sick at sea. There is no one to
take care of you.”
“Yes, mother, Captain Brown and Walter will.”
Mrs. Gates knelt down beside the bed, and prayed for submission to bear
what she felt to be a bitter trial—resigning a beloved, affectionate
boy to the hardships and chances of a life at sea.
“Mother,” said Ned, as she took the light in her hand to go down
stairs, “isn’t Walter Griffin a splendid boy?”
“Yes; too good a boy to go to sea.”