were exhibited in the hall: the company stood at one end, and a curtain
was drawn at the other, behind which was the frame. They went off with
great effect. The first was the Magdalen of Corregio, a recumbent
figure, “with loose hair and lifted eye,” the light thrown strongly upon
a volume open before her. The second and third were scenes from the
Corsair. While the fourth was preparing, Mr. Nivernois got engaged in
explaining to a person near him a new method by which _tableaux_ might
be presented in a much more striking manner, and he did not take notice
of the rising of the curtain, until he heard several of the company
exclaiming, “Beautiful!”—“how beautiful!” He turned and beheld the very
picture which he had that day been contemplating: the glorious features,
the blue dress, the veil falling over the back, the head turned round
over the shoulder. He stepped a little forward, and his keen eye caught
the glance of the performer; there was a momentary wavering, a blush,
the face was turned aside, and the curtain fell. Nivernois passed into a
room at the side, and hastened towards the place where the pictures were
shown. He found three or four persons there engaged in arranging the
next performance. A door stood open in the rear leading into a large and
very elegant garden. He looked out, and through the bright moonlight saw
among the bushes a female figure. He rushed forth; the lady fled, but
soon stopped by the limits of the ground, turned her head round, and
again presented the living portrait of the morning. It was Miss
Stanhope. He seized her hand in both of his.
“Oh! glorious being!” he exclaimed, “accept the homage of my soul. Take
all the worship of my being. I love you beyond the expression of all
words.”
She timidly extended towards him the bouquet which she had.
“Give me the motto with the flowers,” said he, “and you make me the
happiest of mankind.”
There was a soft consenting in her form and gestures, though she spoke
not. He pressed her to his bosom, and kissed her glowing cheek, I do not
know how often. He took her hand and they sat down upon a bench; a bed
of violets beneath their feet, the bright young foliage around them, and
above, the glittering moon smiling a pearly lustre on the floating
clouds.
“Thou art, within my soul, a birth of happiness and peace. I have been,
of all men, the most ambitious: not as valuing the opinions of the
world, for I am not yet sunk so low; but that I might in the interest of
action and creation find some comfort to my spirit. I have had some
applause; as much as satisfied the most craving vanity of many around
me. It wearied and fretted me unutterably, and as praise increased, I
feared to go mad with the anguish of disappointment. In this distress of
an intellect always seeking but incapable of finding, thy gentle beauty
beamed upon my heart. It awoke therein life and a fountain of light. Yet
was it not its own light, but the reflection of thy glorious lustre; as
in the blank waters on a starry night we recognise the impassioned
splendor of the heavens. I have placed thee within my heart; and
henceforth shall I find thee, forever, a source of joy and a spring of
inspiration.”
* * * * *
STANZAS.
BY E. CLEMENTINE STEDHAM.
“My harp also is turned to mourning.—Where is God my Maker, who giveth
songs in the night?”
The flush of young Hope, and the smile have departed,
That tinted my cheek—that enlivened my brow;
In sackcloth I sit, with the desolate-hearted,
And hushed is the song of my mirthfulness now.
All Nature rejoiceth to welcome gay Summer:
The out-going morn “walks in beauty” more bright;
And the streamlet replenished, forgetting its murmur,
Is dancing along in the gush of delight.
All, all save my heart, beats responsive to Nature!
In vain do _I_ hear the sweet warbling of birds,
In vain the rejoicing of each living creature—
The bleat of the lambs, or the low of the herds;
My spirit returneth no echo of gladness;
“The harp of the heart,” by affliction unstrung,
Can only reply in the numbers of sadness,
Or, silent with grief, on the willows is hung.
Great Parent of Nature! if to the bleak mountains,
The light of thy smile bringeth verdure again;
Doth gladden the desert with palm trees and fountains,
And scatter new beauties o’er valley and plain;
If the wealth of thy bounty, in showers descending,
Can make “the waste-places” bloom fresh as the rose;
And thy rainbow of promise, in loveliness bending
Upon the dark cloud, hush the storms to repose;
Oh! cannot the light of thy favor awaken
The well-springs of joy in a desolate heart,
And clothe with new verdure the bosom forsaken
Of all that could pleasure or solace impart?
And hast thou not showers for the _spirit’s_ refreshing,
And songs in the night-time of sorrow to give?
Then open thy windows and pour down a blessing—
O smile! and this wilderness heart shall revive.
Cedar Brook, Plainfield, N. J.
* * * * *
TO THE MOCKING-BIRD.
Arch imitator! ’mid thy varied tone,
That revels so acquisitively sweet,
Rivalling e’en Nature’s self, when doth thine own
Wild native air my rapt delusion greet?
Hast thou a voice to echo every note
Of liquid melody that erst hath dwelt
’Mid the greenwood, or where soft zephyrs float:
Yet of thine own hath not, in ecstacy to melt?
What modulation, what inflected grace,
Breathes through the volume of that warbling spell!
An intonation clear, that doth embrace
The woven minstrelsy from rock to dell.
The spring-tide melody, the summer lay,
The plaintiveness of darkly shadow’d night—
Who hath her choral charms, as beaming day—
These in their change are thine, to ’wilder and delight.
That rich, full swell of sweetness and of force,
That seem’d to wrap thy life-stream with the song,
In its wild strength—as struggling springs their source,
Break, and are borne in murm’ring sounds along:
Say, was it thine?—thy Parent-giving strain,
The innate warbling of thy purer soul,
That gush’d, as if it would to bowers attain
Where flowers unwith’ring bloom, and strains divine e’er roll?
But ah! again to earth that half-fled sprite
Sinks, in the beauty of some well-known air,
Less free and joyous, in its raptur’d flight,
Than the wild touching thrill that spoke thee there.
Kindred of thine own vocalizing race,
Yet of surpassing skill and strength of flow—
Illimitably varied—where we trace
The wondrous spell of mystery, we seek to know.
Gay, spry deceiver, from thy covert nigh,
Methinks I hear the myriad of thy clime
Pouring sweet incense through the southern sky,
In the free rapture of each gift divine;
Yet all successive—one continuous swell
Of silvery softness from the fount of love;
The mellow wood-notes, or the screaming yell,
Attest thy perfect art—thy imitations prove.
Oh, spirit-bird! to man thou hast been sent,
To teach Omnipotence by gush of song,
Bringing bright thoughts of goodness, that is blent
In all that gladdens—all that glides along—
And if, perchance, this teaching be not vain,
To win him upward, where he may rejoice
’Mid holy love, pure scenes, and sacred strain
Of heavenly praise, such as I hear from thee, thou voice!
A. F. H.
* * * * *
THE REEFER OF ’76.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR.”
THE WHITE SQUALL.
I was standing one sultry afternoon, by the weather railing, gazing
listlessly over the schooner’s side, and indulging in such reveries as
crowd upon the mind in our moments of idleness, when my attention was
called to the cry of the look-out that a sail was hovering to windward;
and gazing out in that direction I was soon enabled to detect a white
speck far up on the seaboard in that quarter, bearing as much
resemblance, in the eye of an unpractised observer, to the wing of a
sea-gull, as to what we knew it really to be—the royal of a man-of-war.
In an instant all was bustle on our decks. The men below poured up the
gangway: the skulkers came out from under the sides of the guns; the
officers gathered eagerly in a knot abaft the mainmast; spy-glasses were
put in requisition, shrewd guesses were made respecting the flag of the
stranger, and all the curiosity which the sight of an unknown sail
produces on board a man-of-war, was displayed in its full force amongst
us.
“I think she carries herself like a Frenchman,” said the first
lieutenant.
“Pardon me,” said the skipper, “but she lifts as if she were an
Englishman.”
“I could swear her to be a Hollander,” said a lieutenant, who had served
a while in the navy of the States.
“And were you not all so sure,” interposed a weather-beaten
quarter-master, whose boast it was that he had been at sea for more than
forty years, “I should say yon saucy braggart was a real Spaniard, such
as Kid would have given ten years of his life to be alongside of, for a
matter of a bell or so;” and having delivered himself of these remarks,
the old fellow coolly turned his quid, and squirted a stream of tobacco
juice like the jet of a force-pump, over the schooner’s side.
“At any rate, gentlemen,” said the captain, “the stranger doesn’t seem
to bring down much of a breeze with him, so that we shall have plenty of
time to form our conclusions before it becomes necessary to act. If he
should even prove to be an enemy, night may be here before he gets
within range, and under cover of the darkness we can easily escape him.
The little Fire-Fly has done too much mischief, and been too lucky
heretofore, to be lost now.”
The day had been unusually sultry. A light breeze had ruffled the ocean
in the morning, but about two bells in the afternoon watch the wind had
died away, and an almost dead calm had succeeded. The sea became as flat
as a mirror, its polished surface only heaving in long gentle
undulations, like the bosom of some sleeping monster. Not a ripple broke
upon its whole extent. The sky was cloudless: the rays of the sun,
pouring almost vertically downwards, and penetrating even through the
awning overhead, heated the deck till it became like a furnace beneath
the feet. The air was close, stifling, noisome. The men cowered under
the shade of the bulwarks, or hung panting over the schooner’s side. The
sea glowed like molten silver. Occasionally a slight gurgling sound
under the cutwater would remind us that the deep was not wholly
motionless; but excepting this, and now and then the feeble creaking of
a block, no sound broke the oppressive silence around.
At length, however, a slight breeze was seen ruffling the sea upon the
seaboard; and when the wind came up toward us, curling the ocean here
and there into mimic breakers, and when especially it swept with
refreshing coolness across our decks, we experienced sensations of the
most exquisite delight, and such as no one can imagine, who has not
felt, after a sultry calm, the first kiss of the long-wished-for breeze.
A new life was imparted into our men. The sails were set, and we once
more began to hear the sound of the wind in the hamper, and of the waves
rushing along our sides. It was, however, only a two-knot breeze. Such,
with but little variation, it had continued to be up to the discovery of
the stranger.
For half an hour and more after our look-outs had detected the sail to
windward, we managed to keep away sufficiently to maintain the distance
we had first possessed. But gradually the wind freshened; the billows
began to roll their white crests over in the sun-light; the sails
strained under the press of the breeze; and the waters, rippling loud
and fast under our bows, went plashing along our sides with a gurgling
noise, and then hissed by the rudder as they were whirled away astern.
“What a provoking breeze!” said Westbrook. “Here we are at a convenient
distance, as O’Shaughnessy would say, from yonder chap, having besides
the whole night before us to plan an escape from his clutches, and lo! a
breeze springs up just when it ought to be calm, leaving us at the mercy
of our huge friend up here, with a prospect of dangling from a yard-arm
if he turns out to be an Englishman.”
“Shure an we’ll blow ourselves out of water,” said O’Shaughnessy
himself, happening to overhear the conclusion of Westbrook’s remark,
“rayther than do that same.”
“And into it also, eh!” said Westbrook.
O’Shaughnessy made no reply, but shrugging his shoulders, the
conversation dropped.
The strange sail had by this time been made out to be a three-decker,
and so rapidly did he gain on us that we now counted upwards of forty
guns on a side. As the breeze freshened, moreover, his velocity
increased. Throwing out fold after fold of canvass, until a pyramid of
snowy duck rose towering above his decks, and the water rolled in
cataracts of foam beneath his gigantic bows, he seemed determined to
overtake us before the breeze which he brought with him could by any
possibility subside.
Meanwhile we made every effort to escape; but without success. The very
freshness of the breeze, owing to our comparatively light canvass, was
in favor of our adversary. In vain we threw out every sail; in vain the
ropes were hauled as taut as they could be drawn; in vain as a last
resort, our sails were wet down even to the trucks—every endeavor to
increase our speed only appeared to weary out our crew, without altering
the relative velocity of the two ships.
“By my faith! but yonder fellow sails well,” said the skipper, “I little
thought anything that carried canvass could come up in this style, hand
over hand, to the saucy Fire-Fly. What think you, Mr. Stevens?”
The lieutenant shook his head, and answered,
“I fear, sir, we shall have to choose betwixt a surrender or a hopeless
fight.”
“Ay, ay—that’s true,” said the skipper, abstractedly, “but he’s not
overhauled us yet, and there’s many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip,
you know.”
“Pray God it may be so now!”
By this time the man-of-war had come up within long cannon-shot of the
schooner, and just as the lieutenant finished his ejaculation, the
stranger luffed beautifully up a point or two, and the next minute a
sheet of flame streamed out from one of her bow-guns, and a shot
whistling past us aloft, plunged headlong into the sea to leeward. At
the same moment a roll of bunting shot up to the gaff of the stranger,
and slowly unrolling blew out upon the air.
“The English cross—by all that’s holy!” ejaculated the skipper.
There was a dead silence of more than a minute. Each one looked into his
neighbor’s face. The captain, with a compressed lip and a disturbed
brow, gazed, without speaking, on the man-of-war; while the discipline
of the service, as well as the sudden knowledge of our peril, were
sufficient to restrain the officers from conversation. Directly,
however, the Englishman luffed again; another sheet of fire blazed from
her bows; and a ball, sent this time with more certainty of aim, went
through our fore topsail just above the foot.
“Show him the bunting,” growled the captain through his clenched teeth,
“and get ready the long gun.”
We looked at each other in mute astonishment. I thought of Paul Jones in
a like emergency. But no one dreamed of expostulation, even if such a
thing had been allowable from inferiors. The flag was brought.
“Send the bunting aloft.”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
The huge ensign, at the word, fluttered to the gaff, and whipping out on
the breeze, disclosed the cognizance of the commonwealth, emblazoned on
its surface. No sooner did it unclose its folds than the man-of-war
luffed rapidly, and several points more than at either the preceding
times; while simultaneously a sheet of continuous fire rolled along his
side, and a shower of balls, ploughing up the sea betwixt the two
vessels, fell like hail around the schooner. At the same moment I heard
a noise like rattling thunder at my side, and looking up I saw the
mainsail coming down by the run. Quicker than thought it lay a wreck
across the schooner.
“We are sinking,” shouted a voice. It was that of the purser. The terror
of the speaker betrayed itself in every tone. “God have mercy on us, for
we are going down.”
“Silence, fool!” sternly said the skipper, and then raising his voice he
thundered, “what have they hurt?”
“They’ve cut away the throat halyards, and the peak has parted with the
strain,” answered the first lieutenant, who, with Westbrook and myself
had sprung at once to ascertain the real cause of the alarm.
“Let new ropes be reeved—all hands to your duty—let drive with the
long gun.”
The old gunner had been calmly waiting until the momentary confusion
should subside; and now, with his usual flourish, he applied the match.
“Hit him, by the Lord Harry—and cut down his topsail,” ejaculated the
old sea-dog in high glee, as the stranger’s fore-topsail fell from the
cap.
This daring bravado appeared to inflame the haughty Englishman beyond
all endurance, for, after the momentary vacillation in his course
occasioned by the loss of so important a sail, he put his helm down
again, and without losing headway to fire any more unimportant shot,
rapidly approached us. Our fate was now, to all appearance, sealed. We
gave ourselves up for lost. Dismal recollections of all we had heard
respecting the prison-ships of our enemy, or of the more summary
punishment of death sometimes inflicted on our countrymen, came crowding
on our minds. We looked into each other’s faces in silence, but, though
no word was spoken, on every countenance we read the determination of a
brave man, to die sooner than to submit. Such a resolution may seem
strange to others, but we were like men to whom defeat is worse than
death. We could not submit. To us the horrors of a prison-ship were more
appalling than those of a grave. We were resolved, if we could not
effect an escape, to die at bay.
“I would give a year’s pay,” at length ejaculated the skipper, but in a
low tone so as not to be heard by the crew, “if this breeze would but
die away here. We should then have a chance, however slight. But to be
cooped up like a rat in a hole—it is too bad!”
The sentence had scarcely been concluded, when, as if in answer to the
skipper’s aspiration, the breeze blew out in a sudden gust, and then
died rapidly away, until it had almost subsided.
“Ah!” said the captain, “my wish has had a magical effect. I’ faith,
we’re dropping the Englishman already. Oh! for two hours of calm.”
“And we shall have it soon, though not for long,” said the old
quarter-master, for the first time for nearly an hour taking a complete
survey of the sky, and shaking his head knowingly, but with something of
an ominous gesture. As he concluded his scrutiny, he said, “there’s
something brewing off here to leeward which will make us before many
hours reel like a drunken man, or my name isn’t Jack Martingale.”
“What mean you?” said the lieutenant.
“You’ve mayhap never sailed in these latitudes, or you would have seen a
hurricane afore now,” said the quarter-master. “Well, yonder tiny cloud,
down there on the sea-board in a line with that second ratlin, holds in
itself such a capful of wind as will drive the stoutest ship like a
feather before it—ay! or send Noah’s ark itself, which the parson says
was bigger than a fleet of ninety-fours, skimming away swifter than a
sea-gull over the seas.”
We all turned in the direction to which the old fellow pointed us, and
sure enough, about five or six degrees above the horizon, might be seen
a small dark insignificant looking cloud, hanging like a speck upon the
azure surface of the sky. Had we not known the quarter-master’s superior
experience, the younger portion of our group might have discredited his
prophecy. As it was, we were almost incredulous. Yet as we gazed on the
little cloud, we noticed that it slowly but steadily increased in size.
Our attention, however, was at this moment recalled from the signs to
leeward by the renewed demonstrations of an attack on the part of the
ninety-four.
The wind, during our short colloquy, I have said, had blown fiercer than
ever, and then nearly died away. This partial calm, however, had been of
short duration. In a few minutes the breeze was seen ruffling the sea
again, from a quarter of the horizon, however, several points to the
leeward of its old position. After blowing freshly for a few minutes
this gust too ceased. Meantime the enemy had gained little, if anything,
upon us, and no doubt fancying he perceived the signs of unsettled
weather in the sky, and therefore wishing to bring the chase to a speedy
termination, he luffed up once more, and opened a fire on us with his
bow guns. It now become a struggle of the most exciting character. Our
mainsail had by this time been repaired, and the time lost to the foe in
luffing nearly counterbalancing his superior sailing, we were enabled to
keep just within long cannon shot of the Englishman, and, by maintaining
this distance, to protract our surrender until a chance ball should
happen to disable us, or night should set in to favor our escape.
“He gains nothing on us now, I think,” said the skipper, “but his guns
are well served. That was truly sent,” he suddenly added, as a ball
whistled by within a few feet of his head, and then plunged into the sea
some fathoms off.
“And there comes the breeze again,” said the lieutenant, “how the
Englishman walks up toward us!”
It was even as he said. The breeze which, during the last five minutes,
had been chopping about the horizon, now blowing in fitful gusts, and
now dying away into an almost perfect calm, came out, as the lieutenant
spoke, from its old quarter, and heeling the tall ninety-four over until
his coppers glanced in the sunlight, sent him like an arrow from the
string across the deep. We could see the breeze ruffling the sea ahead
of the enemy, and keeping provokingly but a few cables’ length in his
advance for many minutes before it reached ourselves, and when at length
it bellied out our canvass, and we began to forge along, the man-of-war
had lessened by one-third the distance that had intervened betwixt us.
As if re-inspired by his advantage, the Englishman began to fire on us
with rapid and murderous velocity. Ball after ball came whizzing after
us, some tearing up the bulwark, some madly splintering the hull, and
more than one cutting its terrific passage along our decks. In vain we
made the most desperate exertions to increase our speed. The strength of
the breeze was a disadvantage against which our comparatively light
canvass could not contend. Every moment, we saw, lessened the distance
between us and the foe. It seemed madness to contend further. Already
the ninety-four was in dreadful proximity. The schooner was becoming
terribly cut up in her hull, and it seemed a miracle that her spars had
hitherto escaped. If we should be crippled, and we knew not but the next
shot might do it, how could we expect any mercy from our foe? Rebels
already in the eye of our pursuers we had nothing to hope for if
captured. Every one felt this. No one therefore dreamed of a surrender.
As the wounded men were carried below, their departing looks were
directed frowningly on the enemy,—and the last words of the dying were
to conjure their messmates never to give up.
“Never flinch, my hearties,” ejaculated the gunner, as one of his crew
was struck by a splinter; and had to be carried below. “Give it to ’em,
for villains and tyrants as they are. Hah! I have him in a line there.
Stand by all now,” and giving a last squint along his piece, he applied
the match, and gazing after the shot as it went whistling away,
exclaimed, “hit him on the quarter. I wonder who’s hurt,” he added, as a
sudden commotion was seen on the enemy’s deck; “somebody of more note
than a mere topman, I guess, or they wouldn’t be in such a flurry about
it.”
“And that’s the answer,” said Westbrook, as a ball struck us forward,
scattering the bulwark about the deck, and killing a man outright at the
gunner’s side.
“Swab her out there,” said the imperturbable old sea-dog, without
flinching in the least, “and we’ll revenge poor Harry Ratline. By the
Lord above, I’ll make them pay for this. Work faster, you lubberly
scoundrel,” he continued, cuffing the powder-boy. “There, that will do.
And now let’s see what damage you’ll do, old red-mouth!” and patting his
piece familiarly, he applied the match, and stooping on his knees after
the recoil, glanced along the gun to mark the path of his ball. It
struck the ninety-four just by the fore-chains, entering the first port
aft. It needed nothing to tell the deadly revenge of the shot. Even amid
the roar of the contest we could almost fancy we heard the shrieks of
the wounded and dying from that fatal discharge.
So intensely occupied had been every thought, during these last few
minutes, that I had not noticed the gradual subsidence in the wind; but
my attention was at this moment aroused to it by an exclamation of
O’Shaughnessy at my side, and turning my gaze to leeward, I saw at once
the cause of his wonder.