NIX’S MATE: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF AMERICA. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ATHENIA OF DAMASCUS,” &c. “Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates, him,

            That would upon the rack of this tough world,

            Stretch him out longer.”

King Lear.

IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL COLMAN, NO. VIII ASTOR HOUSE, BROADWAY. 1839. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by RUFUS DAWES, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. New-York: Printed by Scatcherd and Adams, No.38 Gold Street.    

            TO EPES SARGENT, AUTHOR OF THE TRAGEDY OF “VELASCO,” THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED, BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR. NIX’S MATE. -- CHAPTER I.

 

            A cold sweet, silvery life, wrapped in round waves.

Leigh Hunt.

            Help me, Cassius, or I sink.

Shak. Julius Cæsar:

            Oh, she, that hath a heart of such fine frame,

            To pay this debt of love, but to a brother,

            How will she love when the rich, golden shaft

            Hath killed the flock of all affections else

            That live in her.

Shak. Twelfth Night:

           

            An October morning in New England! They who appreciate the beauties of Nature in the chill air of Autumn, when the hoar-frost hangs heavily on the brown grass, and the forest-foliage has assumed the diversified robe so peculiar to the northern regions of the United States; particularly they who have loitered among the uplands of Massachusetts and in the vicinity of Boston, have seen the sun rise from the blue Atlantic, and break the clouds into a thousand fragments of purple and gold, while his beams glittered on the ripples of the ocean,--and this on an October morning,--have seen a vision of magnificence and beauty perfectly characteristic of that glorious country which is already developing the scheme of broad philanthropy, of which the pilgrim fathers were the first medium of manifestation.

            Alas for Trimontain! but one of its lofty eminences remains;--those beautiful earth-altars which our fathers saw from the heights of Charlestown, when, gazing across the intersecting waters, they marked a resting-place for the infant Liberty, where they could rock it in security, and worship their Creator after the promptings of their own unfettered hearts. Beacon-Hill, where in time flamed the signal-fires of patriotism, and called together the sturdy ploughmen of New-England, to pour out their heart’s blood on the consecrated heights that look down on the sister cities of freedom; where for many years stood the monument of revolutionary achievements, and caused the young hearts of a rising generation to throb with gratitude and pride while they contemplated the deeds of their fathers,--alas! that venerable hill has fallen before the avarice of man, and is now covered by rent-yielding palaces, where, amidst the dance and the song, the banquet and the wine, live hundreds who never heard of, or at least who never saw, that sacred eminence, and who have no sympathy with its ennobling associations.

            Such, however, must be the fate of all things earthly, and, except that the venerable landmarks of antiquity are the symbols of better things, it matters little that some of them are uptorn, if indeed this intimate and inseparable correspondence be not a conclusive reason against their disturbance.

            Such has been the rapid progress of improvement in time-honored Boston, that a very few years have brought about astonishing changes in its appearance. Were it not for the old State House, the common, and a few other memorials which remain, it would be difficult for one who had not seen it for the last forty years to recognize the place he had formerly visited. How changed must it then be from the town of 1688, the point of time to which we are now desirous of directing the reader’s attention!

            How vague and erroneous an impression have most of the pilgrim descendants of the character of their forefathers! How mistaken an opinion as to their motives in crossing the world of waters, and establishing their societies in this hemisphere! Such has been the influence of crown writers, who were hired to throw ridicule on the noblest race of men which it has been the privilege of history to remember; such has been the influence of concentrated wealth and selfishness, which, time out of mind, luxuriating on the fat of the earth, wrung thence by the poor and needy, have ever opposed that spirit of the great Revelation, which was the declaration of universal independence. As, long afterward, light from the Reformation advanced, men began to see things in their true positions, and, like another sun rising at noon-day, from the midst of the sacred revelation streamed forth the everlasting truth that the freedom of Christian worship, civil rights, and equality, were inseparable. Even the ravings of Muncer were not without their value; and though that fanatical advocate for the equality of man mingled error in such large disproportion to truth, the doctrine in its purity has been gaining ground from that time to this, and will finally, divested of all alloy, be received throughout the civilized world.

            The first settlers of Boston were, for the most part, men of thoughtful and industrious habits; many of them from illustrious families, all of them respectable. Could it be supposed that such men as John Winthrop, Sir Richard Saltinstall, and Isaac Johnson, would seek an asylum in a howling wilderness a thousand leagues from all the delights of civilization, from no higher motive than the paltry privilege of “going to meeting,” where the trumpery of external worship was swept away from their sight? By no means. The non-conformists, who left their father-land for America, were impelled by a deeper motive. As the physical order of man could never have been known but for a temporary disturbance of the vital functions, so the great idea of human liberty could never have been understood but from the inculcation of its opposite. There must be some new and sudden encroachment on the rights of man, before the people can comprehend their true condition. The Hierarchy of England effected this, and opened to the Independents a view of human relations which they had never before contemplated. Surrounded, as they were, with causes of human suffering, so deeply ingrained in the body politic as to make their removal hopeless, and recognizing, as they did with the vision of seers, the progress and exaltation of man in the great future, they turned their eyes towards America, and in the sublime spirit of Renunciation, resolved to co-operate with the Divine Will in establishing universal freedom.

            The great principle of action, then, which stimulated our fathers in America, was renunciation of self. This was the foundation of their greatness. It was this that enabled them to see wherein all men are born free and equal; it was this which made them love their neighbor as themselves; it was this that induced them to forego all the allurements of kindred and of home, seek out a dwelling-place for the expansion of Philanthropy and the consummation of the greatest good with which mankind were ever blessed. When our fathers planted their feet on the soil of America, the voice of God spake through them in one great prophecy,--that here the true character of man would ultimately be developed; and that, though temptations and trials might for ages intercept the progress of righteousness, it would finally be here established in the happiness of the human family. Civil liberty is the ultimate form of religious truth. Let us, the children of the pilgrim fathers, watch and encourage its progress. The grand struggle, forevermore, will be between Renunciation and Assumption. The reconciliation of these opposites will be the solution of the great problem of social existence. This will be accomplished, not by the poor levelling the rich, but by the moral elevation of both rich and poor; not by the principle of agrarianism, but by the spiritual principle of Sympathy, which must be cherished in the sanctuary of affliction. Pride already equalizes both rich and poor on the bad elevation of selfishness. A new order of things has now appeared; a new offspring has descended from heaven.

            The morning-star had faded in the frosty atmosphere, and was now hardly visible above the eastern horizon, when the tramp of two Bostonians, shod in the heavy shoes worn in the year 1688, was heard on the hard-beaten sidewalk of Green’s-lane, in that ancient metropolis, the City of the Three Hills. The early risers, who were pacing the streets at this unusual hour, to the pleasant half-disturbance of sundry sleepy citizens, who, seeing no reason for bestirring themselves otherwise, were turning over in their comfortable beds to take a morning’s nap, were an old patriarchal-looking gentleman and a young man of eighteen. They were dressed according to the costume of the time, and alike; except that the garments of the younger had a more youthful cut, better adapted to his years. The old man seemed to be past seventy years of age, and his white locks, parted above his forehead, fell in profusion over his shoulders in curls. The expression of his countenance was dignified and serene. His eyes were of dark blue, and were full of gentleness; and his nose and mouth were remarkably symmetrical. His neck was adorned with a white cravat without any collar, the long ends of the same falling on his bosom. He wore a crimson velvet waistcoat, and a coat of the same, which were none the fresher for time; breeches of similar fabric, and yarn stockings of blue and white mixed; these terminated with square-toed shoes of heavy make, fastened with large buckles of Bristol stone. His whole appearance was that of a very respectable man, who was enjoying a morning walk in undress. The younger person presented a striking appearance. He was a little above the middle height, and was elegantly formed. His limbs were built with that roundness which is indicative of great strength, and his step combined firmness with elasticity. His features were of the Grecian mould, regular and rather massive; and his light grey eyes beamed with peculiar intelligence; add to this, dark brown, glossy hair, which was worn after the manner of his senior, and the sketch of the young companion may for the present suffice. He was walking by the side of the other, and he carried on his left shoulder two fishing-rods of jointed cane, and in his right hand a tin kettle. Each of the two had a fish-basket swung over his shoulder at the left side; and, thus equipped, they were wending their way in silence, till the elder began to end his meditations, as follows:

            “The smelts will bite smartly this morning, Horace, or there is no reliance to be had in a nor’wester. Let us try Bull’s Wharf this time,--what say you?”

            “As you please, Mr. Temple,” replied the young man, his face beaming as he turned to the old gentlemen; “there is no better place for fishing about Boston, than Bull’s Wharf, that I know of.”

            Conversing after that manner, they crossed in the direction indicated, emerging from a cluster of low, irregularly-built wooden houses, and coming in full view of the harbor glittering in the struggling radiance of day, the old man took off his hat, the conical crown and broad brim of which gave such a picturesque expression to his figure; and heaving a sigh, not of sorrow but of gratitude, bent his eyes upward for a moment, as if in acknowledgment of the sweet influences of morning: then turning to his young companion, whose thoughts for the time seemed equally absorbed in the pure and lovely, he exclaimed,

            “I guess you were early at the rope-walk this morning! Those are fine minnows, truly; ah, ha! you have some young bass there too! Highty-- tighty, man, you have bait enough to catch all the fish in the harbor!”

            The young man playfully nodded assent to this conjecture, and the conversation continued on the subject of bait and fishing-tackle, till the pedestrians found themselves at the foot of the wharf afterward so well known as the one where the celebrated Tea-Party performed their prodigy of patriotism. The place alluded to stretches out from the eastern part of the city into the harbor, and just reaches the channel where at high tide a ship of-the-line may ride safely at her moorings. It commands one of the most beautiful prospects imaginable. Across a two-mile expanse of water, Dorchester Heights,bosoming to the skies with luxuriant verdure, was at that time undisturbed by any habitation of man, save one small, rude building, where dwelt a fisherman and his wife, to whom we shall more particularly refer hereafter. As the eye turns to the left, the harbor widens, till, at a short distance from Dorchester Point, Fort Independence, then Castle Island, presents itself to the vision; and but a half gunshot farther to the left, the now-called Fort Warren frowns on the scene, while far in the distance, ten miles off, Boston Light-house shows itself half buried behind the waters of the outer harbor. Midway between the city and the light may be seen a stone beacon-mark, placed there to warn mariners from a sunken ledge called Nix’s Mate, all that now remains of a beautiful island, where fruit trees once abounded, and where singing birds were listened to by the rough sailor as he glided by on his way “from the girl he left behind him,” or on his return to her fond endearments. But we pass now from a more minute desscription of this place, and turn to our piscatorial adventures.

            In the meantime the young man had rigged the veteran’s fishing-tackle, having adjusted the cork-float to the silken line, and fixed the gimp snood with six hooks appended, a minnow quivering on each. As for his own, he had no chance of arranging it; for scarcely had the old man’s line touched the water, when the cork was dragged under, and he drew with a bending rod four large silvery smelts, glittering, quivering, and flashing in the rays of the rising sun, and making mist enough for a rainbow in the spray which they scattered around them.

            “Here they come, my boy, here they come!” shouted the excited veteran; “did you ever see finer fellows in your life? Fresh bait--my lad, fresh bait;--here, I will take the smelts off;--don’t give us that dead fellow,--give us a lively one--there-- that’s your sort;” and so saying the old man’s eyes sparkled with delight, and his line was soon in readiness and cast again into the water.

            In ten seconds more the old sportsman pulled up three others, measuring from six to nine inches each; and this he continued to do for some time, hardly ever hauling in less than two at once,--so that the junior, whose patience was almost exhausted, seemed likely to have a small chance at participation in the sport of the morning, till at length the half-sated gentleman bade him take care of himself, and leave him a while to bait his own hooks.

            “You have been very obliging, Horace,” said the old man, “and you must overlook my eagerness this morning; but I never enjoyed fishing so much in my life. My old fingers are hardly fit for this business: but I can’t help being attached to fishing--it is a primitive pursuit, and has a good correspondence.”

            The young man went to work immediately, and made the most of the time left for the diversion; but though he was actively engaged on his own account, he kept a sharp look-out for the wants of the old gentleman, and it was a sight that would have made the hearts of the mother-side anglers dance with delight, when, in rapid succession, and sometimes simultaneously, they broke the blue surface of the Atlantic, and spangled the atmosphere with five or six smelts at a haul, till both their baskets in two hours were full to overflowing.

            The sun was now well up, and our sportsmen were just thinking of leaving, when the younger cried out in irrepressible ecstasy, “Look there! Mr. Temple, look there! do you see the shad?”

            Mr. Temple turned in the direction pointed to, at the corner of the pier where the tide was rapidly setting in, slightly colored with the effects of a late storm; when an effect like a flash of lightning through the water convinced him that the signal had been well given. The old man’s eyes now sparkled brighter than ever--“Off with the smelt hooks,” he exclaimed, “off with them, Horace, and rig the shad snood as quickly as possible. Let me get a shad this morning, and hey for breakfast in earnest!”

            The smelt-hooks were soon disengaged, and their place supplied by another about four times the size, with a much longer shaft in proportion fastened to a piece of strong gimp. To this there was no lead attached. For bait, he chose one of the largest minnow, exactly resembling the bass or rock, and passing the hook under the dorsal fin, left the bait at liberty to swim with the line on the surface of the water.

            The old man eagerly cast off as soon as all was ready. The live bait gently touched the water as he trolled it backward and forward to tempt the wary but impetuous victim. Presently a shad shot by like a thunderbolt--another--another and another,-- when suddenly, quicker than thought, one hungry fellow struck the bait, and the sportsman’s winch sprang like a watchman’s rattle. The old man had nothing now to do, but, as the sailors say, to keep his line taut; for if he had given the furious fish an opportunity, he would have risen, as is his habit, and shaken the hook out of his mouth, with his head above the surface of the water. Mr. Temple was, however, too true a Bostonian to be taken in that way. He kept his victim steadily in his feel; at times, when it struggled hard, he eased out the line, but on the least relaxation, he drew it tight again; till, after full fifteen minutes of intense interest, he brought the exhausted fish to the surface of the water, and after drowning it, drew it safely to the shore.

            In the excitement of landing the fish, the young man unfortunately stepped back over the capstan of the wharf, and was in an instant precipitated into the water. Being an expert swimmer, the accident would have been in no way alarming had he not fallen sideways as he did. The concussion almost deprived him of his senses, and he sank to the bottom, perfectly unable to help himself. When the old man saw this, he screamed in an agony of terror. Not a moment was to be lost;--yet what could he do, old and infirm as he was? Despair, with presence of mind, gave new life and energy to his actions. His will to accomplish a beneficent object enabled him to use the means of effecting it. He threw himself over the capstan of the wharf, and holding the fishing-rod between his teeth, he caught hold of the timbers, and by placing his feet between the large stones with which the pier had been built, lowered himself down to the water’s edge. He now passed his left arm behind one of the timbers, and taking his rod in his right hand, reached it towards the suffering young man, who had now risen to the surface of the water. Alas! he had not power thus far to help himself, and he was about sinking a second time, when the generous and disinterested old man sprang instantly to his assistance.

            It now seemed as if the necessity of the occasion had inspired him with fresh youth and activity;-- with newly-derived vigor he dashed the waves aside, and reached the drowning man in time to save him. With his left hand he held him by the shoulder, while with the other he helped to keep himself with his burden above the water.

            “Save him! save him!” cried the benevolent old man, entirely forgetful of his own perilous situation. The petition was not in vain. Just then, a sailor, who had crossed the channel, and was making rapid headway, by rowing cross-handed, emerged from behind a merchant vessel which was moored at the wharf. The cry of distress met his ear, and he redoubled his exertion. At the utmost need of Mr. Temple, the boat rounded to his assistance. With one hand the sailor sustained the silver-headed philanthropist, while with herculean strength he drew the other into the boat. The old man was then relieved, and he bowed himself down, and sent up audible thanksgiving to the Almighty for his providential deliverance.

            Horace Seymour now lay exhausted on the bottom of the boat, while Mr. Temple supported his head on his knees. “Ah me!” thought the latter, “how sudden, how unexpected is misfortune! A few moments ago we were too happy, my young friend; and now--who knows but that you are dying!” And the old man shuddered with the cold.

            The boat was soon brought to the landing stairs, and the old man procured a carriage. Public coaches were then unknown, but the kindness of a neighboring friend supplied the deficiency. Placed with care in the vehicle, and accompanied by himself and the sailor, under the direction of Mr. Temple the driver stopped in the court-yard of an elegant house, which occupied the site of the late Washington Gardens.

            The family of Wilmer was one of the most ancient in the metropolis, though they had lately emigrated from England. Mr. Wilmer was a lawyer of eminence, middle-aged and highly accomplished. His wife was the youngest daughter of a Scottish marquis. He had met her in his travels, had woed and won her, and now brought her over with him to America. The fruit of this union was an only daughter; let us introduce the reader to her.

            Grace Wilmer, at the time of the unhappy accident we have narrated, was enjoying the freshness of the young October morning in the spacious and well-ordered garden of the mansion house. She was seventeen years old, saving two months; and she was now looking forward to the extraordinary festivities of her anniversary natal day, which happening on Christmas, enabled her mother to gratify her daughter’s innocent inclination to hilarity, while the ordinary observances of the occasion were regarded in course.

            Mr. Wilmer was one of the earliest Catholic settlers; but as he did not obtrude his religions tenets on the people about him, he was thus far inoffensive to the community in which he resided. Few, indeed, were aware of his religious bias; his wife and family regularly attended the Congregational meetings, and his occasional levity on those subjects which were of importance to his neighbors, was regarded with a charity and forbearance which we are not in the habit of attributing to the New England colonists of that period. The truth is, that, at the time of our narrative, the strict forms of Congregational observances were a good deal broken in upon by influences which could not be controlled; and some of the most liberal in the church ministry looked into the future with sad forebodings, and entertained too well-founded apprehensions that the purity of their worship would be soon contaminated, if not destroyed. They did not, however, cling to any bigoted belief, that they had already attained to a perfect understanding of the whole Christian revelation; for they looked forward, in the midst of their temporary despondency, to times of still greater illumination, when their posterity would enjoy a far higher degree of gospel exaltation than was permitted to their own understanding.

            Grace’s figure was exceedingly fine, yet not more so than that of some who are descended from her family and now adorn the circles of fashion and retired life in that elegant city. Her neck and shoulders were perfect models for sculpture, and her head was as fine as the imagination of a young and enthusiastic painter dreams of in his reveries of Elysium. Her features had not that common regularity which is generally preferred by statuaries, and which is always given to the Venuses and to the daughter of Latona; but there was a harmonious beauty pervading them, which may in vain be sought for among the marbles of old Greece. Her forehead was rather too high for a woman; but its perfect regularity and whiteness, shaded by the brown tresses which partly fell on each side, and, fastened by a blue ribbon, dropped luxuriantly over her shoulders, elicited admiration rather than fault-finding; while her large and lustrous blue eyes, with their long, dark shining lashes, seemed to pierce the very skies, and drink in from their purest depths the dewy freshness of their coloring. Her nose was not perfectly straight, but it seemed so, except in profile; and her mouth, which was faultlessly formed, with the underlip dimpled in the centre, was in constant action with her eyes; as if some glad and happy thought, or some humorous suggestion of her fancy were struggling for utterance. The color came and fled, hovered and trembled on her cheeks, like the flashes of light on the clouds of morning; and her eyes would sometimes glisten with emotion, till she turned aside to dash the bright intruder from their lids, if but a flower chanced to awaken an association of deeper joy, or the thoughts of her young imagination were bewildered with unwonted luxuriance.

            The education of Grace had been carefully attended to. The common branches of English tuition were familiar to her, and she had acquired enough of the higher to place her at ease in any company where accident might throw her. She had a slight knowledge of Latin and of Greek,--not enough to make her pedantic, had she been so inclined; but sufficient to enable her accurately to discriminate in the use of her mother tongue, and to allow her to get the sense of such chance passages as she met with in books. More than this her father did not care for her to acquire, but her knowledge of the French and Italian languages was exact and critical.

            Such was Grace Wilmer, who was now rambling through the diversified walks of her father’s garden, where the frosts of a New England autumn had already paid many a rude visit, and left the foliage tinted with those beauties so peculiar to the North American forests. She had gathered a bunch of the China-Aster, which she intended for her mother when they should meet in the breakfast-room; and she had fastened one, which was now glittering with sunshine and frost-work over her beautiful forehead beneath the band that cinctured her curl-clusters, and she was bounding buoyantly toward the house with her ribboned locks streaming to the breeze, and holding out the bundle of flowers to her mother, whom she had just discovered at the window, when her attention was arrested by the sound of the carriage wheels at this unusual hour in the court-yard. She immediately retired within the house; but hardly had she reached the parlor, when the shrieks of her mother, and the hurried cries of the servants, brought the most terrible revulsion on her feelings. Grace flew immediately to the scene of distress, where she found her exhausted cousin supported by two men, one of whom, Mr. Temple, she recognized but regarded not, and her mother fainting in their presence. Mr. Wilmer had not returned from his morning walk.

            “Horace! Horace!” sobbed the heart-stricken girl, “how has this happened? my poor, dear cousin!” and she threw herself on his neck, and wept such tears as come scalding from the brain suddenly overtaken by unlooked-for, overwhelming desolation. So violent was her anguish, that her grief became hysterical, while her eyes dropped tears fearfully fast, and her bosom heaved with the convulsions of a galvanized subject. She supposed her cousin to be dead. Such a sudden transition from the free breathing of undisturbed delight to the choking obstructions of inexpressible suffering, was too much for Grace Wilmer; and as the paroxysm of passion subsided, she fainted in the arms of those who were standing by. Horace Seymour was conveyed to his bed, and medical aid was immediately sent for. He was copiously bled, and, on his reviving, it was found that there was a probable chance of his recovery.

            Amidst the confusion attendant on bringing Horace Seymour home, no one heeded the stranger to whom they had been so deeply indebted. At the time Grace fainted, it was not thought strange that the unknown mariner received the sinking beauty, for in the tumult of the occasion the hand of friendship could not be regarded as improperly exercised in ministering to the common distress; but the kindness and delicacy of his attentions could not be overlooked. He chafed her hands and temples, and sprinkled her forehead with water, till she opened her eyes upon him; but before consciousness was restored to her, he had vanished from the company, and was not to be found. Many hours passed before the afflicted girl recovered sufficient energy to assist in the cares of her family, and then what was her surprise to discover that a valuable ruby ring had been abstracted from her finger; a ring which had belonged to her lordly ancestors, and which her mother had presented to her on her last birth-day. She did not dare to inform her parents of the loss; and she prudently judged, that if it had been stolen from her, her best chance of regaining it lay in present secrecy.

            Little did she then dream who possessed that lost treasure: little did she think of him who, in the first delirium of love, had borne away that memorial of one whose looks were burnt in upon his very memory, the idolater of Grace Wilmer!

CHAPTER II.

 

            Oh fate of late repentance! always vain;

            Thy remedies but lull undying pain.

            Where shall my hope find rest?

Savage.

            Misfortune on misfortune! grief on grief.

Addison’s Cato.

            Something hath been amiss--a noble nature

            May catch a wrench.

Shak. Timon of Athens.

           

            Some obscure child of sorrow had just been consigned to the tomb in the Chapel burying ground, the worm-eaten planks placed over it, the rich mould of the grave-yard heaped thereon, and the brown sod restored to its accustomed place;--the mourners, the idlers, and the loiterers had one by one retired, the monotonous sound of the funeral bell still surging on the memory, when the stranger mariner, starting from the deep reverie in which he had been bound, found himself alone among the monuments of the dead.

            The sun was fast receding behind the hills which half girdle Boston with a crescent of greenery, and the orange hue of evening, like the deep coloring of Claude, reflecting back from all opposing objects, partly gilded and partly veiled them in gloom.

            The mariner was sitting on a square monument, which consisted of a large slab of sandstone supported by four columns of the same. He had thrown his hat on the grass, and bending his body listfully over, appeared to be meditating deeply on the most exciting subjects, for his features displayed extreme emotion. He seemed to be a young man of about twenty-five years old, nearly six feet high, uncommonly well-made, with broad shoulders and a slender waist. His head was one of those which immediately attract attention; being finely developed in every part, though rather too small for perfect symmetry. The affective organs were moreover rather larger than the intellectual; so that, judging from the exterior, one would readily suppose that he were better calculated for action than for speculation. His features were perfectly regular; his eyes light blue, and large; his nose was straight; his lips were like those we see in the Napoleon of David, with a chin and neck full and massive. His hair was rather light and curling, and his complexion was browned as if by constant exposure to the weather. He was dressed in loose pantaloons of blue cloth, with a short jacket of the same, snugly fitting the body; a check shirt with the collar turned down, was circled at the neck by a black silk kerchief, which fell from a slip-knot on his bosom. His feet were clad in white stockings and thin shoes.

            Edward Fitzvassal, for such was the name of the person we have now described, was the natural son of one of the proudest men that ever lived within the shadows of the three hills. Possessed of immense wealth, that father, who appropriated large sums to the gratification of his sensual appetites, had lived in the hall of his ancestors in England surrounded by every luxury, grinding the poor till sufferance ceased to be a virtue with them, till at last he was driven by their hatred to seek a shelter in America. He had buried his wife soon after he arrived, and her monument was now before the eyes of Fitzvassal. She had never injured him, indeed he had never seen her; for, long before he was a conscious child of suffering, that woman had sunk under the repeated injuries of her husband, and lay slumbering in the church-yard. He had been acknowledged by his father only through the desperate and unceasing importunity of the most abject misery which the satiety of sensuality had cast on a lonely woman. In consequence of this importunity, Vassal acknowledged his son, and bribed a young man to marry the mother; a fellow who had followed the seas in several distant voyages, and who, being tired of a wandering life, was easily induced to take upon himself such a beautiful incumbrance as Ellen Wilby and her boy, backed as the burthen was with the gift of a small fishing schooner and a frame-house, already referred to, situated between Dorchester Heights and the Point, large enough to accommodate a small family.

            Ellen yielded to this necessity with meek submission. Though she was nothing but a humble serving-maid, she had been deceived by the ardor of too confiding affection. Often had she entreated her seducer to leave her in pity of her helplessness before the seal of her ruin were accomplished; for her heart’s weakness spake to her in terrible admonitions, while she dreaded the fascination of her charmer; and now, when the harsh reality burst upon her that she was an outcast in the world, and that the man on whom she had lavished her very heart’s blood in her excess of womanly devotion, would not even look on her with kindness; when she was on the point of being consigned to the poor-house as a mendicant, and of having her infant torn from her arms as the child of no one, to be subjected to the tender mercies of a cold and calculating charity; then it was that, in the desperation of her agony, she flew to the house of her seducer, and through untiring importunities extorted from him protection for her child.

            It was not for herself that she cared. She was willing to undergo any privation in which the pledge of that false affection might not participate; but she loved it even more than if it had been the fruit of lawful affection; for the natural principle developed itself in its fulness, as it was warmed by the strange fire that consumed her; and though it was not the fire of heaven, the ministers of mercy tempered it to her endurance, and mingled joy even in the excess of her anguish. Though she married Abner Classon with reluctance, she endeavored to conceal her unwillingness, and make amends for her simulated love, by performing the duties of a wife with apparent cheerfulness.

            Poor wretch! how many thousands have the false arrangements of society wedded to similar suffering! How many anguish and pine in rayless misery, with the light of their eyes fading, and the bloom of their cheeks turning pale; whose lives are one undisturbed current of hypocrisy, and who array the dead body of their hopes in the garniture of smiles!

            Abner Classon was a rude sailor, wholly destitute of any refinement. He had been, in his younger days, eagerly sought after by the vulgar, idle, and dissipated of Boston, as he was ever ready for a frolic, could out-drink any competitor, would stand by his friends in a row, and was gifted with a sort of dry humor, which discovered itself rather in his manner of saying things than in any intrinsic excellence of their own. He was seldom at home, as, every other day, he ran down the outer harbor, coasting along Nahant and the neighboring fishing grounds for cod and haddock, which he carried to Oliver’s Dock, and sold at the market value. The proceeds he would now and then carry with him home; but generally he found ways of spending it at sailors’ boarding-houses, where he was glad to meet any revellers he could find, and always willing to pay the whole bill himself.

            Such was the step-father of Edward Fitzvassal, and under such influences was he brought up from his childhood; for, though his mother exerted herself in every way to lead him in the right path, and imparted to him the rudiments of a simple education, the same she had herself with great difficulty acquired; yet the brutality of Classon dragged him down faster than he could rise from the disadvantages of his situation, while the example of habitual drunkenness threw its pestilential influence on his path.

            Edward Fitzvassal grew up under such protection to manifest forms of character almost entirely dependent on the circumstances by which he was surrounded. At an early age he showed a haughty, overbearing, and indomitable temper. In the first flush of generous youth, when under more genial auspices, his heart would have become attuned to all that is lovely and admirable in nature, in art, or in their hidden spiritual causes,--he learned to realize the false and cruel relation which he and his mother held to the world in which they lived. Before he was fifteen years old he had drunk deeply from the bitter fountain of contumely, and been spurned from his unfeeling parent’s threshold in heartless disdain. He learned to know that the consequences of another’s fault may descend to an innocent sufferer; he learned to realize the hard condition of a poor man, by becoming conversant with the apparent happiness of the rich; in short, he learned to compare the outward forms of good with the inward forms of those evils which spring from discontent and penury; and the flames of torturing unrest began to parch his bosom.

            How could it have been otherwise? Who was there to open for him the deep recesses of his nature, lacerated and bleeding by the thorns of pride and all nameless irritation, and pour the balm of human sympathy into his bosom? Who was there that, having been tried as the silver is tried in the furnace, in the nine times heated fire of adversity; that had passed through privations, and been smitten down by the iron mace of human agony, for temptations too readily yielded to; that had been bowed down in undissembling humility at the inmost shrine of sorrow’s sanctuary, to afford a brother’s consolation in his afflictions, a guide in his labyrinth of woe?

            But it was provided, as the best possible path for Edward Fitzvassal, that he should strike into the thick entangled forest of human life, and be his own pioneer through the wild. Nor was he left wholly desolate. He felt that he had courage and hope; he knew that at times his heart was visited by an unaccountable glow of consolation and promise,--and, though he attributed all this to his own inborn energies and unconquerable pride, and so mistook another’s bounty for his own resources, he rose sufficiently above the influences of his condition to assume the semblance of endurance. Deeply was he indebted to the gentle offices of his mother, a woman who had learned to know and realize the immortal from the abyss of degradation to which she had fallen.

            The truths which are said to lie in the bottom of a well are the stars that correspond with societies of angels, and when the parched earth has drunk the last drop of moisture which rolled there in delicious coolness, the pilgrim, who has mainly sought to quench his thirst at the fountain, may turn to their realitics in heaven.

            Fitzvassal had been thinking over the darker passages of his life as the funeral train left him to his solitary reflections; and as he turned to gaze on the aristocratical mockery carved on the tomb of his father’s consort, curses deep and bitter heaved from his lungs, while he ground his teeth and snapped his finger joints after the restless and agitated manner of those who would but cannot fly from the horror with which evil surrounds them.

            There is a sun that shines on the inward man, like that which brings the day-beam to the horizon; and the dulness that gathers over us at times, is because we have suffered the invisible attendants of the spirit to intercept its rays, and envelope the better part of our nature in shadow. In vain will the natural sun culminate in the heavens and scatter its brightness around us, if the spiritual sun is clouded by our passions. There will then be no brightness for us; no beauty will break over the face of nature; the melody of birds will be discordant jargoning, and the verdure of the trees like a melancholy funeral pall.

            “My father!” groaned Fitzvassal--“in what has he been a father to me? He has given me life, and he has my bitterest curses for it.”

            He then remembered, that the last time he visited his parent, he had been spurned like a dog over his threshold: and never did demon-father receive from his accursed progeny heartier maledictions than those which boiled up from the hell that was flaming in this miserable sufferer.

            With unutterable anathemas, Fitzvassal sprang from the monument, and casting his fiery eyes on the gloom around him, hurried to the fence of the churchyard, and bounded over it into the street. Immediately opposite stood, on a part of the most elevated ground of the metropolis, the splendid house where his unnatural father resided. The mansion was built with considerable architectural style, and had been once occupied by a colonial governor. It had several gable ends, a manner of building common in those days; and its exterior was rough-cast with broken glass. Before it a succession of glaces, like steps, well grown with grass and interlaid with ornamental gardening, reached almost to the street, now called Tremont. Fitzvassal turned his eyes from it in disgust, and went his way in sorrow.

            The shadows of evening had now gathered deeply over the town, and the heart of the wanderer, as he pursued his solitary walk from Boston, beat violently with conflicting emotions. His thoughts struggled between two opposites,--hatred for his father and love for his mother. How could he help loving one, who, in giving him birth, hateful though it was to him, had sacrificed every thing her heart held dear, --one who had since lived only for him; who had wedded herself to a man she loathed, that he, her only child, might be kept from the cold charities of the world. True, she had sacrificed every thing in vain,--for the pittance which she expected from her husband was generally denied her, and she was often driven abroad amidst the inclemency of winter, unknown to her brutal, uncongenial partner, to beg for that support which his beastly necessities denied her. Though her child never knew of this as he grew up to energetic youth, he did know more, much more than his hardihood of mind dared to ponder on; and amidst all the conflicts that environed him, and all the despondency that hung its dark drapery over his life, he tried to cherish the hope that by some means, fair or foul, he would one day be enabled to make his mother independent of the world, and his father beg for mercy at his feet. Though his stepfather had stood in the way of all his determinations, it could not be hidden from the son that every thing the abandoned man could convert into money went immediately for brandy; and in one hour of domestic agony more terrible than others, he resolved to make a desperate effort to relieve the distresses of his mother, and break the bondage that enslaved her.

            Fortunately for Fitzvassal, an opportunity at the time seemed to present itself, of furthering his purpose. There lived at that day one of the most enterprising men New England ever saw; one who was designed to work an important part in her history. William Phips was born February 2d, 1650, in an obscure village on the Kennebeck. His father followed the occupation of a gunsmith, and William, afterwards Sir William, was the youngest of a large family. “Reader,” says the venerable Mather, “inquire no further who was his father? Thou shalt anon see, as the Italians express it, a son to his own labors.”

            From his earliest years young Phips discovered to those who knew him intimately, uncommon abilities and an adventurous disposition. With such a spirit, unwilling to be confined at home, where there was little else to engage his active mind but Indian skirmishes and petty border quarrels, he left his father’s house, and shipped on board a merchant vessel which traded to the West Indies. Ever active and obedient, it was not long before Phips became master of a vessel, and he continued for a long term to follow the old trade to the West Indies. Many years before, a Spanish galleon, laden with immense wealth, had been wrecked on the coast of Hispaniola. Great as the loss was, the circumstance had long been forgotten, and was never referred to but as a nautical legend, which sailors spun into long yarns with a mixture of improbable fiction and ghostly circumstance.

            The fact that this treasure still lay,not many fathoms deep, near Port de la Plata, did not escape the vigilant mind of Captain Phips; and for several years he endeavored to collect, as warily as possible, all the information that tradition could afford him on the subject. At last, during one of his voyages he fell in with an old Spaniard, who, taking a sailor liking to Captain Phips, communicated to him certain information, in a shape more rational and tangible than any which he had before collected: the exact spot was pointed out on the chart where it was pretended the treasure lay, and every assurance given that there could be no error in the information.

            This intelligence, confirming parts of the disjointed narratives, which the vigilant captain had collected, and suggesting a reasonable probability that the treasure might be recovered, induced Captain Phips to make proposals to several wealthy individuals of Boston, and among the rest, to Edmund Vassal, for fitting out an expedition for the recovery of the prize: but it was Captain Phips’s fortune to meet with discouragement in every direction. The men of money laughed at the proposed enterprise as only worthy of a madman, and at the very idea of such an expenditure, curtailed their current expenses, and began to feel poor. But Captain Phips was made of sterner stuff than even his best well-wishers imagined. He determined at once to go to England, and lay the plan of the enterprise before King Charles II. He knew that that monarch would do any thing for money, but, in so judging, he did not take into consideration that he was to be called on for an outlay.

            In the meanwhile the affair was talked of with great freedom, and among the twelve thousand inhabitants of Boston, there were not a dozen who did not regard the proposal with contempt. It seemed to them about as rational a project as the more modern one to sail into the interior of the earth, and, like every thing novel, it was hunted down forthwith. The idea of such a possibility as the one proposed in the scheme of Captain Phips, was enough to inflame the imagination of a poverty stricken, woe-fraught, half-crushed and despised piece of mortality like poor Fitzvassal; and on hearing of the project, his resolution was formed in an instant. Decision and resolution are qualities of no common temperament, and these this young man, who was then already eighteen years old, possessed in an eminent degree. He shipped on board Captain Phips’s vessel, and was made second officer before he reached England. The captain soon discovered that he had been in reality a sailor all his life, which was so far true, that Fitzvassal had been almost every day on the water, and from the familiarity which he had necessarily formed with marine affairs, had become acquainted with the practical details of navigation.

            King Charles II. at first entertained the proposed expedition with considerable favor, but he was soon induced by his court favorites to reject it. They could not spare their money, ill-gotten as it was, yet so essential to their debaucheries and infamous pleasures, even with the fair contingency of increasing it an hundred fold; so that Captain Phips was compelled to turn for assistance in another direction. At length the Duke of Albermarle, son of the celebrated General Monk, who was principally instrumental in the restoration of England’s monarchy, was induced to regard the scheme with favor. He accordingly invested sufficient money to fit out an armed schooner, which, under the guidance of Captain Phips, sailed on the destined adventure.

            The expedition was successful. Captain Phips recovered wealth from the bosom of the deep equivalent to a million and a half of dollars, and with this rich reward for his labors he returned to England, and laid the treasure before his generous patron, the Duke of Albermarle. At first it was proposed in the king’s council to seize the whole amount, on the villainous allegation that the enterprize had not been clearly enough explained to the king; but the latter, with becoming magnanimity, refused to touch a shilling, declaring that the representation had been satisfactory, and that the plan would have been adopted by himself but for the advice of those very councillors who would now deprive the lawful owners of their property.

            Instead of robbing Phips and Albermarle of their goods, the king conferred the honor of knighthood on the enterprising captain; and Sir William Phips was allowed a sum for his part in the fortunate undertaking equal to one hundred thousand dollars, a princely fortune if we consider the relative value of money a hundred and fifty years ago.

            While the duke’s vessel lay off Port de la Plata, and the hands were busily engaged in stowing away the rusty masses of double-joes, and the ponderous bars of bullion, which the Indian divers had recovered from the deep, Captain Phips found it necessary to promise the men an ample, extraordinary compensation for their labor, in order to keep down a spirit of insubordination, which seemed to be breaking out among them. They did not relish the idea of contributing in that way to the heaping of wealth on wealth where there was already an undue proportion, and an opportunity for providing for future wants, seemed then to present itself, which would not be likely to happen again.

            It was through the influence of Fitzvassal that the men were kept in order; for he whispered among them that, as an immense amount of money must necessarily be left after the schooner were laden, it would be an easy thing to help themselves in case another voyage were attempted, as it assuredly would be, and satisfaction were not afforded them according to the captain’s promise. But we must not anticipate the development of events connected with another part of our narrative.

            At the time we are now noting, Fitzvassal had been but two days returned from his voyages. Immediately on his arrival he hastened to the humble abode of his mother, and to his astonishment, found the house locked up and deserted. There was no indication that it had been occupied for years. In a state of deep perturbation, he ran to the landing-place by the water-side, and to his great joy found a boat, which had been fastened there but a short time before by a fisherman, who had landed to dig clams on the beach. He sprang into it and pushed for the town, without knowing where to look; but in the desperate determination to leave no search unattempted in the hope of discovering his mother; for there was that on his mind which seemed to assure him that his parent was not dead, but was longing for his presence as the hart panteth after the water-brooks.

            It is important for us now to retrace our steps one day, which we shall attempt in the following chapter.

CHAPTER III.

 

            “I told you so, Sir, they were red-hot with drinking;

            So full of valor, that they smote the air

            For breathing in their faces.”


Shak. The Tempest     “A bold, bad man.”


Dana   

            After Fitzvassal had retired from the mansion-house of the Wilmers, he hurried rapidly toward the northern precincts of the town, with his mind more distracted than ever. For the first time in his life he realized the truth that man is not intended to live principally for himself, but for others; and the very radiance of this revelation, disconnected from any thing else, gave him a thrill of mixed emotion which he had never before known. He felt, and the recognition of the feeling surprised him, that there are ties which bind us to one another, stronger than the chains of avarice and sensuality; and he perceived the law of our being, half developed only, in his bosom as incontrollably imperious. Need it be said, that for the first time in his life he loved? Such was, indeed, the case; nor was it remarkable that he whose life had been one scene of tortured pride, restraint, and poverty, and in its best phase one of hard and unremitting servitude; that he who had never been thrown, even by accident, in the path of a female of purity and refinement, other than that of his forlorn and heart-sick mother; and had had no opportunity, therefore, of calling forth those sentiments which lie buried in darker natures than his, and are always susceptible of being vivified by the sweet influences of woman, should have felt in his situation as did Fitzvassal when he found the flood-gates of his pent feelings suddenly opened, and the iron of his stern nature melted.

            He had sustained in his arms the most beautiful girl imagination had ever presented to the vision of a poet; he had seen the roses fade away on her cheeks, and her angelic face assume the habiliment of death; he had chafed her temples, ah, how delicate! till the own hue of loveliness came back to its alabaster rest;--he had watched the long, dark lashes as they pressed upon her cheek, and he had seen the bright revelation when they were lifted like the curtains of heaven; he had felt a sigh from that bosom whose beauty was not to tell, but to be the dream of her worshipper. He fancied that those eyes looked on him with gratitude and interest, and he fed his thoughts with this luxurious delusion, till he peopled his own created heaven with the progeny of hope. With what rapture did he press to his lips that ring which had encircled her graceful finger! Why had he robbed her of that rich treasure? Nay rather, why had she robbed him of his heart of hearts, and given him no equivalent? At that moment he resolved to restore the ring, and to peril every thing for the merchandise of her affection.

            Fitzvassal now wandered toward Winnissimmit Ferry, with his mind principally occupied with the events of the morning, when he came to a small tavern with a sign of a sea-gull on the wing, and the name underneath, A. Classon, painted in badly executed characters.

            His astonishment may easily be conceived when he made this singular discovery. Instead of entering the house, he made the best of his way from it; and coming to a lumber-yard in the vicinity, strolled therein, and gave loose to his thick-coming fancies. The name on the tavern sign he was confident was his stepfather’s,--there was no other person of his name in Boston or in its neighborhood, he was certain; and he could not doubt for a moment that it was in reality the same.

            But why, if this, indeed, were his abode, had he deserted his house in Dorchester, and relinquished the occupation he had so successfully followed for years? Could it be that his mother was dead?

           

            As if at this thought, the heart of Fitzvassal, which had suddenly been humanized by the transcendant influence of Grace Wilmer, melted; and the sturdy mariner bowed his head in secret, half suffocated with vainly suppressed emotion. Had he entered the portal of the sanctuary, and bowed down in the belief that his mother was no more; or were his emotions of a blended texture, interwoven with which the idea of an adored woman was most prominent? It would have been a hard task for an ordinary pschycologist to analyse his feelings. It was not the first time the man had ever wept; but never before had he wept in such a cause, and never before was he not ashamed of his emotions. He had within a few hours found his parental hearth deserted, and the very weeds growing on the door-stone; he had, as he had reason to believe, saved the lives of two human beings, one of them the cousin of the loveliest creation of heaven; and he now reviewed the event with delight, associated as it was with sensations so entirely new and delicious. In the almost hopeless search for his mother he had found her worthless husband; and a thousand suspicions arose at once to affect his feelings of filial reverence and give agitation to his passions.

            In some degree relieved by the crisis which had passed, Fitzvassal retraced his steps toward the Sea-Gull, which, on narrowly examining, he discovered to be a common sailor boarding-house. His long absence from his maternal roof, he was well aware, must have disguised him effectually; he therefore entered without any apprehension of discovery, it being his desire to remain unknown for the purpose of eliciting the whole truth about his mother in case she were alive.

            The Sea-Gull was one of those remarkable specimens of architecture, hardly an individual of which now remains in this country It looked like a cluster of houses fantastically grouped together, each successive story projecting over that below it,--the whole terminating above by half a dozen gable-ends. The walls were rough cast with small fragments of glass, and over the front door were carved the figures M.D.CXL, showing that the edifice had been erected nearly fifty years already. The doorway was closed by a sort of shutter divided into four parts, and after ascending one step, it was necessary for the visitor to descend two more. As Fitzvassal came up, a sailor, who was leaning over the lower section of the door, enjoying a Dutch pipe of tobacco, gave way for him to enter, and he immediately found himself in the bar-room of a tavern.

            The apartment was only sufficiently lofty to accommodate a tall man without stooping. On one side was a large fireplace occupied by two sailors, who were sitting opposite each other between the jambs, on blocks of wood, regaling themselves with the fumes of tobacco and blistering their legs before a roaring fire of oak wood, under the coals of which were half a dozen long iron bars terminating with a one pound ball, appropriately denominated logger-heads, the use of which formidable instruments, a little varied in shape till they have degenerated to a sort of poker, has descended from father to son in a succession of generations for the perpetuation of mulled wine and flip, and for the due exhilaration of New England sleighing parties.

            On the hearth, a half-gallon pewter vessel was very deliberately evolving the motive power of modern boat and rail-road engines, little suspecting its own importance, which, however, was partially acknowledged by the thirsty tars, who occasionally interrupted its solitary musings by transferring the fumes to their own brains.

            Within the bar, our new comer, without much difficulty, recognized his step-father. He was engaged in the very laudable occupation of mixing rumbitters for two wicked-looking truckmen, who had just come in, and who now stood leaning in their dirty frocks on the still more dirty counter of the bar. One of them, as he rested on his left elbow, amused himself by trying to hit with his whip-lash the head of a nail which projected its shining head above the sanded floor, and in doing this he recklessly scattered the gritty particles too near the steaming flip, for the satisfaction of the sons of Neptune.

            “Mind your eye there, you fresh-beef-eating land-lubber, and luff away--you’re sanding our ca’boose, d’ye hear!” Shouted one of the sailors, who was distinguished by the enormous size of his black beard and whiskers, and by the massive proportions of his queue, “or, shiver my timbers,” he continued, “if I don’t carry away some of your dirty canvass, and be hanged to you.”

            “I tell you what it is, bully slush-bucket,” replied he of the whip, taking his bitters from the landlord and tossing it off at a single gulp, while he eyed the sailor with a shake of the head in regular cadence with his words, “I’ll tell you what it is, bully slush-bucket, if ye drive that are team this ere way, ye’d better not turn down our worf, if ye know what’s good for ye, no how.”

            The only rejoinder which the sailor condescended to make to this reply, was by instantly springing on his feet, and dashing his tarpaulin on the floor as his; glove of defiance. The truckman immediately made towards him, as if to anticipate his attack; but the other, with inconceivable rapidity, threw his feet into the air, and striking both of them at once with the entire weight of his body, full on the truckman’s stomach, hurled him against the door, which, giving way with the momentum, sent the fellow headlong into the street.

            The sailor would have followed the man had it not been for the other truckman, who hit the former such a blow behind the ear, that he was immediately knocked down and disabled. All was now confusion, and a general fight seemed to be inevitable. The truckman having come to from the effects of the blow and fall, had gathered together several others of his white-frocked brotherhood, who seemed determined to have an out-and-out row, and revenge the disgrace that had been cast on their fraternity. Accordingly, they marched up to the house, and were about to commence a bombardment, when Fitzvassal, turning aside the others with such singular force and authority as at once commanded their acquiescence, placed himself alone at the door-way. “Get out of the way,” exclaimed the fellow who had floored the sailor, “or I will make you swallow just such a dose of jalap as I gave that other sick monkey yonder; clear out, I say!”

            So saying, he endeavored to thrust Fitzvassal aside, and failing to do that, made a pass at him for a black eye; when the latter, seizing him by the collar with his right hand, and suddenly grasping his right leg with the other, lifted him up with as much ease as an ordinary man would raise a child, and hurled him over the heads of the others far into the street.

            Such an exhibition of muscular power elicited an involuntary shout from the by-standers,--the truckmen fell back astonished, and unwilling to enter the lists with such an opponent, while those within the Sea-Gull sent up a yell of wonder and delight. At that moment, Classon, who understood human nature as well as most men, came forward when he thought mediation could be best effected, and exclaimed to the crowd that had meanwhile gathered round his door;

            “Hallo, my hearties, where’s the use of all this squabbling? One would think that old Admiral Tromp had raised his broomstick, and opened his Dutch metal among us. Haul in your guns and belay. You’ve each on you lost a man; and now, suppose you parley. You’ll have the selectmen arter you as sure as codhook, if you don’t stop. Who’s for flip and a quiet life? Come in all hands of you, the Sea-Gull will treat the company;--who speaks for flip gratis?”

            This agreeable challenge was answered by a salute from the crowd “half whistle and half groan”-- for Classon was very unpopular, and the people did not much care to be indebted to his hospitality who was such a favorite of the odious governor’s; however, omnipotent rum carried the day, and, after looking at each other, as if to say “If you will, I will,” they turned into the grogery.

            Beer and rum are pacificators as well as quarrelbreeders, and “a hair of the same dog” is often found to contain much practical philosophy. Though we might say a word for the principles of homœpathy, which the sagacious Classon practised in allaying the popular fever, the less said about infinitesimal doses the better.

            Classon now brought out all his stone and pewter pitchers, and filling them with the proportionate quantities of rum, beer, and sugar, made a requisition on the scorching fire-place for the red-hot logger heads which were buried there like ostriches in the hot sands of the desert. And now the sizzling of the iron, the steaming of the flip, and the gabbling of tongues made an uproar to which there is fortunately nothing in the nature of things for a simile; while the quantity of fire-water that Classon sacrificed as a libation to the vox populi would have paid the rent of his house for a month. But he was not so low in the estimation of the powers that were, as not to have a reason for what he did; and he consoled himself, moreover, with the reflection, that he had perhaps saved his house from being pulled about his ears, and had given some fifty Bostonians a taste of his flip; which circumstance might, in the course of human events, serve as a sheet anchor for the coming winter, and help to reinstate him in the fair opinion of the people. Nor did he much misjudge; for more trivial occurrences sometimes conspire to give a reputation to as humble an establishment as Abner Classon’s, and to turn the tide of public odium which beats against a man’s affairs, into a current which shall set in every way for his advantage.

            The peace-offering having been accepted, the parties roared their hour away, and then departed with glistening eyes, red noses, and heated brains, to diversify the different scenes of life, in which their daily business now called them to take a part.

            While the treat was going on in the bar-room of the Sea-Gull, Fitzvassal had an opportunity of observing his step-father, who, though much changed from what he had been a few years before, retained all those distinctive characteristics which constituted his individuality. He was a man about five feet six inches in height, who stooped a good deal about the shoulders, probably from the constant habit of rowing; certainly in part, from his dissipated course of life. His forehead was very low, narrow, and square, over which his reddish, curling hair pressed in matted tangles. His cheek-bones were high, his mouth large and bent down at the corners; his nose, which had been tolerably regular, was misshapen and sunken in at the bridge, from a diseased cartilage; his eyes of a greenish brown, small and near together; and his complexion very red and sunburnt. His skull, from the occipital to the frontal bone, was scooped out in a hollow, and it was far more largely developed behind the ear than in the region of the intellect.

            Fitzvassal had been observing this man, his mother’s husband, with amazement. He had met with all sorts of men abroad in the countries he had visited; he had seen drunkards of every description; but such another as his own step-father had never crossed his path. The quantity of liquor which he had swallowed within the last two hours was incredible; and though the occasion was extraordinary, it showed plainly enough that the man was in the habit of indulging to a most insane excess in the maddening contents of the decanter.

            Classon’s evil passions had always overswayed his better nature. Had the alternative of a virtuous or a vicious course of life been presented to him in the pliant and ductile years of childhood, there can be little question that the tranquil delights of the former would have been preferred by him. Bad as he was, profligate and reckless as he might now be, there was a visible spark of goodness glittering in the dark recesses of his rocky, antral bosom, which might have been even then kindled into a sacred monitor.

            “Who cares for Abner Classon?” was his daily ejaculation; and the dark spirit within him whispered, “Why, then, should Abner Classon care for any human being?” Thus it is that the vilest of the iniquitous yearn for human sympathy; and it is only for want of this divine principle properly directed, that so many follow up one bad step, by precipitating themselves into the direst and most hopeless gulph of degradation. Classon, from a long course of vicious indulgence, had so completely broken down the will, that the most acute sufferings which sometimes followed his delirious debauches, had no other effect on his mind than to prompt him to resolutions which he had not power to keep. On an occasion like the one which had just happened, he would follow up his potations to such an extent, that he could not contain the dearest secret of his heart; and all the while he was conscious of his infirmity, he would go on pouring out the very matters it was most important for him to keep to himself.

            As Classon’s temporary guests retired, the sailors who had been seated within the fire-place, resumed their blocks, and being a good deal excited by the stimulant they had so liberally indulged in, began to sing fragments of love-ballads, while the other roared out with that hysterical laughter which belongs to the peculiar kind of insanity produced by excessive intoxication. While they were in this mood, the man with the big whiskers, who had been so prominent in the row, casting his blood-injected eyes on Fitzvassal, who was endeavoring to decypher the inscription on an old worn-out engraving that hung in a black frame over the mantle-piece, cried out to him as follows:

            “Throw us your hawser, Jack, and come to anchor alongside, will you--I like the cut of your jib, if I don’t blow me!”

            “Ay, ay,” answered Fitzvassal, who thought the opportunity a favorable one to pursue his investigations, as Classon had now retired to replenish his decanters, “I like a snug harbor after a hard blow, as well as any man that ever slung a jack-knife to his button-hole.”

            So saying, he placed an additional block within the jambs, and seated himself without further ceremony beside his jovial companion.

            The rough sailor who invited Fitzvassal to the merry junketing, touched his tarpanlin as the latter placed himself alongside, evidently perceiving that he had some time since graduated at the forecastle.

            “I thought as how,” resumed the sailor with an air of blunt deference, “by the way in which you heaved that rotten spar overboard, you might be one of his majesty’s man-o’-war’s-men;--but you’ll excuse an old sea-dog for any blunder o’ the like, seeing as how d’ye see, flip’s good and man’s dry: p’rhaps you’ve no objection to trying a pull at the same windlass?”

            At the same time he gave a hitch at his waistband, and with the other hand passed the beverage to Fitzvassal: the latter, however, only pretended to taste it; so, smacking his lips as a prelude to his praises, he returned the jug to the sailor, and said:

            “Why, this is something like: your landlord is an old hand at the oar, I see; one would think he he had been the king’s chaplain by the way in which he mixes.”

            “Ah, I see, you knows a thing or two of the secret service;--maybe you never was a man-o’-war’s-man,” --replied the sailor, cutting his eye over the way at his fellow voyager,--“never mind--all I can say is, if you knew the chaplain of the Rose frigate, you’d see a mixer in right earnest. You’ve no objection I see,” continued the man in whiskers, “to a drop of the creature when ashore; nor I neither, as for that are matter. They keep a fellow infernal short of grog though on board these ere frigates.”

            And having uttered the foregoing with some vehemence, he added to his other creature comforts a huge piece of pig-tail, which he twisted off with his grinders.

            “Ah?” exclaimed Fitzvassal in a tone of inquiry, “then you are hands of that goverment ship lying off there in the channel?”

            “Ay, ay, Sir!” responded both the sailors, simultaneously.

            “And she’s as nice a sea-boat, Bill Grummet, as ever you sailed in, I know,--isn’t she?” inquired the other man of him in the big whiskers, while he rested his elbows on his knees and his cheeks on his hands, his bright eyes glistening in the hollows.

            “For that are,” answered Grummet, taking a long intermittent pull at the flip, and wiping his mouth with his sleeve preparatory to the resumption of the quid which he had hauled out of his mouth for the occasion--“for that are matter, I can’t say but as how she’s trig enough, and clean in the run too, and one of the best sailers in the service.--The king has reason to like her, any how.”

           

            “The king!” exclaimed Fitzvassal--“what special reason has he to prefer your vessel to any other?”

            “I thought everybody had heard of his voyage a few years ago, to Scotland, and how he was shipwrecked and all that”--said whiskers.

            “Certainly,” replied Fitzvassal, “every body has heard of that accident; but I don’t yet understand what your Rose frigate had to do with it.”

            “Then I can tell you all about it, and maybe a little more than any body that you know of has heared yet. His royal highness that then was, the Duke of York, d’ye see, took it into his royal head, a few years ago, to make a voyage to Scotland. So what must the Admiralty do, but equip the Grampus frigate. I was in the forecastle of that are crank old hulk,--devil take the Friday in which she was lunched, I say;--but that is neither here nor there, for as I was saying, the Duke got on board at Plymouth, and with half a dozen as slick, oily-looking Catholic priests as ever a Portuguese man-o’-war’s-man set eyes on; and by the jingoes! the way they crossed themselves, beat the reefers;--well, we got under way smooth enough, but the next morning, afore day, running ten knots an hour, with studding-sails all set, we brought up smack on a sand-bank, and began to leak like a cullender. The sea made a clean breach over us, and carried away the quarter-boats as slick as a boatswain’s whistle. As soon as it was light, we had the long boat out, and in jumped the Duke; and what d’ye think? He wouldn’t let a soul get in with him but the priests and a parcel of pointer dogs, blast ’em! When the crew found that his royal highness was safe, they sent up a roar of joy, as if they had all of ’em a twenty years’ reprieve from old Davy Jones’s locker.

            “Is this is all true?” asked Fitzvassal with great earnestness.

            “It’s all as true as a log-book,” resumed the sailor; “and by the soul that’s to go aloft when this old hull’s waterlogged, it was too much loyalty for my tonnage, I tell’y.”

            “And what became of the Grampus?” inquired Fitzvassal, deeply interested in the narrative, which he soon discovered to be something more than a mere sailor’s yarn.

            “Oh, she went to pieces in an hour or so, and a couple of hundred as fine fellows as ever you saw, to say nothing of the women and children, went to the bottom in a giffy.”

            “Women and children?” exclaimed Fitzvassal; “is it possible that a sailor like the Duke of York, his present majesty, a man who has fought so well for his country, that he should suffer women and children to perish before his eyes, while he saved himself and his pointer dogs from drowning.”

            “It’s as true as preaching,” said the sailor.

            “Then,” added Fitzvassal, “you may mark my word; he will inevitably be the last king of his family; for a man who could be guilty of such unheard-of baseness, is as bad as bad could be. How did you escape, Grummet?” continued he.

            “God knows!” replied the man; “but I recollect lashing myself to a spare royal-yard, and I found myself on board the Rose as a man wakes up from a dream--and who should I find there but this same cargo of privileged man and dog flesh in the same quarters. The Duke and his friends were lucky enough to fall in with our craft. And it was for the reason of that, d’ye see, that I said that the king had cause to like our trig little vessel lying off there in the stream, that’s all. The Rose is well enough, but I don’t much fancy the way they have got into of treating a fellow in his majesty’s service.”

            “The fact is,” said Fitzvassel, who was any thing but a royalist, and whom the story about the Duke of York put in a humor for decrying the government of England, “the fact is, that things have come to such a pass, that the very name of king is inseparable from tyranny.”

            “The king’s bad enough,” said the sailor, “Charley loved the galls at such a rate, that he gave the helm to the old dog-saver, which just finished the spoiling of him.”

            “Whenever tyranny rules ashore,” exclaimed Fitzvassal, musing, you may be sure to find plenty of it at sea. In these times you may find it wherever the British flag waves in the wind.”

           

            Grummet looked steadily at the speaker, with an undisguised expression of suspicion, for he began to think that the officer-like looking man with whom he had been so communicative, might be tempting htm with an insidious show of frankness, and so entrap him to his disadvantage. His penetration had already satisfied him that he was no ordinary man, and the thought occurred to him that there was danger of committing himself by too great a freedom of expression.

            Fitzvassal instantly comprehended him, and continued, lowering his voice and looking full into the eyes of each sailor by turns; “Ay, you doubt what I say, seeing that I may be the master of a vessel myself; but I tell you what it is, I can drink a can with a ship’s crew ashore, and make them mind their eye too when abroad; and yet I never whip’d or betrayed a sailor.”

            The men stared at him with astonishment, and by the manner in which they ducked and scraped, while he now looked at, and spoke to them, seemed to admit that the authority of such a man could never be disputed.

            “I hate tyranny, however,” resumed the speaker, who wished to further his design without any more delay; “I loathe it in every shape, from a king on this throne to the landlord of a sailor boarding-house”--and with this remark Fitzvassal pretended to look cautiously around, as if the person to whom he alluded might have entered unawares, and overheard the severity of his reflection.

            “I must allow,” said Grummet, taking from his pocket, in which he thrust his arm to the elbow, a few pieces of silver, and pondering over them in his hand, “that these landlords are a set of sharks.”

            “But this landlord here of the Sea-Gull seems to be an exception to the rule,” suggested Fitzvassal; “by the manner in which he treated the people just now, one would suppose that he had been a partner of some lucky buccaneer. That man is too geneous to rob an honest tar of his wages!”

            “Oh! he is free enough with his money, and well he may be if all’s true that’s said of him,--but num’s the word for that,” replied Grummet, “yet the man who would treat his own wife as he does”--

            “His wife!” interrupted Fitzvassal, who had inadvertently struck the very key for which he had been sounding, “his wife! and how has he treated her, pray?”

            “Bad enough, but that’s no affair of mine, d’ye see.”

            “Where is his wife? what of her? who knows any thing of Classon’s wife?” exclaimed her son, who was so hurried away by this miserable gleam of intelligence about his mother, that he was completely thrown off his guard.

            “This lubberly landlord lets her be supported in the Poor-House,” said the sailor, “at least so they told me the other day; but people along-shore beat the marines for tough yarns; p’rhaps its a lie after all.”

            “The Poor-House?” exclaimed Fitzvassal; “how, in the name of mercy, could she be suffered to go to the Poor-House while her drunken husband is rioting here on the fat of the land?”

            “Why, they tell me as how,” said the man of hair, “that this here landlord, Abner Classon, is chief rigger to the governor, and that he lets him do as he likes for reasons best known to himself. If he will do dirty jobs for Sir Edmund, why, I suppose Sir Edmund won’t be outdone in obligations, that’s all.”

            “The scoundrel!” ejaculated Fitsvassal; “but-- and he checked himself, remembering, after a moment’s hesitation, that he had already expressed himself too warmly, “but it is no affair of our’s, as you truly enough remarked just now; it is no affair of our’s; come,” said he, taking up the jug and passing it along, “let us drink confusion to all tyranny and rascality on sea and on shore.”

            The men rose from their seats, doffed their tarpaulins, and making a leg, drank one after the other, and pledged the sentiment which had been offered. After which, making a move for departure, Fitzvassal insisted on settling the tavern score himself, and having whispered in Grummet’s ear that he would like to see him again shortly, received their hearty good-morrows, and once more found himself alone.

            Fitzvassal was more than ever determined not to make himself known to his step-father. He saw at a glance the exact position in which his mother must be placed, and he resolved that his first business should be, to relieve her, as soon as possible, at all hazards. There were reasons, however, for not doing so immediately. He did not doubt that the extravagance, excesses, and villainy of Classon had driven his mother to the last pass of distress and poverty; but when he took into consideration the flourishing appearance of the man’s affairs, and the hint just dropped by the sailor, of the kind of service which it was reported this man performed for the Governor, he felt every reasonable assurance that the liability of the husband had been overruled by the lawless dictator who governed the colonists. He determined to sound Classon, but, if possible, not to reveal himself; that he might procure information respecting his father, and others who could be useful to him in carrying out his designs.

            While he was musing after the foregoing manner, Classon entered the room, with his arms laden with the replenished decanters; then turning to his unrecognized step-son, whom he had not heard from for so long a time he supposed him to be dead, he opened the converation as follows:

            “What, all alone, hic! my hearty? I hope you hav’nt heaved all my customers into the street--as ye did that bull-headed, piratical, big whiskered-- hic!--bully--hey?”--

            “You mean the truckman, landlord,” responded Fitzvassal--“that big-whiskered fellow was fighting for the quarter-deck of the Sea-Gull, against a fleet of dirty-rigged land-lubbers.”

            “True--hic! true”--said Classon, his glazed eyes rolling in their sockets, and his kness bending under him, while they scarcely sustained the weight of his body--“I’d forgotten--otten all about it-- I hate quar’ling ye know, as I hate witchcraft--hic! and all abominations--didn’t I get the weather-gage of them ere chaps--hic!--just now; hey?”

            “You managed like a jolly old Admiral!” replied the other, clapping Classon on the shoulder with that kind of familiarity which he knew to be agreeable to such characters when in his condition--“old Blake himself couldn’t have done better.”

            “Ha! ha! ha!” chuckled the flattered inebriate-- “do y’know now, hic! that I took a liking to ye as soon as ye came into the Sea-Gull?--and when I saw ye batter that chap--whew!”--And Classon made a sort of drunken war-whoop, which plainly indicated how steeped was his brain already in the fumes of alcohol. The man then seemed to muse awhile, and he shook his head as his eyes swam over the floor, see-sawing his hand horizontally, as if he were feeling for something in the dark.

           

            “Ye see”--resumed he--“I am over-working myself for the good of so--so--ciety--hic!--I am peace-maker of the town--and so ye see I’ve got my line all in a snarl this morning--hic! plague on this sour stomach!--did ye ever have a sour stomach, hey?”

            “I’m not much troubled with ill health,” said his step-son--

            “I can’t--hic! ’magine what it is,” resumed the publican, “that is ruining my digestion”--and he was going on to lecture on dietetics in a manner consoling to his darling inclination, when Fitzvassal, who was not disposed to breathe the pestilential atmosphere of the man any longer than was necessary, interrupted him--

            “You had a fine jail-delivery of rum and beer this morning, Admiral--you were liberal with your grog.”--

            “Yes, hic!”--cried the other--“it costs me a mint of money to carry my, hic! schemes; but massa-- hic! pay for ’em, as the Indian said, hic!”

            Fitzvassal was not at that time prepared to guess that his step-father alluded to the strong box of the governor, which his instrument could use on all such occasions as suited his necessities with even greater freedom that he had done that morning; the concluding remark of Classon’s passed him, therefore, without particular attention, though he distinctly remembered it afterward, when he became more fully informed of the relation they bore to each other.

            “But I thought,” said Fitzvassal, “that your colonial laws did not allow your indulging in such jollifications as I saw here this morning. Your people have the reputation, on the other side of the water, of being the most sober community on the face of the globe. One in London would never believe the story of what I witnessed this morning, here in your too hospitable quarters.”

            “Ye’re a stranger in these ere parts,” replied Classon, “any body--hic! might have known it--We Boston folks--hic! have improved a quantity since the days of the Rump--hurra for Jemmy and liberty!-- We used to be--hic!--the stiffest and most puritan-- tanical set of water-casks ye ever--hic!--laid yer eyes on--I never see’d the--hic! like on it in my born days--but, thanks to the spirit--hic! of what d’ye call it, they have remoddled the old ship, and-- hic!--we are afloat again.”

            “In what are your circumstances improved?” inquired Fitzvassal.

            “In the liberty of drinking, to be sure.” responded the man of the bottles. “A few years ago--hic! a fellow was limited to half a pint of wine--pshaw! and that--hic! was half water--and if he called for more than that--hic!--at a sitting--or for a reasonable jorum of strong-waters--the commissioner--hic! had power to countermand the order, and send it-- hic! hang this indigestion!--back to the tap,--and if ye--hic! will believe it, one of--hic! these fellows was always--hic! at yer elbow--lest a man should take too much liquor. A putty kind of--hic! liberty of conscience, not to let a fellow get as drunk --as drunk as Chloe, if he likes!”

            Fitzvassal endeavored to keep the drunkard in good humor by forcing a smile to his face, and he pursued his object by giving another turn to the colloquy.

            “What sort of magistrates have you here, in this famous city of yours,” inquired the step-son--“it seems to me they allow the people more leeway than they do anywhere else.”

            “They were--hic! as beggarly a set of puritanical puppies, as ye--hic! would like to lay yer eyes on--till, hic! the most ex--cellent Sir Edmund Andros came over among us; hic! Jemmy--hic! deserves the everlasting gratitude of this generation --hic! for mending our manners.--Cranfield and Dudley were well--hic! enough, but it will be all the same hic! a hundred years hence.”

            Whereupon he helped himself to a cup of rum, and passed the decanter silently to the other, who as silently declined, by removing it a short distance from him.

            “As I was--hic! going to say,” resumed Classon --“now that Sir Edmund is governor--hic! he has put into office a very decent, liberal--hic! set of Catholic magistrates--as different--hic! from those water-drinking knaves as--as Edward Vassal is”--

            “Edward Vassal--did you say?” exclaimed the unknown son of that man.

            “Yes--Edward Vassal--and what--hic! of that, pray?--ye have driven the idea I had--hic! out of my hend.”

            “I’ve heard of that man in England.”

            “A pickled scamp--hic! that fellow,” said Classon with great bitterness, and he ground his teeth as he spoke.

            “Who; Vassal?” exclaimed the mariner, following up the idea which he knew would open the heart of his step-father.

            “Yes! Vassal--do ye doubt it? Does any one doubt it? I thought every body knew that,” cried the drunkard with a volubility he had not shown before, and suddenly assuming a kind of mastery over his debility.

            “Having often heard his name mentioned,” said Fitzvassal with a long-drawn breath of affected indifference, “I was about to inquire of you if the man were yet living?”

            “Yes;” replied Classon with a smile of demoniacal malice, “he is alive, and much good may his life do him. We shall meet on equal ground one of these days, when there will be at least three of us to curse each other.”

            This speech was uttered with a distinctness and deliberation which showed how powerfully his feelings were working; his convulsions were cured by the transition.

            The decanter came again in requisition, and the spirit seemed now to have absolutely no such effect on him as it had had before.

            “You speak of three of you,” insinuated Fitzvassal, endeavoring, if possible, to draw his step-father to the confessional, though he knew well enough that he meant to include himself in the number which he had devoted to the abodes of darkness; “if you excite my curiosity thus, you must not be surprised at my asking you extraordinary questions.”

            “Not at all,” replied Classon, who began to warm toward the other for his condescending manner--“I had as lief let ye know all about it as not. It will be all the same a hundred years hence.”

            “No matter,” said Fitzvassal, “I don’t care about knowing.”

            And, indeed, the young man began to dread what he had just before so earnestly desired to hear: for a narrative of all his mother’s wretchedness and of his father’s crimes was appalling to think of.

            “Don’t be too modest, young man--modesty has been the bane of many a man before you; if one can’t be frank with a sailor, where’s the use of having a tongue in his head? I have no secrets that I care about. I don’t care, for instance, who knows that I married Vassal’s mistress”--

           

            Fitzvassal involuntarily shuddered.

            “Ay,” resumed the man, “brat and all--but I do care that I didn’t make him pay dearer for it, that’s all.”

            His step-son gazed on him with horror while he spoke, and his eyes blazed with the impulse of revenge.

            “The brat is dead long ago, I hope,” continued the publican, “he had ‘gallows’ written in his face as clearly as his father had ‘villain;’ as for that woman, d--n her”--

            “Hold, infamous scoundrel!” cried the infuriated young man, who could command his temper no longer; “if you utter the hellish slander which was even now on your lips ready to blast my ears, you shall not live another moment to curse the earth with your presence!”

            “And who, in the devil’s name, are you?” responded Classon, his cheeks glowing and his eyes flashing with consuming fire, now blown almost into a flame by a sudden gust of passion: “I should like to know who you are, that have the audacity to confront me in this manner, and insult me in my own house; who in the devil are you, hey?”

            “I am Edward Fitzvassal!” screamed the other: and if a thunderbolt had burst through the roof of the man’s house at that moment, he could not have been more astonished. He lifted both hands, and gazing incredulously on the speaker, reeled against the shelves of his tap-room in perfect amazement.

            “And if ye are indeed the man ye say ye are,” exclaimed he, “I had rather have seen the devil come from hell than you across my threshold. Ye come here for no good--I warrant.”

            “What I come for, Classon,” rejoined his step-son, “you may know hereafter;--I did not intend to discover myself to you; but your scoundrel tongue has forced me from my determination. Swear to me that you will not reveal my name to Sir Edmund Andros or any of the crown officers, and I will make your fortune.”

            “You make my fortune?” exclaimed Classon, with undisguised contempt and incredulity--“Edward Fitzvassal make my fortune? ha! ha! ha! that is a good joke, truly.”

            Fitzvassal made no other reply than by taking out a handful of gold, and chinking it before the publican.

            Classon gazed on him with astonishment--and then, his countenance all of a sudden becoming serious, said,

            “But why are ye so anxious not to be known to the governor? He is friendly to me, and perhaps for my sake, who am of great service to him, and for certain considerations--hey? would not molest ye.”

            “Classon!” said Fitzvassal sternly, “I am not disposed at present to make a confidant of any one, much less of you. Promise me that you will not betray me! But no matter--you dare not do it. I caution you though at your peril to keep a sharp lookout. The moment you betray me, you lose an independent fortune. I want no favors of you that you will not be paid for a hundred-fold more than Sir Edmund Andros pays you for your dirty work. I am able to do it, and will do it. Do you hear me?”

            “I hear ye,” replied Classon, musing.

            Fitzvassal looked steadfastly at him, and placed a purse heavy with gold in his hand.

            “Classon!” said he, “the first act you must do is to procure the release of my mother.--Who occupies the old house--or rather who owns it; for I know well enough that it has been vacant for a long time?--No matter--if you have mortgaged it, redeem it, and have every thing comfortably provided for her. But be careful how you go there to live--”

            “I have no wish to do so,” replied Classon, who was so confounded with Fitzvassal’s show of wealth, that he hardly realized his own whereabout: “I will do as ye desire, immediately.”

            “I will double that purse when I see you again in a few days,” said Fitzvassal--“and now good-bye for the present. Do you have the house ready for my mother before you release her, and when she is there--but I will communicate with you before then.”

            So saying, he left the Sea-Gull,--and Classon, perfectly bewildered with the events of the morning, took an extraordinary cup of rum, and sat down in his bar-room to meditate.

CHAPTER IV.

 

            Of tyrannie and crueltie

            By this ensample a kynge maie see,

            Him self--


Gower ’tis most just    That thou turn rascal.


Shak. Timon of Athens          

            The day before Fitzvassal arrived at the deserted house of his mother near Dorchester Point, the people in the vicinity of Mount Wallaston, now Quincy, were surprised at the appearance of “a low built, black, rakish-looking schooner,” which, toward sunset, coming up in that neighborhood, dropped her anchor about a mile off in the harbor. The flag of England was flying at her main-top, but as the sun sank below the hills, it was hauled down soon after her arrival: at the same time her sails were all carefully furled. There seemed to be an unusual number of men at this work, who by the aid of a good glass, appeared to be dressed in blue jackets and trowsers, the cuffs and collars of the former being red. A number of people collected together in the course of the evening, and a good deal of speculation was soon afloat relative to the probable cause of this unaccustomed appearance: for in those days the waters of Mount Wallaston were seldom honored by any thing in the shape of a square rigged schooner; a few fishing boats with an occasional wood or sand lighter, constituting her principal marine visitors. The general impression was, that she was a government yacht, which had brought important despatches to the administration; and the curious who had collected to reconnoitre her, being satisfied with this conjecture, which was soon transferred into a piece of actual intelligence, retired to their several abodes to discuss the probable subject of the new orders.

            For the last six years previous to the present time, 1688, the colonies had been groaning under the arbitrary encroachments of Charles II. and his successor. The spirit of liberty, which, in opposing the tyrannous advances of the first Charles, unhappily degenerated into licentiousness, and led to the very opposite of those rusults which were anticipated by a Hambden and a Sydney, had at one time apparently died away in the bosoms of British subjects. Nothing could have seemed more inauspicious to the great cause of human freedom than a superficial view of the political aspect of those times. In its most discouraging appearance, however, the political philosopher might have discovered the old tree, though scathed by the lightnings of ambition, and stripped of its greenest branches, to be sound at the root, and even more energetic there, than if the nourishment of its beneficent mother had been diffused through its unharmed body. The good seed, to change the illustration, had assuredly been thrown upon good ground; and though the tramplings of kings and bishops were able to keep the plantsunder for a time, there was no fear but that they would burst forth in season and yield a plentiful harvest.

            But such encouraging views were confined to comparatively a few persons among the millions of British subjects who were desponding under the adverse events which they had vainly endeavored to control. Liberty had always been dear to them; and since the Reformation, it had been handed down to them from generation to generation with increasing attractions. In the course of a few generations antecedent to the accession of Charles the first, a body of men had arisen comprising the flower of England, who had now become the special guardians of that high trust, which was first executed at Runnymede. In recognizing liberty of conscience as inseparable from civil liberty, and thence opposing all parliamentary action, which was compulsory on them to observe certain rituals and ceremonies in religious worship, they came in collision with that powerful class of men which has existed in all countries, and who, rioting on the privileges they possess, are ready to sacrifice the rights of others, and the everlasting principles which set forth the true relations of society; so long as they may pander to their own selfish appetites and wallow in epicurean delights.

            The attrition of classes so unlike tore off the outward folds which had for a time enveloped them, and revealed the interior characteristics of each. The selfishness of the hierarchy and their dependents became now the pander of royalty, and it was glory enough for that degraded class of lace-clad slaves, if, in furthering the royal prerogative, they could partake of the luxuries it claimed: but the sturdy non-conformists, who had seemed nothing more than religious zealots singularly attached to a simple mode of worship, and jealous of control in this peculiar prejudice, now arrayed themselves between the people and the crown, and protected the former from that desolating sway which served for a time to threaten the extinction of their glory.

            The first parliament which was elected after the Restoration gave the people little to hope. Wearied as they had been under the domination of Cromwell, with all their hopes frustrated, they had vainly expected that the sceptre of their reinstated monarch would not only re-establish order, but be even a better safeguard of their rights, than if it had never transcended the social contract: they soon found, however, to their bitter disappointment and mortification, that there could be no redress under the authority of the Stuarts. The descendants of Henry the Seventh carried the ideas of divine right and popular subserviency to such an extent, that nothing could be expected from them but the propagation of errors and the perpetuation of tyranny. The decapitation of Charles I., instead of opening the eyes of his son to the essential nature of the executive office, served no other purpose than to infatuate him the more with notions of kingly prerogative; and we find his influence forthwith exerted, after the Restoration, in packing a House of Commons which would go any lengths in favoring the crown. From that time forth there were few interruptions in a series of executive aggressions, the inconvenience of which was felt in the colonies as well as in the mother country, till they ended in that high-handed act which ought to have sent the head of its inventor rolling beneath the scaffold.

            Having squandered incalculable sums on his lawless pleasures, and exhausted the resources of war and peace to replenish his coffers, Charles II. conceived the mad idea of seizing on all the charters in his dominions, and granting them again under certain restrictions, for what he deemed an equivalent in money. The charter of the city of London was the first that was sacrificed to this mad avarice, and it was followed by all the others in the kingdom. The colonies in New-England did not escape the hurricane that swept away nearly every vestige of their ancient liberties, and tore up the very landmarks of civil society which their patriotic progenitors had so carefully planted. Accordingly, in the year 1683, a quo warranto was issued against the New-England chief corporations, and a judgment entered up in Chancery. In place of their own elected governors, who were removed to make room for him, Henry Cranfield was commissioned by the king to rule over New England; and these outrages were followed up, during the next year, by the infatuated James II., who then succeeded to the crown, and stripped the colonies of all their remaining privileges. The king assumed the power of making governors, deputy-governors, judges, magistrates, and military officers; and through the former, and four commissioners, legislated and taxed the people at his own pleasure. In short, the whole form and substance of the colonial government were completely changed and destroyed. Joseph Dudley, who was the successor of Cranfield, was the miserable instrument of this usurpation; but though he was odious to the people, this man procured some favor on account of his father’s services.

            All offices of any influence were now filled with royal favorites whose political and religious principles were diametrically opposite to those of the American people. This state of things, with all its necessary concomitants, lasted till the year 1686, when King James I. having stretched his prerogative almost to the point of non-endurance, gave another screw to the tyrannical vice with which he grasped the people of New England, and consummated his assumption of mastery by sending over Sir Edmond Andros, as governor.

            At the time we are now chronicling, the people, especially of Massachusetts, were groaning under this man’s arbitrary oppression. They were not possessed of even a remnant of that liberty which their pilgrim fathers had toiled so hard to maintain. Even the lands which their hardy sires had redeemed from the wilderness, and paid for to the savage proprietors (for not an acre had been wrongfully acquired by them,) were taken away; their titles having been usurped by the crown on the forfeiture of the charters,--and they who were desirous of holding them again, were compelled to pay one half their value to the king. Enormous impositions were laid on them in the shape of office fees, and pounds were now exacted, where, under their charters, only a few shillings had been required. The people were taxed without mercy, and at the same time were not allowed any assembly or general court: not only were they refused representatives, but they were not permitted to assemble at all, but once a year for the choice of petty officers, so insignificant that the crown would not condescend to interfere with them: and even the number of the selectmen of Boston was diminished by the capricious interference of the governor.

            All this, and more, was borne with as much patience as the religious principles of the people could summon for the occasion; and this is saying every thing for those who considered self-denial and the endurance of hardships, the most imperative of duties. They endured, because they possessed that unshaken confidence in the order of providence which had been transmitted from their parents, and because they knew, that so long as they reposed themselves under that power, and exerted their utmost ability to cooperate with the supreme will, the shadows that enveloped them and the storms that beat so furiously against their consecrated altars, would pass away in season, and bring again the sun of peace and liberty with brighter and more renovating influence. Besides this, they were ardently attached to their mother country, and sincerely desired to harmonize with her in all things practicable; and their agents were even now in London, soliciting the paternal interposition of the sovereign to save the colonies from utter and irremediable ruin: for, so far from their having increased for a number of years back, they had obviously diminished; since nearly all the objects for which the children of liberty had left their incompetent, criminal, and debased father-land, seemed for a while frustrated by these high-handed usurpations.

            But the people of Massachusetts had never despaired. Patiently had they waited for the fulfilment of promises which had been repeatedly given to their petitions, and so long as their agents remained at court, the hope which had sustained them under so many privations was re-kindled by every arrival in their waters. The people of Boston, however, had for some time given unequivocal indications that the chain was galling them to the quick. On several occasions they had manifested that feverish restlessness which is so disagreeable to tyrants; and on a late one, when certain soldiers were on trial for having deserted from the army, and a freeman had dared to complain to the council of its unreasonable conduct, he was told by one of its members that “he must not think the privileges of Englishmen would follow them to the ends of the world.”

            Such a sentiment could not be lost on the inhabitants of Boston. It was not bruited abroad and proclaimed from the house-tops, but it was indignantly whispered about in private; and wherever it was heard, it roused the blood of the people to a more tumultuous action, than if the war-trumpet of the most beloved monarch had summoned them to contend for their altars. Meetings were held in spite of the denunciations of Sir Edmund Andros and his council, and measures were in rapid progress for effecting a revolution in some degree analogous to that which in less than a hundred years after, was achieved by the sons of liberty.

           

            Such is a brief outline of the condition of public affairs, and of the popular affection towards the crown officers, at the time when the events hereafter to be described were secretly working for consummation; and it will in part explain the readiness with which the people about Mount Wallaston assured themselves that the Grampus was a government vessel.

            The sun had now sunk behind the blue hills of Massachusetts, and the shadows of evening had enveloped the landscape in gloom. Two days had passed since the arrival of this vessel, which was still riding at anchor about a mile below Mount Wallaston. At seven o’clock that evening, a person wrapped in a long pea-jacket stood at the door of a rude hut, which was built on the borders of the sea at half gun-shot distance from the anchorage of the vessel. The hut was constructed under the lee of a bank of earth, that, breaking abruptly in that place, sloped gradually down to the water, where was a small boat fastened to a rock, which served the double purpose of an anchor and a ring-bolt. The hut was erected over a natural excavation of the earth, which, with little assistance from art, rendered it available as a cellar. An abundance of sea-weed was heaped round the foundation of the tenement to keep the frost more effectually out; and you ascended to the door by the aid of steps that had been constructed out of broken spars, which the proprietor had gathered from the floating wrecks of vessels that were frequently scattered along the shore.

            A challenge within of, “Who’s there?” followed immediately on a low tap at the door, which, on the summons being repeated, was slowly opened by the occupant.

            “What do you want here at this time of the day?” growled the inquirer, as his head peered from the opening, and a dark lantern gleamed on the face of the person who had disturbed him.

            “It is only I, Morgan!” responded the visitor-- “I’ll tell you my business presently; in the meantime, I’ll take a place by your fireside, if you’ve no objection.”

            “Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Morgan in a more friendly tone, “come in;” on which he stepped back to admit his visitor. “I thought it might have been one of those infernal revenue officers, who are everlastingly prowling about these ere parts: and jest now, I guessed that the old rats had nosed out the cheese you know on.”

            “It is on that very account I have called to see you now,” rejoined the guest; “the moon rises at about one o’clock, I believe,” continued he, musing.

            The man took down from a small shelf over the fireplace a very dirty almanac, and after thumbing it awhile, replied.

            “She rises to-night at a quarter past one precisely.”

           

            “Very well;” resumed the other, “the Dolphin must be under weigh before the moon rises; the revenue-cutter will be after her before that hour, unless she clears out from this place; I may be mistaken, but if Sir Edmund Andros gets scent of me, as I have reason to think that he will, farewell to all your hopes, and to mine too, as for that matter. You know the soundings about Nahant?”

            “Perfectly!”--

            “Run her down to Nahant, then, and anchor her on the sou’west shore, close by the Swallow’s Cave; --if we can get her in there before the moon rises, she will be snug enough. There is not a solitary inhabitant on that witch place that ever I heard of, and the fishing-boats never run round that side.”

            Morgan put his nose aside with the fore-finger of his right hand, as much as to intimate to his employer that he thoroughly understood his meaning; and then looking at him shrewdly, inquired,

            “You’ll not trouble Nahant yourself, I suppose?”

            “Not to-night; I have business of the utmost importance in Boston. Run the schooner as near in among the rocks as you can, and stay at anchor till I come; unless you are attacked, which is not probable. You know there is no danger in riding that side of the peninsula unless it blows a tornado, for you are well sheltered from the north-east. Here is something as an earnest of the future.”

            With this, the stranger placed in the hand of Morgan several pieces of gold, which the latter chinked without returning any answer, except to invite his guest to be seated.

            “I can wait with you an hour,” was the reply, while the visitor looked at a very elegant watch; “at eight o’clock I must see you on board.”

            The speaker remained silent for some moments, and seemed to be pondering something in his mind, while he stirred the embers with the iron scabbard of his rapier, which, as he seated himself on the wooden settle, projected from under his pea-jacket. At last he turned his face round with a sort of suppressed whistle through his teeth, and gazing carelessly on the rude habitation of his pilot, which was almost entirely without furniture--the bedstead being built of rough boards on one side of the room after the manner of the berths of a vessel, and a small deal table occupying the centre, on which lay a few clams, a piece of sea biscuit, and a black bottle--the tout ensemble bronzed by the flickering light that flared up reluctantly from the hearth,--questioned him as follows.

            “And how long, pray, have you lived here, Morgan?--The last I heared of you before I left Boston,--for though I hailed from the old point over there in Matapan, I always regarded myself as an inhabitant of the good old town of notions,--you were in Limbo for debt.”

            “You are jest about right there,” replied Morgan, looking a little queer at his employer, and screwing up the corners of his eyes as he spoke; “and I should have remained there to this day, for what I know on, if the rascals, not being contented with burying me alive one way, hadn’t tried to bury me another;-- but the carcass of Jake Morgan got into the clutches of the wrong grave-diggers that time, ha! ha! ha!”--

            And he chuckled at the remembrance of something of which his visitor was too uninformed to be able to participate in his mirth.

            “If you haven’t been the most prosperous man in the world, Jake,” said he, “you have at least been lucky enough not to lose your good humor. Suppose, now, you tell me the adventure you allude to; for by the dull face of a puritan, I’ll swear that since I hove in sight of the Light-House I have met with hardly any thing but melancholy and misery. Come, Jake Morgan, before we set to work let us have the story that seems to put you in such excellent spirits.”

            Jake Morgan was a muscular, square-built man, of about forty years of age. His raven, black hair, braided into a triple cue with their ends fastened together, hung half-way down his back. His face was very pale and cadaverous, contrasting strongly with his black beard and eyebrows; but his dark eyes, always moist and restless, had a very mirthful expression, though it arose rather from mischievous purpose than from any very laudable impulse. His large mouth was filled with sound, strong teeth much yellowed with tobacco, which he could not help exhibiting in consequence of a remarkable spasmodic action of the lips when interested in conversation. He was always ready to tell stories, being generally himself the subject of them; yet he rarely had an opportunity of indulging this disposition, except when he met with an accommodating customer on his excursions to the neighboring settlements to dispose of fish and wild fowl,--for when Morgan was out of employment as pilot, his necessities compelled him to resort to this means of living,--and then he was so universally regarded as an unprincipled and dangerous man, who could be easily engaged in executing schemes of mischief,--that few men were mirthful enough to pay the price of being amused by him. He was nothing loath, therefore, to comply with the solicitation of his present employer, and regale him with one of his personal anecdotes. Therefore, having drawn himself closer to the fire, and mused and cleared his throat for the effort, after disposing of an “old soldier,” which had been worn out in the wars of his corn-grinders, and supplying its place by a fresh recruit of “nigger-head,” he proceeded as follows:--

            “Well, you see, as how, I’d been in the stone jug more than a year, e’en-a-most eighteen months, living on bread and water, a thin diet for one whose belly-timber had never been short of salt-junk and pork; and all this for running up a small score at the Two Gridirons, kept by Job Tileston;--you remember Job, I dare say?”--

            “I think I heard of such a fellow’s being hanged some time ago,” replied the guest.

            “The same feller, exactly,” resumed Morgan; “he was taken up a year or two arter I used to patronize him, for cutting a man’s throat who put up at his house. It was about as dirty a job as ever I heared tell on, that are murder--perhaps you’d like to hear about it!”

            “Perhaps you had better finish the yarn you began with,” said the visitor, “and leave that for another time.”

            “Well, may be I had,” replied Morgan; “but it’s no yarn, I assure you; I’ll bet a shilling the main part of what I’m going to tell you is registered down in the chronicles of Boston jail:--I know it must be, if them fellers who keep it have any regard for true history. But to proceed without any more palavering, I’ll soon get through, for a short horse is soon curried.

            “Well, you see,” continued Morgan, “after Job Tileston had put the screws on me, there seemed to be no earthly chance of getting out; and I had purty much made up my mind to stay there till I died. A good many on’em, who were not very fond of an active life, have done so; but I was used to knocking round, and didn’t care about staying there in the public boarding-house longer than I could help. Job used to come every now and then, especially Sunday arternoons, and look at me through the bars; many a time had that same man of Uz looked over the bar at me before,--but that’s neither here nor there. On them occasions, though, he was more like one of Job’s comforters than Job himself,--and the way I used to curse him! Howsomever, it was all done in a quiet way, and I soon got so used to being there, boarding and lodging all free, that I wouldn’t have given a tinker’s d--n to be let out agin: and hadn’t it been for the meerest accident in the world, I might have been there to this day, and then the Dolphin might have whistled for a pilot, and the world been cheated out of one of the best jail-bird legends it ever yet heared on.”

            “At the rate you are now going,” interrupted the listener, whose patience began to be a little fretted, “it will be time to go aboard before you have got under weigh with your story.”

            “Well, then,” continued Jake, squaring himself in earnest, “I will try to tack as little as possible. It seldom happened that I was left alone in the cell I occupied; while I boarded there, I suppose I chummed with more than a dozen different persons, who like schollards in old Mather’s College, had been examined, admitted, and graduated. Some on ’em out of that same institution occupied very elevated stations when they left--Job Tileston climbed to the very top of the ladder--ha! ha! ha! but he fell off though--good again! not so bad that”--

            His employer could not help laughing at the fellow’s drollery, for though he had told the story a dozen times before, his sense of the ludicrous and whimsical constantly suggested the most grotesque relations among his fancies.

            “The last chum,” resumed Morgan,“was a queer feller, who had never, as he confessed, been out of debt in his life. There was nothing strange in that, though; but what tickled me was, he took it into his head to die, and then he was so cool about it. ‘Sam,’ says I, ‘aint you afeard to hop the twig?’--‘Afeared!’ says he, ‘what have I to be afeared on? But I tell you what it is, Jake,’ says he, ‘I don’t much like this paying the debt of natur--its inconsistent.’ Soon arter this the death-rattles came over him, and his eyes turned up in his head, and he struggled like a good fellow”--

            “For pity’s sake,” interrupted the listener, “pass over the particulars of that scene; I have no stomach for the horrors to-night.”

            “Why, od’s niggers!” cried Morgan, “I know’d well enough that Sam couldn’t feel nothing--he didn’t suffer no more than a lobster does in a pot-- kicking’s no sign! “Howsomever, it was all one; a few minutes arter, and I laid him out as straight as a salt fish, and closed his eyes; but they wouldn’t stay closed, they wouldn’t; so I put two coppers I had on ’em, because them wasn’t the handsomest dead-eyes I had ever seen, I assure you!

            “It was now about midnight, and while I was fixing Sam, I felt something cold and clammy catch hold of my naked arm behind: by Golly! warn’t I scared then? For as soon as it got hold o’me, such a scream came through the wall as you never heared in your born days. And what do you think it was? A crazy feller next cell, who had poked his arm through the air-hole, and finding he had caught something, set up that diabolical screaming. I tried to make him undo his grip, and he wouldn’t; so I cut the tendons of his wrist--you needn’t be alarmed, it didn’t hurt him none--but he let go though, like a monkey hold on a hot potater. I had an extra blanket that night, and slept very comfortable. The next day, the carpenter brought a pine coffin, and the turnkey and him put Sam into it;--talk of feeling for a feller, I was a perfect mourner compared to them ere fellers! The way they knocked Sam about was a caution. Well, having packed away the body, the carpenter, put the top of the coffin on and fixed the nails, and then found that he had left his hammer;--so off they both started, and left me with my late chum who now, as the thought struck me, would be a friend indeed:--the friendship you meet with in the world has no such body to it as mine had;-- good again!

            “While the jail folks were busying themselves about Sam, I lay on my bundle of straw, kivered up by the blankets; and it was while they were banging the doors and rattling the bars and padlocks on their way out, that I planned one of the grandest schemes that ever entered into the head of man, or ever you heared on. And what do you think it was? Why, I’ll tell you, for I got up in no time to put the plan in execution. I went to work, and dragged out the dead body of poor Sam;--by the bye, I forget to tell you that I see’d that infernal jailor put them are very coppers in his pocket which I put on Sam’s eyes to keep ’em down,--but I didn’t say nothing;--I say I dragged the dead body of poor Sam out of the coffin, and carrying it to my bundle of straw, I kivered it up with the blankets exactly as I was kivered up myself a few minutes afore when the jailer and the carpenter was in the cell. My next step was to get into the wooden surtout myself, which had been vacated by my accommodating fellow-boarder. Here I placed myself as quietly as possible, having snugged the top and fixed the nails just as they had been fixed by the carpenter.”

            “I should have feared,” interrupted the listener, who now seemed to place some reliance on the story, and attended with deep interest, “I should have feared suffocation in the coffin.”

            “There was no danger o’ that,” resumed the story-teller; “I don’t know but a feller might have lived there a week, for there was a purty considerable sized knot-hole in the coffin. Howsomever, I warn’t fool enough to trust to that; so what does I do, but put two wedges of wood under the top of the box to keep it from being made too tight, and every thing being now ready, I laid as comfortable as ever a live corpse did afore me. And this reminds me of another story which”--

            “Which you had better postpone for the present, perhaps;” suggested his guest.

            “As you like,” continued Morgan, a little piqued; “but do let me tell it to you one of these days--it’s a devilish queer story about a man who was going to be buried alive;--howsomever, I will not interrupt what is now telling. As the arternoon advanced, the old slamming of doors and rattling of chains, and bars, and padlocks began again--we used to hear that constant three times a-day for meals, and extra when new boarders came.--By and bye the door of my cell opened, and in came I don’t know how many persons. The first thing done was to drive the nails, which operation sounded in my ears like thunder. As soon as this was over, the coffin was lifted from the floor and placed on the shoulders of my pall-bearers. I now had the satisfaction of perceiving that there was room between the coffin and the kiver for air enough to supply a grampus; so that, you see, I was in no sort of danger of wanting wind,--the only fear was that those outside would get wind of me,--good again! not so bad that! The pall-bearers now began to descend into the street, and to talk together as follows:--

            “‘How long has this rotten old rascal been dead, Joe?’ asked one of my body guard of another.

            “‘About a week I should judge,’ replied the feller, spitting.

            “‘Who’s going to have him; do you know?’ again inquired the first feller.

            “‘Doctor Sikes,’ said the feller called Joe, who was at my right shoulder; his turn comes next. The doctor is a queer feller at buying bodies, but I guess he got bit last week a little.’

            “‘How so?’ asked my body-guard at my left foot.

            “‘Why, you see,’ said he, ‘the doctor’s son, and some other chaps, were blowing it out down at the Red Lion, and all in a nat’ral way they got as drunk as you please;--well, arter they were purty well tired on’t, and ’twas time for them to be packing, they found that they hadn’t got no money none on’em. ‘I see the way to fix it,’ said one; ‘how’s that?’ said another. ‘Let’s put Ned Sikes in a fire bag,’ said he, ‘and sell him to the old man; Ned’s dead drunk, and as good as a corpse,’ said he. ‘Hurrah!’ cried they all at once, and set to work in earnest to do it. So they hauled an old canvass bag out of a boot-closet they know’d on, and crammed into it the body of Ned Sikes, and off four on them started for the doctor’s house, leaving the rest of the company to await the result of the negotiation. So knock, knock, went they agin the old man’s door, and presently he stuck his old night-cap out of the window with his head in it. ‘Who’s there?’ said he,--‘hush!’ said they,--and the old feller took the hint, and came down. The Doctor looked at the bag, and lifted one end on it. ‘What is it?’ said he; ‘a man,’ said they; ‘what did he die on?’ said he; ‘rum,’ said they. ‘He isn’t worth more than fifteen shillings, then,’ said he; ‘make it a pound,’ said they, ‘and it is yourn;’ ‘done,’ said old Sikes, and they carried the Doctor’s own drunken son into his study, and left it on the floor in the dark.

            “‘The doctor was gammoned that time, any how,’ said the man, who kept me up on the left shoulder; ‘and he’ll get gammoned this time too; for we’ve got the money, and this is about the rottenest corpse I’ve had the honor of bearing many a day; and if he don’t get gammoned this time, there is no such thing as rum in punch.’

            “You’re right there, my body-guard,” thought I, “for once in your life at least; and the pall-bearers just then began to laugh aloud, for they had turned down near the bottom of the common. I know’d that they were in the habit of burying hungry debtors down at that old grave-yard, and I could calculate purty well the whereabouts. My friends made a terrible fuss with my body, and were already tired enough of their burden, when we drew nigh to my long home. They stopped, and I couldn’t mistake, then. Now was pill-garlick’s great time. I began to kick and scream at the same instant, as if heaven and earth were coming together, and all the devils in devildom had been suddenly unchained at once. My pall-bearers, half frightened out of their wits, dropped the coffin, and scampered away as if for their lives; one on’em tumbled over a tomb-stone and nearly broke his neck. I had no time to lose. With a desperate effort, I drew my knees up, and at the same time strained with my back and elbows till the sides and top of the coffin split asunder an gin away at once. I tore and wounded my shoulder horribly against the nails of the coffin, and here are the scars at this day. You ought to have seen the way I cleared! I never stopped till I reached Nigger Hill, and there I remained as snug as you please for the next six months; till, accidentally mistaking another man’s wallet for my own, I was induced to remove here, where I built this house. Since then I have been pilot to all the scamps, saving your presence, who have honored these parts with their countenance. What think you now of my adventure?”

            “I think,” replied the other, “you have had an excellent education for a cut-purse, and that your adventure of the coffin is altogether worthy of you. Did the sharks let you alone after your escape?”

            “I never heared any more of their capiases, as they call them. I guess they thought Jake Morgan was a leetle too hard a customer for ’em, and that, on the whole, it would be as well to let him alone.”

            The time was now arrived which had been determined on for proceeding on board the schooner. Accordingly, the captain of the Dolphin opened the door of the hut, and proceeding down to the water’s edge, gave a loud and shrill whistle, which was answered immediately by the appearance of a light from on board the vessel. In a few minutes the light passed down the side of the schooner, and was seen shining over the water, and growing brighter and brighter, till presently the plash and dip of the oars were heard, and a barge, rowed by eight men, with a coxswain, rounded to the wharf.

            “Is it you, Mr. Rogers?” inquired the captain, addressing the man at the helm as he stepped on one of the after-thwarts.

            “Ay, ay, Sir!” returned the helmsman.

            “Step aboard, Morgan!” said the captain; and Morgan seated himself aft, along-side the officer.

            Having shoved off according to orders, the barge was on her way back to the schooner. It was not long before they were on her deck. She was a sharp built schooner, with raking masts; her bowsprit running almost parallel with her deck, like the modern Baltimore clippers. She was of about one hundred and fifty tons burthen, carrying six twelve pound carronades and one long twenty-four pounder, which was swung aft of the foremast. Her bulwarks were high, and almost straight fore and aft, with a deck like that of pilot-boat. She was painted black, and was, on the whole, as suspicious looking a craft as ever fell under the glass of a revenue cutter.

            It was not the first time that Jake Morgan had been on board the Dolphin. He had piloted her in, a few days before, having seen her signal far down in the bay, where he had gone to fish for cod and haddock. He was now in her cabin, with the captain, and Mr. Felton, his lieutenant. They were seated at the table, their only light that which shone in the binnacle, and which cast a peculiar gleam on the visages of the company. The captain turned towards his lieutenant.

            “We must weigh anchor immediately, Mr. Felton, and proceed to Nahant; I have given the pilot directions, as he will continue with you till I come. I have reason to suspect that Sir Edmund Andros has got scent of us, or that he will have, this very evening. Keep your guns loaded with grape and cannister, and if the revenue cutter should come, I know that you are able to blow her out of the water. Should this happen, run out to sea, and in a week from this time cruise off Cohasset, by the glades. I will join you there. Otherwise wait for me at Nahant. You may send the men for fresh provisions to Salem. Business in town requires my presence.”

            So saying, he went to his state-room, and from his desk took a package carefully bound with red tape, and placed it in his bosom; he then replenished his pockets with gold, which he took from a sheet-iron box; and being thus provided, he went on deck, and descended into the barge which was waiting for him along-side.

            “I shall take your boat, Morgan, this evening,” said the captain, giving a farewell nod, “and I shall probably bring it with me to Nahant. Keep a sharp look-out!”

            In a few minutes the barge landed him on the shore, and returned to the vessel.

            Being now alone, he cast off Morgan’s boat, and having set the mast in the forward thwart, and unloosed the sail, he was soon on his way to Boston. He beat about, however, some time, till he had seen his favorite vessel under weigh with a stiff breeze, and then he put his helm down, and bore directly for the long wharf in the metropolis of New England.

CHAPTER V.

 

Fate may dash             My sceptre from me, but shall not command

            My will to hold it with a feebler grasp;

            Nay, if few hours of empire yet are mine,

            They shall be colored with a sterner pride.

Ion.      Ruffian, let go that rude, uncivil touch.

Shak.  

            The tyranny of Sir Edmund Andros over the people of New England was, as near as could be, an exact counterpart of that of James II. over his more immediate subjects. Charles II. would never have been guilty of half the excesses which are recorded against him, had it not been for the influence of his bigotted brother. What made matters still worse was, that the then Duke of York was himself under the complete dominion of the Catholie clergy, and is said to have gone so far as to write a letter to the Pope, promising his holiness that he would leave no means untried to establish his religion in New England.

           

            The colonies were hateful to James, as nurseries of republicans; and he saw no security for his crown so long as the arbitrary principles which sustained it were assailed by the free spirit which, though temporarily subdued, he was aware must prevail in that favored region. Had it not been for the Duke of York, the charters of the people would not have been invaded; and now that this last vestige of liberty was gone, James did every thing in his power to perpetuate the slavery he had effected. He was therefore careful to use all the religious influence he possessed to spread Papacy throughout his dominions; knowing well enough, that if he could enslave the consciences of men, there would remain but little to be achieved in fastening on their necks the most servile bondage.

            In this spirit, and with this ulterior object, priests were sent over to America in disguise during the first part of his reign, who used every art in their possession to lead the people into the snare that was set for them; till, as the tyranny of the monarch grew more daring, and his infatuation more extravagant, the secret disguises of his conduct were entirely abandoned, and he set to work with the holdness that better became him.

            One of his first acts at home was, to augment his standing army from seven thousand to fifteen thousand men, and to place over this force his favorite Catholic officers; a step which at once trampled on the laws and liberties of the people. This conduct was in the midst of professions diametrically opposite to it, and perfectly harmonized with that contemporary piece of villainy--the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Lewis the Fourteenth of France. In the mean time Catholic lords were admitted into James’s privy council, and Jesuit Colleges were established in different parts of the kingdom. Monks now appeared at Court, and the administration became entirely Catholic. So absurd and impolitic was his conduct, that even Pope innocent XI., much as he desired to see the whole Christian world at his feet, disapproved of it; for he had sagacity enough to see that, so long as it was against the sense of the people, it could not endure, but would, on the contrary, ultimately redound to his disadvantage.

            In his zeal to spread his religious views and convert the whole empire, James now published his declarations for liberty of conscience in the year 1687, which so charmed the Independents, that for the time they seemed to forget the oppression to which they were subjected. Allured by such hopes as this seeming liberality inspired, the people of Massachusetts, through Dr. Mather, Rector of Harvard University, and Sir Henry Ashhurst, their agents at London, petitioned the king to restore their charter, in the confident belief that their prayer would be granted. But the king had no intention of extending his liberality thus far, and it was soon discovered that his only design had been to favor the Catholics.

            Bad men, the enemies of the people, are the same in all ages of the world, and when in power are the more dangerous to liberty, because their infatuation increases with their assumption. James had now become almost absolute, and he lost no occasion of taking the responsibility of a tyrant. Though his parliament was thoroughly Tory, they could not be induced to wholly prostitute themselves to the crown. They so far truly represented the people of England as they resisted the royal design of forcing the Catholic religion upon them; for a step had been taken in human progress which could not admit of retrogression, and the religious sentiment of the country was fixed for its allotted duration.

            James, however, was resolved to leave no electioneering machinery untried. He visited the counties in person, and closeted himself with influential men, making a desperate effort to pack a parliament that would carry out all his enormous schemes. But the virtue of the people resisted all his machinations, and liberty triumphed. Historical parallels are instructive; but we shall leave the reader to draw them. In furtherance of his arbitrary designs to enslave a too confiding people, the monarch of England resolved to produce the Pope’s nuncio in public. By the laws of England no one could assume this character without the penalties of high treason. But, in defiance of these laws, and in direct opposition to public opinion, this man, by the order of James, made his public entry into Windsor, attended by all the pomp and paraphernalia of his religion. It was the duty of the Earl of Somerset, in virtue of his place, to conduct official characters to an audience. But he was too good a citizen to be a tyrant’s instrument, --and so he lost his office. The Duke of Grafton was not so scrupulous, and he broke the laws to please his master. Jeffries was then at the head of the King’s Bench, or there is no telling but that Grafton might have been Lord Chief Justice of England.

            These acts, among others, made James so unpopular, that he resolved, if practicable, to use the influence of the Prince of Orange, his son-in-law, if haply he could induce that eminent personage to agree with himself; for he was a favorite of the English dissenters for the services he had rendered them, while the Princess was the last hope that her countrymen clung to. The king’s object was to make the repeal of the penal laws popular. In pursuance of this end, he at length obtained the views of the Prince and Princess of Orange, which amounted to this, that they had no objection to indulging the Catholics with liberty of conscience, but, on the contrary, desired it, as they did most ardently that the Protestant dissenters should be allowed the free exercise of their religion; but that they would never agree to the repeal of the test and penal laws, which excluded the Catholics from parliament and public offices, and were the best securities against the overthrow of the Protestant faith.

            From that time forth, the people of England, as well as of the Colonies, began to look with more determined opposition on the projects of their king; inasmuch as they could now realize a source of protection, which before they had only hoped for. As the malcontents in the kingdom increased, James became the more obstinate. He now, in 1688, published another declaration, granting liberty of conscience, and abolishing the penal laws; at the same time ordering the bishops to read this declaration in all their churches. How unpopular this measure was, may be gathered from the fact that one minister having told his congregation, that, though he was compelled to read the declaration, they were not obliged to stay and hear it read, they immediately left the house, and he recited it to the deserted pews.

            In the meanwhile the two parties in England, through the judicious councils of the Prince of Orange, united against their common enemy, the king. So long as a Catholic monarch possessed the throne of England, the Stadtholder saw the impossibility of attaching that kingdom to the Protestant alliance of the princes of the empire, Holland, Spain, and Savoy, against the ambitious schemes of France. The birth of the Prince of Wales, which happened this year, shut out the princess from the succession; so that all hope of securing the Protestant faith in England seemed to have expired. The Prince of Orange, therefore, entered into a closer correspondence with the malcontents, who promised him their full assistance if he would co-operate with them in the re-establishment of their liberties.

            James now began to perceive the true state of affairs, and forthwith he ordered his fleets to be equipped, and new levies to be set on foot for the protection of his dominions. It was the same fear that impelled him to despatch the Rose frigate to Boston; for he had learned through the Massachusetts agents that the people were becoming restless under the privations and impositions they endured, and that unless their charters were restored, it was impossible to foretell the consequences which might follow. The king, therefore, thought it advisable at this juncture, to send an armed vessel to Boston, that the turbulent people there might be overawed, and kept under the provisional authority.

            It would have been well for George III., nearly a century after, if he had taken counsel from history, and learned of what stuff his North American subjects were made, and how they worked in the traces of despotism. It is delightful to observe, at this period of our history, the broad advancing shadow of those mighty events, which in their majestic march were even then heralded in the distance, and which, so long afterward, came up in their appointed time in the consummation of the age.

            The Rose frigate was now lying off in the channel of Boston harbor, where she had been for about a week previous to the events which we have already recorded. She was now the topic of universal conversation, not only in the metropolis, but in all the neighboring towns. Reports of various kinds were in circulation relative to her intentions, but nothing satisfactory could be determined. No intelligence had yet reached the people of New England as to the state of affairs in the mother country; and though their hopes had all along reposed on Mary when she should ascend the throne, that consolation was now taken away by the birth of the Prince of Wales. Still they confided in the influence of the Stadtholder, who occupied so important a position in European politics; and they now heard with satisfaction that overtures had been made to him by the most considerable of the English nobility and gentry.

            In this state of uncertainty and suspense were the inhabitants of Boston, expecting on the one hand, the restoration of their ancient liberties, and on the other, enduring all the miseries which the privation imposed. The Rose frigate had been in their waters for a week or more,--Sir Edmund Andros had been summoned from New-York,--he had repeatedly met with his council; yet nothing had publicly transpired, by which it could be ascertained that any thing had been done for their relief: and, what excited their suspicion, and made them still more restless, was, that a further change had, since the arrival of the frigate, been made in many affairs of the administration, which, so far from inspiring an expectation of relief, confirmed their darkest suspicions. Among other movements which alarmed them was, that several guns had been dismounted from Fort Hill near the residence of the governor, and transported on board the frigate; and, in addition, the arsenal had been deprived of munitions of war, which were sent to the same destination. The officers of the vessel, nevertheless, associated with the citizens, and seemed by their conduct willing to allay any apprehensions of evil. But the jealousy of an injured community is not so readily appeased.

            There was a group of men standing together at the end of Long Wharf, an extensive pier which runs out to the channel of the harbor at the north-eastern part of the city, from the termination of the principal business place, then known as King’s Street. They were looking towards the frigate, which, as she lay at anchor about a mile off, was then swinging round with the turning tide, her guns one by one becoming visible, till her whole broadside was presented to the town. As her flags streamed to the breeze in the blaze of noon-day, from her black masts and rigging painted against the marbled atmosphere, she presented a truly gallant appearance; and the group of men who were beholding her, seemed to take a pride in her beauty.

            Several merchant vessels were lying about that part of the harbor, and half a dozen pleasure-boats were skimming lightly to and fro, with parties of ladies and gentlemen, whom curiosity had prompted to take a look at this important stranger. Most of the stores on Long Wharf were closed, and the truckmen were standing about, sunning themselves against the walls, or perched on the anchors that lay rusting on the ground. A number of sailors were there also, who seemed to have nothing to do but to smoke their pipes in the sunshine, sing ballads, and spin long yarns.

            Among the group of persons to which we have referred, was a man who seemed to be a master mechanic,--a personage about fifty years old, of a muscular, and powerful frame. There was something very striking in this man’s appearance; he had an expression of severity about his eyes and mouth, and he exhibited great vehemence of enunciation and action, which seemed to make an extraordinary impression on those around him. His head was large, and his features were regular but hard; and his dark eyes flashed energetically as he spoke. His teeth were uncommonly white, and they appeared more so from the darkness of his close-cut mustache. The other men appeared to be mechanics also. Two of them were pump and block makers, and the fourth, who was the principal talker after the master-mechanic, was a calk-and-graver.

            “And who cares,” said the master-mechanic, who was an anchor-smith, addressing the calk-and-graver more particularly, but turning his rapid glances occasionally towards the others, “who cares, neighbor Bagnal, whether that fine-built vessel is any finer for our bone and muscle or not? She is in want of refitting if ever a vessel was, but Boston mechanics don’t get any such job as that in a hurry.”

            “If I could get the calking of her,” followed Bagnal, “it would give me my winter’s wood and something to boot, I guess. But no luck like that now a days! I never knew business at such a standstill; did you, Randal?”

            “Never,” replied Randal, for that was the name of the anchor-smith, “never!--but unless times alter, it will be the fault of us, the mechanics of Boston, if we don’t re-model, and re-rig, to say nothing of re-anchoring the public ship.”

            “We are the boys for that business, any day,” exclaimed the two pump and block makers.

            “And what do you suppose that yonder man-o’-war is sent here for?” inquired Randal, shaking his head as he spoke.

            “It’s more than I can do, to tell you,” replied Bagnal; “but I’ll bet the best month’s wages of any man’s money, that she didn’t carry away those eighteen-pounders from Fort Hill, and the grape shot and pikes from the arsenal, for any convenience of our’s, any how.”

            “And I’m just your way of thinking,” said Randal: “but never mind, my boys, there’s more bending to be done yet, before you make horse-shoes of us Yankees, depend on that;” and he cast a glance of defiance across the water at the frigate, and involuntarily stamped his foot as he spake.

            “Bagnal!” continued the same speaker, pulling the man he addressed by the skirt of his coat, “why didn’t you come to the meeting of our ward last evening, at the engine house in High Street?”

            “I never knew,” replied Bagnal, “nor heard of any meeting, till it was over.”

            “You deserve never to be at another,” rejoined Randal, “as long as you live. There was some speaking to the point, and the best spirit you ever heard of.”

            “And what would the Governor say to that?” asked Bagnal, smiling as if he anticipated the answer.

            “Who cares for the Governor, I want to know?” exclaimed the excited mechanic; “the devil take all such governors, say I; governors, indeed! ginger-bread men, dolls, jumping-jacks, man-milliners. I want to know whether our great-grandfathers came over here to be governed this way? Can any body answer me that?”

           

            “Of course they did no such thing,” replied Bagnal, followed by the echoing assent of the others.

            “And even if they did,” resumed Randal, “it would be no reason why we should knock under to such a lace-bellied set of knaves,--and by the fire of thunder,” he continued, lowering his voice as he spoke, “this King James is no better than his underlings.”

            “Not a whit--not a whit;” echoed the hearers.

            “Or else,” pursued the speaker, “when he came to the throne, why did he make such fair promises without any intention of fulfilling them? We might have known it would be so; and for my part, I never had any doubt that it was altogether owing to him that the last king seized on the charters of the kingdom.”

            “Why did the people submit to that, at the time? that’s what puzzles me,” said Bagnal.

            “It’s more than I can tell you,” replied Randal; “but you know how easily a colt is broke to the saddle. At first a little kicking and bolting, but very soon it seems to come as natural as lying.”

            “But I hope that isn’t the case with men,” ventured one of the pump and block makers.

            “And why not?” said Randal: “the man who submits to the least infringement of his rights, without putting a stop to such infringements peremptorily, once and for ever, has lost the only chance he ever can have of being free. He is situated precisely like a woman who has not checked the advances of licentiousness. If her pursuer has gained any advantage, she may attribute her integrity, if it be retained, to any cause but to the energy of virtue.”

            “According to all that,” replied Bagnal, “when a community is once under the thumb of a despot, it must remain there for ever.”

            “And so it must,” added Randal, “but for the last remedy.”

            “Well.” said the other, “for my part, the sooner it comes the better, for there never was quite such a tyranny as ours.”

            The attention of the group was now turned more particularly in the direction of the frigate, for one of her barges was seen advancing toward the shore. They kept their eyes upon it some time, remarking the accurate fall and dip of the oars, till Randal said to them:

            “Come, let us clear out from this place, for, as sure as we come in the way of those fellows, we shall get into a row. There is no use of kicking up a rumpus at this time of the day,--come!”

            Having made this remarks, Randal turned away from the bottom of the wharf where he had been standing, and, followed by his companions, entered a shop which provided ship-stores. Here they seated themselves on some barrels which contained sugar and flour for retailing, and after calling for bread and cheese, and something to wash the same down, they resumed their conversation.

           

            “There’s no use of denying it,” said Randal; “but we are on the eve of a revolution. The king, in trying to cram the Catholic religion down our throats, is changing the very character of the people--Hallo! there, Classon,” he exclaimed, as Abner Classon just then passed by on the wharf,--“heave to, and give an account of yourself.”

            Classon hearing his name called, slackened his pace, which was directed down the wharf, and looked in at the shop door.

            “Come in,” cried Randal, “what are you afraid of? Though we are all Whigs here, we are not hungry enough to devour such a Tory as you are; come in,” he continued good-naturedly, “I want to have a talk with you.”

            Classon, who was easily attracted where eating and drinking were going on, entered readily when he found the little knot in the shop so agreeably engaged; particularly as they seemed well disposed towards him.

            “You are always at it, somehow, it seems to me,” said Classon; “and since your are so pressing, I don’t care if I do take a drop of something, for the sake of drinking his majesty’s health”--

            Randal was about to make a truly republican ackknowledgment of this proposal, when a tumult was heard on the wharf at the place they had just left. Cries of “help! help!” mingled with oaths and blows, all at once saluted their ears.

           

            “The barge!” exclaimed Randal.

            “The bargemen and the truckmen are fighting!” cried Bagnal.

            “They’ve insulted the king’s officers!” shouted Classon.

            “Down with them! down with them!” screamed Randal.

            So saying, the latter seized a bundle of axe handles, which, among other articles of a miscellaneous nature, were on sale at the shop, and taking one himself, distributed the rest among his surrounding associates, with whom he sallied forth to join the town side of the combatants. What was his astonishment, when, arriving at the scene of disturbance, he found ten British sailors, with three officers, from the frigate, endeavoring to drag six men to their barge; in short, a press-gang in the act of kidnapping certain inhabitants of Boston.

            “To the rescue! to the rescue!” shouted Randal.

            “Hurrah! hurrah! to the rescue!” cried a dozen others who were by, and had provided themselves with bludgeons from the same convenient store house that served Randal.

            “Let us alone! let us alone, you infernal scounrels,” exclaimed the men, four of whom were truckmen and two sailors, “we are free citizens of Boston; --help! d--n you, let us alone:” and they struggled, but in vain, to be released.

            “Take them to the barge, the blackguard landlubbers and whimpering sea-calves,” said the chief officer to the men, while he brandished his cutlass over his head; “drag them into the barge and push off, before those fellows get here--make haste!”

            But the assailants from the shop were too quick for the British press-gang, and Randal with his followers were among them in a moment.

            “Release those men instantly,” demanded Randal, “or by the hammers of hell, we will throw every man of you over-board!”

            At that moment bang went a pistol from one of the British officers, the ball from which passed through the high-crowned hat of the last speaker, and at the same moment the man who fired it lay rolling on the wharf. The signal for battle having been thus promptly followed up, the affray became immediately general. To defend themselves from the assailants, the men were instantly released, who readily joined their friends, and commenced an attack on the common enemy.

            In vain the officers endeavored to rally their men. Their assailants multiplied every moment, and they were driven, much battered and bruised, to their boat. Two of the officers were thrown from the wharf, and were with difficulty taken up by the barge. The other made the best of his way there with the men, and they were fain to escape at all with their lives. As long as the barge was within hitting distance, the officers and sailors in her were liberally saluted with stones, and they revenged themselves as well as they could by sending back the most diabolical threats and imprecations. While this skirmish was going on, Classon, who dared not take sides so openly against his fellow-townsmen, though at heart disposed so to do, as soon as he perceived that the day was going against the press-gang, skulked silently away, and taking the shortest cut he could find, ran directly to the dwelling-house of the Governor.

            The reports of this outrage, and the gallant bearing of Randal and his friends, spread like wild-fire through the town and the surrounding villages, much magnified and distorted from the truth, as all such matters invariably are; and amidst the various conjectures that occupied the public mind, it was now believed that the Rose frigate meditated unheard-of enormities, and was sent to Boston to rivet those chains which the tyranny of England’s kings had so mercilessly thrown round the people.

CHAPTER VI.

 

            Here is a man--but ’tis before his face-- I will be silent.

Shak. Troilus and Cressid.

            Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas.

Virg. Pollio.

           

            As soon as Fitzvassal arrived at the pier in Boston, after leaving the Dolphin well under-weigh for Nahant, he proceeded immediately to the house of Mr. Temple, which occupied a beautiful position in the western part of the town. On inquiry for him he was promptly introduced into an elegant apartment, which Mr. Temple occupied as a study.

            The instant Fitzvassal cast his eyes on that venerable man, there was a recognition between them, and his surprise may be imagined when he discovered in the person of the gentleman to whom he had rendered such signal service, a man who occupied a distinguished part in the public affairs of the day, and with whom he had on the present occasion the most pressing business.

            After the interchange of such courtesies as naturally arose from their meeting for the first time since the memorable event mentioned in the first chapter, Mr. Temple begged his visitor to be seated: at the same time Fitzvassal presented him with a packet which he had brought with him.

            Mr. Temple cast his eyes on the envelope, and immediately rose from his chair.

            “I am indebted, then, to Captain Nix, for his kindness in bringing this packet?” courteously demanded the venerable man.

            Fitzvassal bowed, and replied:

            “I have the honor, Sir, of bringing you those despatches from Sir William Temple.”

            “Really,” said Mr. Temple, “I very little suspected under how great an obligation I was to the gallant Captain Nix, the other day, when he was instrumental in saving the life of my young friend Seymour, and my own. You are very welcome, Captain, very.”

            “I was but too happy,” replied the pretended Captain, “in doing any service to my fellow-men.”

            “Thank you,” responded Mr. Temple; “will you permit me to glance at these papers? Any news from England, you may readily believe, must excite our earnest curiosity.”

            Fitzvassal entreated him to use no manner of ceremony, and Mr. Temple broke the seal of the packet. The first paper he opened was a letter from his kinsman, the baronet, which ran as follows:

            “Herewith I send very important papers for the instruction of our friends in Massachusetts. The bearer, Captain Nix, is a gentleman in every respect worthy of your confidence. Treat him as he deserves--I am much afflicted with the gout, and keep entirely out of public business. The Prince of Orange was never so popular as now--but you understand how little I can engage in the events of the day. I am afraid that his majesty’s persecution of the bishops will subject him to inconvenience.

            “Your kinsman, “Temple.”

            “My cousin is a profound statesman and a prudent politician,” thought Mr. Temple; “but if he thinks that men will give him credit for all that he has promised to the king, I incline to fear he will be mistaken.”

            “My kinsman,” said he, raising his eyes from the paper, and resting them on the supposed Captain Nix, “alludes to the persecution of the bishops. The other papers may contain an account of that affair, but I’m at present wholly in the dark about it. I perceive by Sir William’s letter that you are a good Whig, so we may talk about these matters without the slightest reserve. What is this affair of the bishops?”

            Fitzvassal having been in London at the time, was fortunately enabled to give an account of that irritating transaction, which he proceeded to do as follows:

            “The king, it seems, had published a second declaration of indulgence, by which the Catholics were to reap too many advantages, and this was ordered to be read in all the churches. Some half dozen of the most influential among the bishops, thinking that they would act contrary to the law if they complied with this order, petitioned the king to rescind it: but his majesty, instead of yielding to their request, had them all sent to the Tower”--

            “To the Tower!” exclaimed the astonished Mr. Temple; “is it possible?”

            “Such is the simple truth,” replied Fitzvassal; “but you would have been much more surprised if you had observed the people when they saw the ecclesiastics in the boats on their way thither.”

            “And what did the people do?” inquired Mr. Temple.

            “Why, Sir, they seemed as if they would go mad. The whole line of the shore was stowed as close as possible. Men and women, and even boys and girls, sent up the most frantic shouts and screams, and even ran into the water, begging for their blessing, and calling down the wrath of heaven on their persecutor. It was a rare sight for republicans, and as I live, I believe one half of England is republican at this hour.”

            “You are wrong there, my good Sir; republicanism can never flourish in England, at least for a very long time. The moral soil that is necessary for the sustenance of republicanism is worn out there. This is the only country where it can ever truly flourish, you may depend on it.”

            “But the psuedo-captain Nix could not understand why republicanism should not thrive as well in England as in America, and he seemed to think that what he had himself witnessed there was a positive proof that it could.

            “You may observe all the possible difference, Captain Nix,” continued Mr. Temple, “between the republicanism which springs up in the midst of a court and aristocratic influence, and that which is generated in the uncontrolled bosom of man. The plant is an exotic in England, and is only warmed by a hot-bed; here it is indigenous, and is at home in the open air.”

            “It may be so,” said the young man deferentially; “I have never paid much attention to these subjects --but one can’t help being something of a politician in England, where they seem to talk of nothing else but Dutch wars and state alliances; Whig, Tory, and Church influence. I never was so tired of any thing in my life as of the everlasting gabble that was going on from morning to night in the coffee-houses and taverns; but the Prince of Orange, after all, is uppermost in every man’s mind.”

            “And what do they say about the Prince, now-a-days?”

            “On that subject there are as many opinions,” said Fitzvassal, “as upon any other.--He is certainly exceeding popular, though.”

            “But we, some of us, know more on that head than the people do;” said Mr. Temple, looking at the supposed Captain Nix, confidentially.

            “Yes, indeed!” replied the other, with a mysterirous smile, that was intended to disguise the fact that he did not understand at what the venerable gentleman was driving; “I presume those papers contain the substance of every thing.”

            “No doubt--no doubt,” returned Mr. Temple; “but I hope matters will not be precipitated in England. I believe that if things are prudently managed, James may be compelled to abdicate, and William of Orange be placed on the throne.”

            In an instant Fitzvassal’s mind was illuminated upon the whole matter in hand, and he discovered at a glance the actual posture of public affairs; he therefore promptly replied:

            “You may depend on our prudence, Mr. Temple, we are well persuaded that it is absolutely necessary to act with the utmost caution.”

            Mr. Temple now proceeded to examine the documents which had been transmitted from his kinsman in England, and among others he found a communication from the Massachusetts agents, lamenting that, though they had used every endeavor, and applied every argument to persuade the king to restore the charter, he peremptorily refused to do so; so that there remained but little hope of its final accomplishment.

            The old gentleman’s countenance fell when he received this intelligence, and he turned to the other mournfully, saying;

            “So then, it seems that the king has refused to restore our charter! Can this be possible?” he added, musing; “can James be so infatuated as to suppose that the people of this colony can much longer submit to these arbitrary encroachments? Captain Nix! I hope that you will not find it necessary to return immediately to England. I can see a storm brewing in the political horizon, in which it will require all the stout hands we can pipe to quarters to keep the ship afloat. We may require your services.”

            “And you shall most assuredly have them,” replied Fitzvassal, a thought suddenly flashing across his mind that an opportunity might now offer itself to further his suit with Grace Wilmer, who occupied so large a share of his mind and nearly all his affection. “You shall most assuredly have them, Mr. Temple. My vessel, which is armed for any emergency, will be ever ready at a moment’s warning.”

            “Thank you, thank you heartily, Captain Nix; and if, in the mean time, you are in want of stores, ammunition, or even money, you will find no difficulty in procuring them. You shall be amply provided. Where is your vessel?”

            “Fearing that Sir Edmund Andros would find these papers, and discover my relation to the malcontents, I thought it prudent for my officers to keep her down the bay, out of sight;--for, to tell you the truth, Sir, just such an emergency as that you have suggested, presented itself to my mind from the first.”

            “It was wisely thought,” said Mr. Temple. “This now is a great relief to my mind; are you in want of any thing?”

            “I am most liberally provided,” replied Fitzvassal, “it is not probable that either I or my vessel will require any thing during our stay.”

            “It would be desirable for you, if you could make it convenient, to reside in the town,” urged Mr. Temple; “for if you find it necessary to be absent, it would not be an easy matter to communicate with you.”

            “I can readily manage that,” replied Fitzvassal; “but it may be necessary first to absent myself for a day or two, in order to make suitable arrangements.”

           

            “I must introduce you,” said Mr. Temple, “to the members of the Committee of Safety, which is hardly known to exist. Only the leading men in Boston are in the secret. You are aware that I hold a conspicuous station;--it is as chairman of that committee that I do so. Of course you know nothing about it when away.”

            “I think I comprehend you fully,” returned the other, “and it would give me great pleasure to meet with your associates.”

            “It will be necessary for you to conduct yourself with great circumspection while you remain in town,” said Mr. Temple, “the officers of Sir Edmund Andros are extremely vigilant; and if it were suspected that you are the agent of the English Whigs, there is no calculating with what severity they would treat you.”

            “It appears to me,” replied Fitzvassal, “from all that I can discover, that you are enduring a more humiliating tyranny in America than in England. Usurpation seems to have gone greater lengths here than there, and it would appear that this country had been selected on purpose to ascertain to what extent unbridled ambition might impose on human patience.”

            “And you will find, when you come to know the people better,” said the venerable Temple, “that, in proportion to the patience and fortitude with which they endure such tyranny while there is hope of its removal, will be their courage and perseverance in resisting it when it becomes no longer a virtue to endure. The people in the country towns are already on the eve of rebellion, and it is with the greatest difficulty that their indignation can be restrained. The government, who now are in the city, are on the brink of a volcano. It has been our endeavor to suppress any outbreak, so confident have we been that his majesty would not refuse that justice which we claim. Even now, when it seems to be peremptorily denied us, if the committee will follow my advice, it will keep back the communication of our agents from the people, in the humble trust that something, which we know to be in preparation, may yet mature for our relief.”

            “Yet it may be advantageous for the people of these colonies,” said Fitzvassal, after a long pause, during which he seemed to be reflecting on the observations of Mr. Temple, “that they should have such a seasonable taste of tyranny, in order that they may be able fully to realize its odious character.”

            “There is much good sense in that suggestion,” replied Mr. Temple; “and for that very reason the tyranny which is here suffered, is more deeply felt, and may be the more readily thrown off. The very contrast of their condition now, with what it was but six or seven years ago, before they were robbed of their charter, will only operate to endear to them those rights of which no earthly power can deprive them: for, mark what I say, Captain Nix, the people do not recognize any deprivation of their rights, or any actual extinction of their charter,--they are perfectly conscious of their situation, and they know well enough that they have been called upon to endure a trial of their faith; this trial they are passing through, and the time is near at hand for their deliverance. Observe the result, and then tell me whether the people of Massachusetts are not true to that best blood that ever flowed in the veins of man.”

            While Mr. Temple spoke, his fine face glowed with the enthusiasm of a seer, and Fitzvassal gazed on him with admiration.

            “Young man,” resumed the sage, who seemed to represent the embodied truths which actuated the great men who first colonized North America, and now appeared to be endeavoring to transmit their spirit to posterity in the individual personation before him, “young man, they singularly misjudge who regard this land merely as an unexhausted field, where money may be more readily gamed than in the older hemisphere. The facility for acquiring wealth is undoubtedly greater than in England or anywhere else, and that facility will in after-times, even more than now, stimulate the avarice of men, and lead them away to pioneer in wildernesses yet unexplored, and thus lay the foundation for that edifice which is destined to astonish and delight the world by the sublimity and beauty of its architecture.”

            Fitzvassal betrayed, by the expression of his countenance, that he did not understand the drift of this discourse.

            “I perceive,” resumed Mr. Temple, “that I am speaking too much in parables; but when I reflect on the high destinies of this part of the American continent, I have no language to express my thoughts, which flow in upon my mind like realities. Every valuable plant that has survived in the nurseries of European civilization will hereafter be transplanted in this garden of established truth.

            “Do not believe what men will tell you hereafter, that the form of government which must inevitably arise here, and be carried into full effect, is only an experiment, which haply may fail in the end. Point such men to the grandeur of those confederacies which could never have decayed under the invigorating influences of America; tell them that the experiment of self-government, and of many governments under one, has been tried over and over again, and that the object and end of every experiment was to show future generations in America how far the civil liberty and greatness of a nation might be elevated, if they would at once take an example and a warning from the past; and while you point with one hand to that past, be careful to direct the other to the future;--that while you show them the principles on which their greatness must be founded, they may learn to see through their apparent destiny the more substantial glories that await them.

            “Every thing,” continued the seer, “is progressive; but there never has been a complete antitype of that progress which I see sketched out before me in the great future, when the people of America, like one immense heart, shall give vitality to the vast territory that stretches between the two oceans, and from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.”

            Fitzvassal now gazed on the speaker with more amazement than ever--and it did not escape the eye of Mr. Temple.

            “Your astonishment may increase,” resumed he, “if you will contemplate a population of four hundred millions of men actuated by one paramount object, and speaking one common language.”

            “I must confess,” said Fitzvassal, “that my imagination is not large enough to grasp so comprehensive a picture. To my mind, such a future is too full of impossibilities. It can never be. What conceivable ground is there for so magnificent an anticipation?”

            “Do you imagine,” resumed Mr. Temple, “that the immeasurable past has been the theatre of unmeaning events; that innumerable millions of men have been born, matured into thinking beings, and then changed into non-apparent forms; that kingdoms and empires have arisen and fallen; that systems of government have been established and destroyed; that the relations of man, in all their vast extent, have been explored, the rational and affective faculties analyzed and arranged; that the physical regions of the universe have been investigated from suns and their systems, to the smallest animalcules that float in a cup of water; that in the midst of the great elaboration of wonders, light should at certain intervals dawn on the darkness of man’s apprehension, and give him a brighter intelligence; and, what is more, can you imagine that there should be given to man that sublime and transcendant logic, which, taking the mighty past and the present for the terms of a universal syllogism, he is enabled to be the prophet of the future;--can you imagine, I say, that all this has been in vain and without an object? When there is nothing so humble in nature, but that its use is readily determined, who can be so irrational as to suppose that the aggregate of all things is for no determinate object?”

            “I must admit,” said Fitzvassal, “that you speak according to reason; yet I cannot discover any thing in the past, as far as my exceedingly limited knowledge extends, to favor the gigantic anticipations which you entertain with respect to America.”

            “Nevertheless you may rely on their accuracy,” replied Mr. Temple, with a glow of enthusiasm; “and I adduce my authority from the very nature of things, as in their development they express the determinations of heaven.”

            “You think, then, that this country is destined to be great,” said Fitzvassal, venturing another objection to the religio-philosophic scheme of Mr. Temple; “if destiny has any thing to do with it, what becomes of that boasted liberty which is to flourish here?”

            “What men call destiny is only another name for order,” replied Mr. Temple: “but from a habit of associating order with nothing that is not beauful and pleasing, they do not recognize the relation of end, cause, and effect, in apparently discordant phenomena: but the truth is, that every moral as well as physical manifestation is dependent on spiritual causes. I do not know whether you fully understand me,” continued he, “but you must acknowledge that when a man is about to commit any act, he has an inseparable object in view; as, for instance, pleasure or the gratification of the mind.”

            “Certainly,” admitted Fitzvassal.

            “Of course, then, he wills to do the thing designed,” said Mr. Temple.

            “I cannot understand that this follows of course,” objected Fitzvassal; “for I believe that a man often wills one thing and does another, and now I think of it, I recollect hearing my mother read something just like that out of the Bible.”

            “There is such a passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans,” replied the philosopher; “but Paul declared, in his religious letters, that he spake after the manner of men; and when he expressed the natural feeling we have described, he only meant to say that he willed to do that which he had learned to be contrary to right, and that he did not will to do that which he knew to be according to goodness; or, in plainer language, he lamented that his sense of duty and his fondness for the same, were in opposition to each other.”

            “I think I understand you then to say,” said Fitzvassal, “that whatever a man does, however repugnant it may be to his taste or inclination, he must do it voluntarily.”

            “Precisely,” added the philosopher; “for, without the will, we cannot move a finger, and as we will, so we act. In every act, therefore, man proposes some end as the result of the action, and this end may be good or it may be bad. Man must then be in a state of equilibrium between good and evil, and his will to do one or the other determines his character. Recollect now the distinction between an inclination to do, and a will not to do; for, however much a man may be tempted to commit an act by a strong inclination that way,--if from a sense of duty he does refrain from so doing, his will has triumphed, and his freedom brings joy, because it is in the right.”

            “I wish,” ejaculated Fitzvassal, “that I could have had the privilege of knowing you before.”

           

            “I thank you,” replied Mr. Temple, gratified but not flattered by this involuntary tribute to truth, “I thank you; or rather, I ought to say that it gives me pleasure to find a man whose daily pursuits more or less lead him away from such reflections as these we are now indulging, taking any pleasure in them; --for it is the truth, and not its medium, with which you are captivated; and I am glad that it is so. But do not let us lose sight of our present object; you understand now that there is no such power as destiny; do you not?”

            “Yes; if you mean,” said the pupil, “that all human conduct must, when we examine it closely, be regarded as voluntary.”

            “That is all I mean;” resumed Mr. Temple; “for if all actions of men are voluntary, liberty is only another name for their inseparable condition; but this moral liberty is distinct from civil liberty, for the former is vital and the latter accidental.”

            “I never thought of the distinction before,” said Fitzvassal, “but I perceive that it is so.”

            “The highest degree of liberty, therefore, which a man can enjoy, is the liberty of freedom, or the unrestrained permission of co-operating with the infinite will in the completion of all good works.”

            “I begin now to perceive the application of your philosophy to the matter in hand,” said Fitzvassal.

            “For you will find,” continued the philosopher, “that the infinite will proposes great moral ends, and that he uses spiritual causes, which ultimate in natural effects. The operations of external nature and the conduct of men are the effects from these causes and ends.”

            “It would seem then,” objected Fitzvassal,” that bad actions are means of divine operation; for we find even more bad than good actions in all ages.”

            “You are partly mistaken,” replied his teacher, “yet are partly right. As the divine providence proposes the good of man, it wills that man may be good; but since man is at liberty to do as he loves to do, it is plain there is only one possible way in which such a co-operation can be effected, and that is, by a man shunning evil as sin; for, so long as he indulges even an affection for sin, it is impossible for his will, which is his love, to co-act with the divine will for his benefit. Evil is of many degrees of enormity, and sometimes less evil is permitted to prevent the appearance of greater. In this sense evil may sometimes be considered as according to the providence of God.”

            “The conduct of an individual, then,” suggested Fitzvassal, “is not only important as it regards himself,but as it must affect the whole society of mankind.”

            “Not only so,” said Mr. Temple, “but as a stone thrown from the hand effects a change in the balance of the whole Solar System, so the smallest activity of man’s has its influence through the immeasurable all of intellect and of affection.”

           

            “Still,” replied Fitzvassal, “I cannot understand the necessity of evil.”

            “The word necessity,” said the philosopher, “ought to be expunged from the vocabulary of man, because it has no meaning. In common discourse it implies the absence of a cause, when in fact it was intended to admit one, though it be inconceivable. It is more rational to say that evil abounds, because man being free to choose, voluntarily does that which he erroneously supposes to be good when it is not so; or voluntarily does that which he knows to be evil. If man were perfect, he could not be progressive, and he is progressive, because he is constantly separating evil from good; and thus, by preferring the latter, assimilating his own will to that which is infinite.”

            “There must be yet a deeper reason for the existence of evil than that you have stated,” suggested Fitzvassal.

            “And there is a deeper reason for it,” replied the sage; “the state of perfection is a state of innocence. A departure from this state is a state of conscious nakedness, an idea which implies a knowledge of good only through its opposite, evil. So long as a man is inclined to evil, through the gratification arising from its imagination, and yet refrains from committing it, not on account of its wickedness, but for some mere worldly consideration,--he deceives himself if he supposes that he is a moral man and is free from contamination: such a man would do what he longs to be about, if the worldly restraints were removed from him; and therefore he is at heart very far from pure. It is on this account that where man is inclined to evil, and deceives himself, he is permitted to do overtly what he inwardly desires; and thus he is no longer deceived as respects himself, but may now renounce what he knows and experiences to be bad.”

            Fitzvassal admitted the cogency of this argument. “You have opened,” said he to his instructor, “an entirely new field for my mind to labor in, and I thank you for it. In recognizing the idea of progress, I can readily understand how all the by-gone transactions of mankind are directed with a view to their final development: and how the spiritual character of man is the real creation which IS TO BE HEREAFTER, and which is fore-shadowed in existing nature.”

            “You will find no difficulty then,” resumed Mr. Temple, “in comprehending the destiny (for we may now use the word without danger,) the destiny, I repeat it, of this North American continent. And do not for a moment imagine that the tyranny or ambition of all the kings on earth can quench the spirit which at this moment burns within the bosoms of Americans. That spirit is not a mere emotion, which has been suddenly kindled in young and energetic bosoms; but it is, so to speak, the very flower and fragrance of all human thought, action, and experience; and it has been directed to these majestic dwelling-places of untutored man, that it may not be polluted by the malaria of privileged orders, but that it may expand itself to the broad light of the immortal sun, and grow in the warm effulgence of heaven.”

            The clock now struck eleven, and warned our adventurer to depart; but before he went, he accepted the invitation of Mr. Temple to stay at his house, and regard it as entirely his home whenever he could complete his arrangements to make Boston his temporary abode.

CHAPTER VII.

 

            I do remember an apothecary.


Romeo and Juliet        Oh God! this is death.


George IV      

            Fitzvassal left the house of Mr. Temple with his mind crowded with the revelations of truth which had been opened to him that evening. He now began to feel that his voyage of life had heretofore been pursued without compass or chart, and he could not help regretting that more light had not been imparted to him, by which he might have avoided the quicksands and breakers upon which he had run.

            “It is singular,” thought he, as he paced his way along in the clear moonlight, descending from the common, “it is very singular how every thing that man said this evening seemed to me, as soon as I understood it, like an old familiar truth. Why could not I have arrived at the same conclusions without his assistance, and in what consists the difference between us? He seems to stand on an elevation above me, so that his eye embraces a wider compass: but I believe I discerned every object which he pointed out to me, and why could not I have seen them as well as he if I had occupied the same ground?”

            New light seemed now to be dawning upon him; his mind had foliated under the vernal influences of a re-producing sun, and a wider surface was present-sented for radiant heat to act on.

            “It must be,” thought he, “that the difference among minds consists more in the point of view from which objects are seen, than from any radical, essential difference among them. And if this is true, our ability to discern the true relations of things principally depends on the ground we occupy.”

            Fitzvassal felt that a new era of existence had opened for him, and as he gazed upon the full-orbed moon scudding away from the clouds, and illuminating the fathomless abyss, he thought how beautifully it seemed the emblem of his own present condition, reflecting the more subtile influences of another mind, and driving away the errors that enveloped it, as that influence descended into the depths of his being, and spread light where all before was darkness.

            From these lofty associations, his mind wandered to the dwelling-place of Grace Wilmer, which he was now slowly approaching. The streets were as silent as in a city of the dead. There stood the house, bathed in the moonlight, and it seemed to him the holiest place on earth. Fitzvassal leaned on the rude fence that divided the common from the street; and while the beautiful elms waved gently above him, and threw their fantastic shadows on the ground, he gave free action to his heated and uncontrollable fancy, and revelled in the fairy dreams of voluptuous romance.

            There is an involuntary as well as a voluntary sympathy in our natures; and though the beautiful and adored object of his love was dreaming all the while of Seymour, the energetic mind of Fitzvassal broke in upon her pure Arcadia, and she murmured in her sleep from the momentary influence of his passion.

            Who shall go down into the depths of the human heart, and unriddle all its mysteries: who shall bring up its joys and its woes, and analyze them in his mystic crucible?--Oh love! human, passionate affection! there is more in your least emotion than poet ever revealed or philosopher thought of: but there is a love of self, so like to its heavenly radiance, that the angels are themselves deceived while they rain down upon the heart the gladness of their happy paradise.

            As Fitzvassal was indulging in the luxury of fancy-woven images of love and beauty, a sound arrested his attention, that seemed to come from the very depths of woe. He turned himself round in the direction whence the sound proceeded, but all again was silent. He listened attentively, but it was not repeated; and then, supposing that it proceeded from his heat-oppressed brain, he relapsed again into the indulgence of his rapt imagination.

            Fitzvassal had already forgotten the occurrence just mentioned, and was now completely lost in reveries of enchantment, when he observed a small figure emerge from the shadow of a tree, and cautiously approach him. As it drew near, he perceived that it was a boy, apparently eleven years old; his clothes much tattered, without any shoes on his feet. He held a very much torn hat in his hand, and when he hobbled within ten feet of his object, he stopped, and asked in a very imploring tone:--

            “A little charity, if you please, Sir!”--

            The stepson of Abner Classon was what is commonly called a generous man: that is to say, he did not love money for itself, and he was willing to share what he possessed with others. He therefore, as he happened to have money enough with him, threw a piece of silver into the boy’s hat without any farther reflection, and walked away; for he had not yet descended into the sanctuary of sorrow and been baptized by the tears of human affliction. He who had wanted sympathy without being conscious of the want, had not learned that this, above most other things, is salutary to man.

            As he walked away, his thoughts already reverting to the same current, that can hardly be said to have been been disturbed by this little incident, he heard the same expression of grief which had arrested his attention some moments before, and he now turned about, determined to ascertain its cause. He soon discovered that the sounds proceeded from the little boy who had seated himself on a stone in the shade of a tree not far from where he had been standing, and was now sobbing piteously.

            “There is no deception here,” thought our adventurer; “I must find out what ails that boy; he seems to be in great distress.”

            “What is the matter, my little man?” inquired Fitzvassal of the shivering, sobbing boy.

            But he returned no answer, except to sob the more.

            “Are you ill?” said he, as gently as he knew how to ask.

            “I am cold,” at last moaned the boy, “and--I havn’t had any thing to eat for two days.”

            “And can’t you buy something with the money I have given you?”

            “The shops are all shut up,” replied the half-famished sufferer, “and mammy--mammy is--dying”--

            And he burst into an agony of grief, and wrung his hands, which glistened in the moonlight with the tears that fell fast upon them.

            “But this will never do--this will never do,” said Fitzvassal, his sailor heart taking pity on the lonely boy, and trying all he could to convey encouragement by his tone; “we must see what can be done for you. Your mammy shall not die, if I can do any thing to save her.”

            And he then thought of his own mother, whom he had not seen for years, and he could have wept with the boy in right earnest.

            “Come, my little man,” said he, patting him on his head, “go with me down to the apothecary’s shop yonder, and I guess we will contrive to get you something to eat, and to take home to your mammy.”

            So saying, he took the boy by the hand, and led him along with him till they stopped at an apothecary’s store with the sign of Galen’s head, situated on Cornhill, at the corner of what is now called Winter Street. A dim light gleamed through the window, where was placed several globular vessels with colored water in them, and a number of chemical instruments, the like of which have been in use time out of mind.

            Fitzvassal knocked at the door, and almost immediately there were indisputable indications within that the summons was about to be obeyed; for the crash of a broken vial saluted the auditory nerves of the customers.

            In a minute or two the door was unbarred, and a little hump-back man, with his head in a red nightcap, made his appearance, holding in his hand a teasaucer containing a burning taper.

            The disciple of Galen was a middle-aged man, who, could he have stood up straight, would have measured five feet in his stockings; but, besides being very much warped in the back, he stooped considerably. He was very much goggle-eyed withal, an indication of loquacity which the volubility of his utterance perfectly well answered. His nose, which was naturally large and shaped at the end like a Florence flask or a full-blown bladder, was very much the color of a beet that had been half bled to death, while the mazes of the vine were pictured there in exact representation, by the purple veins, several of which seemed to have broken into one. He wore under his nightcap a little cow-tail looking scratch, which came straggling about his ears, and almost veiled his eyes that were as red as a blistered skin, and seemed like the peepers of an angry crab. When he spoke to one, he kept them constantly rolling; while as often as he could, he supplied his hungry-looking nose with snuff. He held the taper with his left hand, and as he opened the door the light gleamed over his face while he said:

            “What will you have to-night? what will you have to-night, good man? Have you any prescription from the doctor?”

            “Please to let us in, Mr. Saultz,” for that was the appellation of the apothecary, who had been a fixture in that place as long as Fitzvassal remembered; “please to let us in, I have an especial favor to ask of you.”

            And so saying, he placed a piece of gold in the druggist’s hand, which made him for once set his eyes like those in a figure of wax, or like a boiled lobster’s.

            “And what am I to do with all this, please you, good man?” exclaimed the gobbo, in astonishment; “what am I to do with all this, please you, good man? You don’t want it all in physic, do you? For if you do, it will buy a precious quantity. Perhaps--ah, I see how it is,” said he, looking up and discovering the mariner’s dress of Fitzvassal, “I see how it is--you want to get a medicine chest, I know you do--are you going to the West Indies, or are you”--

            “You misunderstand me altogether,” said the mariner, “I am not at present in want of any medicine, though I don’t know how soon I may be; for this lad here tells me that his mother is dying and”--

            “Bless my stars!” interrupted Saultz, “you don’t say so? Well, I’ve got the best assortment of physic you ever saw, and I will let you have it in any quantity.”

            “I tell you that I don’t want any of your drugs-- and when I do, I will let you know,” said our adventurer, who was getting out of patience with the garrulous compounder of medicines: “what I want of you now is, to procure something for this boy to eat, for he is half starved to death.”

            “You don’t say so!” exclaimed goggle-eyes with unaffected astonishment; “poor little thing, is it possible! Pray take my advice then,” continued he, “and let him be very careful that he don’t eat too much all of a sudden--for it sometimes happens”--

            “For heaven’s sake,” cried Fitzvassal, “have done with this gabble, and tell me whether you can get something for this child to eat? The shops are all shut up, and we can’t find any thing this time o’ night anywhere.”

            “Why couldn’t you go to the Red Lion yonder? --I guess they could have accommodated you; but never mind, I can get something for you, if I can only rouse up my good wife;--wait a minute--wait a minute and sit down.”

            Whereupon Mr. Saultz very deliberately left the shop, and thereby afforded his customer a better opportunity of examining the apartment: but he first obliged the little sufferer to sit down on a snuff-keg which was there, with a word or two of encouragement that it wouldn’t be a long time before the apothecary procured something for him to eat and to carry to his mother.

            The boy, though very ragged, had nothing else in his appearance, like most beggars, to awaken disagreeable feelings; for his face and hands were clean, and he gathered his naked feet under him, evidently from a sense of shame rather than from the effect of cold; and this expression of delicacy did not belie him, though it did not do him justice; for his mortificacation proceeded from a fear that his squalid, or rather destitute state might reflect unfavorably on his generous protectress.

            How little do they who have grown up to man’s estate trouble themselves about the feelings of children! It would really seem as if they fancied that children were destitute of all those fine and delicate springs of emotion which are recognized in maturer life, and are the sources of all our joys and sorrows. It is time that the grown world went to school to some one who has not forgotten the tender susceptibilities of childhood, that it may learn to sympathize with the little sufferers. The germinating bud has within its folded recesses all the beauty and the fragrance of the flower; and the gentle distillations of heaven sink as sweetly into its secluded shrine, and the sunbeams fall there as soothingly, as on the prouder petals that would claim all to themselves. How many a sweet spirit withers beneath the blighting frown of an unsympathizing guardian; how many a one retires to weep in solitude, because it is not loved as it would be, and is not comprehended in its affection! We little imagine what arcana we read when the words “of such is the kingdom of heaven” pass from our unheeded utterance!

            The shop of Mr. Saultz was unlike any thing of sort we would find in these days of improvement. It looked more like the beginning of a museum than any thing else; the shelves were filled, without much order or arrangement, with bottles of various descriptions and sizes, interspersed with paper bundles labelled as containing drugs and garden seeds, much covered with dust, as though they had not been disturbed for years. Shells of various kinds were scattered here and there, and minerals in abundance. In one corner of the room were seen the legs and feet of a skeleton, hanging from under a very dusty and old blue cloak; while from the ceiling, in the opposite corner, was suspended the skin and feathers of an enormous screech-owl, gloaming on you with his his round beady eyes. On the counter were several jars of snuff, a box of wax candles, another of Dutch pipes, and a pair of medicine scales. Over the fireplace were hanging two nearly obliterated engravings in black frames, and one other round black frame, a little over the others in the centre, contained five profiles, cut from black paper on a white ground. In the fireplace was a heap of smouldering ashes, showing that the embers had been covered up; and on one side, in the corner of the same, a tea-kettle was swinging from the end of three interlocked pot-hooks, the uppermost of which was attached to a large crane. Near the fireplace was a round table, of hard black wood like ebony; this stood on three claw feet, supported by a stem, the whole like a bird’s leg and foot. The top of the table swung up and down, and it now stood against one corner of the room like a target. The shop was separated from the sleeping-room of Mr. Saultz and his wife by a door, the upper half of which was glazed, with a curtain of spotted calico on the inside for the security and convenience of those within.

            While Fitzvassal was waiting for the re-appearance of Saultz, and was in the meantime amusing himself by running his eyes over the premises, the latter had dispelled the visions of undarned hose and unpatched inexpressibles, and the phantoms of sausage meat, bacon, and smoked herrings, which danced in strange confusion before the nocturnal vision of Mistress Debora Saultz.

            “Good wife! good wife,” exclaimed Saultz, the smothered tones struggling through the door to the shop; “Debora, I say!”

            “Yaw--aw!” gaped the bewildered housewife, “brown soap--smoked herrings!--”

            “Good wife, I say! good wife! wake up, I say, Debby!” and from the sound that found its way to the shop, Fitzvassal knew that the apothecary was trying to shake the drowsiness out of his wife; “get up, good wife--marry I say--stir your stumps-- come!”

            “Lord a’ massy, Simon--yaw--aw!” replied the dame, unconscious as yet of life; “you’re always disturbing a body.”

            “Can’t you get up?” asked the apothecary, who thought that his spouse was waking.

            “Soap--herrings,”--murmured the woman with a long-drawn sigh--and she was sound asleep again in a moment.

            Seeing this, the desperate apothecary seized his rib by the shoulders and shook her with all his might, crying lustily at the same time;

            “Debby! Debby! stir your old lazy stumps--the house is a-fire!”

            This appalling sound, with the unaccustomed agitation of her mortal body, brought Mistress Saultz bolt upright in bed in an instant, in another instant, she was on her feet, crying out with all the agitation conceivable,

            “Lord a’ massy on us!--is the house a-fire, sure enough?--Oh Simon, Simon; Oh my bacon, my bacon, Lord a’ massy on us!”

            “The house has no notion of being a-fire,” said the apothecary, “I only wanted to wake you, that’s all.”

            “Lord, how you frightened a body;--Oh dear! I never shall get over it as long as I live, I am all in a flusteration--Oh dear me! how came you to do so--you good-for-nothing,--you!”

            “Debby, my love!” said her husband, willing to pacify her, “you are well paid for this disturbance --see here!”

            And he placed in her hand the piece of gold that Fitzvassal had given to him in advance for services to be rendered.

            “And, my dear”--he continued--“the good man who gave you that, wants you to get something for a poor hungry boy he has brought with him.”

            It would be difficult to say how large a share the little yellow piece of eloquence had in moving the sensibilities of Mistress Saultz; but at any rate we will give the woman her due, and allow her that large share of good-heartedness which seems to be the common inheritance of her sex, and which even vice and crime cannot wholly obliterate in their bosoms; we will not pretend to analyze her motives too closely, but she immedately exclaimed, on this intelligence being imparted to her by her husband;

            “Massy on us! the dear, poor creature! Oh, yes, Simon, it well becomes Christian folks to help the poor and needy;--there’s the sausage-meat that was left to-day, you know,--and there’s some cold chocolate that’s easily warmed;--do you kindle some fire, Simon, and I’ll be ready presently;--the poor dear boy! and so he shall have something to eat, he shall!”

            And while she was so speaking, she was bustling about and hurrying on her clothes with all possible despatch.

            Saultz, in the meantime, gathered together some chips, and raking out the live coals from the ashes, proceeded to build a fire: and as he was thus busily employed, his guests drew nigh to catch the earliest heat that was evolved from the crackling wood.

            In a few minutes after, Mistress Saultz appeared, with a stew-pan in her hand, courtesying as she came to the man who had given gold for his necessities, and patting the poor boy under the chin so affectionately, that he broke out again into fresh sobbings, while the big tears coursed down his cheeks.

            “Don’t cry now,” said the kind-hearted woman, hoping to soothe the feelings of the child, “don’t cry, my dear little fellow; you shall soon have something to eat,--Simon! Simon, I say, get some more chips here; you can never get the chocolate to boil with such a fire as this--massy on us, what’s got into the good man!”

            “I can’t find any more kindlings, Debby,” answered Simon, “can I split up this old cover here?”

            “Lord a’massy on us!--do hear the good man;-- can he be crazy? Why, the next thing he’ll be doing, will be to split up the window shutters;--go along into the wood-house, Simon, there are plenty of chips there;--break up the boxes, indeed!--I should like to see it done in my house:--If it wasn’t for us women, I don’t know how the men would get along; --break up the boxes? I should like to see him do it!”

            But before she had done talking about it, Saultz had very meekly withdrawn on his wife’s errand, and he now appeared with his arms full of dry chips, which were laid upon the fire, that soon imparted a genial warmth to the room.

            The good wife now brought out the target-looking table from the corner of the room, which she spread with a clean white cloth, on which she placed a couple of bowls; “for, may be,” she said, “the gentleman himself would like to taste a spoonful of chocolate on such a coolish night.”

            Fitzvassal thanked the woman, but told her that he did not require any food.

            Mistress Saultz now poured out the steaming chocolate, and encouraged the boy to partake of it after adding suitable quantities of milk and sugar: and the little fellow drank it with all the eagerness that might have been expected in one of his years, who had tasted nothing for two days.

            As the boy became refreshed by the food, his countenance brightened up, and he would now and then cast a look upon his benefactors, a look in which a sweet smile was blended with more familiar melancholy, as if he had not words to express his gratitude, but would have those to whom he was indebted be sensible of his feelings.

            “I wish,” said he at last, breaking silence, and heaving a sigh as if a part of his grief had been taken from him, “I wish mammy could have something too.”

            “And hasn’t your mammy any thing to eat no more than you--poor, dear soul?” inquired the good-hearted woman.

            At this, the little fellow burst into tears again, moved by the remembrance of his grief, and melted by the music of human sympathy.

            “I’ll tell you what it is,” exclaimed Fitzvassal, “turning to Saultz and his wife, who were sitting by the table, and leaning their elbows there in a mood of considerable interest, “I’ll tell you what it is-- I am determined, now I’m in for it, to see the end of this business. I met this little half-starved boy in the street, and he told me that his mother was dying of hunger.”

            “Lord ’a massy on us--you don’t say so?”--ejaculated Mistress Deborah.

            “A thousand pities!” joined Mr. Saultz.

            “And who knows,” resumed Fitzvassal, “but that this poor woman is at this moment all alone; no hand to help her, and destitute of common comforts?”

            “May be she is lying in”--conjectured Mrs. Saultz.

            “Is any body with your mother?” inquired our adventurer.

            “No, Sir,” sobbed the boy, “she is all alone.”

            “When did you leave her?”

            “At sun-down, Sir; she told me to call on the governor.”

            “And did you do so?”

            “Yes; I went to his house on Fort-Hill.”

            “Well!” said his benefactor, “did you inquire for him?”

           

            “Yes, Sir; but the servant turned me away.”

            “The monster!” exclaimed Fitzvassal, but reflecting a moment, he added; “the man didn’t realize that you were so much in want. How far off does your mother live?”

            “Close by, Sir.”

            “Will you go with me to the place?”

            “Oh yes, indeed, yes indeed!” exclaimed the boy, who, never dreaming of so much kindness, was half frantic with joy at the very suggestion.

            “And now, my good woman,” said Fitzvassal, turning to Mistress Saultz, and putting two pieces of gold in her hand, “I shall want you to go with us.”

            “Oh certainly,” replied the dame, rising and court-seying, “certainly, Sir, if good man has no objections: and perhaps I had better take with me a leetle motherwort; for if the poor woman, as is very likely, should be really lying in, it would be a blessed comfort to her, as sure as you are born.”

            “You have no objections to your wife’s accompanying us?” said Fitzvassal, rather inquiringly, and at the same time placing a piece of gold in his hand also; “she may be wanted, and I shall probably require some medicines, for which I will pay you most liberally.”

            “Not the slightest objection--not the slightest”-- answered the man, all but dumb-foundered by the quantity of gold that had so suddenly fallen upon him--“Go, get your hood, Debby, and go with this gentleman;--and if there is any cupping or bleeding to be done--ahem!”

            “We shall certainly let you know,” interrupted Fitzvassal, helping out the assumed modesty of goggle-eyes, and finishing what he would have said:-- “we shall certainly let you know, and shall depend on your services; in which case you shall be paid extra.”

            The apothecary’s face shone with marked evidence of satisfaction at this assurance, and Mistress Debora turned into the bed-room, and in a minute after re-appeared with her cloak and hood on.

            “And now,” exclaimed the woman, “I only want to get the motherwort, and then I shall be all ready; poor, dear creature, I hope the child wont be born and no motherwort tea for the woman;--Simon, sweet-heart! get an ounce of motherwort.”

            And Mistress Debora assumed all the blandishing persuasion of manner of which she was capable.

            The help-meet of good man Saultz was what the world calls a kind soul; and she was, to do her justice, as ugly as she was good. Her figure looked like a well-stuffed pillow tied in the middle, surmounted by a New England old-fashioned suet-pudding in a night-cap. Her eyes were small and light green; her nose, buried in her cheeks, showed its whereabout more from its snuffiness than from its extreme beauty of outline. Her hair was very red, and could not be made smooth by any known art of the barber’s. Add to this a sharp, squeaking voice, and the figure of Mistress Debora Saultz ought to be before the reader.

            Mistress Saultz, next to going to extra meetings at the Reverend Sloman Morphines, liked nothing so much as grannying, or, as she called it, seeing women comfortably lying in. She always insisted that there was nothing wanting to make Boston a perfect paradise but a lying-in hospital, and she was at that very time using her best endeavors to get up a society for the promotion of the object dearest to her heart.

            “The old women of Boston,” she used to declare, “may say what they please about it; but I know well enough that they will never be able to get along without societies. Massy on us! there is more to be done in a society than in a church congregation.”

            Notwithstanding all this zeal for the public good, and her extraordinary care for posterity, there were not wanting those who were malicious enough to accuse Dame Saultz of the diabolical crime of aiding and abetting witchcraft. Some went so far as to charge her directly with having furnished sundry women with herbs, with a guide for preparing decoctions that would enable those who drank of them to ride through the air on pitchforks and broomsticks; and one positively asserted that she had been in company with Debby Saultz at a communion near the Spouting Horn, at Nahant, and that she saw her kiss the goat and ride in company with more than a dozen others over to Egg-Rock in a thunder-storm.

            However this may have been, one thing was certain--she was fond of grannying, and was now in her element; because she had worked herself up to the belief that nothing short of her favorite employment could have been required at this time of the night. Accordingly, every thing being made ready for the expedition--for it must not be imagined that granny Saultz had left behind her any of those odds and ends that in their sum-total constituted the fitting out of such a craft--they started off in the cold moonlight for the dwelling-place of the boy’s mother.

            It was now near the middle of October, when the weather is very changeable, and it was still more so in New England at the time we are now referring to. Within the past hour and a half, a dark cloud had been slowly rolling up its heavy drapery, and its deep edge now nearly touched the moon. The wind, too, had arisen, and was now howling mournfully among the many trees with which the metropolis of New England was provided, and the fallen leaves were whirled about in eddies, whose rustling sound hymned with the fitful gusts the most desolate harmonies. There was a spirit of melancholy and gloom abroad that sank into the very heart of Fitzvassal, and perhaps sounded deeper vibrations for the soft music that but a little while before had melted on his heart of hearts, while he gave full swing to his fancy and revelled in the elysium of love.

            He now almost regretted that he had engaged in this adventure; for he was cheerless and sad, and withal weary with the unusual excitement he had undergone that night; and he would fain have laid his head upon his pillow, nay, willingly would he have wrapped himself the closer in his watch-coat, and thrown himself on the bare earth, so might he for a few hours bury himself in the God-ordained oblivion of sleep.

            The little party walked along in silence, the boy trotting with unequal footsteps, trying to keep up with his benefactor, whose mood of abstraction prevented him from noticing with what rapidity he was going.

            “Massy on us,” exclaimed Mistress Debora, who, like Johnson’s Time in pursuit of the bard of Avon, panted and toiled in vain after Fitzvassal, “Massy on us, how fast you travel! I wish Doctor Sikes, bless his heart! had such a pair of legs as you have --he wouldn’t keep the women a-waiting so then, as he does now. Lauks! I could go as fast once myself, but I can’t now--”

            “’Ask your pardon, Madam,” said Fitzvassal, apologizing as well as he could for his forgetfulness, “but really I wasn’t aware of walking quite so fast.”

            “Did you ever have the rheumatis’?” inquired Mistress Debora, pathetically, and rubbing her shoulder as she spoke.

            “I can’t say that I ever had,” he replied.

            “It’s pesky bad, I can tell you,” said the dame, continuing to rub her arm; “I’ve had it now these four weeks e’en-a-most, and it seems as if nothing was good for it. I’ve tried hards’-lard, that Dame Jenkins recommended to me,--she that lives by the sign of the stump-tailed-bull, down the north eend, right opposite good-man Giles’s;--I suppose you know her as well as you do the town pump. Says she to me, one day--Don’t walk quite so fast, if you please, Sir, --Debby, says she--for she always calls me Debby; Debby, says she, and says I what? Where’s Thankful? says she, and says I, Thankful’s down stairs, and says she, is she? Call her, says she; and I called her you know, and it so fell out that, after all, she wasn’t there. Dear me, how fast you do go;-- well, as I was saying--

            “How far is it,” interrupted Fitzvassal, addressing the boy, and wholly unmindful of the garrulous old woman, “to the place where your mother lives?”

            “Just round the next corner,” said the boy, “we are almost there.”

            They had now, after walking up Cornhill, turned down an obscure alley at the left, not far from King’s Street, a place where a large number of rude habitations were crowded together on both sides, the gables of which projected over so far that it would have been dark there in the brightest moonlight. But the moon was now deeply veiled in the clouds, and the wind increasing, drove down on the pedestrians a sharp sleet, which almost cut through the skin, and added materially to the uncomfortable feelings of Fitzvassal and his companions.

            “Massy on us!” exclaimed the woman, treading very carefully behind the others, “if I had known it was going to be so dark, I would have fetched a lantern.”

            “This is the place,” said the boy, shivering with the cold, and stopping at what appeared to be a cellar door, which slanted a little over the side of the alley.

            “What! down this cellar?” inquired Fitzvassal, astonished that the boy did not go to the door of the poor hovel at which they had stopped.

            “Yes, Sir,” answered the boy, “we’ve lived there ever so long, but it isn’t a good place for poor, sick mammy.”

            The child then raised the cellar door, which was comparatively light from its decayed state, and laying it back, said:

            “I will go down first, and strike a light, and then you can see the way;--it’s very dark down there and muddy;--it won’t take me long to get a light.”

            Whereupon the lad descended, followed by Fitzvassal, leaving Mrs. Deborah Saultz alone in the alley.

           

            “Lord ’a massy on us!” vociferated the dame, “I shall be scared to death, e’en a-most to death, if you leave me here all alone.”

            And she stood stamping her feet, and blowing on the ends of her fingers to keep away the cold.

            Meanwhile the boy, followed by his benefactor, reached the bottom of the ladder that led down to the apartment; for the steps consisted of nothing but planks, nailed on the timbers in such a way as to present their edges for a foothold. In a short time the former was engaged with flint and steel in striking a light; and while this was going on, the ears of our adventurer were pained by sounds of the most helpless distress.

            A small rush-candle was soon lighted, and a scene of human poverty and suffering presented itself, of which before he had no conception; and his first reflection was;

            “Is it possible, that in the heart of my native city, the metropolis of New England, such abject want and misery can be found, in the very midst of affluence, luxury, and extravagance!”

            He then thought of Mistress Saultz, who was waiting above, and he proceeded immediately to bring her down, which operation was effected with no little difficulty.

            “Is it you?” murmured the sick woman to the boy, who now approached the bed where she lay-- “Oh Willy! thank God, you have come, my child. --I’ve passed a weary time since you were gone;-- where have you been, my child? God bless you!”

            In reply to this, Willy put his arms round her emaciated neck, and kissing her, wept profusely; nor did he relinquish his position till Mrs. Saultz came forward--Fitzvassal, from motives of delicacy, remaining in the back-ground.

            “These good people, mammy,” said the boy, “have come to see you; they gave me something to eat, and said that they would come and see you, mammy!”

            “God bless them,” cried the woman--“but it is too late!”--

            Mistress Saultz was not inactive all this while; but after feeling of the poor woman’s pulse, and looking at her thin, pale face, with her eyes shining unhealthily in the large orbits where they had sunken, said to her in a soothing manner:

            “Is there any thing I can do for you, my good woman?”

            “Who are you?” feebly inquired the patient.

            “Mistress Saultz is my name, ma’am; Mistress Debora Saultz,--perhaps you have heard of Simon Saultz, the apothecary?”

            “Oh yes!--I have heard the name”--

            “He is my good man, he is,” said the woman. “Pray tell me what ails you?”

            “Nothing!” said the sick woman, mournfully. “It will soon be over!”

           

            “You’re not a-going to die, I hope,” said Mrs. Saultz, “there’s always hope, you know!”

            “God’s will be done!” exclaimed the woman.

            “Amen!” said Mrs. Saultz.--“But, cheer up, cheer up, tell me what ails you, and I will try to do what I can for your comfort.”

            Saying this, she applied a smelling bottle of ammonia to the woman’s nose, thinking it might revive her.

            “Water!” exclaimed the woman, feebly, as if she were fainting, and had no power of further utterance.

            Mrs. Saultz bustled about a good while, and at last espied a broken cup and the lower half of a pitcher containing some water, with particles of rotten wood and dirt settled at the bottom. She poured out a little of this, and gave it to the woman, who, after keeping her eyes shut for a time, seemed to revive.

            “Thank you!” said the woman.

            “Mistress Saultz!” she resumed, after a pause, “when I am gone”--

            “Dearest mammy!” exclaimed the boy, “don’t talk so!--oh ma’am!” said he, turning to the other imploringly, “do give mammy something to eat,-- she is starving to death”--

            “Massy ’on us, ma’am!” inquired the woman, energetically, “you don’t say you are famishing for want of food!--I didn’t believe such a thing was possible.”

            “It’s no matter now,” replied the sinking sufferer, “God’s will be done! I have deserved it all, and more;--but oh,” she cried, and it seemed as if her heart would break when she uttered it--“oh my son! my son! could my Heavenly Father but have permitted me to see you but one moment before I died--oh, how I have prayed for that--for that!-- oh my son, my Edward!”

            As those words struck upon the ear of Fitzvassal, who in the meantime being beckoned to by the amazed nurse, came forward, it seemed as if all the blood in his body rushed to his head at once;--for his ears rang, and he staggered like a drunkard;-- but as he pressed one hand to his forehead and the other to his breast, while the equilibrium of vitality was returning--he sprang to the side of the bed, and gazed on the woman like one petrified with astonishment.--The patient, shading her glazed eyes with her lean and skeleton fingers, glowed on him with a most wo-worn expression, then choking and struggling for utterance, she suddenly spread out her hands and exclaimed--

            “My son! my son! merciful God, I thank thee!”

            “Do not my eyes deceive me? can it be possible?” cried the bewildered man. “Good God, am I not dreaming? Oh, my mother! my mother!”

            And Fitzvassal fell upon his knees at the side of the rude pallet of straw on which his dying parent was reclining, and seizing her cold, clammy hands with his, he buried his head in his agony.

            Mistress Saultz turned aside, and wept like a true woman, holding her checked apron to her eyes. She had never witnessed such a scene before, and she held the boy by one hand, who fixed his gaze on his protectress with his large, inquiring eyes, staring as if he had just waked from a dream.

            At length the paroxysm of surprise, distress, grief, joy and suffering, all blending for a moment into one thought, and that agony subsiding, Fitzvassal raised his head, and gazing on his mother, while he still pressed her damp, cold hands in his, exclaimed--

            “And have I then been reserved for this--my poor, dear mother!--Is it indeed, you, that I behold in this forlorn situation?--Great God! save me from such a reality!--drive from me the vision!--let me not be tortured beyond endurance!”--

            “Oh, my son,” interrupted the woman, who seemed to be gifted for the time with extraordinary energy, “do not talk thus,--rather thank the giver of all good that we have been permitted to meet again in this world”--

            “For the love of Heaven!” exclaimed the son, half-frantic with the reality of his situation, and addressing himself to Mistress Saultz, “run to your house, and procure some sustenance suitable to one in such a condition.--Go!” cried he, almost madden. ed because the woman did not spring forward to execute the order immediately--“go, or I will strike you dead on the spot.”

            “I shall never be able to find the way back again, in the world,” said the woman, half terrified out of her senses.

            “Let the boy go with you, then.”

            “Oh, yes, I will go with you,” said the little fellow;--I know that this gentleman will take good care of mammy.”

            “It will do no good!”--murmured the woman-- “I cannot eat--give me a little water--there! that will do,” said she, moistening her lips with it.

            “I tell you to go immediately,” exclaimed Fitzvassal--“Some good can be done, and shall be done-- Go, Mistress Saultz, for God’s sake! and that soon: --here, I will help you”--

            “So saying, he proceeded to assist the woman, who mounted the ladder much more easily than she had descended it, and the boy accompanied her.

            “Now, make all possible haste!” urged Fitzvassal, “and by all means bring some good wine;--you shall be well paid, depend on it!”

            Mistress Saultz declared that she didn’t care about the money, and for the time she probably spoke the truth. Guided by the boy, she now made the best of her way toward her own house, while Fitzvassal descended again to that unparalleled abode of poverty and woe.

           

            “Do not grieve for me, Edward!” said his mother, anxiously--as the afflicted son once more approached the bed of his suffering parent--“do not grieve for me, Edward, I shall soon be at rest”--

            “Tell me, mother, as you love me and value my happiness--tell me how you came to such a deplorable condition?

            “Oh, my child, it were a long story to tell--and I have not strength enough to waste on it;--it was all for the best--your father”--

            “What of him?” eagerly inquired the son, stung to the very quick by the name.

            “I forgive him from my heart;--he loved me once --at least I thought he loved me;--but Heaven knows how I have loved him--even to the last--”

            “May the curses that come after a hard and horrible death cleave to him, and damn him forever!” screamed the son, almost forgetful of his mother’s sufferings, in the degree of hatred which he felt for his unnatural sire--

            “Oh, my son,” said the sinking mother--“do not curse--do not curse--bless rather!--curses come back with fearful fury on us;--do not curse--I would bless thee, my son, with my dying breath-- but I cannot bless thee cursing!”

            And while she spake her eyes filled with tears, and Fitzvassal fell down upon his knees and asked her forgiveness.

            “There!” she continued, “that is a good, dear child, and may the giver of all good keep you from evil”--

            “And there’s that scoundrel, Classon!” ejaculated Fitzvassal, “how could he see you suffering thus?”

            “Do not blame him,”--said the mother, imploringly--“for heaven’s sake, my son, do not blame that man;--he never pretended to love me;--poor man! he has enough to be sorry for without thinking of me”--

            Fitzvassal ground his teeth, but said nothing; while his breast heaved convulsively, and the demon of vengeance gnawed at his very heart-strings.

            “What an age it seems, Edward!” said his mother, fixing her eyes on him, “what an age it seems, since I saw you--and how you have altered, too!”

            The only response the object of her affections could return to this, was a faint and melancholy smile, in which the very picture of heartsickness was undisguisedly portrayed.

            While he gazed on her--her eyes rolled upward.

            “Mother!” exclaimed the son, wishing to arrest her attention, that he might be relieved from an apprehension that she was fainting--Mother! will you have some water?”

            “It is growing dark,” replied the dying woman, “don’t take away the candle, Edward!”

            “Dearest Mother!” cried the terrified man; “look on me, dearest mother!”

           

            Where are you, my son?” faintly murmured the woman; “I do not see you, where are you?

            And as she spoke, the unequivocal signal of dissolution showed itself in that most appalling of all sounds, the death-rattle.

            “Where are you, Edward?”

            “Here I am, by your side, my dear, kind mother.”

            “Don’t leave me again.”

            “Indeed, indeed, I will never leave you again.”

            Though Mistress Saultz had been gone but a few minutes, those minutes seemed to Fitzvassal as many hours;--“Why can they delay so?” thought he in the misery of his impatience.

            “Who are they?” inquired the dying woman, stretching her pale, emaciated fingers in the direction of the cellar door.

            “What do you mean, my dear mother?” replied the son.

            “Who are they, there! Oh, now I know;--look at them Edward!--do you see them?”

            “Dearest mother!” ejaculated her son, believing that her mind had wandered, and that any further reference to the subject would add to her delirium.

            “They are beautiful and bright creatures.--See! they are beckoning to me--I will go with them--but not quite yet--Edward, my love! are you here?”

            Fitzvassal bowed his head upon his mother’s bosom, and wept like a child--“God bless you, my son! farewell!”

           

            The unhappy man perceived a slight shuddering beneath him, and he lifted his head to gaze on his mother’s corpse!--He laid his hand upon her heart, but it was still and quiet; he lifted her arm, and it fell from his grasp heavily and dead; her eyes were fixed in their sockets, and as he pressed the cold lids upon them, there came no sign of life, and he held his hand there till the current of his own life chilled, and he thought of her seducer and his affections withered up, while his heart for the moment overflowed with bitterness.

            The bereaved son then knelt on the bare ground, and poured forth an imprecation, deep and earnest, on that man who had given him life, and been the means of destroying his mother; and before he rose again, he had sworn terribly that nothing should prevent that vengeance which the sacrifice before him demanded.

            “Yes!” he exclaimed aloud, “by thy sainted spirit, thou best of mothers! by all thy deep afflictions and unheard-of sufferings! by thy pale, lifeless body, that now lies before me, I swear that Edmund Vassal shall bitterly atone for this deed!”

            And he seated himself upon the side of the stiffened corpse, and gave vent to his concentrated misery.

            The cellar in which these sufferings were, showed the very picture of penury. The bare ground, without one plank to keep off the dampness, was its only floor, and this so wet and muddy, that the most robust health would have sunk under its influence. There was no furniture there, unless a couple of old packing-boxes could be called such, which served for a bedstead to keep the straw from the mud, and another which was used for a table. Other than these, there was nothing that could be called so. The cellar door was much broken, and the walls of which the apartment was made, were so dilapidated, that in the day-time one could not well help seeing into the street.

            Such was the wretched abode in which the unhappy mother of Fitzvassal had lived for months, and where she now lay in cold obstruction, dead. To such a place it was provided that her miserable son should be led, that he might take the blessing of his mother. Happy for him if his heart had been already softened by suffering to receive the imprint of that impression which her dying words should have made. But, unprepared for so great a calamity, his heart rebelled against the ordinances of heaven, and he cursed and bemoaned his fate, as one which had been cruelly forced on him, and which he believed he did not deserve.

            Mrs. Saultz and the boy Willy now arrived with a basket containing such matters as was judged to be best for the poor woman whose spirit had already gone: and when the good-hearted creature found that she was dead, she wept with unaffected feeling. The poor boy could find no limits to his affliction. He threw himself on the lifeless body, and wept bitterly. Though every sort of consolation was offered to him, he refused to be comforted.

            “Oh mammy, my dear, lost mammy,” he would say, “I shall never see you again--Oh! I shall never forget how kind and tender-hearted you have been to me! I will die with you, my dear, dear mammy, indeed I will.”

            The day now dawned, and Mistress Saultz, under the direction of Fitzvassal, paid all those melancholy offices to the dead which custom and propriety render necessary. A suitable coffin was procured, and permission obtained from the apothecary for the body to be conveyed to his own house, from which it was intended that the burial should proceed. The boy was placed under the care of Mrs. Saultz, and Fitzvassal, retiring to the Red Lion, called for a room, on entering which he locked the door, and threw himself on the bed, exhausted and spiritless. In a few moments after he was buried in a death-like slumber.

CHAPTER VIII.

 

            The will of the people is above all law.

The Heaven-Born.

            The devil take the hindmost.

Old Saw.

            Fort Hill forever!

Boston Boys.

           

            It was broad noon before our adventurer woke from the heavy slumber in which the excitement and suffering of the previous evening had thrown him. As soon as he had hurried on his dress and taken a short repast, he proceeded without delay to the house of the hospitable apothecary, where he found every thing ready prepared for the funeral. In less than two hours after, the body was consigned to the earth; but Fitzvassal felt that its spirit was still around him, to warn him, and, if possible, to keep his feet from falling.

            He now ascertained from the boy Willy, who had been in the Poor-House with the unfortunate wife of Classon, that so great were the privations, and so humiliating the mortifications to which they had been compelled to submit, that she determined to rely in future on her own poor abilities to support herself, though her health was much broken, and there did not seem to her to be a prospect of long continuance on earth. The boy had become attached to her because she was the first and only person that ever seemed to take any interest in him; and when she left, he contrived means to deliver himself likewise from the life-in-death they endured from the harsh charities of the world.

            Of all forms of human suffering, there can be none (saving those which arise from acts of depravity), to be compared with obligations which are whispered in the ear, looked from the eyes, and thrust upon the wretch that endures them, in every shape of suppressed but never forgetting consciousness. He who can endure that, is either more or less than mortal.

            Touched by the gentle affection of the boy, Mistress Classon took the lad under her protection, and so long as she could earn a trifle by going out to work, she contrived to support both him and herself. Though they often had nothing but a crust of bread and cold water for food, and a damp cellar without the common necessaries of life for their lodging, yet they slept sweetly in the consciousness of having done their duty, and being free from the poisonous atmosphere of that last of all curses which is falsely called Charity.

            Fitzvassal now engaged the kind apothecary to take Willy--(the poor foundling had been christened Willy May, from the month in which he had been lost and found)--as an apprentice in his shop, and he made such provision for his wants as secured Mr. Saultz from any expense to which he might otherwise have been liable for his support.

            Our adventurer was rambling down King’s Street in the early part of the afternoon of that day, when his attention was arrested by an unusual tumult in the public avenue. The report of the attempt on the part of the British officers to impress certain freemen of Boston was just then finding its way into the more thickly settled parts of the town, and the indignation of the populace was without bounds.

            Several hundred people had collected at the upper part of King’s Street, among whom Randal was conspicuous; and from the great excitement visible in their actions, it was manifest that insult and injury had roused them to such a pitch of indignation, that it would require something more than mere words and promises to appease their irritation.

            “Let us to the Governor’s!” shouted Randal from a truck in the midst of the crowd, on which he had mounted to gain a vantage ground for his influence, “let us to the Governor’s, and we will soon find out whether the people of Boston are to be cuffed and dragged about like cattle.--Hurrah, for the Governor’s!--Liberty and old Boston for ever!”

            “Fort Hill, for ever!” shouted a hundred voices at once, in reply to the patriotic summons of Randal; and a movement was instantly perceptible in the direction of the Governor’s house.

            “What is the matter?” inquired Fitzvassal, addressing himself to a man who seemed rather to be looking on than sympathizing with the offended crowd.

            “Why, don’t you know?” answered the man, who soon showed that he was a thorough-going Tory; “the people are getting crazy because they can’t bear the wholesome laws of his Majesty.”

            “What do you refer to just now? Has any thing new happened to-day?”

            “The king’s officers,” replied the man, “only endeavored to impress a few seamen, that’s all;--and hence all this fuss;--confound this republican spirit I say!”

            This information was sufficient for Fitzvassal. Without any further inquiry he plunged into the crowd, and rather led than followed them towards Fort Hill.

            There was now one incessant succession of shoutings, of “Fort Hill for ever!” “Down with the Tyrants!” “Sailors’ Rights and no Impressment!” “No Taxation without Representation!”

            And as the throng advanced, the doors and windows of the houses flew open; and it seemed as if the Spirit of Liberty had all at once burst out like a smothered blaze for a general conflagration. Hundreds were added to the hundreds already assembled in the moving mass, at the head of which were seen Randal and Fitzvassal, cheering the people on, and sending forth new sentiments, which were taken up and reiterated by the thousands who now approached Fort Hill.

            The news of this insubordination among the people had in the meanwhile reached the ears of the Governor, who, accompanied by his aides and other attendants, (among whom was Classon, who had been so ready, on the failure of the British officers to impress the men, to carry the report to Sir Edmund Andros,) transferred his quarters to the Fort, where, having shut the gate, and secured himself from the rage of the people, he waited restlessly for their arrival.

            Fort Hill is one of the three eminences that have given the name of Tremont to the metropolis of New England. It is a very considerable elevation of ground on the eastern part of the town, and commands one of the most beautiful prospects imaginable. At present large stores and dwelling-houses intercept the fine water-prospect in part, and have destroyed its principal features of beauty; but in the times of the first revolution, under the second James, it presented a very different appearance. In those days there was an uninterrupted sweep from the fortress to the water’s edge, and the eye, as it looked from the heights, coursed over a charming slope of greenery on every side, and towards the north-east and east overlooked the beautiful bay and the many green islands which then, more than now, were unparalleled for picturesque loveliness.

            At present, there is hardly any vestage of the fort which, in the troublous hours we are chronicling, was the retreat for the tyrant of New England; but it was then a place of strong defence. It was so contrived, that not only the harbor was partially commanded by it, but it overlooked from behind the different avenues from the town which led directly to its base. The ramparts were defended by twelve cannon, and the whole was surrounded by a moat, over which a drawbridge was thrown on the side fronting High Street, the principal way of approach from the town.

            Among the few houses in the intermediate neighborhood of the fort, was one commonly occupied by the Governor and his suite when they were present in the city. New-York was his permanent residence, but, as we have already stated, Sir Edmund Andros was now on a visit to Boston, partly on account of the distracted state of the people, and partly on account of a new Indian war which was threatening to break out in the eastern parts of the country.

            The flag of England was floating proudly from Fort Hill, where Sir Edmund Andros had retired from the fury of the people. He was guarded by two hundred men, who constituted the garrison of the fortress; but it had only one half its usual weight of artillery, six of the cannon having been, a few days before, transferred to the Rose Frigate.

            So sudden had been the gathering of the people, that the Governor had no time to spare in placing himself where he could for a while check their advance towards him; and as the crowd heaved and surged at the foot of the hill, the bridge was seen drawing up, a very few moments having passed since its inmates had betaken themselves to its recesses.

            At the moment Classon came to the house of Sir Edmund Andros with the intelligence of the successful resistance on the part of the people to the attempt to impress the seamen, that dignitary was engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. Wilmer, the only one of his council in whom he placed implicit reliance, and whom he therefore preferred to all the others who composed his board of advisers. As may be easily imagined, the report of such an occurrence was in the last degree alarming, and they were making hasty calculations, what were best to be done in the emergency, when messenger after messenger arrived, with even exaggerated accounts of the popular movements, which were, in fact, serious enough of themselves; so that the resolution was suddenly taken to throw themselves into the fortress till the indignation of the people could be appeased.

           

            Sir Edmund Andros was now standing within the fortress, by no means free from that apprehension which his arbitrary and unreasonable conduct had justly awakened; and near him were Mr. Wilmer, Classon, and some other adherents, whom the emergency of the time placed on a footing which would not have been permitted, but for the present agitation of his mind.

            It is not to be supposed that the Governor had any cowardly shrinkings, other than such as arose from a consciousness of having done wrong. Had he been expecting an ordinary enemy which he could oppose like a soldier, he would unquestionably have been as ready as any other man to conduct himself well in the emergency: but his situation now was very different. He had an infuriated people to contend with, whom he, to be sure, heartily despised, but whom he dared not treat as rebels against his tyrannical authority: and he was never so much at a loss, as when standing, as he did, in the midst of soldiers with his friends about him, he saw the dark tide swelling upward, with a purpose, perhaps, of attempting to carry the fort by storm.

            Sir Edmund was a man about forty years old, very polished in his manners and address, but whose features were harsh and forbidding. His courtesy was too condescending to be agreeable, and his general bearing was marked with aristocratic arrogance. He was really a new man among the titled; being one of the innumerables of his day, who had knighthood forced upon them for the sake of the money which thereupon went to the crown. At any rate knight-hood did not sit gracefully on the Governor; for, with all his politeness--if there is not an inconsistency involved herein--he seemed to be perpetually conscious of his dignity. His dress was very splendid, consisting of crimson velvet much adorned with gold lace, with thread-lace collar and wrist-bands, diamond knee-buckles, and brilliant Bristol stones in his shoes.

            Ambrose Wilmer, the father of Grace, to whom we have already alluded, had been recently appointed one of Sir Edmund Andros’s council on account of his religious principles. Heretofore he had not obtruded his opinions on a people who were generally so opposed to them as the Bostonians; not only because he could expect to find very little sympathy among them, but for the more prudential reason, that a zealous avowal of his sentiments would be likely to stand in the way of his practice at the bar. He was now, however, an open and avowed Catholic, and had for some time unhesitatingly declared his principles, probably from a short-sighted view of public events, and from an ill-grounded belief that James would effect an entire revolution in the established Protestant religion. In personal appearance Mr. Wilmer was extremely elegant, closely resembling his daughter; but his predominant expression was one of deep thoughtfulness. He spoke but little in conversation, but his judgment was cool; and Sir Edmund Andros found in him an adviser that came too late for his preservation.

            “This is a bad business, truly,” exclaimed the Governor, looking with undisguised concern at the turbulent sea of heads that was now rapidly approaching the moat; “what is best to be done, Mr. Wilmer?”

            “It is a difficult matter to determine,” replied the counsellor, shaking his head and looking down at his feet.

            “It will never do to fire on them should they be unreasonable?” said the Governor, in a tone that seemed to suggest an expedient, and at the same time to inquire as to its practicability.

            “You may depend upon it, Sir Edmund,” replied Mr. Wilmer, “that the moment any blood is spilt by your soldiers, a revolution is inevitable.”

            “Nonsense!” interjected the Governor. “Now that is too good a joke, truly. Revolution, indeed! Come now, Mr. Wilmer, do let us talk seriously about this matter;--would it answer to give the fellows a shot?”

            “A shot,” replied Mr. Wilmer, “would find an answer among those fanatics before it would be agreeable for you to meet it. No, Sir; in the name of heaven, do nothing at present, but endeavor to reconcile the people to your authority. They are, I was going to say, justly offended at the peremptory conduct of the king’s officers, and great allowance is therefore to be made for them.”

            The noise and uproar of the people had now increased to a fearful extent, and the situation of those who were within the fort was by no means agreeable; especially as a number of missiles found their way over the parapet into the fort, and a shower of stones, hurled from slings, struck the flag-staff, and showed a disposition on the part of the crowd to use violence in their measures.

            A cry now went up among the people for Sir Edmund Andros. A number of persons rushed to his house, which was found almost deserted; when they joined the others round the fort, who were already persuaded that the Governor had taken refuge within its gates.

            “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” went up a thousand voices - “Sir Edmund Andros! Redress! Down with tyranny! No taxation without representation! Sailors’ rights for ever! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

            Sir Edmund looked at his counsellor, and seemed to implore his advice.

            “I think it would be prudent,” said Mr. Wilmer, “if you were at least prepared for the worst; for in case the populace are permitted to take possession of the fort, there is no calculating to what extent they may afterwards meditate mischief.”

            “I think you are right,” replied the Governor, and he immediately gave orders to have the guns loaded with grape shot; that in case an attempt were made to carry the fort, the crowd might meet with such a repulse as would at once, as he imagined, put an end to the project.

            The noise of the drums and fifes, and the preparations which were audibly going on in the fort, seemed only to infuriate the people the more.

            “Who’ll follow me?” cried Randal, as he brandished a club, and stood ready to leap into the moat. “Who’ll follow me? we will soon find out whether we are to be trampled on in this way or not; who dares follow me?”

            A hundred voices simultaneously answered to this call, and the ardor of the people would soon have defeated their own purpose, or deluged the town in blood, had not the Governor at that moment sprung on the parapet, and taking off his hat, presented himself respectfully to the crowd.

            “The Governor! the Governor!” shouted the tumultuous assembly; and attention being called to the presence of Sir Edmund Andros, those who had been just ready to spring into the moat, fell back as if they had already gained the object of their search.

            “Have patience, my good people!” exclaimed the Governor, “and I will presently send you an ambassador, through whom we can have all our difficulties adjusted;--you shall have all you want, and more too.”

            This was said in a tone which those who knew him best could not fail to understand as veiling the bitterest sarcasm and contempt. Nevertheless they did not give vent to their feelings, but joined the general cry, which was sent back responsive to the apparent peace-offering.

            “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! three cheers for Liberty! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

            The Governor having bowed to the people as hypocritically as he knew how, leaped back into the fort, and immediately addressed himself to Mr. Wilmer.

            “And whom, do you think, I intend to send as my minister plenipotentiary to this rabble-rout, hey?” and he smiled contemptuously as he called;

            “Classon! this way!”

            The miserable tool of power was at the Governor’s side in a moment.

            “For heaven’s sake, what are you going to do, Sir Edmund?” whispered Mr. Wilmer.

            “You shall see, presently,” replied the knight, laughing; “I am going to give this scamp of mine a lesson in diplomacy, that’s all. Do you go, Classon! and nail a towel to a broomstick, and then come back here; do you mind?”

            “Ay! Ay! Sir,” said the publican, entering at once into the humor of the scheme, and running away to execute the order of his master.

            “Does your excellency know what you are going to do?” inquired Mr. Wilmer, addressing the Governor, who seemed to be delighted with a plan which he thought would turn the whole affair into a frolic.

            “Oh yes!” replied the chief magistrate, “I know well enough what I am going to do;--I mean to teach these plebeian scoundrels better manners than to come here hollowing and shouting after they know not what; the scurvy miscreants! I tell you what it is, Sir; if you think I am going to govern hogs without ringing their noses, you are very much mistaken, that’s all.”

            “You know your own business best, Sir Edmund; but upon my honor as a gentleman,” replied Mr. Wilmer, “I advise you to adopt a very different course with these people. You must remember that they are not English villains, but are all of them, perhaps, freemen of Boston.”

            “Freemen of the devil,” exclaimed the Governor; “what right have they to call themselves freemen; have they any charter of liberty, I should like to know?”

            And the aristocratic mocker laughed at the idea of that privation under which the people were groaning and toiling in almost hopeless misery.

            “Your excellency may laugh,” said his adviser, “but I fear you don’t understand the character of this people so well as I do. They are puritans to be sure, and they imagine that nobody else knows any thing but they: for which bigotry and blind infatuation there is no remedy that I know of, but patience. It seems to me that they might have been made exemplary members of holy mother church if they had been more frankly and generously dealt with by our august sovereign; but you will be sorely disappointed if you expect that they will be ruled after the manner you devise.”

            But Sir Edmund only laughed the more scornfully at this intercession of Mr. Wilmer, and replied:

            “You must know, Sir, that ever since the disagreeable duty devolved on me, by his Majesty’s order, of governing these people, there has hardly a week passed without some outrage or other having been committed. There has not been one of his Majesty’s laws obeyed without murmuring. I for one, am tired of trifling; and now that they have seen fit to resist the king’s officers in a duty which had my express sanction, I will show the puppies what it is to bark at their masters. But here comes my ambas sador!”

            Just then Abner Classon came up, bearing the towel nailed to the broomstick, which he carried with all that mock solemnity which he knew would be agreeable to his master.

            “Now, Classon,” said the Governor, “put on that red flannel cap of your’s and carry the flag of truce to your townsmen--and tell them from me, that it is a sign that they had better go home and make their faces clean, and let alone matters that don’t concern them.”

           

            “But I am afraid to carry such a message to them,” said Classon.

            “Nonsense!” exclaimed the Governor, pulling his ear, as if he meant to encourage him, “do you fancy that they will fail to respect the flag of truce? Go to the commissary, and deluge yourself first with drink. I suspect you will be ready enough then. Bring some liquor here! the siege has made us dry!”

            The last part of this speech was addressed to one of his servants, who went immediately on his errand, and forthwith brought a square bottle of Hollands and a silver goblet.

            “Help yourself now like a man, and let us see if you can’t get up a becoming outfit for the embassy.”

            And the Governor purposely turned aside, that the fellow might not be interrupted in his agreeable task of helping himself to gin.

            “There!” resumed Sir Edmund, after he was satisfied that the man had swallowed about a pint of the spirits, “there, I think we shall now be in prime order for treating with the beleaguers. Come now, march!”

            “Let me intreat you,” again interposed Mr. Wilmer, “not to send this man on such a mad errand. It is impossible to say what may be the result. If they are not stimulated to throw themselves precipitately on the fort, and thus meet an untimely death, which would throw the whole country into a fever, there is, at least, danger that they will sacrifice this poor fool to their malice; do consider of it, before you proceed any further.”

            But the more Mr. Wilmer spoke against the thing, the more firmly did it seem that Sir Edmund was bent on having his own way; the former, therefore, finally yielded, remarking:

            “As you please, Sir Edmund; but if your excellency has not cause to repent of this rash proceeding, I will never again volunteer any advice respecting a people in whom I am so much deceived.”

            With all his audacity, however, the Governor had not courage enough to let down the drawbridge of the fort, by which his mock ambassador might find a convenient passage across the mote; but he ordered him to make the best of his way over that he could.

            Classon accordingly undertook to fulfil the command of his master, whom he was afraid to disobey; and leaping from the parapet to which he had ascended, he sprang with several bounds into the moat, which he forthwith undertook to climb.

            In the meanwhile the multitude, whose clamor had to a great extent subsided since the appearance of the Governor, in the confident expectation that he would commission some respectable individual to hear an account of their immediate subject of complaint, and be the medium of conciliation, when they saw the well-known pander of their detested Governor, bearing such a contemptuous signal of the mock-pacific, they could not control their indignation.

            “Hush!” said Randal, making a sign to the people, “let him alone till he gets near enough,--he is the rascal that took part with the press-gang this morning--we’ll fix his flint for him presently. Stand back a while, and don’t scare him,--let’s hear what his old groggy face has to say to us.”

            The people, over whom Randal seemed to have complete authority, gave way at this intimation; and as Classon struggled on the steep bank of the moat, the former lent him his hand to enable him to reach the ground above.

            “And what word do you bring from our gracious master, Mr. Herald,” inquired Randal, as with a giant grasp he brought the fellow to his landing place; “what message, hey?”

            “Sir Edmund Andros bade me say to you,” exclaimed Classon, loud enough to be heard by every man in the assembly, where a death-like silence reigned for the time, so anxious were they to hear a report from their Governor, “that you may look upon this ere as a sign that you had better all go home and wash your faces, and not meddle any longer with matter’s that don’t concarn you.”

            The shouts and screams, mingled with curses and execrations, that followed this announcement, rose on the air like thunder, or the sound of the breaking up of the ice when it has been heaped mountain high by some partial thaw, and is now sent with overwhelming fury to the ocean.

            “Tar and feather the scoundrel!” shouted five hundred voices at once, as if the punishment had been instantaneously suggested to them all at the same time; “tar and feather, the scoundrel! The drunken old pander of the tyrant--hurrah for the tar and feathers!--give the Tory a court dress for once in his life!--to the rope-walk at the bottom of the Common!”

            The idea of wreaking their vengeance on Classon, whom they had always hated, and whom they now detested as the mean tool of an unpardonable insult, so possessed the minds of the people, that they were diverted from their undefinable business with the Governor, and were now bent on inflicting that punishment which in this country has often been awarded to political offenders, who for some especial act have made themselves obnoxious to it.

            “To the rope-walk! to the rope-walk!” was the continued cry;--“away with him to the rope-walk!” and while some seized the offender, and ran him on toward the place of sacrifice, many of them shot ahead to make all things ready, and to stir up more people to partake in the promised entertainment.

            The roar of the infuriated multitude now gradually died away about Fort Hill, while other parts of the town were called on to listen to the disturbance, and contribute their share of citizens to the ungovernable crowd.

            In the meanwhile the Governor, flattering himself that this stratagem had succeeded, laughed at the apprehensions of Mr. Wilmer, who knew the people too well to look for so sudden a pacification. Sir Edmund, however, in his secret soul, began to fear that he had gone too far, and had no small reason to dread his ill-timed frivolity might have become the means of sacrificing a man, who, however base and worthless in the estimation of the community, had always served him with a fidelity which demanded better treatment in return.

            In vain did Classon cry out for mercy and for help. There was none for such an offender as he. He was regarded as a man lost to every principle of virtue and good feeling, wholly devoid of honor and patriotism, and the miserable instrument of a man who was himself the instrument of a cruel and oppressive tyrant. The people therefore rejoiced in the opportunity which the events of the day had afforded, of showing their proper spirit, and making an example of a man who, in the point of Tory subserviency to a nefarious administration, had many compeers in Boston.

            A sort of temporary pillory was now constructed and placed upon a cart drawn by jacks, and in this Classon was placed and dragged to the neighborhood of the rope-walk, which ran nearly the whole length of the bottom of the Common. On the way thither he was pelted with rotten eggs, decayed vegetables, and all the nameless missiles which are gathered together for such an occasion; so that the wretched man was almost exhausted before he reached the place where it was intended to make a more especial example of him.

            The cry, as they turned round the Common, was --“Feathers! feathers! now boys, for the feathers!” And a dispute seemed at one time likely to arise, whether they should go back to the house of the Governor, and take his beds for the supply of their wants, or whether they should make a requisition on the house of Mr. Wilmer, which was close by, and seemed to afford the greater convenience for the occasion.

            As Mr. Wilmer was not so popular as he deserved to be from the part he took on the side of the Colonists in opposition to the Governor, they were not sorry for a pretext for showing him the state of their disposition. They therefore determined to call at his house, and procure the feathers necessary for the meditated operation. As soon as this point was settled, they drove down to Mr. Wilmer’s house, and at once invested it.

            The people believing that Mr. Wilmer was in his house, called loudly for him, and bade him contribute something towards the court-dress, as they called it, of Classon.

            “Hullo! there,” cried one of the leading men, “I guess you have feathered your nest so well by this time, you old priest-ridden hunks, that you can afford to spare an armful for a poor, shivering Tory brother,--can’t you?”

            Which declaration was applauded to the echo, by the clapping of hands, and every conceivable kind of noise which a promiscuous multitude of two or three thousand persons could make.

            The family, as might be supposed, were exceedingly alarmed at these proceedings, more especially as they had not been prepared by any previous intelligence of the popular outbreak; and they feared that some accident might have happened by which Mr. Wilmer had awakened the displeasure of the populace, though they knew well enough that nothing remarkable had occurred that morning when he left the house to visit the Governor.

            Mrs. Wilmer and her daughter were so much frightened, that after the first glance at the crowd they were afraid to go the window; the servants were, if possible, under still greater apprehension than they, and Horace Seymour was, though fast recovering from his misfortune, unable as yet to leave his chamber. The family could not even imagine what could be the demand of such a crowd.

            The anxiety of Fitzvassal at this moment may easily be conjectured. In an instant he saw the true position of affairs, and running round by the back part of the house, where stood a small and comparatively humble tenement, he dashed into it, and, ascending to a chamber, seized a feather-bed, and tossing a handful of gold to the woman, who looked on thunder-struck at the movement, he as rapidly departed, and coming to the garden fence of the Wilmers’, threw the bed over into the enclosure. He then sprang over the fence, and taking the same in his arms, he boldly entered the house by a back door, and hurried as fast as possible to the front. In doing this he was obliged to pass the apartment where Grace and her mother were clinging to each other in their agony of apprehension. But he heeded them not, till, having thrown open a window which looked upon the street, he crowded the bed through it, when the people outside seized upon the same amidst the most tremendous acclamations.

            The crowd having attained its object, and, as it is supposed, compelled the counsellor to humble himself in obedience to their will, immediately began to move off; and so rapid was their departure, that before Fitzvassal could collect himself sufficiently to explain the cause of his intrusion, the ladies had ceased to fear any further effects of their violence.

            As Fitzvassal entered from one door of the drawing-room, Mr. Temple came in through the other. The latter had observed his conduct and perfectly apprehended his purpose; and rejoining as he did to find the expedient successful, it was not singular that he should immediately congratulate him on his adroitness.

            “Really, Captain Nix,” said he, approaching our adventurer, and grasping him cordially by the hand, “you seem to have been set apart by heaven for the accomplishment of great objects: and this, too, appears to be a favorite field for your chivalry. It was but the other day you saved the life of young Seymour as well as”--

            “Is it possible that this is the gentleman,” exclaimed Mrs. Wilmer in astonishment, “to whom we are so deeply indebted?” And she looked from one to the other, as much as to indicate that she had not the pleasure of Fitzvassal’s acquaintance.

            “Pardon me, ladies,” said Mr. Temple, “I thought that you were acquainted with my friend.”

            He then, without further ceremony, presented the supposed Captain Nix to them.

            The color slightly mantled on Fitzvassal’s cheek as he found himself playing the hypocrite in the presence of her he adored; and the deep roses shadowed the cheeks and temples of the beautiful girl as she courtesied before the enamored gaze of her admirer.

            As Mrs. Wilmer had been the first to lead the conversation, she did not suffer it to lag, but relieved Fitzvassal from the unavoidable embarrassment of one who had to meet the acknowledgments of their gratitude in advance, by addressing him with great kindness.

            “It would not be easy for us, Captain Nix, to express to you how very much we thank you for your great kindness to us; nor do we deem it a slight favor that you have been instrumental in preserving the life of one whom we value so much as we do Mr. Temple.”

            The venerable gentlemen bowed courteously at this compliment, and the psuedo-captain Nix replied, that it was the highest happiness a sailor could enjoy to be the means of affording the slightest satisfaction to the most accomplished of their sex.

            Mr. Temple now explained to the ladies the cause of the popular disturbance, and when they understood the peculiar favor which had been extended to them by the presence of mind and the promptitude of Fitzvassal’s service, they renewed to him the sense which they entertained of his goodness, and overwhelmed him with their thanksgivings.

            The service which Fitzvassal had rendered in this last instance to the Wilmers, was indeed more important than it appeared; for the crowd believing that their demand had not been complied with from the deliberate determination of Mr. Wilmer, whom they supposed to be secreted in the house, were already proceeding to violent measures, and were beginning to tear down the fence that bordered on the street; while some were taking the blinds from their hinges, and doing other acts of an aggressive nature, which, if they had not been timely put a stop to by the sudden diversion of our adventurer, might have been carried to the most deplorable lengths.

            Mrs. Wilmer and her daughter, as we have before noticed, regularly attended the congregational churches, and were in fact strict Presbyterians, so far as the observances of the sabbath required; but, as respects the innocent amusements of life, they conformed as nearly to the usages of the Catholics as Mr. Wilmer did; so that, by a happy combination, they perhaps evinced finer specimens of character than could be anywhere else found among the colonists. Formed as they were by the discipline and liberality of two different sects, they made themselves agreeable to individuals of both parties; and it was a common remark, that, go where you would, there was no society in New England more cultivated and polite than that in the domestic circle of the Wilmers.

            The uproar of the distant multitude was now so loud, that Fitzvassal and Mr. Temple, feeling a deep interest in the fate of the unhappy Classon, took their leave of the ladies, and withdrew. Bending their steps toward the bottom of the Common, they soon came to the scene of the disturbance. A graver’s kettle had been brought out from the yard adjoining the rope-walk, and a barrel of tar emptied into it, under which a fire was soon kindled. Classon was then stripped naked, and daubed, by means of a mop, from head to foot, care being taken to leave his eyes, nose, mouth and ears free from the unctuous matter. As soon as this was done, the feather-bed was ripped open, and Classon rolled over in it till he was more effectually covered than a bird; presenting altogether the most grotesque appearance that could be produced by any disguise.

            While this operation was going on, the populace kept up a continual uproar, seeming to take the greatest delight in thus showing their abhorrence of a man who, though a born citizen of the place, added to the most profligate and abandoned life a total disregard of all the duties of a patriot.

            They now replaced him in the pillory, and paraded him over the city with Sir Edmund Andros’s flag of truce flying above his head; nor did they fail to make a circuit of Fort Hill, uttering groans and imprecations, till finally, as if their rage had become exhausted, they released the miserable man, who was borne, half-lifeless, to his own house near Winnissimmit Ferry. The crowd now dispersed with more order than could have been expected; and long before the sun had sunk below the horizon, there was not the slightest indication in the town that any rioting had occurred among the people.

CHAPTER IX.

 

            The great agent in this affair is the Sibyl.

Warburton, Div. Leg.

            A type of Heaven, a lively hue of hell.

Gascoigne, Voyage into Holland.

--the fruit        Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

            Brought death--

Milton.           

            We return now to the Dolphin. The evening on which she left her anchorage in the harbor of Mount Wallaston, she passed down the inner bay of Boston, with her sails all set, a gentle breeze blowing from the south-west. Passing some of the loveliest islands in the world, the rock-bound promontory of Nahant appeared about a mile before her, just as the moon arose from out the Atlantic horizon.

            For wildness and natural beauty, few places can compare with Nahant. It lies between Boston and Salem, coastwise stretching out into the sea, and nearly equidistant from those places. From the main land it is nearly two miles away, approached only by a path over two beautiful beaches rolled by the pressure of the waves harder than the best gravel-walk, and glittering in the sunshine with exceeding beauty. On the left, as you approach Nahant by the beach, Egg-Rock lies off about a mile and a half, towering in solitary grandeur one hundred and fifty feet from the level of the sea.

            At high tide it is very difficult to reach Nahant at all by the beach, and it has sometimes happened, that when there have been extraordinary tides, the traveller, too rashly calculating on the possibility of the passage, has been overwhelmed in the waves that on such occasions roll in with terrific power and rapidity. Many a time have we made that passage, when the carriage was nearly lifted and borne away by the surf,--or on horseback, when the animal had to struggle for his life in the billows.

            The wild beauties of Nahant are exceedingly peculiar. There is a place there called the Spouting-Horn,--a deep, curving fissure in the rocks, where the waves, setting in with fury, dash the water up mast-high with a subterranean roar that is sometimes frightful;--but as the waves roll back again, and the thunder below you for the moment ceases, the spray of the subsiding waters catches the rays of the setting sun, and forms the most beautiful rainbows.

            The whole border of Nahant is one chain of black, rugged rocks, that seem to have been heaved up from the centre of the earth by some terrible convulsion, and thrown there in the utmost disorder; and against and over these dark masses, the north-east furiously drives the scared waves of the Atlantic, that come tumbling in with unbroken precipitation, where they are doomed to vex themselves for ever without rest.

            Next to the Spouting-Horn, Swallow’s Cave is the most remarkable feature of Nahant. It is a small cavern lying to the south-west of the peninsula, close to the water’s edge, that seems to have been hollowed out by the art and industry of man. From this cavern there is a passage through to the south-east, formed by a narrow fissure in the rock, which is bridged ever by a single stone, covered with turf. The place is supposed to have been named from a belief that it was a favorite building-spot for swallows; but tradition provides us with a more fanciful origin,--that it was called after an Indian girl, who was the wonder of the neighboring towns, and who was called the Swallow, because she skimmed in her bark canoe, swallow-like, over the waters.

            Nameoke, the reputed grand-daughter of Massasoit, and the daughter of Philip, king of the Wompanoags, was now the sole occupant of Nahant. On the death of her father and mother, whose fates were so melancholy, the former having been slain after his defeat by the white people, and the latter drowned in her attempt to escape, Nameoke was for a while protected by the Narragansetts; till, becoming attached to a young Englishman, she was seduced a way from their guardianship and protection. But it was not long before she was deserted by the heartless villain, innocent through her own high virtue, but desolate and brain-touched, to listen to the unhealthy throbbings of her own sorrow-burthened heart, and to long for that corporeal change which haply might bring with it repose. In her despair she hired herself out as a serving-maid to an old gentleman, who, in the neighborhood of Lynn, passed his days in lonely contemplation. The history of that man was never wholly known; but he was believed to have fled from England to shield himself from that fabricated scheme, the Popish Plot, which it was the policy of the reformed people of England to keep alive in the imagination of the multitude, a participation in which was more or less imputed to those who were particularly odious to them and of the Catholic persuasion.

            This man devoted his life, as many did in that day, to the study of judicial astrology, and of those Chaldæan experiments which at once show the aspiring and heaven-projected genius of man, and explain the mystery of the tree which stood in the garden of God. As Plato revived the Know Thyself of the ancients, and explained it to his disciples, so shall still greater arcana be unfolded from those two words, and revelations undreamed and unimagined by man, be brought bodily before his vision. Here and there, at immense distances of time, light has been let down upon the eyes of humanity, but as yet it could not bear it, and it was withdrawn; yet has it been given to a few to see what is now ineffable, and to speak darkly of the future, that a gradual preparation may be made for that which cannot be sudden in its advent.

            To this man, Nameoke endeared herself by the wildness and originality of her genius, and by the gentleness of her affections. To her he imparted all the wonders and mysteries of his learning. In short he treated her more like a child of his own, than as a domestic whose duty it was to serve him; and as neither of them held much communion with the world, they became mutually attached to each other on that account. Under his tuition Nameoke soon acquired the English language, which she spoke as well as he, though she retained much of her native modes of expression. The old man died, after Nameoke had lived with him five years; and then she was a beautiful girl of nineteen, thrown on the rough world without any protection but her own powerful character, and on this she determined forth with to implicitly rely.

            Once only had she visited Nahant in company with her generous protector, to gather the wild yarrow by moonlight, and pull the sponge from the Sunken Ledge. Here, in her wanderings, she discovered the rocky cavern, which even then appeared the most alluring spot she had seen; and to this secluded place her mind reverted, when the gravel rattled on the coffin of the old astrologer, and she found herself once more alone in the pitiless world.

            At the epoch of our story, Nameoke was twenty-two years old, and eminently beautiful. Her figure was tall, and curving in all the lines of elegance and grace. She moved like the bending maize, and glided over the ground like its shadow. Her eyes and hair were as dark as the raven down of midnight when to the vision of the poet it is smiling at the music of the spheres. Her features were perfectly regular: her teeth as white as the apple blossoms, and her breath sweeter than their fragrance. The expression of her eyes told of a bosom full of all sweet harmonies, sweeter and infinitely purer and dearer for the rude discords that had sometimes disturbed their undulations, but had driven them nearer to heaven. Alas! how few are there who are capable of comprehending a true woman; how few of the sex who are willing to be loved as they ought!

            Nameoke’s winter dress was a mantle of mole-skins, opening over a neat tunic, upon which a necklace of the rarest and whitest shells hung in graceful festoons. Around her waist she wore a belt made of interwoven porcupine quills variously colored, in which was thrust a dirk in a silver sheath. Her lower dress was of fine deer-skin, highly ornamented with quills and other fancy-work; and her feet were protected by half-boots of buck-skin, profusely in wrought with small beads and shells. Her hair, which streamed over her shoulders, was confined by a narrow band of silver round her forehead; and she held in her hand a mace of ebony, damascened with ivory and gold, and terminated by a massive head of diamond cut steel, that glittered in the sunshine like that it was intended to represent.

            Such was Nameoke, or the Swallow as she was more commonly called by those who know of her; and now, since the death of her protector, she was often sought by unhappy lovers or desperate maidens, and sometimes by characters of the highest standing, who, according to the current of the times, believed in the influence of the stars.

            When the Dolphin came within sight of the Swallow’s Cave, about half a mile off, and a little to the east of the same, Morgan ordered to let go the anchor, and in a few minutes the vessel was snug at her moorings, with all her sails brailed up and furled for the night.

            During the passage down, Felton as well as Morgan kept a sharp look-out; and as they had discovered nothing in chase of them, and indeed no sail of any sort in sight, they felt very confident that there would no interruption occur that night: and they accordingly set the usual watch, and were preparing to turn in, when Morgan called the attention of the officer to a singular light, which flamed up from the peninsula in the neighborhood of the Spoting-Horn, and operated powerfully to awaken the curiosity of the latter to inquire into its cause.

            While he was examining this appearance as well as he could with the night-glass, he observed a figure standing erect on the summit of Pulpit-Rock, a high solitary cliff that, like the leaning tower of Pisa, seems to threaten its down thundering every moment. The figure looked to him like that of an Indian, but he could not distinctly ascertain whether it were or not; but while he was questioning his judgment relative to it, a voice stole over the water, combining more power, sweetness, and feeling than the mariner ever remembered to have heard. So impressive was it, that he bowed his head in his hands, and listened with rapt entrancement. Presently it ceased; yet still he listened in the hope of hearing more, when, raising his eyes, he saw a canoe shoot forward in the bright wake of the moon, while the same sweet sounds came tremblingly over the water, and spell-bound the hearer with its melody.

            “Pray what sort of a place do you call this, Morgan?” inquired the bewildered seaman; “it must be Mermaid’s Cove or the paradise of the Sirens, for I never heard such music in my life.”

            “It’s a haunted island, to be sure,” said the pilot; “pray tell us if you have never been here before?”

            “Never!” replied Felton. “I never was in this part of the world till this trip, and I must confess I never saw any place wilder or more attractive.”

           

            “Did you ever hear of a singing-swallow?” inquired Morgan, spurting his tobacco-juice over the leeward of the vessel, and looking up into the face of the officer with a most knowing glance.

            “I can’t say that I ever did,” answered the other.

            “But you have, though, notwithstanding,” resumed the joker; “for the music which you have been praising so mightily, comes from a swallow’s throat as sure as my name is Jake Morgan.”

            “Don’t try to fool me that way, Jake,” said Felton, “I don’t pretend to understand what you mean by a singing-swallow and all that nonsense; but if that voice which I heard just now doesn’t come from the throat of a woman, blow me if it did not come from an angel’s or a devil’s--that’s all.”

            Morgan burst out into a loud fit of laughter at this remark, but as he did not feel in a humor to joke any more at present, he intimated his intention of taking a night-cap, which he accomplished as soon as possible, and then turned into his berth, where in a few minutes he was sound asleep.

            Felton paced the quarter-deck a long time in the hope that the music would be repeated, but in vain. At one time he thought that he perceived the canoe glide by in the shadow of the shore toward the Swallow’s Cave, and the lurid light in the neighborhood of the Spouting-Horn was now almost extinguished. He therefore, despairing of hearing a renewal of the songs that fascinated him so strongly, determined to follow the example of the pilot, and, like him, he was soon wrapped in the slumbers of oblivion; but though the cares of the day were forgotten, he had moonlight visitations in his dreams, and a voice sweeter than the song of the nightingale’s, which he had often listened to at home, came to him like a voice from faery land invested with the gayest influences of imagination.

            Though the Dolphin remained several days at her anchorage, there occurred no repetition of the sights and sounds which had engaged the attention of Felton, who, though he went often ashore, could never discover any vestige of the singular apparition which he had seen on the first night of his coming: but had he found his way to the Swallow’s Cave, he might have seen traces of one who was destined to have so large an interest in his fortunes.

            It was on the evening of the fourth day that Felton, in watching the horizon, as he constantly did in every direction, at length discovered a sail-boat, that seemed to be bearing down towards them.

            “Take a squint through this glass, Morgan,” said the officer, “and tell a body what you make of it; it strikes me that it is the captain.”

            Morgan took the glass, and almost immediately exclaimed;

            “That’s she, as sure as a gun, and the Captain in her. How the Jenny streaks it through the water! There’s a Swallow now, Mr. Felton, something like, and she makes music too wherever she goes--Oh she’s a beauty, that she is!”

            “And that reminds me, Morgan,” said the officer, “that you have not yet explained to me what you meant the other evening when you yarned so obscurely about a certain singing swallow. Come now, clear away the fog, and give us a peep at your meaning.”

            “Why, you see,” said Morgan, “the fact is, I was afeard that if I gin you any information about the petticoat that lives yonder, you would go crazy and drown yourself. I knew well enough that such information as I might have gin you would have made you desert the Dolphin;--and by the way, I doubt very much whether the Captain wouldn’t have changed his anchorage if he had known as much about Nahant as I do.”

            “You speak in riddles,” exclaimed the officer, whose curiosity was excited to the highest pitch by the insinuation of Morgan, “don’t let a body die of his ignorance, when you are able to relieve him; what is all this about the Swallow, Jake!”

            “Why, the story’s a purty long one,” said Morgan, “and I am afeard the Captain will be here afore it is completed; howsomever, I’ll gin you some idea on’t. You see, then, in the first place, there’s an Indian gal lives on that are place over there, all alone by herself”--

            “The devil, you say!” exclaimed the mariner.

           

            “No; I don’t say no such thing,” said Morgan; “but I do say she’s the handsomest gal, by golly, that ever you set your eyes on.”

            “By the thundering Mars, then,” shouted the officer, clapping his hands, “I’ll see her yet.”

            “There! I knew how it would be with you; but I can tell you, you had better attack a grampus than that same Indian gal.”

            “And what has she to do with the singing-swallow, I should like to know?”

            “Plenty to do with it; but the devil of it is she won’t let any body else meddle with the swallow at all--for, d’ye see, she’s the singing swallow herself.”

            “Do you mean to say,” inquired Felton, “that the delicious voice I heard the other evening came from an Indian girl?”

            “I do mean jest that, and nothing more or less,” replied Morgan; “but only look,” he continued, “at the Jenny; Jehu! how she goes it; the Captain will be here in ten minutes--I wonder if he will bring us any news.”

            “How long has that girl lived there?” asked Felton, who was so deeply interested in the Indian girl, that he was not willing to be so readily baulked out of an account of her.

            “Blazes!” exclaimed Morgan, “haven’t you done thinking of petticoat yet? I wonder if you have left any wife at home who would be as much interested in singing-swallows as you are:--perhaps it would be worth while to take one home with you, provided always, as the lawyers say, you can get one:--a singing-swallow, in a cage near your house in the country, hey? a good idea, isn’t it?”

            “Capital, no doubt;--how old is this girl you tell of?”

            “Ah! there’s the rub--what do you think of forty-five?” inquired Morgan, delighted that he had an opportunity of tantalizing the sailor.

            “Fudge!” exclaimed the officer, “if she had been any thing like that time off the stocks, you wouldn’t have troubled your clam-shell all this while about her; I suppose we may put her down at half that age, hey?”

            “You’ve hit it,” cried Morgan, “to the last turn of a splice; the gal, they say, isn’t twenty-two yet.”

            “And is beautiful?”

            “As the full moon!”

            “And lives all alone?”

            “A perfect she-hermit.”

            “Won’t she let people come to see her?”

            “Ah, you are a knowing old wharf-rat,” cried Morgan, cutting his eye cunningly at the officer.

            “No, but none of your nonsense,” replied the officer with a sort of moral indignant tone, “can’t a fellow ask such a question as that without being taken for a wharf-rat as you call it? I am interested about that girl:--but here comes your boat with the Captain.”

           

            Sure enough, Morgan’s boat was now alongside the Dolphin, the Captain seated in the stern-sheets. As he came came up to the gangway, he brailed up the sail, and heaving the painter aboard the vessel, the boat was secured, and Fitzvassal once more stood upon the deck of his favorite.

            Our adventurer nodded to his officers, and expressed towards them, as well as to his crew, the pleasure he derived on being once more with them, and casting a scrutinizing glance at his spars and rigging, and finding them all as they should be, he turned to admire the lovely spot which had been selected as a harbor for the Dolphin. He was now standing on the quarter-deck with Felton, and his eye roved with a pleasurable expression around the scene.

            “How is the bottom here, Mr. Felton?” inquired Fitzvassal of his lieutenant, “does the anchor take hold well?”

            “Never better, Sir,” was the reply; “I think she could hold on in a north-east gale of wind.”

            “You have had no experience, Mr. Felton, of one of our north-easters; they are hard enough sometimes almost to blow yonder rocks out of water. We are pretty well sheltered though, by the peninsula, which is the best natural break-water I ever saw; but I had rather be well out at sea with the wind blowing a hurricane off shore, than anywhere hereabouts within twenty miles of blue water.”

           

            “Do the north easters prevail much this time o’year?” inquired the officer.

            “Not particularly,” said the Captain; “but they are felt during all seasons. I have known as hard as any in August. During the equinoxes, of course, they rage most violently.”

            “Have you any settled purpose about remaining here?” asked the officer, turning his eyes in the direction of the Swallow’s Cave.

            “It it important, Sir,” replied the commander, “to remain here for the present--for you must know that I am called on by circumstances unforeseen by either of us, to take an active part in the political movements of the day!”

            “You surprise me!” exclaimed Felton in undisguised astonishment; “how has that happened?”

            “Would you believe it?” resumed Fitzvassal, “the leading characters in Boston take me for Nix, and I pass as Captain Nix among them.”

            “How is that possible?”

            “The packet which I felt an interest in delivering according to the address, for the sake of those who are suffering under the galling chains of tyrants, was marked, you are aware, ‘By the favor of Captain Nix;’ it moreover contained a letter, recommending the said worthy to the particular consideration of the Bostonians, and so I, by a kind of pious fraud, am reaping all the laurels of Nix.”

            “Nix, then, was never in Boston?”

           

            “Never.”

            “And how are you so connected with political matters, that your presence is necessary hereabouts?”

            “There is a strong indication of a great popular movement for liberty, and the people have no navy.”

            “Have you promised your assistance?”

            “Most certainly!”

            “Perhaps then, we shall have the honor of engaging the Rose frigate!” said the officer, his face flushing with the thought.

            “I think it very probable,” replied the commander, “that she will give us some work to do, and I believe we could beat the frigate, though she is so much heavier than the Dolphin. I think we shall try it, if a chance offers.”

            “What are they about in town?”

            “They are as noisy and turbulent as butchers’ dogs,” answered the commander, “and no wonder at it. There is nothing worth living for in that place, with one glorious exception. Since the colonies have been deprived of their charters, they have been making leeway at a rapid rate. It is now several years since I was in Boston, and positively I could not believe my own eyes that such a change should have taken place. There is no law or order there whatever, and the people are treated like brutes. Would yon believe it, Mr. Felton, a press-gang only yesterday had the assurance to go ashore in open day, and endeavor to carry off half a dozen citizens to the frigate.”

            “And did they succeed?”

            “Succeed, hey? Why, what do you think the people of Boston are made of? No, Sir, they did not succeed; but they got most gloriously hammered as they deserved, and such a mob as grew out of it you hardly ever saw in London.”

            “Did any mischief ensue?” inquired Felton.

            “They made out to tar and feather one scoundrel.”

            And Fitzvassal sighed deeply at the sorrows and misery which the thought of his step-father suggested.

            “The fellow richly deserved it,” he continued, rallying himself; “he was a villain, and a Tory to boot. But we must be in readiness for action, in case this disturbance should result in a general insurrection; though I have been assured that there is no danger of it. The people are as yet ignorant of the extent of their sufferings. They lean on hope, but the anchor is too weak to hold them.”

            In conversation like the foregoing, the remainder of the day passed off, the Dolphin lying idly at anchor within the curving bay, and nothing transpiring to interrupt the monotony of the scene but the large gulls that wheeled away in the blue air, and now and then dipped to the water for fish, or the seals that occasionally showed themselves under the stern of the vessel.

            The mariners, some of them, were engaged in mending the sails and rigging, and in such other matters as were necessary to be attended to on board; while others were fishing from about the bows for perch and cod, and two were busying themselves in the jolly-boat among the rocks for lobsters. All these were procured in the greatest abundance; nor was there wanting a goodly supply of ducks, which the skill of the men brought down as they rose from the water.

            In the meantime, Felton had not failed to inform the commander of the surprising appearances on shore, with a view to obtain permission to go that night and explore the causes of the same. This was readily granted; for Fitzvassal considered it as nothing more than a freak of sailor fancy, and a pretext, perhaps, of passing a leisure hour on the main land in the distance.

            Felton was a gentlemanly-looking mariner, about thirty years old. His eyes and hair were very black, his complexion was olive. He was above the middle height, and in his whole expression, air, and manner, seemed to be a sensualist and desperado. He was a person of great enterprize and daring, and was always ready to engage in perilous encounters and hair-breadth dangers. He was now bent on finding the beautiful girl, the brief hint of whose existence and solitude had fired his imagination; and as the gong told the hour of changing the watch at nine o’clock, he had entered a barge, and was on the way to the shore.

            His first determination was to land at the Swallow’s Cave; but as he was afraid of being watched by his commander or by Jake Morgan, he changed his purpose in this particular, and ordered the coxswain to steer round the Sunken Ledge, which is a reef of rocks stretching out by the southern part of the peninsula, and to land him as near the Pulpit Rock as was practicable. Accordingly, the barge ran close under that beetling crag, and Felton, leaping on the rocks, bade the coxswain return to the vessel, and come again for him when he should make a signal on the morning.

            Felton was wrapped close in his watch-coat, a pair of pistols and a dagger at his girdle inside; for though he did not think of any thing but the lovely recluse of Nahant, it was an indispensable habit with all the officers as well as men of the Dolphin, to be thus prepared for any emergency.

            He had now climbed the rocks, and reached the grassy plain above, from which position, by the bright star-light, he could plainly discover the schooner lying away to the right in the range of Boston, and the barge moving rapidly through the water to the regular cadence of the rowers. He waited where he was till he saw the boat along-side, and heard the heave-hos of the sailors as they hoisted it again to the vessel’s davits; and then, after listening awhile to the beating of the surf on the rocks, he bent his footsteps toward the eastern point of the peninsula, with the purpose of reconnoitering the entire place.

            He had not proceeded far before the same lurid appearance, which had first attracted his notice, presented itself in the vicinity of the Spouting-Horn; and he heard from another direction the same music that had before entranced him. His first impulse was to hasten, and ascertain by a nearer examination from what cause it proceeded, when his purpose was arrested by a symphonious breathing like Æolian lyres in concert. He turned, and paused to listen to the sounds which seemed to proceed from the mysterious cavern at the south-west; but as soon as he had been convinced in this conjecture, the avenue was on a sudden changed, and it seemed that Pulpit Rock was the source of those sweet harmonies.

            “It is very remarkable,” thought Felton, “that precisely the same sounds should proceed from such opposite directions!” And as he thought of the heavenly minstrelsy, it seemed to him that he was not so bad a man after all.

            While he was yet flattering himself with this consolatory reflection, a peal of such unnatural and diabolical laughter rose on the wind from the Spouting-Horn, that as Felton turned involuntarily in that direction, his blood ran cold with horror.

           

            Thrice was this hellish sound repeated ere the mariner could sufficiently collect his energies to think calmly and resolve coolly: and while he rallied his courage, he saw the thick smoke curl away above the blue flame, and he now urged his footsteps thither. He had already proceeded some way under the full determination of confronting whomever they might be that uttered such hideous noises, when he started to feel a touch upon his shoulder. He suddenly turned, and the figure of the Indian enchantress was standing full before him, the light of the high blazing fire gleaming vividly upon it. Never was there such majestic beauty as presented itself that moment before the mariner. Her head and figure thrown a little back, her left arm stretched toward him, and the mace in her right hand thrown over her shoulder, as if to indicate the way he ought to go, she exclaimed:--

            “Fly! white-man, fly!--Nameoke has read the stars--go not where mirth is madness--fly ere it be too late!”

            As she spake, her hair streamed to the breeze, while her eyes looked wilder and more beautiful than the startled fawn’s; and as she ceased, her lips were still parted, as if a spirit of intelligence breathed through them.

            “What have I to fear,” exclaimed the entranced voluptuary, “under the influence of such beauty?” so electrified was he by the suddenness of her appearance.

            “Nameoke has seen the star of love in gloom,” she replied; “and the cynosure drop blood from the bear;--turn, white-man, ere the moon comes up from the waters, for it will else rise drenched in thy life-blood--turn!”

            The fire that gleamed so fearfully, now went strangely out, but it flamed again in a moment, and the figure of the Indian girl was gone. Felton was confounded; but before he could realize her departure, the same sweet music swelled upon the air, and seemed to woo him to its birth-place.

            “By the Spirit of darkness,” muttered the man in his amazement, “but this is passing strange. Was there ever such glorious beauty as that on earth before? I will have her, if I go through hell to achieve it!”

            As though it were responsive to this oath, a peal of the same infernal laughter echoed among the crags, and went like an ice-bolt to his bosom.

            Felton nevertheless sprang forward, more resolved than ever to find out the cause of the unearthly voices, which would have intimidated a bolder man than he. Grasping a pistol in his right hand, he redoubled his pace, and was moving at a rapid rate, when the enchantress again checked his career.

            “Beware!” she exclaimed, “the blood that falls from the bear is now mingling with the dews--return to your evil bark as you love the atmosphere you are breathing--return before it is too late.”

            Felton caught her hand, exclaiming,

            “Inexplicable woman! I will not return till my curiosity is satisfied--I came here to find no other but yourself--why do you now warn me away? I already love you as my life, and will never leave you.”

            The same diabolical laughter swelled again on the air--and a noise swept by them like the rushing of a hundred rockets.

            “They have discovered you!” exclaimed the enchantress, “I feared that it would be so--Look yonder! did you see that meteor stream upon the sky?”

            “I care for no meteors, nor for the old boy himself,” said Felton; “but I will swear that yon are a thousand times more beautiful than the stars.”

            “And more fatal,” sighed the sibyl; “Nameoke is a poison-flower of the forest. The flower saves and destroys.”

            “Charming Nameoke!” exclaimed the impassioned voluptuary, “you are too beautiful to destroy; save me then from the burning flames that consume me--the flames that are kindled by thy beauty!”

            “Follow me!” cried the beautiful enchantress, “Nameoke would save thee and him from ruin-- but the stars tell of wailing and sorrow--there are changes and deaths in their dwelling.”

            She then gathered the millefolio, and taking from her bosom a sprig of the Chaldæan roybra, said to him, “Hold these together in your hand, and you will be secure from every fear and fantasm.”

            Felton took the plants, and held them as he was directed to do; for the sorceress spoke with such authority, that he vainly endeavored to throw off her influence, and he was surprised to find that immediately a supernatural courage took possession of him, and, without feeling reckless, his heart was strengthened with an irresistible power, which seemed to clothe it in steel.

            “This is very wonderful truly,” exclaimed the astonished Felton; “whence do these herbs derive such singular virtue?”

            “All things are for good and evil,” replied Nameoke, “and it is the fate of man never to be without the knowledge of both. Nameoke loves to do good, but her instruments are powerful as well for evil.”

            After walking for a few minutes, they came to the rocky cavern where the enchantress dwelt. They descended over rough stones andg rael close to the water’s edge.

            “See where Nameoke dwells!” she exclaimed, “a brave dwelling, where she sleeps and is lulled by the lapsing of the waters; but we must have a light.”

            With one stroke of her mace she caused the fire to stream from a huge fragment of flint upon a handful of dry moss, and throwing on this pieces of wood that had floated from some wreck, in an inconceivable short time a fire flamed up through the cavern, and sent across the water toward the vessel a brilliant sheet of light.

            As the flame arose, a current of cold air swept through the fissure, and a hundred different sea-birds went flapping and screaming to the night, and a dozen bats came driving against the fire, attracted by its dazzling splendor.

            “Nameoke is not alone!” said the Sibyl, “hear how the fowls scream at her coming--hark! ’tis the roaring of the sea-monsters, the fire has aroused them from their slumbers.”

            The enchantress now took an iron pot from beneath some sea-weed, and dipping up salt water with a shell, poured it therein. She then cast into the same handfulls of dried herbs, the Heliotrope, Virga-Pastoris, Centaurea, Nepta Verbena, Rosa Serpentina, and other magical plants, to which she added Alloes and bits of Sandal-wood. She then climbed within the fissure of the cavern, and brought down a couple of star-fish, which she cast into the pot, murmuring over it a charm in the Arabian dialect approved by Albumazah.

            Instantly a peculiarly red flame shot forth, and then, a dense smoke smothering it, rose and filled the cavern. Nameoke now murmured a brief incantation, and the smoke again drove away and left the fire flaming as before.

           

            She now strained the decoction through a silver seive, and pouring a part into a goblet of the same metal, threw what remained into the sea.

            “Now drink from this,” exclaimed the enchantress, “and it will render you invisible to all who work charms for evil, and then come with Nameoke, and she will show you things equally novel and wonderful.”

            “Charming Nameoke!” cried the ardent voluptuary, “I have drunk so deeply from the magic of thy beauty, that further sorcery would kill me. Come to my arms,” he cried, clasping her violently; “come to my arms, beautiful Nameoke, and make me the happiest of mortals.”

            “Felton!” said the enchantress, in a tone that surprised him even more than the utterance of his name, “drive away that viper from your bosom, or it will sting you to death. I know you well, and those with whom you are living. Begone from me, unless you can be a man and not a fiend!”

            “Is it any crime to adore one so beautiful?” exclaimed Felton; “is there any thing more innocent than love?”

            “There is love in the heavens and love in the hells,” replied the enchantress; “would Felton see the difference between them?”

            “Love knows no difference,” said the mariner, his visage reddening with excitement, and his eyes gloating on the imperial beauty, with the fire of the black snake when he would charm a bird to its destruction; “Love knows no difference, Nameoke; it must be the same wherever it lives--whether in a palace or in a rocky cavern, whether in your fabled heaven or in your hell.”

            “Nameoke will show you then the difference,” exclaimed the Sibyl, “and when you know how far they are from being the same, perhaps you may fly from the love that curses, and leave her and your evil courses, unless you are too fixed in their delights. This talisman will draw away the veil that hangs between the natural and the spiritual: take it!”

            So saying, she suspended a mystic charm about his neck, while she threw wood of the Aloes, Crocus and Balsam into the fire, and at the same time smote the rocky cavern with her mace: when immediately a peal of thunder burst above their heads with the uproar of an earthquake, and as if a thousand gongs had been smitten at once, the cavern split asunder and Felton found himself with Nameoke in the midst of sylvan scenery, more magnificent and lovely than the imagination of poet ever conceived in dreams of Arabian intoxication.

            They were walking hand in hand in a garden, where apparently Nature and not Art strove for mastery; for though flowers of innumerable genera and species were blooming in every direction and in the exactest order, there was a wildness in the arrangement which was the result of perfect contrivance. In all directions there were walks of natural mosaic, where countless stones of every imaginable shade were blended in beautiful forms; and with such skill had the artist designed them, that pictures of the most exquisite loveliness varied like moving kaleidoscopes, and seemed to carry out the very happiness of the gazer into bodily creations; over these walks, trees of infinite variety, in blossom, in leaf, and hanging heavily with delicious fruits, arched in fantastic garlands, and swung gracefully and wooingly in the air. At the termination of some of the alleys stretched immense lawns, bordered by gently undulating uplands, and swelling higher and higher in the distance, till hills were overtopped by hills more lofty and still more lofty, and at length terminated by majestic mountains, that sent their towering pinnacles among the clouds, and rested in perpetual sunshine.

            In the intermediate spaces were seen meandering rivers, that, winding among the swelling waves of greenery, broke out at intervals like sparkling crystal, where swans were sailing two and two, and plashing in the wider and nearer lake-like harbor that reflected from its unruffled surface the whole landscape and the sky around them; this deepened toward the zenith, from the brightest ultramarine to the celestial sapphire. In all directions fountains of clearest water burst forth in forms that mocked all human contrivance, and painted on the heavens such glorious rainbows, that the heart overflowed with gladness while the eye rested upon them. Here and there were children engaged in innocent delights; some of them sitting on banks of flowers, and weaving garlands for each other’s heads; others sporting with lambs of brilliant whiteness, and bounding with them over the waving hills of close herbage, laughing and shouting, and clapping their hands, the very pictures of careless enjoyment.

            The enchantress watched the mariner, who gazed around with a pale and haggard countenance. Surprise was depicted in his features, but gladness was a stranger to their expression.

            “This is a paradise of beauty and innocence,” exclaimed the enchantress; how does it suit the rover of the seas?”

            “I see no beauty here,” exclaimed Felton, “it is more insipid and irksome than a dead calm.”

            “But look upon the skies,” said the enchantress, “Nameoke would live there for ever; look upon the landscape, see how the lights and shades blend harmoniously around us; can any thing be more lovely than these walks and arbors? See there, how the shadows from those beautiful clouds chase each other over the fields, and are now lost in that dark forest; and these fountains breaking up in so many directions! Nameoke will tell you what they mean. They are the correspondences of divine truth, and they all come from one source. Their reservoir is among those distant mountains, and they fall into the earth and fertilize the ground, and take a thousand different directions, that they may scatter blessings in their path. See how they break up again, and lift themselves toward their heaven, and rise to their source proclaiming truth in their operations; how beautifully they paint Hope among their rainbows!”

            “I see the skies and the clouds, the shadows and the landscape, the fountains and the rainbows,” exclaimed Felton, listlessly; “but I see nothing to give me any pleasure--come, let us go away!”

            “Stay awhile,” said the Sibyl, “Nameoke has not shown you all. Cast your eyes through those smaller mountains, where toward the east they break into a vista, and one more lofty and magnificent than the rest rises toward the heavens: do you see the one Nameoke means?”

            “I see a mountain higher than the others,” replied the mariner.

            “And do you see any thing uncommon about its appearance?”

            “I see a bright light streaming from the side, like a small cloud blushing in the sunset.”

            “Nameoke would have you watch it narrowly,” said the enchantress.

            As she spoke, it came rapidly onward toward the place where they were standing; and as it approached, a strong light streamed as from a centre of intense brightness surrounded by a circular Iris of transcendant glory. As it approached, the day seemed to dawn anew, and the birds among the branches of the fruit trees sang aloud with the bltyhsomeness of morning. The clouds, which were hanging about the sky in thick masses, and showing their fine teints by every variety of contrast, now put on the richest dresses of crimson and gold, while the air seemed at once to be laden with the fragrance of water-lilies and verbena.

            Presently the seeming blaze of radiance assumed another appearance. There was a chariot of mother of pearl, wreathed into a more graceful form than a sea-shell, and shining with enamel, in which diamonds and chrysolites circled it in many beautiful bands, and which was drawn by four white horses abreast, whose manes and tails flowed like masses of silver hair, and whose forms were such as never were before seen by man, so faultlessly were they modelled. As they trampled through the atmosphere, it seemed as if they threw up clouds of gold and diamond dust, which the winds scattered behind them in glittering profusion; while the Iris deepened its colors, and from the midst of it appeared a man more glorious than the Apollo of antiquity, in the lustre and beauty of early manhood, with his head bound by a wreath of myrtle. His face shone brighter than the sun, but so mildly in its lustre, that to gaze on it was peace and tranquillity; and his hair flowed over his shoulders like tresses of shadowing topaz. Presently the chariot reached the ground, and as it touched the earth, the trees snowed down their blossoms, and the vines waved their graceful festoons, and the birds sang so melodiously that it seemed as if an atmosphere of love were the breath that gave life to every thing present.

            On a sudden, the young man who sat in the chariot appeared as two, a bride and a bridegroom. His form and features were unchanged, but there sat by his side a female, whose loveliness was so surpassing all imagination, that it were mockery to attempt its description. Her attention seemed wholly occupied with her partner, and she gazed on him with such gentle and delicate affection that she appeared to be the embodied form of one delicious emotion, which was that of a first and only love. He gazed on her with reciprocal fondness, and seemed like personified thought dwelling enamouredly on the ideal object of its adoration. They were goodness and truth living in inseparable communion.

            The young man now gave his hand to the female, and they both sprang lightly to the ground; and as they walked in one of the arbors like two angels in the paradise of marriage, music, from an undiscovered source, swelled sweetly and softly among the foliage; while the fragrance of the water-lilies and verbena gave place to that of the orange-blossom and the lime.

            The enchantress turned from gazing on those celestial objects to watch the mariner: but his eyes were fixed on the earth. There was gladness every where but in his own bosom, and the cloud that shadowed his heart cast its gloom upon his pallid countenance.

            “Take me,” exclaimed he, “in pity take me from this place, which is more horrible to me than the grave!”

            As he spoke, she smote the ground with her mace, and in the midst of deafening thunder they were once again by the seaside in the cave.

            The sea-breeze sighing fitfully,swept coldly through the fissures of the rocks, and fanned the cheek of Felton, who, on reviving, found Nameoke feeding again the flame that was nearly extinguished.

            “Are you awake?” inquired the maiden.

            “Yes!” replied the mariner; “but I have had a disagreeable dream.”

            “Nameoke would have the dream instructive,” said the enchantress, with a look of melancholy; “return now to thy vessel yonder, and think no more of love, which flames only to destroy.”

            “Never!” exclaimed the mariner, more impassionedly than ever; “the insipidity of such love as comes to us in dreams of flowers and romance will never do for Felton. Nameoke, you must be mine to-night, or I perish!”

            “Stay!” cried the enchantress, “did not Nameoke say that she had seen the star of love in gloom, and the cynosure dropping blood from the bear? Did not Nameoke say that the moon might rise this night drenched in the white-man’s blood?”

            “You are wild, beautiful creature,” cried the enamoured mariner, “but your surprising beauty inflames the more for your very extravagance. By the mad dogs of Hell, you shall be mine this moment!”

            “Hold!” shrieked the Sibyl, as the rude touch of the sailor would have profaned her person! “hold, for the love of heaven.--There is one chance for Felton yet, before the moon shall bathe within his blood--Appear!”

            As she spake, she threw a portion of galbanus, dark sandalus and resin on the fire, and amidst the most deafening clangor that roared from beneath the sea, the cavern of the enchantress was rent from its basis, and she stood with the mariner in the abodes of the damned.

            They were standing in one of a long, interminable succession of caverns that were vaulted by black and smoky rocks, where bats of all horrible forms, were flitting to and fro, and lizards and centipedes were crawling amidst the damp, dripping walls. There was a table spread in the centre of this apartment, with a crimson cloth, and was lighted by flam-beaux of pitch; a number of guests were seated at it, carousing from large goblets, their heads bound with poppy and mandragora, their faces red and glistening with excitement. There were men and women in that company, seated alternately; and the women were in half undress, and were kept from falling to the ground by the arms of the men, so drunken were they with the drink; but every now and then a centipede dropped from the wall into a goblet, and the man and woman who drank from it fell together under the table, when a scream of delight went up from the company, and scared the reptiles on the walls.

            The enchantress shuddered as she gazed on the scene, and the heavy dew stood upon her forehead, when she turned away sick at heart, for a smile of delight was gleaming from the face of her companion.

            “This is rare sport,” said he in a whisper, his heart beating violently with emotion; “let us join them, Nameoke!”

            “Wait awhile,” responded Nameoke, “let us see more before we do that:--Follow me!”

            They passed the hall of the drinkers, and came where were sounds of music and dancing. Here were crowds of both sexes half naked, with their arms encircling each other, and wheeling round the room in the delirium of the waltz; their faces wore an expression of loathing mingled with morbid desire, and their limbs could hardly support their bloated bodies. Some of them were emaciated and haggard; but they all had garlands on their heads, which had been drenched in alcohol, and they were now faded and dry. On one side of the cavern, which was like the other in most respects, but was lighted by lamps of skulls, was a number of persons, who dealt out drink to the dancers, which was cold and black, and seemed to refresh those who drank it, for they lay down on couches and appeared to fall asleep.

            “Let us join these people, charming Nameoke!” exclaimed the heated Felton, let us drink and waltz together;”--and he would have thrown off his clothes for the pastime, but she checked him.

            “Stay a moment,” said she, touching his arm; “follow me yet a little further!”

            They turned now into a hall, the odor of which was horrible. The faint light which served it, came only from the phosphorescence of putrifying bodies. Thousands of coffins were piled up along the walls, and pyramids of skulls and bones of men were heaped up without number. There was a solitary couch in the room, but it was without an occupant.

            “Come,” said the enchantress, “we have seen enough--let us depart--it is time for us to begone.”

            “Not without one hour of love with my Nameoke, --see, our bridal bed is ready!” exclaimed the infatuated man.

            And he seized her in his arms, and would have thrown her on the couch in the midst of all the horrors of the grave.

            “Enough!” screamed the enchantress, and she smote the solid rock as she spake amidst the wailings and blasphemies of a million dissolute spirits; and the same terrific sounds brought her with her companion once more where the sea-breeze was moaning in her cave.

            Felton passed his hand across his eyes, as if to relieve himself from a sudden attack of giddiness, and exclaimed--

            “You shall not escape me so easily, fascinating enchantress; your charms and your sorceries only inflame me the more.--By the powers of evil, you shall be mine this moment!”

            “Stay!” cried the enchantress, while her eye gleamed with wildness; “for the love of heaven, stay. Felton! you have seen a picture of heavenly love and its reward, and a picture of hellish love and its retribution; Nameoke might have shown you better and worse. Choose now between them! The three sisters are ruled by the stars, and the stars are ruled by the will of man.”

            “Nameoke!” exclaimed the mariner, frantic with passion, attempting to spring towards her.

            “Forbear!” replied the enchantress--“the star of love is even now in mourning, and the pole-star of the mariner reddens for thy life; fly me ere it be too late.”

            “I care not for the stars, but for Nameoke only; then come to my bosom, for I will not endure delay!”

            The expression of his countenance too well proclaimed his purpose, and he was already springing toward his victim, when her mace smote on his forehead like a thunderbolt. He fell like an ox before the altar; and as his body rolled to the mouth of the cave, the round red moon came up from out the water, and the prophecy of Nameoke was fulfilled.

CHAPTER X.

 

Either tropic now        ’Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven, the clouds,

            From many a horrid rift abortive, poured

            Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water and fire

            In ruin reconciled.


Paradise Regained A brave vessel,    Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,

            Dash’d all to pieces.


Tempest          The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath,

            And these are of them.

Macbeth.

           

            The moon had scarcely been a moment above the horizon, streaming her loveless light on the cold and tremulous ocean, when a deep black cloud, that had been slowly unrolling from the west, threw its impenetrable drapery between her and the earth. The wind had been gently breathing from the south-west, its tranquil current disturbed only at intervals by the fitful gusts that broke in upon its quietude, like our passionate emotions which interrupt the repose of the soul,--those spirit-birds of prey that hover over our purer affections, and veil them awhile with the shadow of their wings. It now suddenly veered round to the north-west, and distant thunder rolling heavily from the same direction, foretokened a conflict of the elements. For a few minutes afterward its very breathing seemed to cease, and a sense of suffocation was felt, as if for a time the electric fluid had drawn to its mighty reservoir the principle of life. Though the moon was up, there was no light, and the stillness of nature appeared like the silence of a man before his last agony of dissolution.

            Presently a light breeze came puffing from the north-west, and a few large drops fell heavily to earth,--when all at once a flash of chain lightning burst forth from the exploding clouds, blinding and bewildering with its intenseness, accompanied by a simultaneous crash of thunder that made the heart sick by its appalling power. The rain now poured down like the water sheets of a cataract, and the blue lightning, with incessant fires, flashed fearfully from the clouds, the wind from the north-west blowing with increasing violence. It seemed as if the fountains of the great deep had again been broken up-- as if God’s covenant with man had been cancelled for his crimes.

            Notwithstanding the comparatively secure harbor that the Dolphin occupied, there was considerable danger to be apprehended from the wind, which the commander knew could not be relied on should the gale continue. Accordingly all hands were piped on deck, additional anchors were let go, and every needful preparation was made to meet any contingency. But the thunder-storm, after raging with great violence for three hours, gradually died away, and the wind hauling round to the north-east, the rain continued to fall in cold, drizzling showers.

            As the day broke, Fitzvassal was no longer doubtful about the weather. Though the lower currents of the atmosphere were setting from the north-east, the clouds above were flying in other directions, and thin vapory mists scudding beneath the heavier and denser, showed that the rain would certainly continue, and probably be accompanied by extraordinary gales.

            He now regretted, that while the wind was blowing from the north-west, he had not availed himself of the advantage and run out to sea; for though he believed that his anchors would hold the vessel in any event that might occur, he felt that the open, unobstructed ocean, with a wind off shore, was better than an indifferent harbor in a gale. Possibly, however,(was his consolatory reflection,) the Dolphin could not have cleared Cape Cod in time, and he knew Nantucket Shoals too well to prefer their danger to one of infinitely less magnitude.

            Unlike the thunder-storm that heralded it, the north-easter came on gradually. It is generally so with the most violent tempests. In consequence of the change of the wind, the waves rolled in upon the rocks with tremendous energy, which seemed now, as the day advanced, to increase every instant; but the wind did not blow with such strength that any vessel might not safely attempt a harbor along the coast; and in the early part of the day several ships and brigs, with some smaller craft, were seen beating into Salem and Boston harbors, the anchoring-grounds of which they reached with little difficulty.

            Towards evening, as the tide approached its full flood, which was uncommonly high, the wind began to rise, and soon raged like a tornado. The roar of the waters could be heard even across the lower harbor of Boston as it thundered on Nantasket Beach; coming, too, against the wind from a distance of many miles, and partly drowned by the din that sounded from the iron-bound coast of Massachusetts.

            The sublimity of the scene that now presented itself cannot be imagined, though it was soon to be surpassed; for it is not while the storm is raging that the waves run the highest; but when the violence of the tempest has abated, and the winds have subsided to rest,--then it is that the vexed waters swell and heave with the most fearful fury, and show their perfect resemblance to the action of human passion:--and how near to spiritual influences is the analogy of the rains and the waves! For who, when the ocean is troubled, and the billows toss him with unrest, has not seen him tranquilized by the descending drops from heaven? So when the agitated bosom heaves with its lacerated affections, our heaven-commissioned tears fall fast and soothingly upon them, and leave us in the peace of the angels.

            While the Dolphin was rocking on the waters, Fitzvassal stood on the quarter-deck with Morgan, gazing on the surrounding conflict with no little uneasiness. The surf ran so high, that it would have been madness to attempt forcing a boat in among the rocks; and, notwithstanding their belief that Felton had crossed the beach the night before, and was now prevented from returning to Nahant, both the commander and his pilot could not help expressing their apprehension that all was not well with the first officer of the Dolphin.

            “Morgan,” said the commander, addressing the pilot after they had been standing together some time in silence, “I wish I could only get a glimpse of Mr. Felton somewhere; for though we could not take him off at such an ugly time as this, it would be some satisfaction to know that he is in the land of the living.”

            “He’s safe enough, I guess,” replied Morgan, who seemed to be willing to afford all the encouragement he could to hope for the best, for the reason that he himself feared the worst; “he’s safe enough, I guess, Sir; he’s only larking about Lynn, sailor fashion. He’ll be heaving in sight by and bye, depend on’t.”

            “But Mr. Felton has always been punctual to an hour whenever he has been ashore, and I can hardly believe that he would have run the risk of going over to Lynn. But if he did go, why, it will be difficult for him to get back again at present.”

            “As for that matter,” said Morgan, “he can manage to get back well enough arter he gets through his lark, if he starts at low tide; howsomever, it would be a tough job jest now. He’s pluck enough though, and knows what’s what; but I wouldn’t give much for all the petticoat he got on Nahant this time.”

            “Morgan!” exclaimed the commander, looking at him steadfastly, “you remind me of a horrible dream I had last night.”

            “What was it?” inquired the pilot, with an expression of suddenly-awakened interest.

            “It’s of no consequence,” replied the other, turning away abruptly, as if inclined to obliterate the remembrance of it; “thank heaven, I don’t believe in dreams.”

            “But I do!” exclaimed Morgan, “for I’ve had’en tell as true as a book. Did you ever hear of my dream of the spectre-ship?--Hullo! what’s all this?” continued he, changing his tone to one of more earnest inquiry, as he looked seaward.

            The commander turned his eyes in the direction indicated, and involuntarily started backward.

           

            “Bring me the glass, Morgan, instantly!” he demanded.

            Morgan did as he was ordered, when the commander, having rapidly adjusted the instrument, narrowly examined the object of their attention. It was a brig scudding before the wind, and heading south-west by west, as if she intended to make a harbor. She was leaning down to the blast like a half-stripped oak in a hurricane, and as she ploughed the huge waves, the foam boiled up above her cutwater like the surf of the cataract rapids.

            “By heavens!” cried Fitzvassal, after carefully observing her movements, and throwing out repeated ejaculations of concern, “that brig, Morgan, is in a dangerous way; only look at her!”

            Morgan took the glass, and after a few moments’ examination, replied, with an emphasis of the utmost excitement--

            “You are right! you are right!--the wind has hauled out to the east, and will have the south with it presently,--she has got a lee-shore, that brig;-- God have mercy on her, whoever she is! See there, Sir! she has made signal for a pilot--the devil himself couldn’t get aboard of her in such a storm as this; do, for mercy’s sake, look at her!”

            The violence of the wind had now brought the vessel near enough to be clearly seen from the deck of the Dolphin, where all hands had collected on the forecastle to watch her dangerous progress.

           

            “Whoever commands that vessel,” said Fitzvassal in a low and deliberate tone, expressive of the deep interest he felt in the fate of the stranger, “understands his business. He was right in bringing his royal-masts and top-gallant yards on deck.”

            “I never saw any thing to beat that,” exclaimed Morgan, whose eyes almost started from his head with astonishment, as, leaning over the tafferel of the vessel, his feet shuffled on the quarter-deck from his mere inability to be quiet: “that fellow understands a thing or two!”

            “She is going right before the wind, Morgan!”

            “Ay, ay, Sir; and if the wind would haul another point to the east, and take a little of the north with it, that poor devil might yet get into Boston harbor; but the way she has it now, there is a small chance for her.”

            “That’s right! my good fellow, that’s right!” exclaimed Fitzvassal, who was so highly excited by the movements of the brig as not to heed what the pilot was saying; “that’s right, close reef your main top-sail!”

            As he spoke, the close reefing of the sail was executed with a promptness and precision which drew a loud murmur of approbation from the crowded forecastle of the Dolphin.

            The brig was evidently relieved by this movement, and was still more so when, a moment after, the intrepid sailors sprang to the treadropes of the foresail, and reefed that also in obedience to the speaking-trumpet below them.

            “Gallantly done, my boys! gallantly done, that!” shouted the commander of the Dolphin, as if the mariners of the stranger brig were in hearing of his voice, or were under his own command: “now set the foretopmast stay-sail!” cried he, elevating his voice--“away there, for your lives!”

            As if in obedience to that voice, the foretopmast staysail of the brig was immediately set, and the vessel, for a few seconds after, seemed to be feeling the wind north-east by north.

            At this juncture, while the brig was about three miles distant from Nahant, bearing hardly two points clear of the Sunken Ledge, the tide being nearly high, and the wind and current setting in the same direction, so that the danger was not so apparent to them on board, the wind suddenly shifted several points to the southward, and at once revealed to them the appalling danger of their vessel.

            “God have mercy on her now!” groaned Fitzvassal, “there is nothing but a miracle can save her!”

            The manœuvres of the brig were now most painfully interesting to every one that observed them, “and the boldest held his breath for a time.” The unhappy vessel immediately hauled on a wind in the desperate attempt to work herself out of danger. Fitzvassal seized the hand of Morgan, lost to every other consideration in his overwhelming anxiety for the stranger that was now exposed to the worst possible lee-shore, and seemed doomed to inevitable destruction.

            “That’s right! bravely done!” exclaimed Fitzvassal, “set your trysail! Right, again! Now your double-reefed foretopsail! Well done, my fine fellows! Thunder and Mars! was there ever such a gale as this!”

            “Hurrah!” vociferated the pilot, “she feels it now --that seamanship was to some purpose.”

            The brig was now evidently wearing away from her dangerous bearings; but though she had a possible chance of clearing the Sunken Ledge, she made too much lee-way to afford any security to her hopes. She had already approached near enough to Nahant to discover, by the boiling of the water, that a terrific reef of rocks lay right in the course she had just avoided. The commander of that devoted vessel was unquestionably master of his art, and in the midst of the horrors that surrounded him, had displayed all the skill it was possible to exercise in his dreadful situation.

            Since the trysail had been set, and the double-reefed foretopsail, the brig ploughed deeper furrows, and tossed the foam about her like a wild horse chased by a lion. The wind raged with such power that the waves were torn up from their ocean-bed, and scattered like the driving rain in the blast. Never had the spectators of the scene witnessed so tremendous a tempest. Fortunately for the Dolphin, her anchors and cables proved sufficient for the trial, though she rocked and pitched about most dangerously for her safety.

            “She makes too much lee-way, Morgan!” said the commander of the schooner, “she can’t clear these rocks, I’m afraid.”

            “What ought she to de?” inquired the pilot; “what would you do, Captain, in such a case as this; for, by the ghost of my great grandmother, I can’t see any get off in such a fix as that!”

            “It would depend somewhat on the quality of my spars,” replied the commander. “It is one of those tough cases that a sailor doesn’t like to think of, much less to experience. Would to God the wind would shift an atom to the north.”

            “Amen!” ejaculated Morgan.

            The devoted brig, in the meanwhile, gained rapidly on the reef, and the hearts of the mariners, steeled as they were to extraordinary danger, quailed with instinctive horror. They were but a mile from Nahantrocks, where the surf ran mountain high; and it was but too apparent that if they could clear the Sunken Ledge, their chance was still but one in a thousand of escaping a watery grave; for the brig must have run down the Dolphin if it escaped the Ledge. Their chance was in the desperate movement that followed.

            “Look! Morgan, only look!” cried Fitzvassal, stretching both arms in the direction of the brig, and turning his face round to the pilot; “she is going to make the last, great move;--every thing now depends on the toughness of her pine and canvass!”

            “Good luck to that Captain, for a fine fellow;” said Morgan, in a tone that indicated his entire interest in the stranger.

            As they spoke, the close reef was let out from her main-topsail, which was hoisted up.

            “Now for it! Now for it!” breathed Fitzvassal, in hardly enunciated tones.

            Immediately the brig bowed before the force of the superadded canvass, burying herself in the foam.

            “God of mercy! it is going!--it is going!” exclaimed Fitzvassal; it is all over with her now!-- God have mercy on her crew!”

            While he was speaking, the main-topmast bent like a strained bow--then cracked, and went by the board,--while the main-topsail and the trysail were torn literally to ribbons, leaving the ill-fated vessel perfectly unmanageable, and wholly at the mercy of the storm. To keep her by the wind was now impossible; her head payed off, and she ran before the tempest in despair.

            Amidst the roaring of the waters, the shrill whistling of the winds, and the beating of the surge, came the agonizing shrieks of the passengers and crew of the doomed vessel, as now, unmindful of the helm, she rolled and pitched about at times with her broadside to the gale.

            In this moment of abandonment, a gleam of hope still remained to those on board of her, that the brig might possibly drive harmless over the Sunken Ledge. That hope, in its fruition, would have been fatal to the Dolphin, and perhaps as destructive to herself; for a cussion of the two would have been almost unavoidable, and either they would have chafed themselves to pieces, or the Dolphin would have been run down and foundered. It was a moment of intense agony to them. The hope of the one was the despair of the other. The sacrifice of all on board one or both of them seemed inevitable!

            Alas! the hope that gleamed for a moment on the hearts of the devoted crew was soon to be quenched for ever. The brig once more turned her bow towards the Sunken Ledge, and gaining fresh headway in the hurricane, amidst the heart-rending cries of the voyagers, drove fast upon the treacherous reef. For a moment the whole fabric shook like an earthquake, and as the sea roared over her decks, her remaining masts and spars were rent away, carrying with them stays, rattlings and all, in one fell swoop of destruction.

            The night was now fast closing in--coming “at a stride,” to throw its mantle over a scene of horror that defies description. The last trace of despair exhibited to the appalled gaze of the spectators, was the vision of a dozen men and as many women lashed to the weather gunwale of the brig, that lay careened on the rocks with her lee buried in the ocean. Her whole deck was exposed to view; but in a few minutes no knowledge would have been had of their perilous endurance, except from the frantic screams of the people on board.

            The feelings of Fitzvassal and his crew may haply be imagined by those who have been similarly placed, where the agonizing cries of the dying have appealed to them in heart-rending entreaties under circumstances where relief was impossible.

            We will now transfer the reader to the peninsula of Nahant, where scenes were in the interim enacted that may at the present day seem incredible, but which, about the time we refer to, were known and authentically reported in every part of the known world.

            We live in the iron age of science, when men run to and fro, and knowledge abounds. We have seen, so to speak, the consummation of the sensual church, when the spirit of selfishness has completed its insane philosophy in the reception of exclusive egotism or in dreams of pantheistic romance; we have stripped spiritual truth of all the habiliments by which she can be known to man; we have torn away the beautiful vesture of holiness, and suffered her to grow cold and die in the chill atmosphere of the world; we have reduced all experience to faith, and our principles to generalized facts; we cannot see a truth that is not tangible by induction, we cannot recognize a good which does not contribute to wealth. What is art, what is literature, what is religion in this utilitarian age? There is no art but mechanic art that meets with encouragement, there is no literature called for but what the prurient irritation of a morbid body desires, there is no religion but the worship of the idol Self.

            Men would at this day deny the principles of the Scriptures as boldly and as openly as they reject the testimony of Cotton Mather, Chief Justice Holt, and half the contemporary judges of Christendom, in relation to witchcraft, if they dared to do so. And is it strange, that they who are ashamed to be called or even to be thought Christians, should strive hard to put down all belief in those horrible forms of spirituality, which, if we admit them to be true, go so far to demonstrate the existence of their beautiful opposites, the reality of angelic beings--the certainty of a state of living which to the worldly and self-sufficient would be any thing but congenial?

            Our fathers have been studying psychology ever since the Mosaic world began, and we, their descendants, know absolutely nothing about it yet. A vast many tomes of curious speculation have found the present generation as ignorant as were their renowned authors. There was a time when a true psychology existed,--or rather, when a perception of the soul’s nature was permitted to man; and hence we see a ray of truth struggling here and there in the writings of Plato and his followers, though nothing more than a ray is discoverable. A gem of inestimable value has been lost by man, and because his children have been vainly groping for ages in the wrong path to find it, they have at last concluded not only that there never was such a lose, but that the reported existence of the gem itself is only an historical blunder. Lord Shaftsbury’s test of truth is nothing more than a criterion of human firmness, precisely as is any other form of persecution. The ridicule of the encyclopedists did prostrate truth in France, and the persecution of the English ecclesiastics did shake the fortitude of Cranmer. The truth was not essentially affected because religion became unfashionable in Paris, and the faith of the English dissenter was not touched by his temporary recantation. It is time to overhaul and cast away many of our old saws and most of our modern instances.

            Since the sacrifice of Felton, an apparent change had taken place in the feelings of Nameoke. She had been disappointed in her efforts to avert evil, and she bitterly lamented the fate of the unhappy wretch, whose uncontrolable impulses had hurried him to his death. Often would she suddenly start from her fixed posture of thoughtfulness, and, as if to fly from some predominant reflection, hurry away among the rough passes of the rocks, and chant her wild songs to the waves. Then as suddenly would she return to her cave, and, rekindling the fire, go through her mystic enchantments.

            It was but a moment before the unhappy vessel struck, that Nameoke, in one of those sudden fits of transition, hastened toward Pulpit Rock, her favorite observatory when the sky was clear at night, or when the moon shone bright upon the waters.

            It was already growing dark, but objects were as yet sufficiently discernible. As she approached the cliff, she shrunk back with horror at the spectacle she beheld. The brig had already struck upon the reef, and her masts were going by the board at the very moment Nameoke arrived at the bank she would have to descend before she could reach the rock. The interval between is scooped out in a craggy glen, over which the surf was then beating furiously, so that it would have been impassable to the boldest adventurer.

            In the midst of this “hell of waters,” on a large isolated fragment of rock, from which the Sunken Ledge could casily be discerned through a rift in the craggy mass, Nameoke saw two hideous women, whose outward forms were expressive of the evil which they loved. One of them looked like a disinterred body that had died of the plague, her livid face blotched with the death-spots of the pestilence, her pale blue eyes turning askant with the glazed and suspicious expression of insanity. Her features were sharp, her chin prominent, and her under-jaw moved to and fro while she mumbled diabolical sentences. The other was a short black woman, her face deeply pock-marked, and her features of the very worst stamp of African ugliness. She, too, looked as if she had been dug up from the grave, a specimen from the catacombs of Egypt.

            Between these detestable shapes Nameoke discovered the body of a dead man stretched out upon the rock; they were squatting one on each side of it, and they were clapping their hands, and swaying their bodies in the agitation of frantic mirth, while their skinny fingers stopped only to point at the devastation that was going on in the storm.

            “Ho! ho!” screamed the black hag, “the charm works rarely, Sister!”

            “Sith,” said the other, “we never saw such sport at the Brocken.”

            And the crags echoed the ha! ha! of their spectre-laugh, till Nameoke’s blood ran cold, familiar as she had been with scenes of similar horror.

            “Brave fun for the hells! brave fun for the hells!” chuckled the livid witch, her long gray locksstreaming to the gale, and her skeleton-looking arms creaking at every joint as she tossed them about deliriously. “Ha! ha! ha! The thunder-spirits have felt the charm, and the dragon-tongued lightnings are coming to the festival. We shall have brave corpses to-night!”

            As she spoke, there was a noise like the roar of subterranean artillery, and flashes of infernal fire broke out from the scathed rocks, and streamed from the sea brighter than the corruscations of the Greenland Aurora. By this terrific glare the awful condition of the lost brig was plainly visible, for the light seemed to be concentrated on that alone, leaving the whole surrounding back-ground darker than the depths of midnight. Every form on board the brig was clearly defined. All order and discipline among the crew was gone, and several of the sailors were seen quaffing large draughts in their despair, which, by the expression of their faces, had evidently brought on madness. Some were in the attitude of prayer, and others were seen stretching their clenched hands to the clouds, and howling their imprecations on providence. Among the passengers, there were two that appeared to be lovers, for they hung upon each other’s necks with passionate tenderness, and seemed to be lost to every thing but those last precious moments of endearment.

            “Ho! ho!” ejaculated the black hag--“the henbane works, does it? Scorch brains! come madness! drown all! Your resurrection-germs shall wander on the cold ocean--they shall not have a church-yard to grow merry in. Fall to pieces! split asunder! stifle in the brine! stifle in the brine! I did it all! ’twas my work--I boiled the henbane for them!”

            “Ha! ha! ha!” hysterically laughed the pale monster, “and if you did, I’ll finish the deed with a vengeance; and then we’ll away to the Brocken. Sha’n’t we have a rare tale for the Hartz to-night? Sha’n’t we kiss the goat merrily, Sister?”

            As she spoke, big drops of laughter-brine rolled from her evil eyes, and her frame shook with maniac mirthfulness.

            “Now for it, Sister!”

            With these words she tore a handful of hair from the scalp of the dead man beneath her, and tossing it to the winds, exclaimed,--

            “Finish! finish! finish! Prince of the Air, thy promise!”

            At this moment the wind seemed to double its violence, and a wave, enormously large, came towering on from the sea. In an instant the brig was overwhelmed, and as the wave rolled back, not a vestige remained of the ruin.

            “Monsters!” screamed Nameoke, whose horror had till now made her speechless, “Monsters and not women! are ye at last satisfied with the blood of the innocent?”

            They turned upon her their hideous visages while she spoke, as if they had all along known that she was their witness, and pointing to the corpse between them, laughed loud and scornfully at Nameoke.

            The thunder-peals now followed the fierce lightning with astounding power, and the hurricane was at the height of its violence. As Nameoke stood in its fury, petrified by the hellish spectacle before her, a wave larger then the rest bounded over the intervening surge, bearing on its crested head the lovers who had been seen on board the devoted brig, still alive, and holding each other with the energy of despair. They were both in the bloom and beauty of youth; their hopes, their wishes, their happiness, alas! lost, lost to earth for ever! The receding wave had left them in the space between the hag-demons and Nameoke, and their inflamed eyes fell suddenly upon them.

            “Save them! for the love of the great God, save them, save them!” cried Nameoke; and she sprang with superhuman alacrity to minister to their sufferings, and, if possible, to shield them from the grave.

            The attempt was in vain. The power of evil was for a time apparently triumphant. With a scream of frenzy the two hags seized the lovers, and with inconceivable strength threw them headlong into the sea. Nameoke swooned away at the sight. When she revived, she found herself alone among the rocks. The day had dawned; the storm had died away to a clam; but not the slightest trace was ever found of the shipwrecked vessel, but her anchor on the Sunken Ledge.

END OF VOL. I.