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It was the original intention of the author of the "Dancing Feather" to have extended that work to fifty chapters, or the usual length of a novel of two volumes. But the editor of the paper to whom it was communicated in weekly numbers, requested, after six chapters had been published, that it should be limited to ten chapters. This desire of the publisher the author complied with, though with injury both to the plot and the harmonious construction of the Romance. The favorable reception of "The Dancing Feather," even in this abridged character, induced its publisher to reprint and re-issue it in a cheap octavo form. Its unlooked for popularity in this shape, and the frequent calls for it even now, has induced the writer to carry out, in some degree, his first intention, and to present the public with a Sequel, commencing with the night of the mysterious departure from her anchoring ground of the schooner "The Dancing Feather"—to the story with which title the reader is referred.
Now a word in reply to certain questions which have been very perseveringly put to the author in relation to the identity of Morris Græme and Carleton, by several readers of both sexes, who have done him the honor to glance over the pages of "The Dancing Feather"; to which, as they are all embraced in the following anonymous note, some time since received through the post, we shall reply by copying our answer to the writer:
Mr. Author:Sir—I have just finished the perusal of your novel, "The Dancing Feather," and must say it has greatly interested me, and especially my aunt, to whom I read it aloud. But we are both equally at fault about one of your chief characters; and taking cover under an anonymous signature, I have resolved to write to you to know all about it. The difficulty (and who can bear a mystery, especially at the end of a novel, where all mysteries ought to be cleared up?) I want to have explained is this:— Aunt says the buccanneer Captain was Morris Græme, and I am supported by two cousins of mine in the opinion that it was Carleton; and I think I shall show you, Mr. Author, that you have made a mistake; for the following conversation occurs in the fifth chapter between Hayward and Morris Græme:
` "—Recent events have confirmed my suspicions that you are a—"
"What?" demanded Græme in a slow tone.
"Nay—I may be wrong. But I firmly believe I saw you one of the foremost in a party of freebooters who boarded and robbed the brig in which I came passenger."
Morris Græme pleasantly smiled at this charge, twirled his mustache and laughed aloud.
"Truly, Hayward, you have a good memory. I was not there, nor could you have seen me therefore." '
This settles the question here. But in the last chapter comes the difficulty! In this are these words from the lips of "Morris Græme," when he surprises Blanche on the shore at Colonel Powel's country seat—
` "—But you (to Blanche) whose name I have breathed when my thoughts were purest, pardon me the insult that I dared to offer on our former meeting, and pray for me when I am gone." '
Now, Mr. Author, if Morris Græme was the "captain," how is it that you have made him say, with the evident intention that the reader should receive it as the fact, that he was not there? If Morris Græme was the leader, where was Carleton—who hovers like a mist among the scenes; indistinct, and hardly a character of the novel, and yet, the pirate chief?— Either Morris Græme and Carleton were one and the same person, under two names, which I cannot believe, (though my brother Tom does, and insists upon it,) or in the last chapter you meant to have written "Carleton" instead of "Morris Græme," and made the former the hero of the interview with Blanche. Tell me if this is not the true state of the matter, and that you very unpardonably and carelessly forgot the plot of your own story, and left your "intelligent" readers in as great a mist as you have left Carleton. You may reply by a line in Mr. Clapp's Evening Gazette, which my uncle takes, or through the Post Office, to
Your humble servant,J. T. T.
P. S.—Who did Blanche marry, and what did you hurry her out of the way so soon for? You say he is a "naval hero;" but she had no right to marry any hero, "naval or military," who did not figure in the story! I don't like the way Blanche is laid on the shelf. Newburyport, Oct. 10, 1842.Miss —; for such the style and character of your letter, as well as the graceful penmanship betray you, I acknowledge the honor of receiving your inquisitorial missile, duly by post, and take pleasure in replying to it. I must confess myself guilty of a slip of the pen, and throw myself upon the clemency of the fair tribunal before which I find myself arraigned. Carleton is a real character. His outline was only sketched when I altered the frame-work of my story, to reduce it to the size desired by its publisher. If the original plan had been carried out, Carlton would have come forth in bold relief from his "misty indistinctness," and been the hero of the novel. But as ten chapters were quite too confined a space for two heroes to figure in, I resolved quietly to drop him and make his Lieutenant, Morris Græme, my chief character. But some of the chapters had already been printed with Carleton a principal character. I therefore was under the necessity of alluding to him occasionally lest some reader, as observing and critical as you have proved yourself to have been, should accuse me of forgetting a personage of my story (for my readers were not in the secret') My error was, I perceive, and which has given rise to the difficulty to which I owe the honor of this correspondence, in quite forgetting at the "winding up" that such a "misty" personage as Carleton had been introduced, and referring his acts to Morris Græme! If Carleton's name had taken the place of Morris Græme's in the text, the mystery you speak of would not have occurred: nor would the honor of receiving your note, now have been mine to acknowledge! If I should one day de cide on publishing a Sequel to "The Dancing Feather," be assurred that neither Carleton nor Blanch Hillary, the true hero and heroine of that novel in its original form! shall be forgotten; nor the subsequent career of Morris Græme (whom I should still, perhaps, make the hero;) for the supposition with which a clever friend of mine interpolated, unknown to me, the last paragraph but one in that print, that the Dancing Feather with her Captain and Lieutenants had foundered in the Gulf of Mexico, turns out to have been incorrect; the vessel in question proving to have been a Carthagenian Cruiser, on board which Red Fred had shipped. The career of the Dancing Feather, and with her, of Carleton and Morris Græme, from the night of her bird-like flight from the cove is fully known to me and may one day afford material for a second Tale, in which rest assured, fair questioner, I shall take pleasure in explaining the difficulties with which you have charged me, touching the first story. In the meanwhile I have the honor to be, very sincerely
Yours,The Author of the Dancing Feather.
P. S.—In reply to your postcript, usually the most important part of a lady's letter, I answer that Blanche should have been the heroine and married the hero. But what could I do, dear young lady, condensing forty chapters into one? But heroines sometimes survive their marriage and are heroines still. If I should publish a sequel you may hear of Blanche yet, and her "naval hero" to boot. To J. T. T.In fulfilment of the intention hinted at in the above letter, we now beg leave to offer to the readers of "The Dancing Feather" "A Sequel" to that novel, in which the original plan is carried out; though with certain alterations in the construction, as the introduction of new characters and new scenes have rendered necessary.
We will introduce our story with quoting a closing paragraph from the previous Tale:
"That night the head of Blanche Ilillary rested uncasily upon her pillow, for many a wild vision flitted through it. About midnight she rose from her couch and gazed upon the beautiful scene without. The round, full moon was high up in the Heaven and shone on the tided waters whose surface grew each moment rougher under the effect of a fresh and increasing breeze from the west. The Dancing Feather rode restlessly at anchor as if impatient to spread her snowy wings and skim the waters like a bouyant seabird. And lo! as she gazed upon the schooner Blanche Hillary thought she perceived figures moving on her deck. Was this a sport of her imagination? Some figures clustered near the schooner's hows, and it actually seemed as if her head swung free!— Sluggishly now she shook out her sails as if by an act of volition. There could be no mistake! Up went the foretopsail! the square foresail, jib and flying jib were hoisted simultaneously! A tall figure suddenly appeared at the stern with his hand resting on the tiller; the bellying sails filled freely with the wind; and, with a rushing sound like that of many wings, the Dancing Feather was once more upon the waters!"
As the gray turrets of the Gothic villa, before which the schooner had been riding at anchor, blended with the dark woodlands, that towered around in the hazy distance, the tall helmsman left his post to another, and walking to the stern, stood, with folded arms, gazing in the direction of the villa until it was wholly lost to his view by an intervening headland.
"Now, fare thee well, sweet Blanche," he said with tenderness mingled with bitterness in his deep tones. "But twice only have I met thee, yet twice has my inmost being been moved by your grace and beauty! Yet I am despised—nay pitied and forgiven' A criminal! to be pardoned—an outcast to be commisserated! yes such am I; and for me to think of her is folly. Love me she never can— pure and proud and beautiful as she is! How her lip curved as she bid me leave her—yet methinks I did discover a tear glittering amid the dark lashes that ever keep in softest shadow her deep blue eyes. But on me never will beam those eyes in love—never
"Vide last chapter of "The Dancing Feather." shall they upon another!" These last words were spoken with sudden and intense feeling, while his dark eyes flashed beneath his meeting brows like meteors beneath a storm-cloud. He turned and paced the deck with a fiery step, which gradually slackened and, with his manner, became subdned and slow. He leaned over the taffrail and gazed into the dark tide which, coldly silvered by the moon gleamed past as the vessel flew onward. Suddenly a hand was lightly laid upon his shoulder. He started, for he had heard no footstep, and looked into a face that fixed its gaze upon his. It was a woman's—oh, how darkly beautiful! how full of expression, love and passion! she moved not her hand from its gentle and timid resting place upon his arm; but she bent down ward her gaze as it encountered the stern, angry surprised glance that met her look.
"Eve!" he at length repeated in a tone of displeasure.
"Be not angry, dear Carlton," she said laying her other arm upon his shoulder as if to soothe and caress him into gentleness.
"How came you on board? not in the boats, surely? Did I not forbid your following me further! We are nothing to each other now, Eve!"
"Yet you are every thing to me, Carleton?" she answered passionately. "For you I have sacrificed all dear to woman in this life; nay all dear to her being in the life to come! for my love to you is crime to Heaven, for I worship thee and thou art my god! In thee I live and exist, and out of thee all is dark and unlovely! Heaven is where thou art—hell where thou art not! Nay, Carleton bend not those eyes upon me in wrath, that once only beamed upon me with love, and shone ever into my heart like the summer-sunshine upon the fountain, in whose faithful bosom mirrored its own bright image! Thus is thy image mirrored in my bosom, Carleton, and though thou, my sun, seest it not for the clouds that thy wayward humor hath drawn between, yet 'tis there!"
"This is idle, Eve," he said with impatience, yet in a tone in which her sensitive ear detected a gentler mood than he would show. "But how is it, that I find you here when four hours since I left you in the city?"
"Carleton your presence is to me life! your absence the darkness of the tomb to my soul! You told me not—you breathed not to me, when you bade me, farewell, and commanded me to forget you, that you were going to leave me forever. My heart is a faithful monitor, and love hath an omnisciency that is not of earth. I secretly followed you to the place in the Park, where you met Morris Græme, and heard your plot arranged! I heard you tell him how you had the day before seen the schooner riding at her anchor, and was confident that with twenty good men, you could cut her out, and that it must be done to night. Morris Græme told you he could have the men in one hour, if you would provide boats to proceed to the cove"
"And you overheard all this! Stupid that I was! Others were listeners too!"
"No! I stood cautiously in the shadow of the tree beneath which you met. After being satisfied of your intention, I watched your departure together. I then made up my mind, and returning to my room, selected a wardrobe and seeking the carriage-stand, drove rapidly along the water-road until I saw the spiral masts of the "Dancing Feather," glittering in the moonlight above the tree. Here dismissing the coach I proceeded on foot through the wooded lawn to the silent cove. All was still and strangely beautiful. I thought sweetly of you Carleton, kindly of all things, and solemnly of Heaven! The stars gazed down holy and still like eyes of love and watchfulness; the branches of the trees depending over the water waved gently in the low night wind; the moon-beams slept upon the quiet waters, and the green-sward beneath the tree, smiled as they fell through the branches of the trees upon it. Oh, I shall never forget the thoughts that filled my soul as I stood in that spot of lonely loveliness and peace! I could hear my heart beat! My eyes filled with tears, and my inmost nature felt that God was there! The stars repeated God is here! the winds sighed through the grove, God is here! the moonlit waters smiled—God is here! and a voice in my bosom echoed God is everywhere. Oh Carleton, if you had been with me you would have believed!"
"But, my little Eve," he said smiling and tapping her brow "this deck is no Bishop's desk. I would hear thy tale, rather!" His brow though still slightly overcast was no longer forbidding, and as his features were lighted up with the smile that came upon them like the "summer sunshine," and were exceedingly fine and expressive. She smiled as he smiled, like "a fountain reflecting the sun-beams," and leaning her head a moment upon his manly bosom, she breathed in a low, grateful tone "Good, noble, generous Carleton!"
"But to thy story Eve! I would know the mystery of thy presence here," he said playfully; "but do not give me a history, child, I beseech thee! Thy faith is a pretty one and certainly hath made thee most poetical!"
"I looked along the dark shadowy shore of the romantic inlet and at length discovered a boat secured to the bank. I sprung into this and releasing it from the land with the aid of an oar soon reached the schooner, which, as I approached it, seemed like a beat tiful thing of life sleeping upon the water. As I stepped on board I sent the boat shoreward with a push, but it long floated about distressed and lost ere I saw it cast upon the land far from where I embarked. How lonely then was the quiet deck and all around! I seemed the only living being on earth! To relieve the oppressing sense of loneliness I leaned here, where you now lean Carleton, and bent my gaze long and steadily in the direction from which I looked for your boat. Wearily passed the hours, till the moon had go to the midheavens, and many a new and strangely bright star had risen from the East and ascended far into the skies. I knew it was midnight, and yet the same deep, unbroken repose reigned around! I grew nervous and then began to feel alarm! Yet I knew you would come! I knew whatever you and Morris Græme undertook, you would accomplish. I trusted and hoped and waited with my eyes still watching the far water. At length the soft night wind, that had moaned through the wood on shore like the sound of a far off and indistinct organ breathing a requiem for the dead, began to strengthen and to curl the surface of the water. The ripple soon increased to small heaving waves, and these soon broke, heaving up delicate pearls of foam. These pearls were shattered before the increasing increasing wind and melted into snowy caps and the Dancing Feather began to move; at first, with a gen tle murmur about her bows; but the motion soon became quite apparent and it was not long before, as if instinct with life and feeling the free-seaward wind, she began to fret and champ at her curbing chain like a spirited war horse impatiently held in when the trumpet sounds the charge! I caught the spirit of the time, Carlton, and as I looked up to the tall masts and saw the sails bound to the slender yards, I felt a desire to possess the power to unloose them to the winds and let the noble vessel free!"
"Brave and beautiful! Thou art worthy to be a sailor's bride, Eve!" he said with admiration, "and now I dare say, if we had not come as we did, you would have followed the bent of your mind and gone to the mast-head and let her sails fly and severed the cable and set her free!"
"No, Carleton, I should not have gone leaving thee behind!" she said with feeling. "But my longing gaze in the direction of the city was at length rewarded I saw a dark object scarcely distinguishable from the deep shadows of the shore along which it seemed to be stealing as if for covert. I watched its progress with a bounding heart and hushed breathing. I feared it would vanish; that my wishes had created to the eye what my heart would have had there! But onward swiftly and silently it came! gradually its outline became distinct and I could then hear faintly the muffled fall of oars! I bent over the quarter-railing in earnest scrutiny as I discerned forms of men standing out in the dark moving mass. Suddenly the advancing barge shot out from the deep covert of the shore into the broad moon-light and I recognized in the stern, not your commanding figure, noble Carleton, but Morris Græme's! My heart sunk within me! Had I placed myself in that reckless man's power! The barge now came nearer and clearer into view towards the schooner; and, joy! I saw you stand up in her bows, your person revealed boldly and distinctly against the bright water. Your proud eye was upon the object of your daring adventure and you stood as if impatient to leap on board, and once more tread her decks her lord."
"Thou did'st see and read me aright, Eve. Yet I saw thee not!"
"Fearing now to be discovered, and knowing my life and happiness were near, I hastened from my post of watching and descended to secrete myself in the cabin! as I reached it I heard your foot strike upon the deck! In one of the gorgeously furnished state-rooms I remained until the bustle and confusion of getting underweigh had subsided, when with a prayer in my heart for courage, and strengthened by my love, I came from my covert into the main-cabin. Morris Græme was there! Before I could retreat he discovered me, with the exclamation,
"Eve Innes! Carleton has then changed his mind! He said he was to leave thee behind!"
"He knows nothing of my being here! I learned your plot and anticipated him."
"If this be true, thou will not be long our guest, lady!" he said significantly, and then turned from me. I came to the deck and beheld you leaning moodily over the quarter. I knew you were unhappy—I knew, Carleton, you were thinking of your deserted Eve! and were repenting that you had left her! I approached in the trusting strength of my love, and in the remembrance how dearly once you loved me! But when I met your frown—"
The few last words of this strange, beautiful creature who hung on his arm and bosom were not pleasant to him. He knew he was not thinking of Eve, but of Blanche Hillary! His darkening brow checked her voice. He drew himself from her caress! she bent her head and misinterpreting the cause of the sudden displeasure in his looks, she said,
"Nay, forgive me! I meant not to reprove thee, because you frowned! If I am but near thee, Carleton, I will gladly let thee frown upon me! I will learn to love even thy frowns, because thine, and strive to convert them into smiles!"
"I know not whether to be pleased or angry at thy conduct, Eve," said Carleton after remaining silent a few moments, while her dark eyes watched with eloquent emotion, the troubled expression of his countenance. "But at present thou mayest remain! Return into the cabin, and by and by I will tell thee what my decision is!"
"Oh, Carleton, listen not to Morris Græme! Thou knowest he loves me not well. Listen only to the voice of love in your own generous bosom."
"Fear not Eve, I will do thee no wrong! Morris thou well knowest will be in none of my counsels touching thee! I have not forgotten that thy love and honor met, with proper reproof, his licentious freedom, and that he is no fit confidant between me and thee! Good night, Eve!"
Softly she repeated the words, and then slowly retired from the deck, passing on the way Morris Græme, who haughtily stepped aside for her to pass. He then walked aft to the spot where Carleton stood leaning thoughtfully over the quarter railing, looking with an absent gaze down upon the eddying waters as they danced and hurried away beneath the counter of the rapidly moving vessel.
The young Captain heard the step of his Lieutenant as he came aft, and instantly altering his position and changing the whole expression of his countenance, he said to him in a cheerful congratulatory tone,
"Well, Morris, we have succeeded beyond our hopes! Here we have beneath us, once more, our tried friend, "The Dancing Feather," who is bounding over the waves again as if she knew her master once more trod her decks."
"Yes, Carleton, we have achieved a gallant deed, and one becoming us!" answered Græme. "See how gracefully the pretty creature carries herself and how merrily she dances to the breeze," he added, his eye proudly watching her as she moved swifty and almost noiselessly through the water. "But, Carleton, we have on board a—."
"Yes," interrupted Carleton, who evidently desired to avoid allusion to Eve, "no doubt plenty of stores; for I learned that Colonel Powel had her fitted for a cruise on which he was going to start to-morrow evening. But I shall have the runs and hold examined as soon as it is day; and also see how we are ofi for spars, duck and especially small arms."
"I have been examining the racks, and find two pairs of horse pistols, a rifle and two manton guns, with a horn or two of powder and a case of balls."
"These with the pistols and side-arms which we brought in the boat will be of service to help us to more. I find the gun-ports are not sealed up, as I feared they would have been when converted into a yacht, and we must somehow manage to find guns for them! Her former guns are sold and are now dispersed in half-a-dozen merchant-men."
"I thought we were to have no passengers, Captain Carleton," abruptly spoke Græme, seeing his chief disposed to avoid the subject of his thoughts.
"I am commander of my own vessel," answered Carleton, his haughty and quick spirit breaking out.
"If you are to carry your leman, I will carry mine!" answered Morris Græme. "When I asked you, that I might decide what to do with reference to Ellen, you said we were to leave both! How is it now that I find Eve Innes on board?"
"Morris," said Carleton in a quiet manner and speaking in a singularly distinct under tone peculiar to him when much moved, "I do not wish to have a difference with you, nor will I! Eve, herself told you in the cabin, for you knew of her presence here before I did, that she became aware of our intention and anticipated us!"
"What is your purpose with her?" asked or rather demanded Morris half crossing the deck and returning.
"I have come to no determination, Morris," he said more naturally. "She is resolved to accompany me, and I don't know how I can avoid it."
"Easily! The shore is not two hundred fathoms distant, and the quarter boat hangs from the cranes."
"I understand you; but I have not made up my mind;" answered Carleton evidently troubled and undecided. "The truth is, Morris, I do not want her here, neither do I like to put her on shore. Her lively presence will relieve the tedium of my cruise and—"
"The truth is, you preconcerted the meeting on board, and she is here by your appointment. I watched her first meeting with you! You betrayed by no start of surprise your ignorance of her being on board! You have deceived me Carleton! Not that I care to have her here!"
"Upon my life, Morris, I did you no wrong! If you say, send Eve ashore, I will do so." And Carleton fixed his gaze upon the face of his Lietenant and friend with a look as if he feared he would require the alternative.
Græme paused a moment, and then with a singular expression darkening his handsome but vice-hardened countenance, he said dryly,
"I have no wish to dictate to you, Carleton. As she is on board let her remain. On the whole," he added suddenly changing his manner, "I am not sorry to get rid of Ellen, for she has grown very grasping and bold of late, and I detest anything in a woman like boldness or want of modesty. She was once a sweet, loving girl, and I would have married her had I remained in society? for we were engaged before I was in College."
"Indeed. I did not know you knew her out of New York!"
"Yes! When she heard I had left College and was in New York she wrote me that her esteem and love for me were unchangand that if I would consent, she would fly from her father's roof and share with me my fortunes!"
"Of course she knew not what those fortunes were?" observed Carleton, at the same time giving an order aside to the helmsman to luff a little more to clear a sloop at anchor ahead.
"No," answered Morris Græme lightly laughing. "She came and I met her at the hotel! Artless as she was lovely and devoted as she was imprudent, I received her with rapture, and not without many tears and reproaches, she became my wedless bride!"
"She expected you would have married, her, Morris? was it not so?"
"Or she would never have flown to my arms," answered the young man with cool indifference.
"It would have been more manly, Græme," said Carleton, "to have shown her her imprudence and sent her in safety and honor back to the roof she had left in sorrow and dishonor!"
"This is excellent morality, Carleton, coming from your mouth," answered the Lieutenant with a sneer on his handsome lip; "Ellen Innes's love survived mine and my honor, and when without ascertaining this fact, she threw herself upon me for protection, she deserved to become what she is! Yet, poor girl, it well nigh broke her heart, when she found she was not a wife! But her love was deeper than her resentment, and so that she believed I loved her, she was happy!"
"Upon my soul! I pity her, and wish she were with you on board, Morris," said Carleton with feeling.
"Thank you, Carleton; on the whole I am content to have her on shore. She has money, and when that is gone she has— beauty!"
"And would you thus idly cast her upon the world?" said Carleton quickly.
"Hath a too fondly loving woman ne'er been cast aside before, that you must look so very virtuous at the thought, Carleton?"
He was silent with the conviction that that very night he would have acted precisely a similar part towards one who had a still dearer claim to his continued protection, for Carleton had wooed and won, and wedded Eve! Yes, Eve Innes was the buccaneer's bride! his lawful wife! But this is not the place for the narration we shall yet be called upon to give, touching the strange union of these two! His conscience smote him at the other's words, and turning away from him he looked over the side of the vessel making no reply.
Græme watched him a moment, and then finding him disposed to remain silent, he walked away towards the fore-part of the vessel as if to watch a sail that was crossing the bows. "Yes, I see Carleton loves his little beauty still! It is plain the plan was concerted which placed her on board! Let him carry her! Perhaps the charming creature may not be so haughty at sea as on land! The Gods be thanked, I brought not Ellen, for time is we were seperated! besides she would be sadly in the way of my proposed flirtation with Carleton's pretty one! If ever I was fascinated by a woman, and yet loved her not, it is by this sweet, proud, cold, vexing enchantress! Thanks, good Captain! The lady may releive the tedium of the cruise!"
Thus significantly repeating Carleton's words, this bold, daring and singularly reckless young man, continued to walk the waist in a thoughtful mood, till the dashing of waters ahead warned him of the proximity of Hurl-Gate.
Hitherto, the `Dancing Feather' had been easily gliding along the picturesque shores, moving past silent villas and gardens and lawns sleeping in the moonlight, meeting at intervals sloops or brigantines under full canvass stretching away towards the city, or going past others which were crowding sail sea-ward, or rather Sound-ward.
After said had been once made on her, impelled by the breeze, she had glided from her moorings before the incredulous and bewildered gaze of Blanche Hillary, the schooner had kept on her course, solely under the guidance of the helm. Not a rope had been pulled, nor the set of the well-ordered canvass altered to this time. The small crew with which they had boarded her, were quietly leaning over the bows, or standing in the fore-rigging gazing at the shores as they glided past. The order and stillness on board, were such that no person would have suspected she had half an hour before been taken possession of at her moorings! But Carleton and Morris Græme, were no ordinary leaders in such an expedition, as they had so daringly planned and felicitously executed. Their men, many of whom they had eight months before commanded the "Dancing Feather," were picked and known. They were but twenty in all; but more than enough for working the schooner, but not the third part of a full compliment, had she been armed as before her seizure and conversion into a yacht. The schooner still remained nearly the same as she had been originally constructed. Her paint had been altered, and she was now perfectly black, with the exception of a narrow scarlet line, or ribbon, running along her bead and relieving it. Her canvass was new and in perfect order; her blocks, rigging, and all her hamper were in thorough preservation. Every thing drew well, and every rope was in its place. In fact she had been made in all points fit for sea by Colonel Powel, and all that was necessary was a crew; which, however, proved a very different one, from that which he had probably anticipated. Of the schooner, and her sailing qualities we have already given a description in the former portion of this story. Her cabins were now richer than before, being furnished with every luxury that could contribute to their elegance and comfort. A library of books—even a harp and guitar, were not wanting! The latter instrument drew the eye of Eve Innes, as she descended into the cabin, and taking it up, she struck its chords like one familiar with the strings. Her voice accompanied one or two of the careless notes she struck. It was touchingly sweet and sad—in tender harmony with the sorrow and love's fear that lay at her heart. She threw it aside a moment after, and leaning her head upon her gemmed hand, wept long and silently.
Still glided on the "Dancing Feather" past the pleasant shores, her path over the moonlit waves. Before her suddenly roared the surges of Hurl Gate! It was not until their loud, near roar struck his ears, that Carleton was roused to a sense of his responsibility. He sprung into the main rigging, and looked ahead! On either hand dark rocks frowned and menaced him, while a whirlpool foamed in the narrow strait between! He sprang to the helm, and took the destiny of the vessel in his own hand. Morris Græme was for ward, standing on the heel of the bow-sprit, and ever and anon, his clear voice rose above the roar of the mad waves, giving directions how to steer. Calm and resolute Carleton stood at his post, and guided her on towards the perilous passage—a passage at that time less familiar than now to mariners, and greatly dreaded.
"Port a little!" cried Morris, from the heel of the bow-sprit.
"Ay, port!" repeated his commander, who, with the assistance of one of his men, could hardly govern the schooner, which now began to jump about in the irregular sea, like some frightened steed, whom his rider would force into some present and visible danger, which he vainly plunges on every side to avoid.
"Steady!" sounded the loud, seaman-like voice of Græme.
"Steady it is!" answered Carleton, in an even tone, which he could just hear.
The Dancing Feather was now in her greatest peril, and truly did she then earn her appellation. Like a feather she was tossed upon the convolving, uplifting, far-sinking waves! All was commotion and imminent danger to life and matter. For a moment or two the vessel staggered and reeled over, as if fairly conquered by the waves: and then, while every man expected to see her the next instant plunge madly into the wild, wrathful bosom of the maelstrom, she righted herself, gathered new energy, struggled upward and onward, came to her course, and again obeyed her helm.
"Bravo! that like to have been her mortal struggle," cried Morris; "But the gallant little schooner will always come atop! See how she shakes the water from her sides like a Newfoundland dog! Luff a little! we will soon be out of this infernal place!"
"Luff it is!" answered Carleton in the same unmoved tone.
"Steady as you are!"
The schooner now altered her course a little, and went flying like the wind through a narrow strait confined by rocks, between which, it being ebb tide, the whole body of water raced with as tonishing velocity. The top-sail collapsed with the rapidity of her motion and though the wind was high, once flapped against the fore-topmast, with a loud report. The rocks being left astern, gradually her speed lessened, and she moved along with the wind free over smoother water and a more open sea.
"I never passed Hurl Gate with the water so wild," said Carleton, as Morris came aft. "I thought at one moment we should have foundered!"
"It was a narrow escape," said Morris laughing. "Now that we are through this passage, let us set every thing that will draw; and as the wind is north-west she will carry her studden-sails."
"Let her remain under what sail she has for a while, Morris,' replied Carleton, walking towards the compannion way. "She will make nine knots with this breeze, which will place as many leagues between us and pursuit by morning, as we will want."
"What are your future plans, Carleton?" asked Morris, as he saw him descending into the cabin. "What is the schooner's destination? I received your note that you wanted to meet me in the Park at eight o'clock, and there only briefly heard from you a plan to retake our vessel, which for eight months had been out of our possession. You explained the plan which I consented to, and obtained the men. The plan has been successful, and once more, thank the Gods, we are on the broad deep with the "Dancing Feather" our home. Now, what is our purpose, good Captain?"
"I have not wholly decided what course to pursue, but will do so soon!"
"Nay, Carleton, have I not as deep an interest in this discision as yourself. I am willing to yield to your nominal superiority in command; but as we have both been equally active in re-taking the schooner, it is but natural we should be equally interested in her destination."
"You are, perhaps right, Morris," answered Carleton, with unexpected mildness; for few men were more impatient of dictation or opposition than he. "I was your commander under our former organization, and when we were scattered the compact was virtually annulled. I have no right to command the schooner beyond any that you have, save that but for me, she would now be anchored before Colonel Powel's villa! With you, Græme," he said somewhat sternly, "I want no quarrel."
"Nor will I quarrel, Carleton. I cheerfully yield to you the command, but insist on being consulted and advised on any important occasion. This is certainly one."
"True, and we will by and by see what we had best resolve on. I will propose to you my own plan, and hear yours, if you have any to offer. As it is, we have taken fortune on board, and followed her, all blinded as she is!"
"Then you have no definite aim in view?" said Morris with animation.
"No, truly I have not," answered Carleton with a smile that on the instant, restored good feeling between the young men.
"Then I have one you will embrace when you hear it."
"That I will do by and by," answered Carleton, descending the stairs to the cabin. "Hold the deck till I come up, Morris, and I will then muster the men and have the watches properly organized."
With these words the young captain disappeared to the interview with Eve.
"Thou hast a gentle treasure there caged, my good Captain, for so thou may'st be till my own time come! but I will ere long teach thy pretty bird to peck from other hands save thine. But let this be for another day and hour. Now let me mature my half conceived plans."
Thus speaking he paced the quarter-deck, now with a quick turn, now with a slower: now stopping full; now moving on and altogether seeming like a man in excited thought. How beautiful was the night or rather morning, for it was now three o'clock.— The moon was in its western field, white and clear as silver, with which it tipped the bursting waves. The shores on either hand, a league asunder, were dark and wooded, with here and there a bright spot indicating the position of some half-embowered villa. Astern the shores met together in the narrow gorge through which they had so lately passed, and before them opened the broad waters of the Sound. They were not alone upon the moonlit wave. Astern, abeam, ahead, gleamed the white sails of many a fair craft; some beating toward the city; others crossing their track to some main-land port; while others stood toward the open Sound on the same course with the schooner. Near them, just forward of the beam, sailed a brig, schooner-rigged aft, which had kept ahead of them since passing Hurl-Gate; but she was now rapidly neared under the additional impulse of a top-mast studden-sail, which Morris, observing her speed, had quit his walk to and fro on the quarter deck to set. He stood near the main rigging with a hand upon a stay watching her. She was so near that he could distinguish the helmsman, whose tarpaulin glistened in the moonlight. Save him he saw no one on her decks. Swiftly and rapidly she glided over the waters that leaped sportively about her sharp bows everything drawing free and looking seaman-like. As Morris watched her and prided himself on the superior sailing of the schooner, which was fast overhauling the brig, to his surprise, as if without hands, up rose from her deck a large ball of canvass which, unfolding itself like a huge bird spreading its wings, d played the broad surface of a lower studden-sail, which soared to its boom, and then, pressed outward by the wind, at once took the rounded shape and fair proportions of the other drawing sails, and gave a new impetus to the vessel.
"That is no merchantman, or, if so, she is commanded by a man from the navy!" he said, turning to the helmsman, in whose bushy red head and peculiarly wicked countenance, no one who had seen Red Fred at the Brown Jug, would have failed to recognize that personage.
"So I was thinking, master Morris," answered Fred, giving a hitch to his trowsers, changing his tobacco from one cheek into the other, ejecting a shower of saliva into a spit box at his feet, and then giving the wheel a turn and a half to windward; "I never saw a stun' sail set in that man-o'-wa' style, afore, on board a trading craft. But in my eye, Mr. Græme, she doesn't look so much like a coaster as she might be! Look at her sheer and cut-water! and the sweep o' the counter! See the set o' them masts, and how square her fore yard is, and how d—d a-taunto she looks. I'm blowed, if I should be surprised to see four ports open in her sides, and as many bull-dogs run their muzzles out."
Here Red Fred gave the wheel a half turn back, and brought the schooner a little more up, for she had fallen off a point during his remarks upon the brig.
"I believe you are half right, Fred," said Morris, after looking again narrowly at her. "One of you hand me my glass from the beckets," he said to a group of men who were in the waist leaning over the schooner's gazing at the brigantine, which was now about a quarter of a mile to leeward, two points forward of the beam, and running very free. Her speed had evidently increased since the studdensail was set, for she was then but a point forward, or else the schooner had fallen off.
"Have you fallen away any?" he demanded of the helmsman.
"No, sir, not a hair line. She is gaining!"
"So I thought. Bear a hand with my glass, boy."
This order was addressed to a lad about sixteen years of age, who, when Græme called for the spy-glass, was standing alone, leaning against the capstan, a little apart from the men who were gathered in the waist, and who, on hearing it, sprang for the companion way. He lingered, probably attracted by some words overheard from the cabin; but the second stern demand of the lieutenant was quickly heeded. As the lad handed the glass he quietly drew back and resumed his former position against the capstan Morris, adjusting it for night use, levelled the instrument at the brig. Her decks were at once brought close and distinct to the sight. He could see the shadow of every rope and spar traced upon them by the moonlight with beautiful distinctness' at her helm stood a nearly clad ordinary seaman. No other man was aft, but the companion doors were open, and a cloak and a book, aye, and a lady's glove lay upon the weather settee. He carried his glass slowly forward and saw that the running rigging was neatly coiled, as on board naval vessels, instead of being hung from pins.— Forward, under the black shadow of the fore-sail were grouped several seamen, engaged in watching the schooner, and evidently interested in outsailing her. He again ranged her decks with his glass, for her bulwarks were unusually low, and he himself was in the main rigging of his own vessel, to discover the officer of the watch. But such a person was no where visible. One object arrested his attention, and that was a bright brass gun—a nine pounder— on a carriage opposite the leeward port. He immediately turned his glass to examine the side near him, to see if he could discover a fellow-port to it, and detected one. He then ascended the rigging twenty feet, and again brought his glass to bear upon the deck, and by this means he overlooked the bulwark and saw enough of a gun-carriage to assure him that she carried at least two guns. He now directed his glass to her spars and top-hamper, and after a brief examination was satisfied that she was an armed vessel. He was about to withdraw his eye from the lens when it was arrested by a figure in the fore-top rigging of the brig, which, on closer inspection, he saw was a man with a spy-glass in his hand, which was directed down upon the schooner's decks. Morris kept his glass levelled until he saw the other remove his, when he tried to get a look at his features! But the other, as it divining his purpose, and not choosing to gratify his curiosity, turned away and directed his glass to a sloop on his lee beam. Græme gave once more a narrow scrutiny of the brig's decks, and then closing his spy-glass descended to the quarter-deck.
"What do you make her out, Mr. Morris?" inquired Red Fred with that freedom which their former companionship on shore somewhat authorized. "She looks suspicious, and in my opinion means to make our better acquaintance before we part company."
"If we only had the schooner in her old trim, we might court the intimacy," said Morris. "She carries a pair of your bull-dogs, Fred, and a watch of eight men."
"That will give her a crew of sixteen, besides cook, and steward, and captain, and mates," said Fred. "We are even handed and four more, if that was all. What do you take her to be, sir? Hadn't I better keep the schooner away a point and run her closer aboard, Mr. Morris? I see we have gained on her since the spencer was set."
"Yes, keep away a little. I would like to take a nigher view of her. She is not in the service, for there is no vessel in it of her description; besides, her armament is not naval. She is more likely a fancy merchant brig, owned by a dandy captain, or a yacht from the Provinces."
"I've seen such craft with your fancy skippers," said Fred, throwing the wheel smartly to windward half a dozen spokes and then checking it. "There was one from Baltimore come into Havana when I was there, and all the Spanish went to see it. She was a full-rigged brig, and every thing about her was in apple-pie style! Her capstan was silver plated, and had silver sockets for the bars. Her running gear was all of white manilla-grass, and and every block and dead-eye about her was polished like mahogany. Her decks were white as snow, and only fit for a fine lady to walk over. I went into her cabin, and blaze me if I ever saw such finery in a theatre! The companion-way was carved and ornamented with silver—the hand-rail was silver—the stair-rods were silver, and every thing was edged and set with silver. I never saw any thing so rich! Carpets were laid so thick you could not hear a step, and such carpets for beauty was never seen by my eye! The furniture was a little beyond any thing in that country. It was all bird's eye maple, gilt and silvered. A pianny was where the transum ought to ha' been, and looking glasses were so plenty that I could not turn without seeing myself. The state rooms were large, and furnished off in great style, and the steerage was as handsome a drawing-room as any body's parlor in York. I looked round for the captain, expecting, you see, of course to see a little dapper gentry, half sailor and half green-horn, finackeed off in long togs and ruffle-shirt risbands. But, shiver my mizzen, if I wasn't shown as the captain of the craft as well-built, thoroughbred a seaman from keel to truck as ever I'd wish to lay eyes on. He was a handsome chap too, and had a keen eye for a pretty lass, or I am mistaken. He had been a middy, but having had a fortin left him he got leave for three years, and built himself that craft, and so sailed about on a blow-any-way cruise, just for pleasure! This was two years ago, and I dare say he is cruising yet; and if that chap hadn't a schooner rig aft, I should say it was the same craft, for I never see two profiles so much alike."
"I shouldn't be surprised, Fred," said Morris, again looking at her, "if she was some such craft as you describe. It would be a feather in our schooner's cap if we could take her guns out of her, But we can't do this without guns unless we run her aboard."
"And that could be easily done, Mr. Morris," said Fred cooly, grasping at the same time the lower spoke of the wheel, as if in readiness to put the schooner away towards her.
"I believe it would," answered Morris with animation. "But keep her steady! We sail together now, and there is time enough. I will speak to Carleton."
Thus speaking, Morris advanced to the companion-way to make known the suspicious character of the vessel, while Fred, impatient to lay alongside and carry out his reckless suggestion, kept gradually edging the schooner nigher and nigher to the stranger.
When Carleton descended into the cabin, Eve was seated on a low ottoman, her face buried in her hands while tears were slowly trickling along their azure tinted veins down to the beautiful wrist. Her long and beautiful auburn hair, fell in disregarded luxuriance about her neck and over her moulded arm and sylph-like figure, the soft and touching drapery of woman's grief! She heard his well known step, and brushing the tears from her dark eyes she threw back her glorious hair and rose to meet him! What love! what deep affection was in her sweet aspect, as she advanced towards him! Whatsoever power there is in female fascination; whatsoever charm there is in woman's idolatory was inscribed by love's finger on every feature! She sprang towards him! She hung upon his manly bosom, as the ivy entwines its trusting tendrils around the oak.
"Carleton, dearest Carleton! you have not forgotten me!" Oh, if you knew how heavily the hours passed when you were away! I am envious of all others, that keep you from me! I would be with you ever! Ever be looking up, thus! into your eyes, that now beam upon me so kindly! ever by your side, knowing that whenever I lift my gaze, it will rest upon your beloved features!'
"You are silly, Eve, to love so wildly," he said, slightly drawing her to his side and imprinting a kiss upon her pure forehead; and he looked as he spoke as if touched and gratified at her deep womanly and almost childish devotion. "You should not thus lavishly cast all your love at a throw!"
"I cast it into thy bosom, Carleton!" she said bending her graceful head, as if to hide from him a shadow of sadness.
He was touched by the tone of her voice and said playfully, "Yet thou hast lost, Eve, and I am the happy winner!"
"Have I not gained thee, Carleton? Having thee I possess all things! It hast filled my heart with joy that I hear thee say thou art the happy winner! Oh, Carleton, if you knew how a careless word from you—one word that gives me a hope that I still am dear to you—makes my heart a heaven! you would love to bless me thus! But alas! I sometimes of late, fear that you have forgotten your love for me and —." She could not go on! He felt a tear fall upon his hand.
"Nay, Eve, thou hast done nought to offend me," he said tenderly, moved by the touching and eloquent distress which checked her words; and leading her to the ottoman he seated himself at her feet.
"My dearest, noble husband! Nay frown not!—thou must suffer me to call thee by that loved title, Carleton!—for to feel that I am thy wife is a source of sweet, indescribable joy! I cannot keep the deep tide from bursting forth, when thou alone only art present! Forgive me, Carleton! To thee I must speak of my happiness, and tell thee how full it is! I must repeat in thy ears, the happy word wife! I must hear my voice utter the blissful sounds My husband! Forbid me not, dear Carleton! Nay, do not look so darkly! I will not offend again! But smile on me, and I will, though it break my heart, keep locked within it, the secrets of our —"
"Utter not the word, Eve," said Carleton, with stern interruption! "Thou well knowest thou art risking my fiercest displeasure! Be content. I suffer thee to remain on board!"
"Oh, joy, joy! I dared not ask thee what thou hadst determined, but I knew in my heart, when you entered, that my love had triumphed. Bless thee, Carleton! For this clemency—may I not call it returning love!—you have my deepest gratitude. Near thee! Oh, this is sweet peace, I will forget, since thou hast commanded it, that thou art — I will breathe the blessed word only in my heart!—and I am thine—thy — let me speak it, Carleton— thy wife!"
"Eve!"
Nay—be not angry with me. To thine ear alone has it been breathed! Art thou unwilling in secret to hear it? Oh, no, no! Notwithstanding your late icy coldness—which if hot tears could have dissolved, had long since been melted into your first affection! notwithstanding you would last night have left me, yet I know, I feel, Carleton, that you do not wish thou wert not my — what, so dear, thou art to me! Thou wouldst kill me didst thou say so! Do I hate thee? Did I love thee less, when I knew my husband was an outlaw! did I fly thee, and scorn thee, and like the world turn against thee? No! thou knowest I did not! True to thee and my woman's love, I loved thee, had room been in my heart, more. Thou wert dearer to me, when I knew I was the only one that loved thee! Of thy crimes confessed to me, the night I discovered who my husband was, did I reproach thee! Did I not forgive thee and tell thee that guiltless wert thou to me so that thou lovedst me!"
"Noble, devoted Eve! I feel that I am unworthy of you!" he said sadly. "I never appreciated you! You were not destined in Heaven to be my wife! Thy love and devotion deserve a better return than I can render thee!"
"Than thou canst render me!" she cried with an earnestness and passion, that increased the brilliancy of her dark eyes, tearful though they were; "what canst thou give me, Carleton that is not dear to me? A word—a look—the slightest glance of thine, is to me a treasure which like a miser I hoard up in my heart's close casket, fondly to gloat over when thou art absent!"
"But, dear Eve," he said with hesitation, as if uncertain how to reply to her impassioned words; you would not love wisely to love unrequited! Such love as thine should be returned with all a man's soul and being! Besides thee, he should have eye or thought for no other! Thou must be the altar of his passion—the shrine of his adoration! Thou adorest? he must adore! Eve, I never have even loved!"
The lovely being at whose feet he sat, listened as if she did not hear, or hearing did not understand! With her eyes fixed earnestly upon his troubled face, and her lips apart as if she would speak, she spoke not! She looked at him a few moments in silent, painful amazement Then she released her hand slowly, gently from his—for he had held it all along, and now seemed with his down-cast gaze to be admiring the glittering jewels that adorned it. Gently, slowly she disengaged it and clasped, instead, her own hand, and bending towards him in an attitude of touching eloquence, she knelt suppliantly! Still she spoke not! He felt her large eyes fixed upon him, and he dared not look up! He feared to meet their sad, reproving, soul-stricken gaze.
"George! Carleton!" she said, and her voice seemed to issue from her heart. "Did I hear aright? Oh, speak—speak kindly to me! and tell me if you said you never loved me? I will listen—I will not let my heart burst—I will hold it in thus with my hands!" and she pressed her clasped fingers beneath her bosom close to her heart. "See, I am calm!"
"Eve—for God's sake, do not look and talk to me so!" he cried with acute misery. "It was an idle word—I meant it not! Turn away those eyes, I cannot bear their gaze!"
"If they grieve thee, Carleton, I will turn them away, I would not grieve thee! But thou hast grieved me; oh Carleton, thou hast grieved me!" Who could withstand the touching suffering of these few gentle words of complaint? The pirate-chief caught her hands, pressed them to his lips, and breathed a word of tenderness into her ear. "Eve, forgive me! I meant not what I said. 'Twas an idle word!"
"'Tis spoken, Carleton," she said recovering her hand and rising to her feet with sweet dignity; "and I feel that it is a true one' Thou hast then never loved me! Alas, when to thee I gave my virgin heart, and thou didst kneel and swear thou lovedst me better than thou didst love life! lovedst thou me not then? When in that hour, I surrendered to thee my maiden name and took thine, alas! ne'er yet mine! and thou didst fold me to thy heart thy bride and wife! lovedst thou me not, then, Carleton! When, because thou wished it so, I, ere yet I had been one day a wife, did take a dreadful oath administered by thee, that I should never divulge, save with thy free consent, our union! lovedst thou me not then, Carleton?"
It was like a spirit of judgment from the other world interrogating him! He was overpowered with the conflict of his feelings, and turning from her walked across the cabin, where he stood a moment with his face buried in his hands! She approached him with a countenance emanating love and sympathy.
"George, forgive me! I meant not to wound where I would kneel to heal! I know thou lovedst me! I know thou hast ever loved me! Thou knowest not thy own heart. If thou wilt look within, thou wilt see the image of thy Eve, imprinted there in the lines of life!"
"No, no, Eve!" he said with bitterness, "I will not deceive you! I never have truly loved thee! If I could have loved thee, thy deep, pure, idolatrous affection would have created love in my bosom! I was proud of thee—of thy matchless loveliness—of thy deep love for me! but I never returned, never requited it! Instead of being a fountain reflecting the summer sunshine of thy warm and sunny love, I was like a wintry pool presenting an icy shield to its beams!"
"Never! never loved me!" spoke she slowly and whisperingly, as if her thoughts introverted, were holding converse with her heart.
"No, truly, Eve! It is time thou wert undeceived! I have long wished for this occasion, but —"
"Long!" repeated the lovely sufferer, "hast thou not loved me for long, Carleton?"
He hesitated, embarrassed how to reply to such painful questions. If she had shown anger, or scorn, or hate, he felt he could have borne it. But to be so like an angel in meekness and gentleness! to receive with such touching sorrow his confession! this was more than even his cold and stern spirit could endure. Again he turned from her, and seemed as if leaving the cabin. But a single word from her lips arrested him.
"George!"
"Eve!"
"Come to me! Nay nearer! sit by me!"
He obeyed her.
"I will say what I have to say, calmly. Thou hast deceived me, Carleton! But I complain not! I am not about to reproach you! If I have grieved you, forgive me! It was a sudden shock to me, to be told from your beloved lips—for thou art still my beloved, George—that I was not loved by thee! But it is over now! I feel I can bear it! Now nothing remains but for me to love thee! Nay—do not look displeased! It is the sweet lesson I have taught my heart for years! and it will not forget it! nor would I it should forget. Thou art my heart's world, its serene Heaven, in which like a dove it flies and is blest; its uprising star guiding it to happiness and peace; its sun from which it derives its warmth and life! Its pulse can only throb with thine, and when thy heart ceases to beat, mine will find rest?"
"Strange and unaccountable creature!" said Carleton with emotion, and yet speaking as if annoyed. "I have told thee, dear Eve, that I have never loved thee! I must now tell thee, I do not now love thee! I pity, I feel for you, with all my heart! I know how deep, how strong your attachment is to me! I knew it would survive even this painful and most trying confession. But, my dear Eve, is it not folly to love, where thou art not beloved! Is it not—"
"Nay, Carlton, I have heard thy words! The arrow hath pierced and cloven my spirit's life! but it hath not shivered the mirror in my breast, wherein thy image is reflected! Thou art dear to me as before! I may not cease to love thee; but I may weep that thou lovest not me! But wherefore, dear Carleton," she said with warm and glowing feeling; "wherefore hast thou not loved? Have I been all unworthy thy manly affection? of that noble love—which this hour I would die to know was mine own."
"No, Eve! you are worthy any man's love! Of yours few are worthy, much less myself."
"Yes—you wrong yourself, Carleton! you have erred, you are now in the path of error! but you are generous and noble and good! Thy spirit is dark and thy nature is stern; but I know that thou hast among men few thy peer. Unworthy! No! and," she added, her voice suddenly changing to a subdued tone, "thou lovest me not. Alas, me! yet thou must love some one. Thy nature is confiding, and thy spirit will yearn for its mate. Thou wilt love some one. Happy she! whom thou lovest? Blest the maiden, into whose rich bosom thou pourest all the wealth of thy great heart's affections. Happy the lovely and loved who can read in thy deep, passionate gaze, that thou lovest and she is the beloved. I have, alas! thought, (for my love blinded my penetration and I was willingly deceived,) that I read love and devotion in your admiring eyes; and my ear has trembled, and my heart-string's, catching the vibration, have thrilled with joy, as you poured into them words of love. But alas! the glance was that of pride and admiring passion, the words the voice of flattery. George thou hast then mocked me with the semblance of love!"
"Thou didst deceive thyself, Eve; not I thee. I admire thee; I was proud of thee, and thou sawest these passions in my eyes and construed it love. I praised thy beauty, and thou didst think I worshipped thee. No, Eve, thou wert the idol only of my vanity, the shrine of my self-love."
"Carleton," she said with strange seriousness in the tones of her voice, "why then did you wed me?"
"Because I then believed that I loved thee."
"Then!" she repeated with an emphasis that made him start. "What has shown thee since then, that thou wert in error, George?" and her dark observing glance was fixed upon his changing countenance with singular earnestness.
He was silent a few moments. He was perplexed, and evidently was withholding the truth to invent an indifferent reply. It was plain by a change in the expression of her intense gaze that this suspicion rose to her mind.
"It was the devotion and disinterestedness of your own love for me, Eve!" he replied with a sudden readiness that would have showed to a close observer, that he had lit upon a happy reply with which he meant to cover from her the true one. "I witnessed your attachment, and from you learning how to love, knew then I had never loved." His eyes avoided hers as he replied, and she listened without moving. For a few seconds after he had ceased speaking both were silent; he inwardly congratulating himself upon his successful answer to her abrupt inquiry, she with her young and faithful heart torn by the first pang of jealousy. She broke the silence.
"George Carleton, thou hast not spoken the truth," she said severely yet not unkindly; there was more sorrow than anger in her even and solemn tones.
The young pirate-chief started and his haughty spirit instinctively rose at the imputation. But as his gaze fell on the lovely woman he had wronged, he suppressed his emotion and replied,
"Eve from thee I forgive that word! I have wronged thee, most truly have I, and from thee can forgive much!"
"And from thee, George, I can forgive much! I did think a while since, that there was nothing I could not forgive in thee! But my heart hath within the minute past taught me not to trust my deep love too far! There is one thing I may not forgive in thee, George!" Carleton plainly desired to avoid the allusion that he evidently anticipated, and said quickly,
"Would to God, Eve, thou wouldst heed the teaching of thy heart and not trust thy deep love too far! It will ne'er be requited and if it be trampled and crushed under foot, thou must thank thyself! If thou wilt love where thou art —"
"Oh, say not hated with thy lips as I read it in thine eyes, Carleton, and I will strive to love thee less," she cried, almost shriek ing, as she pressed her hand upon his mouth. "I have wronged thee by my suspicion of thy truth! I knew thou would'st never be false to me—though thou lovest me not so much and warmly as thou thinkest thou ought to do! I will not require that thou shouldst measure thy love by mine! nor, because thou findest it fall short, thou shouldest not think and so teach thy heart that thou lovest me not; I but think that 'tis woman's nature to love most! I know thou art deceiving thyself and dost truly love me! For the suspicion that, but now, flashed on my brain like bale-fire, that it was because thou hadst learned by loving another, that thou knewest thou lovedest not me, I will not, I dare not, I may not cherish in my thought! Say 'tis false, dear Carleton! O, God, say " 'tis false " and I will kneel to thee!"
Carleton saw now before him, in Eve, woman in her true character! Gentle, loving, adoring, self-sacrificing, let but a spark of suspicion, not that her love hath been slighted, for this she will forgive and still love on, but that her love hath been slighted for another's shrine, light on her heart and a conflagration of all the wild passions of her being ensue! Carlton had never seen Eve but as the gentle, beautiful and loving; her dark eyes beaming affection; her soft, heart-deep tones breathing tenderness and devotion! But now how changed! how sudden the transition in the time from giving utterance to one sentence to speaking another! and yet she only suspected, and the moment before she had rejected the suspicion; but now, as she gazed upon his tell-tale cheek and averted eye and saw he spoke not, it rushed back upon her soul with new strength and distinctness of outline, and she at once yielded up her whole nature to its influence; loosed the wings of her spirit to its storm and let it drive her whither it would. Such is woman when the depths of her heart are moved by jealousy! Light and darkness are not more opposite than her two natures! To her jealousy would create a hell! love a heaven!
Carleton stood in silent awe and gazed upon her. Her slight and singularly elegant person was dilated and seemed taller by many inches. Her bosom violently heaved till her kerchief seemed as if agitated by the wind. Her attitude was commanding and spirited Her dark, glorious eyes flashed with fire and her pale cheek and bloodless lips spoke eloquently and painfully of the deep feeling within. He stood as if petrified before her, and observed her with an astonishment he did not strive to suppress. Could that lovely yet angry creature who stood flashing upon him, be the yielding and quiet girl whom he had so long held dishonored by withholding from her the title of wife? He felt both fear and respect as he contemplated her; and the awkward conviction forced itself upon his mind that to trifle with such a woman's love would not be lightly dangerous! She seemed to be reading his thoughts.
"Speak!" she said commandingly as he still continued silent.
"Eve, I know not what wild spirit has taken possession of thee. Thou art not thyself. But a moment since thou wert defending me with extraordinary eloquence, and now I behold thee without a feather of a cause standing in hostile attitude and demanding of me I know not what! Art thou beside thyself?"
"No, Carleton, no!" she said hurriedly and nervously. "Yet I do not know but that I am. There is a strange sensation at my heart!" and she pressed her hands against it: "It can't be so. I have judged you wrongfully. No, dear Carleton—I knew you would not lo—love a-noth—I could not live if I knew it;—yet I— I think I should—thou—love you still—but—but, dear Carleton, she—you—you should both—"
Here she tottered and would have fallen to the floor but for his arm. He caught her and gently laid her upon the ottoman. Her lips still moved and he bent his ear over her to catch the words from her tremulous lips. She spoke in a very low but singularly distinct and firm tone. It was the completion of the sentence:
"— both die!" and she was insensible.
"God of Heaven, what a woman," he exclaimed starting back with horror.
Pale, and lifeless, and lovely; how still and strange was her death-like repose! How calm and beautiful she lay there, like innocence slumbering; yet her nether lip wore not the pure expression of innocence. It was compressed against its fellow and bore the footprint of the stern spirit that fled from it as she breathed forth her last determined words.
Carleton made no effort to reanimate her! he seemed not to think of it. Lost in his own thoughts he gazed upon his wife a few moments as she lay beautiful and still before him, as if death and not life now claimed her; and as he dwelt on this new developement of her being, he was amazed and feared to contemplate the consequences to his future purposes! He loved Blanche Hillary! Eve had been to him a pretty toy, whom he had tired of and with whose devoted love he wearied, though his pride was gratified by it. Although circumstances had now fortuitously brought about his confession that he had never loved Eve, he witheld, for reasons, all will discern when it is remembered that Eve, though unacknowledged, was his lawful wife, the confession of his attachment to Blanche. Eve's womanly penetration aided by her deep love, which is ever the parent of jealousy, had detected his cmbarrasment, and instantly suspicion of the truth flashed upon her mind. The consequences we have just seen. The reaction of feeling upon her full heart crushed it. A beautiful sacrifice! she seemed an offering upon the altar of love, a victim of Carleton's pride. And was she a victim to his pride. Loved he never that sweet devoted creature? Had he never thought he loved her? yes, until he met Blanche Hillary. He then knew that he had been deceived, believing he had loved; and that alone, he felt, was love which the charms and presence of Blanche inspired in his bosom! It was a new, strange, blissful emotion, such as he had never experienced in Eve's presence. It was deep happiness; with such happiness Eve had never filled his soul. 'Till he knew Blanche he had only known the image of love, and with this painted image he had deceived Eve—deceived himself.
As he gazed upon her with introverted thoughts the past came before his mind in vivid colours! We will lift the veil and with him gaze upon the picture memory so faithfully retouched!
It is moonlight in a southern land! A sparkling river flows with silvery beauty amid green shores! In its winding course it frets among rocky islets; kisses the lithe willow branch drooping to drink its wave; smiles as it laves the velvet verge of melining lawns, and darts with arrowy swiftness and flashing light between rock bound gorges! or, emerging, foaming and agitated, like a frightened deer, out of the wild vortex of some bristling cascade, over which, when most rejoicing in its placid beauty, it was resistlessly plunged into a yawning whirlpool—it smooths its ruffled crest, and spreads broadly away to bathe woodland shores and sweet-scented meadows; its bosom decked with pleasant islands and enlivened by the graceful sail of some pleasure boat, or the light canoe of the sportsman or trout-fisher.
It was night upon this river of the southern clime. A tasteful villa upon its banks was bathed in the soft beams of the mellow moon. Tall oaks, majestic patriarchs of the olden forest, rose high and broadly limbed upon the lawn that lay around it, and in front swept undulating to the bright gliding waters. The fairest part of the lovely river stretched in beauty before the mansion. From the spot above, where a wooded headland towered dark and sublime, came to the ear of the listener upon the piazza, the subdued murmuring of the waterfull, though at times heard loud and rudely as the wind rose fitfully and wafted the roar along the still night. Below was visible a far stretch of lowland, diversified with clump of wood, and vast treeless meadow-land. Amid this wide champaigne reappeared the river, after disappearing a mile below the house, winding, fur receeding, like a league-long serpent, his silvery scales gleaming in the moon-became. In front of the house was a lake-like scene! The river had here expanded its generous bosom, insinuating itself between many a pretty grove and the mainland, and adding it, a lovely isle, to deck its own domain. And beautifully had she arranged the stolen emeralds upon her glittering bosom. Here a sweet spot not larger than a lady's boudoir, rose out of the water not far from the shore, all carpeted with green and shaded by tall umbrageous trees, that with their wide-reaching branches, half canopied it from the noonday sun, and at night letting in the broken moonbeams upon the sward, created a spot where Queen Mab and her mischievous train would have loved to hold their mad-cap revels. Not bowshot distant sprung from the steely breast of the shadowy wave a dark ragged rock, its sides overgrown with tangled vines and beautiful evergreens peeping from every crevice, its black, frowning head beetling far over the deep water and menacing the adventurous boatman who cast his lines in the dark quiet pools at its base. In mid-river lay a floating paradise! It was a lawn-like island, darkly wooded, and of the purest green in the sunny light. Romantic, needle-like rocks towering on one side, relieved its softer character, while its faintly illumined druidical groves gave to it a calm and solemn beauty. A few deer roved its glades and browsed upon its lawn, and its tree-coverts were vocal with the songs of birds. The squirrel leaped from branch to branch joyous and free, and the timid hare found there a secure retreat from the roaming hound or the heartless gunner; for it was a part of the domain of the villa, directly before which it lay. And this was the scene from its drawing-room windows! Lawn and woodland, river and islands, rocks and waterfalls! What besides these was wanting to complete a perfect scene? Life. Hearts to feel and minds to appreciate! Beings with cultivated tastes and having souls filled with moral beauty, and deep unextinguishable love for the pure and the good. And such a being was Eve Innes! In the bosom of this sweet spot she had budded and blown a sweet rose, fit ornament and fairest of the lovely paradise. An only child, and early an orphan, she was reared in all the luxury and indulgence that wealth, guided by paternal pride and tenderness, could bestow. Lovely as a child, she grew far lovelier still as she approached that sweet age when the child merges into the maiden. At sixteen Eve was lovely beyond the beauty of maidens. She was gentle and good as she was fair. Her carefully cultured mind knew no unseemly weed, and her heart was morally pure. Her father loved; nay, worshipped her! In her presence, and gazing upon her innocent and celestial beauty, listening to the music of her voice and treasuring up every look and smile, was he only happy. We need not say that one whom we have described so gentle and good returned with all her affection, and strong and deep was love in her nature, his tenderness and indulgence.
About a mile from the villa of Mr. Innes, in an old mansion gloomily but romantically situated on a rock overhanging the waterfull, resided a gentleman of recluse habits. Little was known of him, save that many years ago he arrived at Charlestown from the West Indies, where rumor said he had been a merchant and accumulated great wealth. He purchased the estate just alluded to from the heir of the ancient family that had long held it, and building a small gothic chateau within the sound and sight of the caseade, there took up his abode with his youthful son and a few slaves. He coldly met the courtesies of the gentlemen in the neighborhood, and invariably declining all invitations, he was soon neglected and suffered to follow the bent of his own humor, though many dark stories were whispered of the manner in which he had obtained his vast wealth.
Eve Innes was nine years of age; and being of a wild, adventurous spirit, one morning, accompanied only by a little negro lad of ten years of age, the almost constant companion and attendant of her rambles, she got into a skiff, in which an old lave fished daily for the table, and pushed gaily out into the calm river. She could paddle and so could Sambo; and after sailing about a little while near the shore, invited by the beauty of the lawn-like island in the middle of the river, she pointed Sambo with a shout in that direction, and they made the light wherry fly towards its green shore. Alighting on the ribbon of white sand that bordered it, she bounded towards the grove in pursuit of a squirrel which she had started from a rock on which he had been very busily seated upright on his hind legs, nibbling a nut, held very daintily between his fore paws. Sambo lingered a moment to secure the skiff and then went lumbering after her like a bear, with his naked splaw feet, while she run like a deer.
The squirrel knew how to escape pursuit, and she was soon panting and looking at the topmost limb of a maple, on which he sat gazing down upon her with provoking coolness.
"Sambo, you must go up after him with a stick and drive him down," she said as her "man Friday" came up.
"Od, lors! missy Ebe, Sambo be sure tumble head fus' and break he neck. Squrl too nimble on de toe for nigger, missy Ebe. 'Sides, if I cotch 'um he bite you!"
Eve looked at the limb again and then shaking her pretty head, with a sweet childish pout on her beautiful mouth, went rambling farther through the wood. Its solemn and sombre majesty struck her young mind with awe! She did not run but walked slowly on and gazed up and around her with wonder and a sweet fear upon her countenance. How true is nature to her duty! She ever speaks to the heart and teaches, as never man taught, the existence and power of a Creator.
The child paused. All around her was grand. Nature reigned impressive and alone. The thought of God sunk deep into the lovely child's soul. It took hold of her inner-life and left there impressed the eternal truth that she was created to live forever. The effect was a strange sense of fear at her heart. But from the dark, aweawakening woods she lifted her tear gushing eyes beyond them to the blue skies overhead, looking down upon her through the leafy branches like soft azure eyes of angels! Then descended as from Heaven, a sweet peace upon her heart: the strange fear fled and love filled her soul. The tears that fear caused to gush from her eyes, love dried up with a smile of serenity and peace; she looked round again upon the solemn and awe-awakening wood and said in her heart, "God is love!"
Thus was Eve Innes taught truth. Nature was her teacher, and the spirit of truth led her to look through Nature up to Nature's God!
"Dar' a yabbit, Missy Ebe," suddenly cried Sambo, who all the while had been looking about with his great round white eyes to see if he could discover another "squrl," for his young mistress to pursue.
Eve was instantly recalled to her sport-loving mood by the sound of his voice, but the seed of another life had been sown in her soul for eternity.
She saw the little brown rabbit, leaping away through the grove and the sight gave her wings! Sambo, although he had started first, was soon distanced and on, onward with affrighted leaps bounded the beautiful animal, leading the pursuing girl deep into the wood towards the centre of the island. With her bonnet held by a string in her hand, her golden tresses floating like sunny waves about her head, and her attitude all grace and spirit, on, onward she pursued! Sambo was soon left behind and quite out of sight— and the rabbit went further and further towards the other side of the beautiful island. Glimpses of the river through the trees beyond first warned her how far she had run: but she still saw the rabbit, who after getting a good ways ahead would stop, prick up his long ears and tempt her on to catch him; and then laying his ears back would again bound away from her eager pursuit.
She stopped when she saw the river gliding past on the opposite side of the; island and then looking back for Sambo and not seeing him she began to think she was lost. The rabbit stopped, also, just where the edge of the wood met the lawn that sloped to the shore. She then thought she would try the chase once more when, being out of the wood she should be able to see where she was. The graceful little animal waited until she was within a few feet of him and then went skipping over the soft sward, looking back at every agile leap. A high rock lay before him half in the water, and she feared he would run to the top and so she should lose him; for she still had hopes of getting possession of him. But the poor little hare's fate seemed likely to be a less happy one than to be folded to her bosom. As, after one of his bounds, he was sitting upright looking back at her, and prettily tossing ts ears, suddenly a large greyhound darted from behind the rock and seized it in his mouth! Eve shrieked, perhaps as much in alarm at the unexpected presence of the dog, as at the fate of poor puss. Her shriek brought also from behind the rock a handsome, dark complexioned boy, about fourteen years old, with a gun in his hand. A glance at Eve and at his greyhound showed him the cause of the out-cry, and calling to his dog in a stern tone he bade him release the rabbit, at the same time running towards him and striking him with his gun. The dog dropped the terrified animal, which lay upon the ground seemingly without life. Regardless of the lad, Eve darted forward and caught it up, and seeing no blood placed her hand upon its little heart. It throbbed and she knew that it had been more frightened than hurt.
"Is it wounded, Miss?" asked the lad with gentle interest in the fate of what he supposed was a `pet.' If Stag has hurt him he shall be whipped for it."
"It is only frightened! Poor puss! You were very good to call the grey-hound off. Oh, I have chased it so far. And I should have been very sorry if Stag—is that his name?" "Yes."— "should have hurt it—for I was the cause of making it come this side of the Island." While she spoke the boy remained gazing upon her lovely, flushed countenance, with deep admiration, which his sparkling eye, and the heightened glow on his cheek betrayed to be deep and feeling for one of his years. He was tall, and finely formed with black hair, large expressive eyes, and a mouth of singular beauty and haughtiness. His carriage was proud and free, and his bearing was that of one impetuous and little controlled. His gaze was earnest, yet respectful—ardent, yet timid. Eve, by her caresses, in a short time restored the little trembler to his senses. It looked terrified and shrunk with in her arm as if fearing the boy rather than his lovely captor. Eve was gratifled at this confidence and smiling, said prettily,
"Your large dark eyes terrify little puss. See how she nestles."
The boy smiled in return and replied, with gallantry, "So they alarm not its pretty mistress, I care nothing for puss's love."
"But they will alarm me, sir, if you keep looking at me so earnestly with them," she said half in seriousness.
He again laughed and turned to call his hound who was straying. He then looked at her a moment steadily and said in a low tone—
"Are you not Eve Innes?"
"Yes."
"I knew no one else could be so beautiful."
Eve was scarcely ten; yet she dropped her eyes, blushed, and felt confused she knew not why. She lifted her eyes and meeting his full dark gaze let them fall again; and then thinking suddenly of Sambo, she said hurriedly—
"I have lost my waiting man," and she then called him in a clear musical tone that all the singing birds took up. Never was "Sambo" so sweetly repeated.
After listening a moment, he asked how she reached the island. She told him and also how she had been led away by the flight of the rabbit.
"Let Sambo find his way back as he can to the skiff," he said; and pointing behind the rock, added with earnestness— "Here is my boat. I will row you home. Stag shall not go in it but wait till I come back for him."
Eve made some objections to leaving Sambo; but the enthusiastic boy silenced them by assuring her that the negro was already back in the skiff fast asleep waiting for her, and with the promise that on landing her he would see that Sambo soon followed her.
He then assisted her into the boat, from which he and Stag had just landed at the rock when Eve and the rabbit made their appearance.
"Stag shall go too. How wistful he looks to get in," said Eve The boat is large enough, and I know he will lie quietly in the bottom. I will be his friend because he did not harm my little rabbit. But oh, you sadly frightened her, naughty Stag! Come in sir!"
The dog with a grateful look, bounded in and crouched on the bottom, in the centre of the boat and creeping gradually nigher rested his nose on Eve's foot.
"I envy Stag," said the boy as he pushed from the rock.
"Envy a dog!"
"You have said you will be his friend."
"And I will be yours too, for calling him off!" she said laughing in her frank, joyous-hearted way. "I shall keep puss as a present from you, if you will let me."
"Will you?" he said with a kindling eye and pleased look. "If you like such things I will bring you squirrels and birds, and I have a pet fawn at home you shall have."
"Oh, how I should love a fawn! But," and she suddenly changed countenance and look at him very seriously, "but you have not told me yet who you are?"
"I am afraid you will not take my fawn if I should tell you!" he said confused, and bending down to his light oars.
"I hope you are not any body very bad," she said archly, yet not without a little fear.
"I am Mr. Carleton's son."
"That dark, stern man that lives at Rock-Head!" she repeated with a grave look. "Are you his son? I have heard you were as wild and savage as an Indian, and as dark! But you don't look savage, and I like a dark face! I wish we had been friends before, how many a nice sail we should have had together. What is your name?"
"George Edward," he said, his face clearing up.
"I like Edward better than George, and will call you Edward. But does your father live in a great black castle, and never go out doors, and when his slaves offend him does he put them in a dungeon that runs far under the river and starve them to death?"
Edward smiled and then looked dark and displeased. At length he answered, "Do you believe such stories, Eve?"
"No, not now that I have known you," she said with a frank look of confidence.
"My father, Eve, is like other men, human and kind. He suffers from grief, and solitude he covets because he can be most happy alone."
"What grieves him?"
"That I know not. He treats me with kindness, but lets me have my own way. Sometimes he is stern and terrible. I should fear to anger him or incur his displeasure. He treats the servants with gentleness and never has starved any to death, I assure you, Eve."
"And is there no black dungeon running far under the water at his house?"
"No. They are idle tales with which the negroes have amused you in the nursery."
"Then I won't believe them, Edward. Oh, there is Sambo in the boat trying to push her off. He sees me and you wont have to go back to find him; so you can go up to the house with me and show Sambo how to make a cage to put my little rabbit in. I want Pa to see you! He is gone into Charleston to-day, but he will be at home soon. He wouldn't guess you were Mr. Carleton's son."
"Why, Eve?"
"Because you are handsome, good and kind, and are not near so black as an Indian."
In a few minutes they landed upon the lawn, and with strange sensitiveness the lad refused her warm invitation to accompany her to the mansion, saying he would the next day meet her by the water, and row her to the island.
And many were the meetings by the water, and the happy row, to the island, and glad ramble through its shades, of the youthful pair. The intimacy so began, grew with their growth. Every where, and almost daily, Edward Carleton was Eve's companion. Mr. Innes took a fancy to him, and suffered the companionship. Eve reached her sixteenth year, and, instead of childish rambles, Edward was ever at her side, when she rode on horseback, when she walked by moonlight through the ground, or sat by her harp or piano. They drew and painted together, and he taught her Italian, the language of love. His voice mingled with hers in the soul-warming song, and the glances of their eyes melted into one, as each looked at the other, at some tender sentiment, for sympathy of feeling. In Mr. Innes eyes Eve was still a child, and he thought not of love; he guarded her no more at sixteen than at ten. Edward, under a governer some hours daily at home, was regarded by both parties as a boy, and no thought was taken of the dangerous intimacy, of two young and passionate creatures. But all too late would now have been the guard, that should have been earlier set over Eve by her father, if he had feared her union with Mr. Carleton's son. But marriage and Eve, he had never for a moment associated together. His life was wrapped up in her. But she had now another object for her regard; an object that called into being a new and stronger love. As the sun-flower of her young passion unfolded with her maiden years, it turned towards him by her side, as to the sun-God of her love. Her heart had grown to his, and love for him, as she grew in years, became her second life. Oh, how deep and pure and comprehensive was her affection. She knew no other happiness than to love him It was beautiful to witness her holy affection; for holy and hallowed it was by the pure, guideless heart from which it grew. And so she loved him with all her being, yet loved her her? No.
Dark and gloomy and stern was his nature, and men said it came from his sire; but what man knew his sire? There was much in the mode in which young Edward had been brought up, in the influences which he was subjected to, in the example of his father's gloomy life; wild and uncontrolled wanderings from boyhood, and the proud independence of his way of life, to from such a character as his. He was dark and stern, and for a young man, strangely so; but he was never thus in the presence of Eve. To her he exhibited, as if reflected from her pure bosom, a kind and generous and manly nature, with a mind susceptible of the finest and most elevated sentiments, and a heart alive to every frank and noble impulse. So Mr. Innes knew him; and so she knew him, and loved him. And when love got deep rooted in her life, and the darker features of his being, would suddenly unveil themselves to her, she would not see them, but hide them with the veil of her sweet love; and with a smile turn the night into the sunny noon.
But we may not linger over the scenes of these days of seeming happiness and promise. One day when Eve was past sixteen, and Edward nineteen, Mr. Innes returned from Charleston, and Eve flew to meet him. His face was pale, and wore a look of anxiety mlnged with displeasure. He scarcely noticed her embrace, but said hurriedly yet tenderly,
"Has Edward Carleton been with you to day, Eve?"
"He is in the drawing room, finishing a landscape for me," she answered timidly, alarmed by his look and manner.
"Eve, return by the piazza to your room awhile. I would speak with him alone."
Trembling she knew not why, and foreboding some evil, the maiden obeyed. Mr. Innes walked into the drawing-room through one of the open lawn-windows and approaching the young man, who was engaged in finishing a painting by Eve from a sketch of his own, said haughtily and sternly, for he was a noble, gentlemanly looking man, and a proud stern air became him.
"Mr. Carleton, I desire that from this day your visits to my house cease."
Edward had turned round on hearing his step, and laid aside his pencil. He now rose to his full height, a tall, dark handsome youth, or rather a young man, and flashing back a haughty glance demanded what he meant by such an address to him.
"I have heard that your father, sir, was a Slave-stealer; and that his fortune was accumulated by this atrocious trade."
"'Tis false!" cried Edward fiercely, his temples burning with the blood of shame and anger.
"Nay 'tis true, young man. I hold the proof. But this I should less heed, though the parent's stain must affix to the son in every society. But there is a charge against yourself, personally, which must forever shut my doors against you."
"Name it, sir," said Edward in a quiet voice—but with an eye like a burning lake, and a lip and cheek as white as marble.
"That you are a gambler so noted, that not a black-leg in Charleston but has your name familiarly on his tongue's end. You have also in a fit of wrath shot one of your own slaves so that he died. I know not how you have won for yourself such a damning character so secretly. I could not have believed the least of these, yet the least is greatest, but that I have the most convincing proof. Some of my friends seeing my blindness, in reference to your intimacy with my dear child, concerned themselves to get the proofs, and to day opened my eyes to my weak folly, and then placed them in my hands."
"May the infernal devils take your friends for their pains," he said, with an eye and brow like lightning playing fiercely from a dark cloud.
"This unbridled emotion, and fierce language convinces me," said Mr Innes with dignified resentment. "There sir!" and Mr Innes pointed significantly to the door.
Carleton smiled proudly and revengfully; and slowly crossing the room howed haughtily to Mr Innes and left the house. Flinging himself upon his horse, he galloped off like a whirlwind, bearing one within his bosom, and the plunging hoofs of his steed were heard far down the avenue ere they were lost to the ear. Then Mr Innes, with an expression on his countenance of deep heart-suffering, pressed his hand to his head and sunk upon a sofa.
Eve overheard the high voice of her father, and the stern tones of Carleton; but could distinguish nothing. Oh, what ages of suspense were those moments. How agonizing the feelings of evil forhoding that oppressed her heart. The quick, fiery step of Edward as he left the house roused her; she flew to her window to see him dashing past the window at mad speed.
"Oh, God, what has occurred!" she cried with anguish inexpressible; and unable to endure the suspense that made her heart seem as if a world's weight lay upon it, she hastened to the drawing-room
The interview between father and daughter, it is not necessary to describe. Eve was told all that her father knew, and was borne lifeless to her chamber; and he in that painful interview learned with grief and self-inflicted reproach, the pure, deep faithful attachment of his beloved child for the depraved young man.
Instead of an episode of one chapter, we could here make a novel of the scenes that followed the expulsion of Edward Carleton from the mansion of Eve's father. That he loved her not truly, is proven by the fact that he left home that very day, and sailed from Charleston in a Spanish vessel to Havana. His wanderings, we do not follow, nor express the crimes in which he was a participator. During the first few weeks of his absence, Mr Innes hung night and day over the couch of delirium. Eve's ravings betrayed to him how deep and in-woven with her life-chords, was his child's love for the outcast. At length she recovered and seemed to forget him. She spoke not of him, indeed she spoke but little, and seemed to live within a world of her own thoughts.
By and by grief and self-condemnation and anxiety together preyed upon her father's health. He was first confined to the house; than to the easy chair; then tookto his bed. His evident- danger restored all Eve's energies. She watched by him night and day like an angel; and when after weeks of lingering disease, he sunk to the last rest left for man, she closed his eyes and gave in silent prayer his spirit to God.
Eve was now an orphan; and an heiress; but, by the stern testament of her father, penniless if she wedded with Edward Carleton? thus do men make their prejudices live after them, and though dead yet retain power aud authority binding on the living. A female relative now came to reside with Eve who still remained in her father's house.
In the meanwhile Mr. Carleton kept secluded as before at Rockhead. If he knew of his son's attachment, and the cause of his abrupt departure from his roof, no one was aware of it. His son had been absent about a year, and Mr. Innes deceased nearly half that period, when one of his negroes was seen riding to town at full speed for a physician. The next day it was rumored that the Master of Rock-head was attacked with paralysis of one side, and that his life was in danger. The succeeding day an attorney was seen riding very fast towards Rock-head, and the day following it was noised abroad that the mysterious occupant of Rock-head was no more. But we must trespass on a portion of another chapter for the remainder of our episode.
Three months after the death of the proprietor of Rock-head, and on that "moonlight night" with which we opened our last chapter, Eve Innes was seated at her window looking out upon the beautiful silvery scene of island, grove and river, which we have described. Her cheek lay quietly in her hand, which was supported by the window. Her eyes looked forth upon the darkly shining river, and the distant murmur of the cascade of Rock-head came faintly to her ear. But her thoughts were not with the scene. In imagination she was following Edward Carleton in his unknown wanderings. She had not heard from him save by idle rumor, which whispered that he had horded himself with pirates at Cape St. Antonio; and a paragraph in the city Gazette even met her eye, in which it was stated that a captain of a Charleston brig had recognised him on the deck of a buccaneer's droger which chased him, but from which he escaped. Eve sighed at all this; but her love only grew with the rumors, and her true heart clung to him with faith and trusting devotion. She knew that he would return. She cherished this hope when hope seemed hopeless.— She heeded none of the rumors. She could not believe that one whom she loved so purely and deeply could be evil! She felt her heart's affections would never go out to an object unworthy their high and holy character. Grief was at her heart at his absence; and sadness lay like the soft shadow of twilight upon her spirits that she never heard from him. How hard it is for woman to give up hope where once her heart's truth has been bestowed! She may weep and grieve in silence; but hope, like a star, though it may go down at morn and leave no guide to the lifted eye, yet rises again in the evening as bright as before: `You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still ."
Tender were her thoughts of Carleton as Eve sat by her window with her eye upon the water. Suddenly she became conscious of an object moving upon the river, within the shadows of the shore. She recalled her thoughts and watched it narrowly, and oh, with what a beating heart! for in all that transpired around her the image of Carleton was ever mingled. Swiftly, darkly, silently, the object glided along the shore, and she saw that it was a long light barque, pulled by several men. An opening of the trees let in the moon light broadly upon them as they passed, and she discerned in the stern a tall figure, who stood upright as she was looking. Her heart became still with emotion. She gazed with parted lips and all her soul was in her eyes. Again the boat was obscured, and falling upon her knees she buried her face in her hands and prayed "that it might be he!"
The barge continued its rapid way. A young man stood in he stern urging on the six rowers in a low but earnest tone. The moonlight again shone upon his face, and that face was Edward Carleton's! Eve's heart had spoken truly. In a few moments, guided by him, the boat struck the bank beneath a large oak, and springing upon the gnarled roots and then upon the lawn, he hurriedly bade them neither to leave their oars nor to speak, and then disappeared in a copse that covered a well-known by-path leading to the villa.
Eve had lifted her head and again looked out, but the boat was no longer visible. She listened, but the quick dip of oars no more struck on the ear. She knew then that it had landed at the oak. She left the window with a bounding heart, and the next moment, guided by her impulsive love and hope, was upon the lawn. But she had not gone three steps from the house when the thoughtlessness and, perhaps, danger of her course occurred to her, and she retreated to the covert of the trellised piazza, from which, unobserved, she could discover the approach of any one from the water. In a few moments she saw a figure obscruely in the avenue, and as it came nearer she knew the step and form of Edward Carleton. He came forth from the shade of the copsewalk and stood in the clear moonshine gazing at the house. He was within a few yards of her and she saw his face distinctly. How had time and passion changed it! He was taller and manlier; and if possible, carried himself more proudly; his fine, oriental profile was stronger and handsomer, she thought; but she shrunk at the dark brow which seemed a throne where ruled passion and fire.— Yet as she gazed she loved. But love is woman's destiny; be the object of her heart's affection good or evil, if she loves she loves! What criminal, what bandit, what man however guilty and steeped in crime and blood, but that some woman, even the beautiful and true, has been found to love him, and to cling closer around him as his fellow men cast him farther forth from their midst.
Dark and clouded with passion was the handsome face of Edward Carleton. But the earth has volcanoes, and its fair bosom is disfigured and made terrible by fierce whirlwinds; yet all men love the world remembering only its sunshine and beauty. So Eve loved Edward Carleton. He was her heart's world, and she loved him for her spirit's life was in him.
He stood and gazed upon the villa, and directed his glance to the window of her boudoir, and then advanced with a quick pace towards it. Still unseen she followed him, oh! with what joy and winged happiness in her step and at her heart.
He stopped near the casement and sang in a low, tender strain the first lines of a well remembered serenade they had often sang together, and which he had composed: CALAVIER. "Oh come to the lattice, maiden, Thy lover bids thee wake; Open thy lattice, maiden, And look upon the lake! Look forth upon the waters bright, Tell what thou dost behold! With wings of snow and streamers light, And breast of shining gold!"
He paused and listened. A voice in reply came from the shrubbery by his side. It was like a singing bird, gifted with articulation. It was tremblingly full of joy, and running over like a bubbling fountain. And the words in truth gushed forth from her overrunning heart:
MAIDEN. From my lattice, cavalier, I look upon the lake; I see a gondolier Its shining waters break! I see a bark with wings like snow, With streamers on the air, Like gold all bright its shining prow; Ne'er saw I sight so fair!"He started and looked round at the sound of the voice; and as it sunk trembling with love and the excitement of the moment, he continued in the words of the song, but in a more passionate strain: CAVALIER. "That bark so fair with wings of snow And streamers on the air, And prow all bright with burnished gold, Awaits thee maiden fair!"
He then went on in a tender earnest voice, applying the remainder of the song to her: "Oh list, fair Eve, my light, my love, Say wilt thou go with me, And by my side the green land rove, And sail the summer sea?"
He approached the spot whence her voice had proceeded, and where, by the agitation of the foliage, he knew she was concealed. As he advanced she repeated with such a deep intonation of love and joy that his bosom was filled with the sweet assurance of her unchanging affection, "Thy true heart is my only bark, Thy love my summer's sea!"—
She could proceed no farther. Her heart dissolved in her song; her voice was drowned in bliss! She was in Carleton's arms closely clasped to his heart. Loved he then that true and trusting girl? He thought then that he did; and proud in her lasting faith and devotion, he felt grateful and happy, for she had always made him happy. In his wanderings, to think of her was happiness, and now, hearing of the death of Mr. Innes and of his father, he returned to see if she still loved him above all the prejudices of mankind. He had learned privately in Charleston, where he arrived the day before as passenger, that she was still at her father's abode, and unwedded, though many a wooer had sought her hand. Yes, Eve had been wooed by many a youth, but she refused them all.— Among her most pressing suitors was the attorney who had been sent for to make Mr. Carleton's will. But every body knew that she was in secret pining with her love for Carleton; and no one mentioned his name in her presence. So Carleton took a boat and by night ascended the river. We have seen the meeting with Eve.
We must now hasten to the conclusion of our episode. An hour of sweet happiness to Eve passed, and she had pledged herself to be his, and he had sworn to wed her when she should name the day, which he wished should be an early one. He then left her, and returning to his boat pulled his way stealthily along the banks to Rock-Head. He soon reached the landing at the foot of the rock, and bidding his men secure the boat and follow him, he climbed the well-known path to the chateau. He found the postern leading to the river closed and locked. He passed round the garden wall and reached the front of the mansion. Stern, dark and silent it stood amid the pines and cypresses that grew around. The solemn repose broken only by the roar of the cascade, affected his mind. His father's shade seemed to look angrily upon him from the window of his chamber. He approached suddenly the main entrance, and found the door ajar. He entered and ascended with a rapid, familiar tread to the terrace-like hall in the centre of the building. The moonlight streamed in through the windows and was his only lamp. He stopped in the midst and looked around. Half-seen, dim portraits glanced on him from the walls; the furniture remained where it had ever stood; all seemed unchanged! He passed on to a door at the upper end and opened it. To his surprise a light dimly burned within, and an old African slave lay by it asleep upon a cot. He recognised him as the old porter, and awoke him. From him he learned the particulars of his father's illness and death, and that he had been left there by the lawyer to take care of the place until he came, letters having been despatched to him to every port in the West Indies. The negro further added that the lawyer wanted to be informed whenever he made his appearance.
"Made he any will, Peter?" asked the young man after listening to the slave's narrative.
"Yes, massa Shorge, de 'torney hab him safe."
"I thought so," murmured the young man sternly. "I knew he would make a will and disinherit me? But we will see!"
The next day the attorney was sent for, and at night made his appearance. The interval Carleton had passed with Eve, secretly going and returning. But with all his caution, being desirous to have his return unknown until he knew how men regarded him, it was in a few hours known in the whole neighborhood that the heir of Rock-head had made his appearance after his long absence on the seas.
"And such was the tenor of his will?" sternly demanded Carleton of the attonrey after a few brief words of conversation.
"Yes," answered the man of law cooly; "if you marry, Eve, the daughter of the late Mr. Innes, you are disinherited.
Carelton curled his lip haughtily and turned and walked the room a few paces, and then came back to the attorney who was busy opening and unsealing an envelope. "You are a long time, Mr. Attorney, in getting at this will," he said impatiently.
"I sealed and endorsed better to keep it, Mr. Carleton, not knowing when you might return! There it is, sir. You can read it for yourself, or I will."
"I choose to read it," answered Edward shortly, tearing it open.
"I forgot to give you this sealed letter that accompanies it! 'Twas given me by your father to be placed in your hand."
"The will first," answered Carleton impatient at the interruption; for he had already began to peruse it.
The lawyer looked at him with wonder and retaining the letter watched his countenance in silence.
"So! this is then the condition on which I am to inherit my father's wealth?" he said musingly. "Well, be it so," he added in a half-tone; "Eve is fair and I love her; yet singing birds are in every grove; but such estates come not, at a man's beckoning. But what is this? A codicil? Let me read:
"If my son, Geo. Edward, aforesaid, shall bind himself to comply with the condition of the above will, then the property real and personal named therein, shall, at the expiration of seven years, after such bond given, be placed in his possession, the interest thereon in the meanwhile to be paid to him annually. (Thus I punish him for his filial disobedience.) If at the expiration of the seven years he shall wed the said Eve Innes, then shall the property real and personal above named and scheduled, be given to the Society for Colonizing Liberated Africans. My son, the said Geo. Edward being now absent and forgetful of his duty, the interest that may accumulate for the time (not exceeding two years) that he shall remain away, shall be forfeited by him and shall go to the husband of Eve Innes, if she be wedded within the two years."
The heir's brows met and darkened as he perused the codicil.
"Well this is a precious document, Mr. Attorney! What if I choose to comply with the conditions of the will?"
"I am in that case instructed to convey to you the titles to the real and personal estate, which titles are now filed in the Orphan's Court. The property besides Rook-wood, which is worth twenty thousand, consists in bank stock of New York banks, Mr. Carleton: your father being wise, invested all his wealth in that way some years ago."
"What is the probable value of the property?" asked Edward.
"Not less than one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Few young ladies, Mr. Carleton," smiled and said the lawyer, "are worth that these times. Miss Innes is very pretty and —"
"You may spare any further allusion to the lady in question, Mr. Attorney;" said Carleton haughtily.
The Attorney stared and was silent.
The next day Edward Carleton made his appearance before the Probate Judge and entered into a bond, pledging himself to the negative condition named in the will. The Court then gave him the necessary power to command the interest for seven years.
"And what has become of the interest, some two thousand dollars, accumulated the last three months," he demanded haughtily.
"In the possession of the Attorney, who drew up the will of your father and who is also its executor," answered the Judge "The object for which it is to be appropriated is named in the codicil. If at the expiration of two years —"
"Yes, you need not explain," interrupted Carleton impatiently. "Curses light on my father;" he muttered as he left the Court. "What could have been the motive of his hostility to Eve?"
This interrogation was overheard by the Attorney, who accompanied him from the Court. "If you will read the letter which your father desired me to hand to you, it will probably throw some light upon it!" said the executor; and again he handed it to him. He took it, thrust it into his pocket, vaulted into his saddle and galloped at full speed back to Rock-head followed by the Attorney at a less adventurous pace. In his own room Edward broke the seal of his father's letter. As he read it he paced the room like a mad-man.
"My son,I am now near my end—but, as I believe death to be an everlasting sleep, I feel no alarm. The grave is rest. I envy the clod and the rock which are dead and feel not; and rejoice that I shall soon be their fellow! But I would say a word to you before I am annihilated. I wish you to know what you are ignorant of respecting me. I am an Englishman descended of a noble family. My grand-father was an Earl, my mother a Countess. A step-mother made my parental roof a hell, and at the age of sixteen I fled from it. I shipped as a common seaman; and having a naturedly vicious turn, (I conceal nothing now) I soon contracted the worst vices. In my twentieth year, enraged by a blow inflicted by the Captain, Iconspired, and heading a mutiny took possession of the brig, killing the Captain with my own hands and so wiping out the foul stain he had blackened me with. We steered for the coast of Africa; and, tempted by the great wealth realized by slave-stealing, we engaged in the traffic and took a cargo to the West Indies. The immense returns by the way of profit, with the absence of all principle, led me to engage in it for a long period, till at length, after several years, my name was known throughout the West Indies and inspired terror all along the African coast. The wealth I accumulated was enormous; and the guilt with which it was obtained was equally vast. But what is guilt but a name? The grave hides alike evil and good: at least this is my belief, and at this hour it is a consoling one. If there were a God I know there would be a hell for me. But my conscience is calm and gives me no warning of a hereafter; and so I die without fear. A peaceful state, my son!
But I must be brief. Satiated with wealth I quit the traffic; and, building a costly and swift sailing yacht, I cruised for pleasure many months in the Mediterrancam, visiting every port, and every where received as a private gentleman. At Syracuse as I was on the eve of sailing, I gave a colation to a select party on board my vessel. Among the guests was an American gentleman and his daughter. I need not describe her. She was perfectly lovely. Eve Innes (for I have seen her once) is her counterpart. I fell in love with her at a glance and delayed my departure for weeks to woo and win her. I offered her my hand and was rejected! Fierce and uncontrolable by nature, I was maddened and demanded the reason of her refusal. She was, at first, silent but at length pleaded her ignorace of me! Fool that I was! I believed she was attached to me and would have become mine; but the truth she concealed. She was already betrothed. This I learned by accident. I met her again at a ball and accused her of duplicity. She treated me with insulting coolness; and haughtily taking the arm of a gentleman near her, left me. That gentleman was her betrothed. Need I say it was Mr. Innes, then a young gentleman on his travels? I sought him out, and picked a quarrel with him. We met with small swords and I was disarmed The next day I sailed. The week following they were married. I heard of it at Naples. Settled gloom then took possession of me. I traversed Asia and half India to banish the image of Eve Evelyn (such was her name) from my mind. A year passed away, and in Beyroot I met with a beautiful Jewish maiden. I was sick and she nursed me till gratitude grew into love when I married her. She possessed every grace and charm and gentle virtue of her sex. I learned to adore her. You were the fruit of that blissful union In giving you birth she died. I cursed my evil destiny; and, leaving you with her relatives, I again became a wanderer. I visited Charleston in disguise, witnessed the happiness of Eve Evelyn in her own home; but she knew me not. I determined to crush her happiness. She had two lovely sons and (shall I conceal the truth?) they pined and died one after the other! I poisoned them secretly and slowly! I felt a fiendish joy in seeing her tears and in witnessing her anguish. At length I returned to Beyroot and found you a handsome boy of four years. I was suddenly haunted with the fear that you would be poisoned and I took you with me. Five years we wandered together, and at length led by, I knew not what secret motive, I resolved to live near Eve! I purchased this property and came hither. In the place of her two boys she had a daughter. It was an infant of three years. I beheld her in her home, when she knew it not. I stole thither by night—and saw she wept over it and was not happy. So I would not take it away from her lest she should smile again; and I let it live. The child grew; and when it was six years of age, I met it with its mother. They had wandered along the green shores gathering flowers and were near the cascade! I came suddenly upon them! I took up the child! I was tempted to toss it into the caldron of boiling foam amid the rocks, but it smiled on me and looked so like its mother when first I saw and loved her, (for now I hated her) that, instead, I kissed it and set it down. The mother gazed on me; I knew she was searching memory! I was willing she should know who stood before her and I turned a full and expressive gaze upon her face; she met my glance and turned deadly pale."
"What would you here?" she said hoarsely.
"The bliss of being near you, Eve," I answered, ironically yet haughtily.
"You can mean no good."
"No. I mean evil; I loved you when I thought you might have been mine—I hate you, another's!"
"'Twas rumored in Syracuse, he was a pirate," she said thinking aloud.
"Yes, lady, I was a pirate—if you will; I am now the foe of thyself and thine."
She caught her child trembllng to her heart.
"Nay fear not; it bears to much thine image when first I saw thee. Thou hast lost two boys?"
Yes," she gasped rather than spoke.
"I poisoned them!" said I approaching her and whispering close her appalled ear.
!" she shrieked. I thought she would have sunk to the earth with horror, while her beautiful eyes blazed upon me, like those of a leopardess robbed of its young. I was awed for a mo ment.
"Yes. I lady! But fear not for this flower. I hate it, being thine husband's. But I will harm it not, at least, while I see not on her face thy scornful parting look."
"Thou fiend! Thou shalt be —" she could say no more; but, overpowered, fell insensible upon the sward. I bore her to the water and revived her; and then suddenly left her, satisfied with the result. She knew not whence I come or whither I went; for no one had seen me, so secluded was my life. She reached home, but spoke not after that hour. In three weeks she was placed in the grave; and so I had my revenge! No not wholly; I watched the young flower she had left to grow on earth. I watched, unseen, her expanding loveliness, and only waited, when there seemed most happiness garnered up in her father's bosom, to crush it. But she grew up from spring to spring, even with that gentle look of her mother's I love to recal; and I could never make up my mind to destroy her. I saw your growing intimacy, and in my heart resolved to make you in some way the instrument of my hatred. But time passed on. She reached her sixteenth year, and I saw that you loved her! Then all my hatred to her blood returned, and I determined ere mine (dark and stained as it was) should mingle in one stream with it she should perish! I had formed my plan and the mode, and the hour was fixed by me, when you left a note on your table saying that you had been insulted by Mr. Innes and should leave the country. Your departure saved her life. Now, I am near death! she yet lives, and I feel no disposition to destroy her. But the curse of a father be upon you, if you should return and wed her! My Will will express in stronger terms my feeling on this subject. Curses rest upon your head and upon the heads of your offspring, should you ever take he daughter of Eve Evelyn to wife. Thy mistress she may be! thy wife never, save with a father's curse!"
When Edward Carleton had finished the perusal of this extraordinary confession, he crushed the manuscript in his hand and stood a few moments with a stern brow and rigid look. At length he spake:
"Yes, I am fit son for such a father! Curse his memory and his name! What care I for such a father's curse! Let his memory perish with him. This then is the secret of the condition annexed to my inheritance; of thy long-rankling hate! disappointed passion and the scornful treatment and marriage of his lady-love. And he would have murdered Eve. God's malediction light on him! My mistress! Never! I am not yet his peer in guilt, if his guilty blood does flow in my veins. Eve is pure and for me she shall remain pure. I am half determined to wed her, in revenge upon foul wishes. But, no; this may not be; and I cannot give he up. She is dear and precious to me, but my inheritance is more so. But I will be guided by events with reference to Eve. She is a lovely and glorious gem, for any man to wear on his bosom Would to Heaven I could make her my wife. But this may not be. I am beggared by my losses in the capture of our brigantine by that British Cruiser, and must needs have money. And this I have. Eight thousand dollars is a pretty income, but will scarcely purchase me a new vessel. But I will wait my time; remain here and watch events and be guided by the result."
The heir of Rock-Head remained at home a few weeks, most of which time was passed in the society of Eve. He spoke not of their union, nor did she. She was happy in loving him, and having him near her, and in believing that he loved her. At length Carleton's proud spirit was chafed by slights received from neighboring gentlemen with whom, with the reckless purpose of ascertaining their opinion of him, he mingled on the turf and in town. But though a few unprincipled young men bore his society for his money, he found himself a general object of suspicion and dislike. At length, fired by an insult, he challenged his man, who refused to fight, adding the epithets "pirate and slaver.' Carlton drew a dagger and struck him to the heart. He fled without a parting interview with Eve. Weeks passed away, and at length she learned that he was in New York. The intelligence conveyed to her drooping heart new life. For though he had dyed his hand in blood, she forgave him, for she loved him.
Suddenly she departed from home, no one knew whither. Rumor had it, that Carleton had come secretly by night and stolen her away. He had come secretly by night, but not stolen her away. She voluntarily fled with him. She had written him at New York, and received a reply full of tenderness and expressions of passion. But in it he lamented that fate and fortune forbade their union. She supposing that he alluded to her own loss of fortune in case she wedded him, according to her father's will wrote him she cared not for the sacrifice of all her inheritance, so she possessed "her heart's world." "Having thee, Edward," she wrote, "I have wealth and honor, and covet nothing. Assured Assured your continued affection, I should be happy in a hovel. Seperated from you I should be wretched in a palace. But I fear you pause at the idea of wedding one, who wedded to you will truly become penniless."
"I must marry Eve!" said Carleton as he perused her letter; "I see my happiness depends on having her with me. She is a charming sweet being, any one would be proud of. She loves me and may be of infinite service to me. I need a faithful friend; I will wed her secretly. She is too pure to be won otherwise, and I cannot think of her, my friend from boyhood, in the light of a mistress. I will make her my wife. The marriage shall be kept secret till I can afford to do without my father's wealth. Eve, I will make thee happy."
Carleton was then in New York, secretly organizing a crew for new adventures. He had met with Morris Græme, the expelled Cambridge Student, at a gaming table, and struck with his bold and reckless character as well as with his intelligence, he one night took advantage of his losses and drew him into the organization. When he had completed his crew, he appointed a rendezvous at Baltimore, where he heard a beautiful clipper schooner had just been built for a Revenue Cutter, and was to proceed, lightly manned, to the coast of Maine, there to be stationed. He met his men under Morris Græme's charge at the place appointed, and that night, the day before she was to sail, the schooner was secretly boarded and put to sea. Carleton steered for Charleston, and running into the harbor at night was landed in a boat, and the schooner stood off and on awaiting his return. Three hours after, Eve was seated by his side on the way down the river. They reached Charleston at midnight, and Carleton conducted her to a justice who was in waiting for them. Without asking any questions, but merely taking their christened names, he united them. Though thickly veiled (at Carleton's request,) and unknown to him, Eve recognized through her veil the justice whom she had often seen at her father's, and knew, if she had such a doubt, that she was a lawfully wedded wife. In two hours afterwards Carleton was once more on the deck of his schooner with Eve by his side.
That very day of happiness and love, Carleton persuaded her to take a vow, not to reveal to mortal man their marriage. What could she refuse Carleton? She believed he required the oath for the preservation of her own fortune, for of his father's will she knew nothing. She took the oath as he wished; but, young and thoughtless, and blinded by love, she did not think of, or foresee the painful and degrading consequences to herself. She first learned them some time afterwards from Morris Græme's addresses, and saw too late her folly and her crime. Once she begged Carleton to remove from her name the dishonor which he now had attached to it. But he laughed and turned her aside, and so let it pass. Again she would have spoken to him, after Morris's insult, but the stern displeasure of his countenance checked her, and she became silent.
The reader of the "Dancing Feather" is already familiar with the subsequent career of Carleton's schooner, to which Eve had given this fanciful name from her grace and lightness upon the waves. After the loss of his schooner, which was seized by a Revenue Cutter and sold, as already stated. Carleton lodged privately on shore under an assumed name, and in lavish style of living. Eve, though his wife, passed as his mistress, and more than once was she reminded of it by his unprincipled friends. But she loved Carleton too much to complain; and, so that he occasionally smiled upon her and spoke affectionately, she was passive in her degradation Morris Græme, his Lieutenant, in the meanwhile was retained in a sort of half-pay by Carleton, who also furnished him with money to keep at command several of his best men. Morris, also, supported himself and a mistress by gambling. Both he had Carleton kept very secret, and careful not to be suspected of ever having been connected with the "Dancing Feather." But Carleton's secret was at length betrayed; and learning that he was to be arrested, he resolved to make some attempt the same night to put to sea. He went along the shore of the East River to take note of the craft, and see what one anchored alone might be cut out. Approaching the vicinity of Colonel Powel's residence, he saw the masts of the Dancing Feather above the wooded headland, and at once recognized her. He then, as we have saw, met Blanche Hillary. His passionate and self-condemning address to her, was for the purpose of an appeal to her feelings, aware that her prejudice must be against him; for he felt that he could never be happy but with her love. He had but twice met Blanche; but love once deeply planted in his fiery breast, needed only to be watered with the dew of fond and ever living memories. In the light of her sun, the star of Eve's happiness was destined slowly to set. Eve had long felt his coldness, but knew not its cause. This was at length revealed to her mind by jealousy, in their interview in the cabin, from which we have so long absented ourselves to glance behind the curtain at "Scenes of the Past," that we fear the reader has quite forgotten that he was present at it. We now resume our narration proper, where we suspended it, to recur to the former life of our chief characters.
The scenes described in the two foregoing chapters, formed the subject of Carleton's painful and self-convicting meditation, as he stood by the couch, and silently gazed upon the marble-like form of the stricken and faithful Eve. At length, alarmed, for he did not wish her dead—and to die thus; he proceded to restore her to consciousness. But she had lain there so long in the image of death, that it was sometime before she showed signs of returning animation. Slowly, and at intervals so long, that it seemed she would never again breathe, her bosom heaved with life. He knelt by her and pressed his lip to hers, and breathed upon her mouth as if he would give her life. He felt anxious and deeply solicitous; for though be loved her not, his better nature was interested in her; and as she lay there, he internally made the resolution, that henceforward, so she came not between him and his hopes of Blanche Hillary, he would treat her with gentleness, and gratify her with the form of affection. These kindlier feelings at once took possession of his breast, doubtless awakened by the ret rospect of the youthful and boyish past, when together they sailed, and fished, and rambled, sang, sketched, and rode together; like brother and sister never severed, but in all pastime ever united. And these purer memories, with the reflection of what a vast sacrifice she was daily making for her love's sake, gave a tenderness to his manner and voice, as he bent over her and softly whispered her name.
The change was instant and surprising. Her heart felt the thrill to its centre, and bounding with new life, sent the blood like lightning into the pale cheek. Her eyes opened, and met his beaming upon her with seeming love and tender interest, and smiling with unutterable love and gratitude, she caught his hand from her throbing heart and pressed it passionately to her lips. One word, spoken in tenderness, had restored her to life. She lay still unable to rise, with her eyes elevated to his face: and eyes more beautiful and full of affection, nay, and bright tears too; were never the messengers of a heart. Carleton read in them the deathless love of her being. He was touched, and bending over her, he lifted her from the couch and pressed her to his heart. What a happy moment was this for the wife. Jealousy, suspicion, pride, all were forgotten. Edward loved her; and in the sweet consciousness of this knowledge, she knew nothing beyond it.
"Forgive me, Edward," she said when able to speak; "I have deeply wronged you."
"Care not for it, dear Eve. It was thy strong love, and can I be hurt at any proof of thy devotion."
"Yet—'tis like a dream: would to God it were!—yet you have told me you loved me not. But this is false, and thou didst deceive thy own heart. I know thou didst, Edward."
"Yes, Eve!" he said with a degree of hesitation.
"I know thou lovest me, and besides me no one Edward. In this sweet assurance I am happy. Go now; Morris Græme has twice called you from the deck. One look, and smile to re-assure my heart. Thanks, dear Edward; Nay I ask not a kiss! Now am I happy."
Carleton left her, strangely and painfully oppressed with the sense of the wrong he was doing her, and returned to the deck from which he had been so long absent. The moon still reigned with silvery sceptre over shore and sea, and the sparkling waves danced in her light on every side. The schooner was slipping along through the water, at the rate of seven and a half knots, with every drawing sail set alow and aloft. Carleton on putting his foot on deck, glanced aloft at the clouds of snowy-canvass, and then his eye fell on the brigantine, which was sailing not two hundred fathoms from the schooner square abeam.
"Is that the brig that was ahead, when I went below, Morris?" he asked, after a moment's survey.
"Yes; and for this I called you. I have been examining her closely with the glass, and find enough on deck as well as in her hull and spars, to make me suspicious of her. When she found, about an hour ago, that we were creeping up to her, and were likely to overhaul and pass her, she set her studden-sail and would have run away from us, but for our increase of canvass. You see I have got the schooner under all she can handle with this stern breeze, and yet the brig is abeam, and has held her position the last twenty minutes."
"The glass, if you please. There is but one vessel that can sail with the Dancing Feather," said Carleton, putting the spy-glass to his eye. After looking at her a moment, he added in a low, impressive tone of voice, peculiar to him when much moved, "and that is the craft. She run away from me when I was in my Spanish schooner in the West Indies, though that little Sea-Slipper, as I called her, sailed nearly as well as the Dancing Feather. By the by, Morris, I have decided to re-christen the schooner. The Dancing Feather for good reasons known to both of us, must give place to another. And as I am bound to the West Indies (when I can get guns aboard) I shall give her the name of my pretty Spanish craft, which that John Bull cruiser captured; leaving me and my men, barely time to escape in our boats through the Lagoons."
"Success to the Sea-Slipper then," said Morris Græme; it will be a fine daring of your old cruising enemy John Bull, to re-appear again on his cruising ground, with the Sea-Slipper revived."
"And if we meet a second time, it will be his last cruise," said Carleton fiercely. "This brigantine is a pleasure yacht, hailing from Baltimore I cant be mistaken in her. She was once a square-rigged, and perhaps has been dismasted and altered aft to a schooner rig."
"I would be sworn to her Captain," said Red Fred, who having just struck four bells and been relieved at the wheel, was passing forward; "was'nt she in the Havanna two years ago last month, and made a sort of city show for the Spanish?"
"She is the same, Fred," said Carleton, with the glass still at his eye, evidently taking a very close scrutiny of the stranger. "I was on board of her, Morris, then and made up my mind to have her. I had the Sea-Slipper lying there in a creek, on the south side of the island, and ascertaining the day in which the vessel —
"Did'nt they call her "The Lancet," said Fred, who still lingered in the waist.
"The Lance, you mean, Fred. It is the same craft, without question. Learning when she was to put to sea, I was off Havanna, waiting for and giving her a good offing, I gave chase, expecting to come up with her in my own way, and my own time; but I reckoned without my host. Soon as her skipper found what I was after, he just walked away from me, as if I had been a fruitdroger. I then put the Sea-Slipper to her best paces, and gained what I had lost. We had been running hitherto with the wind aft. It was a stern chase. But he, finding my studden-sails did me so much better service than his own, and doubtless well aware of his best sailing points, suddenly took in his starboard studdensails and hauled on the wind, set his stay-sails fore and aft, and his three jibs (which you see he has now,) and with the wind four points free, she went off on the wind with as light a pair of heels as the devil would put upon a thief. By sun-down she was hull down and I gave up the chase."
"The Sea-Slipper was not a fast sailor, Carleton, or the chase would not have run away from you in that style," said Græme "See we hold with her now, and, by Heaven, are slipping a half point ahead. She could'nt compare with this schooner."
"She was in bad trim at the time, and not well manned. Besides her best point of sailing was with the wind nearly dead aft. If the brig had not discovered this, and kept on before the wind, I should have overhauled her. But this Sea-Slipper, Græme, shall atone for the fault of her name-sake. She, like the brig, sails best on a wind. That fellow must know me. But, infernal devils! we are without a gun."
"He carries two," said Morris significantly. "But if he would only wait a week for us, we could show him a little sport."
"What do you mean?" asked Carleton earnestly.
"There is an old fort near the mouth of the Kennebec river in Maine, (not thirty hours run from here,) which is nearly dismantled. It is not far from my place of nativity, and in boyhood I often visited it. It was then occupied by a few soldiers, the war having just ended. I was at the place again three months since, having secretly re-visited my native village, hearing my father was ill. It was then quite deserted, but there were in the embrasures four excellent guns, the carriages in tolerable repair; for I examined them with the probability of being some day in want of them. The fort stands elevated, but a vessel can anchor in deep water under it, and the guns can be removed without difficulty. They will answer our purpose until we can capture more suitable ones."
"This is well conceived, Morris, for I confess I had come to no definite purpose. But the amunition?"
"There are two pyramids of balls in the fort; and two leagues further up the river, is the town of Bath near which in a retired spot stands a powder-house. From this we can remove what we require."
"Well planned, Morris," exclaimed Carleton with animation. It shall at once be put into execution, and as you have been so clever as to conceive it, you shall carry it into execution. The active command of the schooner, I resign into your hands till this enterprise is carried through. We are slipping past the brig as you said, Morris. At the wheel, there. Let her fall of a point; steady! With the wind a point more on our quarter, we will improve our advantage."
"The brig has fallen of as we have," said Morris. "She evidently is governing her motion by our own."
The two vessels now sailed along very near each other with all sails set, and presenting a beautiful sight. Symmetry and motion combined, are ever beautiful to the eye; and two more graceful vessels never danced over a moonlit sea. Carleton and Græme stood a few moments silently admiring the freedom and grace of the brigantine as she cleaved the snowytrack with her spray-glittering bows; her tall masts clothed with shining canvass from the water to the truck, towering into the deep blue sky: and her flashing wake streaming like a meteor far astern. And to the eyes of those on the deck of the brigantine, the schooner presented an equally beautiful appearance.
"I will know something more of this craft, and see what her business is up the Sound. It is the Lance, for this insignia is now glittering in the beams of the moon, at her foremast head," he said, directing his glance aloft, where the moon-light suddenly revealed a long glittering lance of silvery appearance affixed to the royal-mast-head."
"Her Captain, then, if Red Fred be right, is the owner; and is a naval officer on leave," said Morris.
"I will make his acquaintance. I saw him once in a cafe in Havanna—a handsome, gallant looking, sailor-like person; and I have reason to know him to be a good seaman. I will breakfast with him."
"He may compel you to dine, then," said Morris laughing, but with a meaning in his words that his commander understood "We have no guns."
"He cannot suspect us. Our having no guns will be in my favor, as I intend to pass ourselves upon him for a yacht. We are no more nor less now Morris, God knows to our sorrow;" he said smiling.
"We shall be something more ere three days, if we run at one for the Kennebec."
"That we shall do—but I would like to learn something of the probable whereabouts of this sporting craft, three days hence. I have no wish to capture her save for her guns and small arms. I would not give the schooner for two of her. She is too large for our sport, Græme. But I should like to capture her in a fair chase, to wipe off the old failure. I would then be willing to present her back to her Captain, if he proves a fine fellow, with my best wishes for a pleasant cruise. Morris, call the men aft to the sheets and braces. I am going to put her away two points more, and see if I can't shoot ahead and go across his fore-foot."
The young Lieutenant of the Sea-Slipper at once gave the necessary orders and the schooner was steered in a course which gradually drew her nigher the brig, which she would soon have fallen astern of and crossed her wake, if her own speed proved not to be increased by this alteration. But the advantage of this slight change in her course was soon apparent. While she approached the brigantine she worked perceptibly ahead of her, and sailed clearly a knot faster on a free bow-line than with both the sheets aft. Carleton stood leaning over the bulwarks looking at the brig with a proud expression of triumph in his dark eyes, while Morris watched closely the sails and helmsman, that no advantage might be lost. The brig still kept on her course, the two lines of direction forming an angle, the brig sailing along the line parallell with the horizon and the schooner approaching obliquily. As they heard each other, Caleton closed his glass and handed it to the boy who had volunteered to act as steward, and jumping into the main rigging, he stood upon the bulwarks with one foot upon a rattling watching her decks.
"How steadily we work ahead on her course said Morris," glancing over the side of the brig which they were fast approaching. "She is resolved not to alter her steerage half-a-point."
"Then we shall make acquaintance with her pencil-like, flyingjib-boom end," said Carleton. "My trumpet here, boy!"
The trumpet was promptly placed in his hand by the lad and Carleton took an attitude for hailing the stranger who was now on his starboard bow not fifty fathoms distance. The two vessels were rapidly nearing each other at the bows and it was a nice question which should shoot ahead of the other; as they sailed they promised to come in collision, the bow-sprit of the Sea-Slipper pointing directly at the figure-head of the brig. But the schooner was moving fastest through the water and might shoot ahead and clear of the brig. But it was doubtful; Carleton and Græme both saw their true position but were confidant of passing safely ahead of her.
It was evident that their manoeuvre was watched with no little interest from the brig. Two persons were on her quarter-deck, one with a glass in his hand the other with a silver trumpet that gleamed at every motion of his hand in the bright moonshine. It was the sight of his trumpet that led Carleton to call for his own.
Swiftly and gracefully like two fair knights prancing towards each other with snowy plumes nodding in the breeze, the two vessels came dancing on, neither deviating from its original course. The dark tall pyramid of sails on the brig's fore-mast already rose between Carleton and the moon, casting their shadow upon his quarter-deck; and the ripple and gurgling of the water agitated by the brig's motion through it mingled with the sound of the spraydash about the schooner's bows.
"We are in no condition to lose a spar, Carleton, or suffer damage in the hull," said Morris. "Shall I bring her to the wind a couple of points? We are sure to be foul of her or have her bowsprit run between our masts!"
Carleton made no reply, save a dark proud smile, and seemed to watch intently the deck of the other, Morris turned on his hee muttering,
"This is fool-hardy! If we get damaged I can never carry out my plan of getting the guns from the old Kennebec Fort." His further thoughts were interrupted by a loud, stern hail from the brig. While his weather-bow port flew open and a gun was run out.
"Schooner ahoy!"
"Aye, aye!" answered Carleton in a clear manly tone not making use of his trumpet.
"What the devil do you mean by coming athwart my vessel in this buccaneer style Luff, or by G—d I'll fire into you!"
"Steady as you are;" cried Carleton coolly turning to the helmsman: then answering the other he said, with a provoking indifference,
"When I give my helmsman my orders I never interfere with him. He is steering his proper course. I should be sorry to run nto you, and equally regret to have you fire into me. But I never change the course of my vessel at the dictation of any man. The sea is free for all who rove it."
There was just a probability that the schooner would forge ahead clear; but the chances were more probable for a collision. If she fell off from her course the breath of a bowline, contact was inevitable. Still they were approaching each other with a merry rippling and dashing of the water and hastening the crisis.
"He will put up his helm you may rest assured," said Carleton.
"There is too much firmness in his tones for that," said Morris. "But we shall soon see."
The vessels now were not two lengths apart, and both had way nearly seven knots.
"Luff, I say;" again thundered the Captain of The Lance.
"Steady;" cried Carleton to the man at the helm. "I have told you that I never change my vessel's course;" he answered to the fiery hail of the other. He saw that collision was inevitable unless one them deviated. But reekless as he was brave, he loved the excitement and the danger; and there was besides, a pride his preseverance for that very vessel had once humbled his pride. In his heart he resolved to risk the safety of his vessel rather than yield an inch to that craft. The captain of the other could have had no such motives, but kept his vessel undeviatingly on her course due east. Silently they approached the point of collision, when all at once, a bright flame issued from the bow port of the brig; bang thundered the gun, and the ball buried itself with a shock that made the schooner lurch and reel, deep into the main-mast, just above the rack of capstain bars. The next instant amid the rolling smoke there was heard a loud crashing and shivering of splinters, mingled with the curses of men, and the schooner shot ahead out of the confusion, dragging with her the flying jib and jib-boom of the brig, carrying away her top-mast studden-sail dangling at the end of her top-sail yard, and losing her own sternboat and half the mainsail, through which the brig in heaving ahead as the schooner crossed her bow, run the splintered head of her bow-sprit. All this mischief was done in a moment, and the two vessels separated and passed on without, at first, scarcely any check to their way.
"I have a mind to give you my other gun," shouted the Captain of the brig as the schooner passed clear of the confusion; "but I see you have not escaped any better than we have Who re you?"
"The Sea-Slipper," answered Carleton in a tone that sounded like proud defiance; while he smiled at anticipating the other's astonishment. The mention of this name had the effect he looked for. They heard an exclamation of surprise and then came the voice of the commander.
I know your colours now, my lad! I thought you had been sunk or is there a pair of Slippers. We have met before. I will not let you go then since such is your quality without another card."
The starbord port in the waist was thrown open and the next moment the gun was discharged. The brig, however, steered awk wardly in her crippled state, and the shot fell wide, dashing a huge feather of spray into the moonlight far to leward.
"I owe you two," said Carleton quietly, and leaping on deck turned his attention to the state of the schooner. She already began to steer wildly, for she was much clogged forward by the brig's studden-sail and spars that hung from her bow-sprit, and felt the want of her mainsail. Morris, though vexed at what he termed the fool-hardiness of Carleton and the equal obstinacy of the young naval officer commanding the brig, as if they had been two rivals meeting, gave himself with alacrity to repairing damages. The wreck was cut adrift, the sail being saved, and the injury done was ere day-light nearly repaired. The stern-beat which had been torn from one of the davits and left hanging by the other was much stove; but being hoisted to its place it was left for another time; the schooner having two light wha le boats slung a either quarter-bulwark.
Day had began to dawn when the schooner was got again under her former accurate steerage way. By the time the pearly hues of the east deepened into the blushing glory of the morning—ere yet the sun emerges from beneath the horizon—the two vessels lately in such mischeivous proximity were three leagues asunder; the brigantine, her damages unrepaired being seen far to windward, near the Connecticut shore, standing back towards New-York, while the schooner was sailing easily along on a bowline, a mile from the land, off Oyster bay. The latter vessel from her rakish appearance in connection with the firing that had been heard on the sound a few hours before, was evidently an object of suspicion to the small trading vessels, which one and all bore up as they came near, and gave her a wide birth. But the Sea-Slipper kept on her course indifferent to their demonstrations of fear, and at sundown passed, with an eight knot breeze from the north-west, between Fisher's Island and the eastern extremity of Long Island, and before midnight she left Montauk Point on the starboard quarter, and then stretched away like a sea-bird into the open ocean.
"I have heard from my yacht, and she has been at her old buccaneering tricks again," exclaimed Colonel Powel entering his drawing room, the second morning after the flight of his schooner from the cove, and addressing Hayward, who was seated reading a paragraph in a newspaper to his wife and Blanche.
"And so have we, father," said Kate Heyward, who, with her husband and friend were looking as much excited as Colonel Powel himself.
"There was a rumor in town just before I left that Captain harry Ellis, who left port the day the yacht was spirited away, had been run aboard by a schooner answering the description of mine, and that he beat her off with his guns."
"This is just what we were reading when you came, sir," answered Kate.
"It must be true then," said Hayward.
"I see no reason to doubt it," said Colonel Powel; "but let me hear the printed account, Blanche."
"I will read it, father: Blanche looks frightened about Harry Ellis, and her voice would tremble like a rose-leaf."
"How can you Kate!" said Blanche with a reproving glance and blush.
"Here it is, dear father: `We mentioned yesterday the sudden disappearance of Colonel Powel's yacht, `The Sparkling Wave,' once better known as `The Dancing Feather,' from her anchorage opposite his villa, and that a revenue cutter had sailed in pursuit of her. We have just received intelligence that leads us to believe that she has fallen into the hands of her former daring commander. It is now known that this person has been privately living in this city, and would have been secured by the police the very night the yacht was taken off. And the fact that he was not found by the police at the place to which their informant guided them gives color to the suspicion. The intelligence brought by a Capt. Martin of the Hartford sloop `Betty Ann' is, that about three o'clock yesterday morning firing was heard by him and his crew on the Sound, and at sunrise they fell in with a brigantine which hailed her, and asked for a spar to make a flying jib-boom of. He stated the brig reported that she had been run into by a buccaneering schooner with a score of men on board, and that he had fired into her and evidently defeated an attempt to board, as the schooner stood on after carrying away, by the collision, some of the brig's hamper, including her jib-booms. Not being able to supply him Captain Martin left him, and soon after he saw the brig a tempting, with her jib only, to beat back to port. If this be correct, the schooner is, without question, the Dancing Feather revived. We sincerely trust she may be fallen in with by the cutter, and treated as her merits deserve. We understand Colonel Powel had full insurance. We shall probably soon have all the particulars from Captain Ellis, who has doubtless put back to repair damages, in which case we shall not fail to lay them at once before our readers."
"There can be no kind of doubt now into whose hands she has got again," said Colonel Powel. "Well, ladies, we have lost our excursion to Newport. You know something of these adventures, Henry and you, Blanche!"
The young lady started and blushed, and quickly answered, with the consciousness of her late intercourse with Carleton, "I, Colonel Powel."
"Why Blanche," said Kate, "you look very guilty."
"Yes, we were fellow-passengers on the Ariel," answered Heyward relieving her embarrassment by speaking; "and one pleasant afternoon were boarded by the Dancing Feather. Her Captain was a tall, dark, but exceedingly handsome man, not more than twenty-six. They were reekless men, Captain and crew, and I have reason to know one of his Lieutenants."
"That fearful Morris Græme," said his wife.
"Well it is dangerous to have them abroad upon the sea, in so fast a vessel; but they have no guns, thank heaven," said Colonel Powel.
"These, men like them, will not be longin obtaining. I have no doubt the motive of their attempt to board Captain Ellis was, to possess themselves of his guns."
"And he gave them to the fellows it seems in a true seaman's style. I must see Ellis when he returns, and hear from his lips the facts. Somebody else would like to see and welcome him too, or I am mistaken." And he glanced significantly at Blanche, who also catching a mischeivous look in Kate's face, got up and went to the window to conceal her pretty confusion.
And was Captain Harry Ellis her lover? There is a pleasant romance worth hearing here, but we can indulge in no more long episodes at the expense of our "Cruise." In a few words, Blanche and Harry Ellis first met, when he was a Middy. He was at home in Boston on leave; he nineteen, she fourteen, and they fell in love, flirted, sighed and parted. He soon rose to a Lieutenancy, and then inheriting a great estate in the South, followed his roving humor, and getting leave cruised for two or three years, in a beautiful and costly craft, which he had built in Baltimore. In the meanwhile Blanche had been met by Carleton, who became at once deeply, passionately enamored with her; but towards him she felt no other emotion, than a romantic interest very natural for an imaginative girl to feel in a handsome buccaneer. After Blanche's return to Boston, Harry Ellis again met her, and renewing his vows of attachment, thought he found a reciprocal feeling in her bosom, addressed her and was rejected! A few months elapsed and she was again in New York, on a visit to Kate Powel, now become Kate Hayward. Harry Ellis arrived nearly at the same time in The Lance, and being a friend of Colonel Powel's was invited to dine with him. Judge his surprise, on meeting in the dining room the beautiful Blanche Hillary. She met him with a frank kindness that led him again to cherish a hope, and after a few weeks devotion, he renewed his suit and was accepted. This happy issue of his manly and devoted love, occured only the week preceding Carleton's sudden and alarming visit to her when, with her book in her hand, and Neptune lying at her feet, he found her seated in a rustic arm chair at the lawn's extremity, looking upon the pleasant water. Are we surprised that she listened not to his strong language of passion, even had his name been unstained by guilt—his heart by crime? Carleton knew not that he loved one who was betrothed. If he had suspected it—but he did not! and so in safety she was left by him till the time should come when he could more favorably press his suit; for Carleton had in his mind the half formed idea of reforming his life for the sake of winning and wearing Blanche. His first step of reform was deserting poor Eve!—his next cutting out the Dancing Feather; in truth a promising beginning. But the true, yet false, notion which he harbored was, that Blanche loved him and might be induced even to share his fortunes in the life he led. He formed this opinion from Eve's great love, and the sacrifice she had made. But Eve loved! Blanche Hillary did not! She loved Henry Ellis, however, perhaps with little less devotion than Eve cherished towards Carleton.
Their marriage was settled to take place in six weeks at Boston; and Captain Ellis had left New York the afternoon of the cutting out of the schooner to proceed to Boston to have her refitted for a voyage to England, whither he intended to take his bride as soon as they were wedded. Blanche was to go with Col. Powel, Kate, and Hayward, in the yacht as far as Newport, and pass a few days, and thence proceed to Boston by land. We have seen how these plans were interrupted by the daring deed of Carleton and Morris Græme!
Blanche stood by the window, from which was a view of the lawn and the bright river beyond, her heart trembling still with the idea of the danger from which Harry had escaped, when those in the room were startled by an exclamation of joyful surprise; and ere they could ask her the cause of her excitement, she had thrown up the sash of the long, ground window, and the next moment was flying across the lawn towards the water.
`Ellis's brig, by the Cæsars!' exclaimed Colonel Powel, who with the rest had sprung to the window.'
At once the drawing-room was deserted, and at a graver, yet full fast, pace they pursued the course taken by Blanche, whose light form had already disappeared in the trees of the grove which crowned a headland over which were visible the taper masts, one of them distinguished by the silver lance at the fore-royal-mast head.
When Blanche reached the rocky headland she saw the brig slowly advancing almost beneath her, the cross-trees being on a level with the shelf of a rock. On the deck stood her betrothed who, hearing her pronounce his name looked up and smiled, waved and kissed his hand, and then giving an order to his helmsman the brig came nigher the headland, while he sprung into the fore rigging and went aloft. The rest of the party had now reached the rock and Colonel Powel hailed Ellis as he gained the cross-trees.
"Welcome back again, Captain Ellis. So you have fallen in with my yacht!"
"By the gods! was that your yacht, Powel?" answered the young commander from the cross-trees, the brig in the meanwhile slowly nearing the rock."
"Yes; she was cut out and run off by her former captain, I am positive."
"I am a fool not to have been sure of her! When I first saw her astern I thought it was the yacht, but having seen the yacht but once, as it only came from the ship-yard last week, I was not sure, and then I could not think you would have sailed at midnight. I then took her to be a revenue cutter, and sailed with her an hour or two, but she overhauled me, manæuvred in a masterly manner, and finally came up with me, and I verily believe would have boarded me but that they discovered that I was armed. As it was they did me mischief as you see, and I did them some, as well as left a nine pounder in his main-mast. Port a little there at the wheel."
"Port it is," answered the helmsman.
"How is the depth of water here Colonel?"
"Twenty feet."
"I thought it looked black enough for full five fathom. Hard a port."
The helmsman obeyed the order, and the brig came slowly past, the headland approaching it nigher and nigher. The young commander, walking out on the top-gallant yard, waited a moment for her to come the nighest; then calling out loudly to the man at the wheel, "Starboard, hard a starboard!" he fearlessly swung himself—just as the vessel was falling off again, and in spite of the cries of the terrified Blanche and of Colonel Powel—far from the yard-end towards the rock, catching at a branch of a tree with a firm grasp. Then securing a footing upon it, he with a light bound, stood amid the group with his hand clasped in that of the happy Blanche.
"How could you be so rash, Captain Harry?" said Mrs. Hayward. "Blanche ought not to forgive you. The color has not yet come back to her check."
"You young sailors will ever be a reckless set," said Colonel Powel, shaking him warmly by the hand. "But I am glad to see you, light upon us any way you will."
"You will stay with us," inquired, or rather insisted Hayward, the two young men having, since they first met, become warmly attached to each other.
"Not five minutes. I must be on board again when she returns on the other tack, and I will take your boat, Colonel, for the purpose. I only jumped ashore to say how d'ye do, and explain the cause of my return."
"We knew it before. Blanche saw your brig and ran to the river-side as if chasing her runaway wits," said Colonel Powel.— "The affair is all over town, and in the papers. It was brought by a sloop which you spoke."
"Oh, aye! I wanted a spare spar or two, resolved to repair damages and go in chase of the scoundrel who run me aboard. But after hailing half a dozen coasters and putting into Norwalk, without getting what I wanted, I was forced to put back. But by the lord Harry! I will yet catch him."
"No, lord Harry, that you don't," said Blanche laughing, yet with a look of seriousness in her sweet beaming eyes; "you shall run no more risks. I have a claim upon you, and I mean to enforce it."
"That is right, Blanche," said Colonel Powel; "make him feel his responsibility. You see, Ellis, the traces begin to jingle in your ears already. But cheer heart. We men must all come to it, if we are fit to make a woman happy, and so long as the traces are wreathed with flowers, as I am sure Blanche's will be, we can wear them for the fragrance they yield."
"Quite sentimental, pa," said Kate, looking archly at Colonel Powel; "will you make another such pretty speech?"
"Mischief, no! Hayward, don't let your wife be too saucy."
"Kate, don't quiz your father," said Blanche with a roguish look.
"Oh, you are quizzing too. Well, I don't see but one is bad as the other. Harry, when you come again I will take you into my library, shut the door, and give you some lessons as to wife-ruling. I must not forget Hayward either."
"Oh, you naughty pa!" said Kate, tapping his cheek with her fore finger. "But you don't look so very Bluebeardish, and I will kiss you." Colonel Powel received the kiss with becoming gravity, and then the party walked along a descending path to the dove, and so round the white beach to the opposite jut of land where the brig would come in on her tack. Here, as the vessel came nigh, he left them, promising to be with them in the evening after he should have anchored his vessel at the ship-yard. They stood watching the beautiful yet crippled vessel as she passed on until she was lost to their sight by a point of thick woods.
We will now change the scene. It was a moonlight night; but the moon, decreased half its size, had just risen late far in the northeastern horizon. Its reddish glare glimmered over a wild scene of wave and rock. A steely river, swift and dark, flowed to the ocean between barren and craggy headlands. All around was drear and savage grandeur; an iron-hound coast presenting an eternal barrier to the lashing surges of the deep. But at this hour the wind was very light from the South, and the waves of the sea rolled landward with a low, suppressed murmur. There was no life to animate the wild scene of rock and ocean. The far moonlit wave was unrelieved by a single vessel as far as the eye could sweep from the headlands. Inland half a league up the river, was a dark height overhanging the water, and in the gloom of night frowned with the warlike outlines of a circular fortress. The slowly rising moon flung its faint, lurid beams into its grass-grown area, and they fell upon the figure of a man who was standing in one of the embrasures upon a gun. His head was bare, his body was half naked, and his beard was unshorn, and was grey mingled with black. His hair was white as snow, and the wind as it came from the sea, which was visible, lifted it from his temples. His eye was wild, and his gestures—for at times he waved his hands and threw out his body—were those of a maniac. He seemed to be watching the sea. As the moon rose higher he suddenly turned to that and eloquently addressed it in wonderful glory of language and imagery; now speaking with tenderness, now with fierce displeasure; now deprecating its vengeance, now pouring forth towards it torrents of terrible denunciation."
Suddenly, in the midst of one of these scenes, he stopped, and shaking his head despondingly, seemed to realize the madness of his conduct; and sighing, he said in a tone of touching woe:
"No—I am not in my right mind. The moon is not God! Yet why does the moon madden my brain? I feel not thus till it shines! 'Tis the cause of these paroxysms of madness—for I am mad.— Men call me mad. I hate the moon. No, I do not hate the moon! Ho, the moon!" he suddenly exclaimed, rising and stretching forth his hands towards it; "the glorious moon! Give me wings and I will bathe in your oceans of light! Curses!" he added fiercely after a pause. "Thou hearest in silence, and I see thee smile at thy slave; for I am thy slave! Thou hast bound me in fetters; thou hast flung a burning chain around my brain. God! I feel it scorching, and the fire is driving me to hell!"
He sprang from the gun, and rushing along the battlement stopped full where it overhung a precipice a hundred feet in depth.— There he balanced himself upon the dizzy height, and long and loudly laughed, as if in mockery of the danger into which the devil in his brain tempted him to cast himself. All at once his countenance changed, and so did his whole manner. Sitting down upon the edge of the battlement he sobbed like a child and anxiously looked towards the sea.
"They say she is on the occean with him somewhere, and so I know if I look and keep watch when the good moon rises and keeps watch with me, I shall see her. There's the ocean, and there I will keep my eye. I bless the moonlight that helps me see the ocean! Oh, I should be so lonely without the moon! Good moon! I will not curse thee! There comes a vessel! No, 'tis a wave breaking on the rocks at Seguin. I have seen so many vessels come, and yet not his. They say she will never come home again. I know they lie! She would never stay from her father! She is my only child. She was a good daughter till she left home. Oh, curse the hour! Curse him who tempted her! They lie, when they say she was not deceived and wronged. Oh how beautiful she was. Some men say he is hung. They lie! If it was true she would have come home to her father. She loved me in childhood, and she is not evil now. She was deceived. Her mother is dead, weeping for her; and she is away, and I am here alone, with only the moon to love me and keep me company. It's a good moon. His mother died of grief last year, because they told her her boy was a pirate! Her mother died of a broken heart. I did not cry. My heart did not break. No! I was strong. I shed no weak tears. I! No! I laughed when they told me. I laughed when I read her name, coupled with his, in the papers the neighbors sent me. No! I wept no tear. Women weep. Men, when they cannot weep—men—go mad! and I am mad! I have no house, no clothes, no food. I hate man—I hate houses—I love this old fort. When I am hungry I can gather clams, and when I am sleepy I can lie down in this grassy nook with the moon to watch by me all night. There is a sail—she comes—no, 'tis a mocker! The devil sails mock-ships on the ocean to make me mad. No. 'Tis a vessel near the land. I saw her broad mainsail turn white and large to the moon. I shall see my child, my Ellen now. I have seen many a vessel pass, and hailed to ask for my Ellen; but I know now she is come; and when she comes I sha'nt mourn as I do now. I shan't be mad; oh no! I will be happy, and I will tell them all she is not bad, but has come home to bless me. Oh, how fast it comes. I will set on my gun and watch it!"
The maniac then left his dizzy seat and took a position on a dismounted gun in an embrazure looking seaward. Gradually as he watched the advancing sail, his eyes closed with fatigue and mental exhaustion, and he sunk upon the grass by the side of the gun in deep sleep. Poor human nature! how weak, how weak, how perishable! at one moment dignified and ennobled even in the eyes of angels, with a commanding and creative intellect; at another grovelling in idiocy lower than the brute, or wandering on earth a wild, fearful wreek of itself, the object of all men's pity and of angels' wonder. This poor being whose madness we have witnessed, had been a clergyman of eminence in a village not far from Bath. He had an only daughter whom he spoiled by indulgence. But mother and father were both devoted to her, and in no other way did they feel that they could show forth their love. They restrained her in no impulse—checked her by no exercise of authority—never crossed her wayward will. Near them lived a gentleman who had an only son whom he equally indulged. Him he at length sent to college, where he early betrayed a vicious propensity; and after two years sojourn at two different Universities, he was expelled in disgrace, and went to New York, where he entered upon a course of profligacy and guilt. The daughter of the clergyman was attached to him, and, deceived by his letters, eloped from her father's roof. The result is already in the reader's possession. This imprudent girl is the mistress of Morris Græme!
The vessel which the broken-hearted father had seen was soon made out as a rakish schooner, standing on under free sail towards the mouth of the Kennebec.
"This is a savage coast, Morris," said her captain, as he stood on the schooner's deck eyeing the rocky shores with his glass. "I would not like a storm to catch the Sea-Slipper upon it."
"There are numerous safe harbors all along the coast, and vessels are rarely lost here."
"It is a remantic and wild region, and seems without inhabitants," said Carleton as he swept the land with his spy-glass.
"Yet there is scarcely a cove that has not its fisherman's cabin, nor an upland that is not cultivated, though rudely. It is a hardy region and a herdy race. But as you ascend the river a league or two the savage aspect of the shores yield to farms and woods, and the higher you proceed the more beautiful the scenes on either hand become, till you find yourself below Gardiner, in the midst of the finest river scenery in New England."
"This is a spacious mouth for so narrow a river," said Carleton, as the schooner glided from the open sea between the island headlands that guard like gigantic posterns of rock the entrance to the river. "How far up is this fort?"
"A half a league by the water, but not a mile in direct line.— Now you can see it lifting its dark head into the sky."
"Yes, but 'tis impossible to get the guns from that height without more means than we can command, Morris."
"No. I have well examined the spot. The path to the water is even, and twelve men can with ease and safety get down a gun at a time."
"Be it so. The devil lend us a lever but we get them aboard; and then hey for the rule of the ocean wave. What stirring lines hose of Byron. It was his Corsair, Morris, that first gave me a thirst to be a sailor and a corsair. How finely they open!"
"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free, Far as the breezes bear the billows' foam, Survey our empire and behold our home!""Blow good breezes! The tide is ebbing, and we go up slowly," he added to Morris, who had himself taken the helm, as the schooner entered the river. "We have been now five days in calms and storms running here, a distance easily run in twentyfour hours."
"If that revenue cutter," said Morris laughing, "that chased us off Nantucket shoals should catch us in this infernal trap we should have a hard chance to get off as well. But I would fight her to the last."
"Yes," said Carleton in a low deep tone of voice; "yes, we must never be taken!"
"No!" came with equally stern decision from Morris's lips.
"No!" echo repeated from the cliff side with a stern distinctness that made them start.
"A good augury," gaily said Carleton, walking to the companion-way to meet Eve, whom he had despatched the young steward-o invite on deck to view the romantic scene around them.
Silently, and moving like a spectre of the waters, the schooner glided along the dark and savage shores, sometimes obscured by the shadows of the rocks, at others reappearing with the faint grey beams of the shorn moonlight gleaming upon her upper sails; not far from the mouth and almost lying at the base of the fort-rock, stretched before them a low broken beach on the extremity of which was visible, as they rounded the point, a white circular battery. It stood out in fine relief in the moonbeams, and in the indistinct light seemed to the eyes of Carleton to be bristling with guns.
"How is this, Morris," he said quickly; "what fortress are we coming upon? We are fairly caught."
"No," answered Græme coolly. "This is a fort built some time before the late war, but has never been used, the fortress on the height so fully commanding it. It is a pretty affair, and looks formidable by moonlight."
"Had I been sailing into this river alone, I should certainly have put about on coming thus upon it," said Carleton, as they glided past within a hundred yards of its yawning embrasures.
"This is a lovely, wild scene, Edward," said a sweet voice at his side; "and there is something in the danger that your purpose hither associates with it, that inspires awe as I gaze. How smiling in the moon this low round fort appears, with the grass waving above it, contrasted with the dark and savage grandeur of the frowning battlements above and almost overhanging it. That height seems the throne of the battle-god."
"You are a romantic person, dear Eve," said Carleton, suffering her arm to rest on his, and her soft hand to steal for the pressure of his own.
"I learned to be so from you, dear Carleton. It was you that first opened my eyes and my heart to the beauties of nature. You taught me to love the roar of the cascade, to gaze with awe upon the rocky cliffs, and to love the beautiful and the sublime in all that our native river presented. And from loving nature I learned to love you as my spiritual nature. My spirit went inward, and there found a new earth to love, of which, that you had taught me to love, was but the shadow. Thou wert my world for my heart's abiding home."
"And you found it, Eve, a world of storms and earthquakes; all unfair and unlovely; its hosom uptorn with whirlwinds of passion, and itself often forced from its true orbit by its own inward convulsions."
"Yet as I delighted to listen to the roar of the water-fall, to gaze on the wild whirlpool of wrathful waters, to rejoice in the careering storm and feel a pleasure in witnessing the fierce uproar of the elements, even as I enjoyed the lovely and the peaceful in nature's serenest mood, so have I loved, yet with awe, ever, dear Edward, the wild warfare in your own impetuous nature. I loved not earth less for its storms and clouds, nor have I loved thee less. Man's soul is the mirror that reflects the material earth. God has so decreed and adapted the two, for what vast end in the future we may not fathom. But we do find the type of all our passions in the elements and their results."
"I think I understand your idea, Eve. It is a singular one, and something within me assures me of its truth. But see how sternly and warningly towers this fortress upon us. What type within my soul— your world, Eve—does this represent?" asked Carleton smiling.
"The spirit of menacing resistance. If thou couldst embody that attribute of thy moral nature in matter, it would assuredly take that shape, or a similar."
"Rather that of the rock of Gibraltar; for I feel the spirit of menacing resistance is as vast and mighty, and strong and eternal as that throne of war's power and strength. But let us discuss this matter another time, Eve," he said, narrowly watching the frowning fortress, which rose nearly above their heads. "To your cabin, lest danger should fall upon you—for our object here may not be accomplished in perfect security, as Morris thinks."
"Nay—I will remain on deck and watch you," said Eve firmly.
"I fear no danger."
"Morris, come hither," said Carleton in a low tone. "Do you not see the figure of a man reclined against the outline of the south battlement of that fort? We are likely to find here some persons to object to our carrying away your guns."
Morris looked a moment, then sprang for his glass and levelled it at the object.
"It is a man seated on a gun in an embrasure of the fort. I see but one, and he does not look like a soldier. He has disappeared. What can this mean? I could have sworn a human being would not have been within a league of it."
"Could our purpose have been betrayed? But no—this is impossible."
"The fort may have been manned since I was here a few weeks ago. At all events, this looks suspicious, and we must act warily. There is no one else to be seen. We are now so near that I could see a crow if one were sitting on the top of the fort. Yet there is some one there, and what his purpose can be unless to guard the place, I cannot conceive."
"If there is one then, there are more than one!" said Carleton. "Forts are not usually given in charge of a single man!"
"We will soon know," said Morris. "I will stand on; for our character cannot be suspected, and if we find resistance we must meet it as we best can. I can depend upon the twenty men we have!"
"The guns we must have, at whatever risk," said Carleton, with decision. "I am well wearied of this being at sea unarmed, as helpless and unfit for service as a Marblehead mackerel catecher. Let her stand on and let the issue be put in fortune's hands. As we approach nearer I can discover nothing upon the fort. No further signs of its being held are visible. This must have been, I think a delusion after all, Morris."
"No. I distinctly recognized a human figure. It was bareheaded and seemed half naked, as it appeared to me!"
"Then some wild man of the woods, perhaps, who haunts the spot," said Carleton, laughing. "I have heard of such persons. How beautiful the deep repose of the frowning terrace, Eve"'
"I am enjoying in my heart all the grandeur and beauty of the scene! How dark and solemn is the black, impenetrable shade beneath yonder fir-crowned cliff side. It seems like the palace of night—the womb of darkness! and see we are gliding into it!"
"We anchor beneath the cliff in the deep shadow there!" said Morris from the helm. "As we come nearer we shall find a path winding from the water up to the fort. We can lay close along side of the rock as the water is ten fathom deep."
"If the fort is manned, we are now at least too far under their guns to be injured," said Carleton as the Sea Slipper glided towards the calm, sheltered spot indicated by Morris Græme, bringing the fortress each moment farther above their heads, until at length it was no more visible. In a few moments afterwards the schooner lay close to the cliff with her sails, not one of which had been lessened, unmoved by a breath of air.
"We shall have to two out of this black-hole," said Carleton as the schooner came gently to and ceased further motion with its how against the side of the precipice. Have the boats down and attached with oars in all ready, if we should have to do it in a hurry. If this was in the West Indies, Morris, I should say we were in for a pretty adventure."
"Be assured we shall find no one in the fort. I will take half the men and lead, as I am familiar with the path. The rest better remain in charge of the schooner, in case of surprise."
The Sea-Slipper was now secured by her hawsers to the rock, both at the bows and stern, as snugly as if she had been lying at a pier. Planks were passed from the waist to the rock, where the hscent commenced. It was decided that Morris should take the lead with ten men, and on ascertaing that the way was clear, he was to give the signal, when Carleton with eight of the remainder was to follow him, the men bearing the ropes and necessary tackle for removing the guns.
Morris Græme sprung ashore with a light adventurous spirit characterestic of him in action and danger, followed by his men, He had his own pistols which he had retained, and brought on board with him at New York, as also had Carleton. Some of his men had a single pistol each, and others were armed with knives, harpoons, or capstan-bars, as they could collect them on board. Certainly a party less poorly armed, never disembarked on such an expedition. With slow toil Morris ascended the stony and steep path, through over-shading pines, which intercepted every ray of light. But as they ascended farther, the path turned off to the right, and became less steep as it wound round the rock. At length he suddenly emerged above the trees, into an opening within a few feet of the base of the fortress. It towered above him in stern silence. He listened, and stillness only reigned. All was buried in the repose of night, with the soft radiance of the moon shining upon its walls, giving a deeper character to its peaceful calm. His glance narrowly ranged the whole breadth of the walls, but neither ear nor eye could detect any signs of the presence of man. Half inclined to adopt Carleton's suggestion that he had been deceived, he waved his hand to his men to advance again, and then with a confident and familar step, passed rapidly beneath the walls to a gate on the north side. It had fallen in; and the appearance of every thing around, indicated the fort to have remained undisturbed since he had visited it on his late excursion to his native town, not far distant. He now hastened his steps, and leaping across the dilapidated gate-way, was at once in the midst of the deserted fortification. He paused a moment, inspired with a feeling of awe by the deep repose of the place and the hour. The moon streamed in through the embrasures casting half the interior in gloomy indistinctness. In a moment or two the influence passed off, and looking round and seeing with a glance that the guns were all there, he hastened to the battlements and with a shout gave the signal to Carleton. It was returned from the deck of the schooner below in her Captain's clear tones, now elevated with exultation, and the hope of once more dancing the billows of the wide sea, with an armed vessel beneath his proud tread.
"Nay, Eve, you must not follow me," he said kindly.
"But there is no danger. Besides, I have made a vow in my heart, and sworn by my love, that I will not leave you. I have wronged you, Edward, in being jealous—for I was jealous, but for a wicked moment only. After your kindness to me the last few days, I can never believe you false, or that you do not love me. Let me go with you. I want to enjoy the wide prospect from the summit—of island, sea and shore."
"Have thy pretty will, Eve," said Carleton playfully. "You are true and faithful, and I should be a brute to cross you in your wishes."
There was something in this remark, which was both pleasing and painful to her; but she feared to analyse it, and so looking on its pleasanter side alone, she smiled and bounded with him to the shore.
"You will ask the Captain for me," said a voice near her, and only heard by her. She looked round and saw by her side the handsome lad whom Carleton had made his steward.
"Yes, you shall go, Little Belt," she said with cheerfulness.— "Edward let Belt leave the schooner to have a climb upon the rocks. He merits it, he has made himself so useful."
"If you wish it, Eve," answered Carleton; and the boy grasping her hand bounded before her up the path, and was soon far out of sight.
"What an affectionate yet strange boy he is," she said after a moments' silence, as they climbed the height, her arm clinging to Carleton's." Little Belt can't be his true name, either. How came you by him on board?"
"I never saw him till he was on board. He came in with the other men. Morris probably knows him."
"I will ask him about him," she said as they at length emerged in full view of the walls of the fort, and beheld Græme standing by a gun upon the battlements watching their ascent.
"It is all as I expected, Carleton. The fort is unoccupied, and the man I saw must have been an apparition, or a delusion. But I could swear he was bare headed! Heaven defend us! here he is again!" cried the young lieutenant starting aside from the embrasure in which he stood, with alarm and surprise, as a half naked, wild figure sprung to his feet from beneath the gun where he had been unobserved in the deep shadow, and seized him by the arm.— Carleton and Eve both started at the sight and gazed upon him with wonder as he stood, tall, wild and demoniac upon the defined outline of the fortress, his gray hair streaming, his chest naked— the moonlight gleaming ghastly upon his haggard countenance in which his eyes glowed like volcanoes! Eve recoiled with fear, and Carleton gazed with horror.
"Who and what art thou?" demanded Græme endeavoring to throw the mad-man off.
"My daughter! hast thou brought back my daughter?" fiercely cried the maniac "Thou shalt not go till thou hast brought back my daughter!" and he suddenly threw his arms closely round him and involved him in his embrace, while he yelled in a voice between grief and rage, "I have thee now—I have thee close! Thou art mine, and thou shalt be hell's till thou give me back my child— my child!"
"Help—for God's sake Carleton, help! I am without power to move in his iron grasp. Hasten round to the gate and come and release me from this demon! He will hurl me from the precipice!"
Carleton obeyed and flew along the path followed by Eve. He sprang past the men who were standing immovable, completely paralyzed by this strange and sudden spectacle, and leaping upon the grass-grown battlement he hastened around the rampart to the precipitous quarter where Morris stood struggling with the madman.
In the meanwhile the maniac continued to make his wild thrilling appeals to him for his child.
"I know nothing of thy child! Release me, demon, or I will hurl thee from the rock!" cried Morris with mingled fury and fear.
"Ha, ha, ha! thou liest—thou hast my daughter! Give me back my daughter! I am mad for my child!—I am crazed for my lost one!" Here his manner suddenly changed. He released him and knelt before him. "Give her to me, Morris Græme, and I will recall the father's curse that now is on thy head! Oh, return her to me and I will bless thee!"
Carleton and Eve had come near and seeing that Morris was released, they stopped and listened.
"How knowest thou me by name, old man?" demanded Græme hoarsely.
"Thou dost not know me, then? Hast thou torn so many daughter's from their homes' that thou shouldst be at a loss for the father's name when he appeals to thee?" said the other rising to his feet and regarding him with a flashing eye. "My daughter! I demand her at thy hand! I will not kneel to thee! Give me back my child I say! Return to me my lost Ellen!"
"Ellen!" repeated Græme, from the very depths of his being, as if the sound of that name had moved the foundation of his guilty soul. He gazed on the face of the mad-man and through all the degradation of form and wreck of mind he recognized the father of her he had wronged. He trembled and became visibly pale, and fell back a step from the menacing air and fixed gaze of the demoniac.
There followed a silence unbroken save by the low dashing of the waves against the island shore, which lasted several minutes. Græme seemed rooted to the spot. Who can paint the horrors of his conscience in those still moments of reflection, with the fearful supernatural gaze of the lunatic upon him? He seemed arraigned to judgment before his time. Carleton would have rushed forward and relieved Morris from the presence of the man, but Eve said—
"No, let us see the issue! If Morris Græme hath done this wrong, this is God's judgment and we may not interfere." Carleton suffered himself to be guided by her, but her words deeply troubled his own thoughts. At length Morris Graæme spoke— for he could not longer endure the fascinating look of the burning eyes upon him. He spoke soothingly; but his voice trembled.
"Of thy daughter, good man, I know nothing. Thou shouldst seek her elsewhere than of me."
"Thou liest," shouted the mad-man! "Thou canst not deceive a lunatic, for the God who hath taken away his reason hath left in its place a sagacity that laughs at reason! I can read thy thoughts, and to my burning brain they are written upon thy black heart in letters of blood! Thou knowest where my child is! Give her to me or I will tear thy heart from thy foul throat!"
Quicker than thought, and ere his purpose was anticipated, the mad-man caught Morris again in the same terrific embrace as before. The young man felt his hot breath upon his face, and the glare of his eyes which burned like furnaces seemed to scorch his brain. He was nearly mad! He struggled, but vainly, to disengage himself. But the strength of the maniac was like that of three men.
"Nay, then, fiend of hell! if thou wilt but let me go, I will tell thee of thy daughter," he gasped.
Instantly he was unclasped, and just as Carleton had again advanced to release him, who a second time was with held by Eve. The mad-man's manner changed to a quiet bearing; and clasping his hands together he bent eagerly forward in an attitude to hear.
"She is in New York. Six days since I left her there. She will probably be at home, as I left a note with her, saying I should not return to her, and that she had best go back to you." Morris ceased. The father remained a moment, silently regarding him. He then spoke musingly as if to himself:
"Home! you said home! This place is now her home. The sound of the sea will be her lullaby—for her singing mother is dead. If she would come to me, she must come hither to me; for here is my only home. Ha! and what hast thou to do here?" he fiercely demanded; "here in my house! Wouldst thou bring woe and madness and burning hell here? Thou hast cursed with thy presence one fair home, and what dost thou here? But thou shalt not defile this sanctuary of the God-afflicted. This spot is sacred to madness and woe! 'Tis the home hallowed by woe, woe, woe! The whisting winds howl woe! the lashing waves shriek woe!— the wild sea-bird screams woe! a thousand demons dance on every rock and sit in every tree, and cry nothing but woe! Oh, 'its a sweet woeful place! and 'tis my home! What dost thou in it, defiler? I will hurl thee into the sea!"
With an air and gesture significant of the purpose he expressed in his fierce language, he leaped towards the young man, who, anticipating his intention, retreated and sprang across an embrazure behind him. The mad-man, excited by the appearance of flight, shrieked fiercely and bounded after him. Morris stopped with a curse upon his lips, drew his pistol from his belt and levelled it at him. Heedless of it the lunatic rushed onward, and Morris fired.
"Take thy death, then, if thou will have it, mad-man!"
The maniac staggered, pressed his hand to his temples, from which the blood poured as if from a fountain, and then recovering himself, made a feartul leap forward, and a third time Morris Græme found himself clasped in his embrace.
"Now, by my soul, Eve, I must to his rescue," exclaimed Carleton.
"See! behold! they will go over the cliff! Oh God! this is terrible!" she suddenly shrieked, covering her eyes and ears with both her hands.
The grasp of the lunatic was the grasp of death. Græme realized all his danger. He struggled for life, while the mad-man strove fearfully to hurl him over the battlements, mumbling all the while indistinct maledictions. He foamed at the mouth, and Morris was bathed in the hot life-blood that streamed from the wound in his temples. For a few moments the contest for the mastery was terrific to witness. The battlements seemed to tremor beneath the feet of the two men. The mad-man strove, inspired with vengeance—Morris for love of life. Carleton involuntarily paused to witness the issue, when suddenly, after a terrible struggle down on the ground, both stood suspended above the precipice. Each had a foot braced upon the verge! Both eyed each other in menacing silence! The least movement would hurl them both into the rocky bed beneath! With breathless a we all looked on without power to stir to aid them. It was at this moment that Eve shrieked. It was instantly echoed by a shriek wilder still!
Startled by the shriek, and its wilder echo, the mad-man released his hold of Græme, exclaiming—""Tis Ellen, my child! my child!"
Morris feeling himself free from him, with a difficult effort recovered his footing; but in the act he so suddenly threw the lunatic from him that he reeled on the verge, where, balancing himself, he stood an instant between earth and air, stretching forth his hands towards a female form that suddenly appeared before all eyes upon the battlement.
"Bless thee, my child, thou hast come at last to thy father!— I forgive—Blessings on—th—"
His last words were lost in air. With a dead, heavy, headlong plunge he disappeared over the battlement into the void beneath!
How still all stand and listen! The sound of his fall as his body bounds from rock to rock is all that breaks the awful silence of that moment. Hark! that heavy dash into the dark waters tells the tale! This sound has ceased; and the silence of the night is only broken by the deep, long drawn breathing of those left standing on the battlement.
When the last murmur of the disturbed waters had died away, every one turned to gaze upon the form, that had so suddenly appeared before their eyes, and those of the falling lunatic. It was that of a tall and graceful female robed in white! But it now was not the emblem of peace and purity. Her garments were disarrayed and rent from the exposed bosom! Her unbound hair fell in long dishevelled masses about her shoulders! and her feet were bare and bleeding. The moonlight shone upon her countenance, and revealed features of surpassing beauty, and proudly cast. But deadly pale was her brow, and colourless the cheek where once had bloomed the rose. The eyebrows were bent in stern regard upon Morris Græme. The eyes large and wild, were fixed upon him with a strange unearthly intensity. The beauteous mouth, where once love sat enthroned, was compressed and stern—wonderfully stern, for that beauteous feature of a woman. Her attitude was threatening, and as she stretched forth her white arms towards Græme, she appeared like a spirit of evil,—a fallen, yet still beautiful angel,—come to adjudge, condemn, and punish! Silent and awed stood the score of crime-hardy buccaneers on the green sward within the fortress; and silent and observing remained Carleton and Eve, gazing alternately upon her and Morris Græme. And how appeared this guilty young man. From the moment she appeared like a vision upon the battlement, and his eyes met her form, he stood like one struck into a statue of horror by some judgment of Heaven. He heard not the mangled fall of the lunatic's bounding body, as it plunged from rock to rock till the dashing waves opened to receive it into their secret bosom! his ears were eyes? his senses were become eyes! he could only see the form before him. Her steady gaze paralysed his soul! he could not look away; but, as if compelled by some fatal fascination, still gazed upon her as she gazed upon him. But how different the expression of their look! his horror-struck, fearful and full of remorse and evil forboding: hers, proud, stern, full of vengeance and undying hate.
There they stood confronted on that lofty battlement's verge, in the full moonlight, the awe-struck and curious groups standing silent and breathless, awaiting the issue. Carleton and Eve had both heard enough from the lunatic, and knew enough of Morris's history to comprehend, in part, the nature of the wild scene before them! To the men, the figure was an apparition from the other world. And Morris Græme would rather such it had been, than the reality it was! Two minutes—oh what hours of mental suffering they involved to the guilty young man—passed in this manner— gaze to gaze—the basilisk enchaining the fear struck eye of its victim. Græme's lips moved and his hands opened and clenched, and he seemed as if striving to call on Carleton for deliverance from her; but no words came from him, and he could make no intelligible gesture.
"How fearful!" whispered Eve under her breath! "how dreadful must be the punishment of the guilty in the world to come, if God permits such visitations of judgment here."
"Hush! she speaks!" said Carleton, whose own guilty character would not let him listen with temper to Eve's words.
"Morris Græme!" the deep, deep unearthly tones of that voice! They made every man start! Every eye was bent on Morris Græme! He trembled visibly, and covered his face with his hands.
She approached him, and laid her white hand upon his wrist, and said again in the same deep voice, "Morris Græme, look up!"
He removed his hands from before his eyes and looked in her face, which was bent close to his. The look he encountered, caused him instantly to drop his eyes.
"Ah Morris Græme," she said in a softer tone, but with her stern beautiful features still fixed in immovable rigidity, and her large wild eye scanning his face, "time was when you loved to look upon me, and to gaze into my eyes! But those were the days of thy love! This " she added, in a tone that made him shrink, "this is my hour of hate! Ha, ha! Græme! dost thou not love me now! I can remember when by this same moon, my only lover! how we walked together arm locked in arm, heart echoing to heart, and I was to be the bride! It was a sweet dream! but 'tis gone! You went far away, and when I followed thee to be thy bride, thou didst falsely wed me, taking my true heart and virgin love, giving me foul lies and fouler dishonor in return. Yet I cursed thee not, Morris! Still I forgave and loved thee; and when once I believed thee dead by Hayward's hand, I wept over thee as if thou hadst never done me the great wrong that broke my heart! But thou didst not love as I loved Morris Græme! or else, thou wouldst not have dishonored me! True love ever elevates, never degrades its object. Time passed, and you became weary of me! Six nights ago you deserted me, destroyer! I wept not—I cursed not! I resolved to die! Your suggestion that I should return to my father's roof, I obeyed! for I would see him once again, and receive his blessing before I died. I this day reached my native village! My home was in the hands of strangers! My father, I asked for him. They scorned me, and turned me from their doors and bade me seek him among the rocks by the sea-shore, for there he wandered day and night, a mad-man! And all said I had broken his heart—that I had crazed my father, and driven him to the holes in the rocks! that I had killed my mother, and when he should die I should be his murderer! and so, they drove me forth with epithets of scorn and dishonor, and then in my heart, aye in mv inmost being, I did curse thee, thee Morris Græme! I went forth and at every place I came I knelt outside the gate, for I dared not enter a house again, and with clasped hands asked who had seen my father? and, so I wandered on till night came; my feet were bleeding and my body wearied! but I could neither rest nor linger till I had found my father. The moon rose and I saw a fisherman launching his boat. He fled at my approach, but when he saw me kneel upon the sharp shells that strewed the wet beach, he come near me and said, "poor thing! thou art crazed too!" and he would have taken me into his house! but no! I had no roof henceforth but that free sky which covered my crazed father's head. He then said it was God's judgment come upon me, and bade me seek my father in this place. And hither I climbed the weary hill and I beheld my father! But how Morris Græme? How?" here her voice, which in the foregoing narrative had been low and earnest and singularly touching in its tone, rose on the still air like the night shriek of the battle hawk. "I saw him hand to hand, eye to eye, struggling with thee for his fast oozing life! Thy brow wet with his fresh blood! thy hand crimsoned with the warm life that gave me life! I beheld thy efforts to hurl him from the battlement. I beheld his grey hairs streaming in the contest, his visage marred with grief and vengeance and woe. God gave me energy and strength, and I flew to save him! But 'twas too late! thy hand had done its deed of blood. He heard my voice—he knew his long-lost child's tones, and turned his eyes and hand upon me and blessed me. In bestowing that blessing he perished by thy red hand, thou thrice dyed murderer?"
"For God's sake Ellen, be calm!" exclaimed Morris, who had by this time in some measure recovered his usual self-possession; "I meant not to slay him! he was the assailant and I did it to preserve my own life!"
"Thy life! what is thy vile life, man, compared with his? Thy life was forfeited to him for the wrongs thou hadst done, and thou wert a coward to seek to save it. Hast thou not robbed him of his child? hast thou not slain his wife? hast thou not robbed him of his reason? hast thou not dishonored his daughter! What hadst thou to do with sacrificing him to save thyself! thou art guilty and accursed, evil man! The day of thy retribution has come, and God hath given thee into my hand! For thy arms, Morris Græme I have sacrificed honor and the lives of all I love! In my arms then shalt now atone with thy life for thine and mine!"
Instantly he was locked in her wild embrace! So sudden and unlooked for was this act, that he could not resist! There was but a momentary struggle, and with a wild maniac laugh, mingled with which, was heard his raving shriek for aid; she sprung over the preiepice with him in her arms. Carleton had sprung forward but too late! He could only see a confused dark and white mass, bounding down the broken sides of the cliff with a loud sound plunge into the sea!
"There was only a woman in white that struck the water, sir, said Red Fred, who with all the rest had rushed to look over the edge of the battlement. "I watched the fall. Mr. Græme must have been caught by one of the rocks or trees."
A deep groan at this instant reached their ears from the rocks below, which corroborated his words.
"I believe you are right," exclaimed Carleton. "Down with you after me to see if he is lying among the rocks, and is alive."
Mid-way the cliff, and near the path, led by his moans, Carleton came upon Morris, faintly clinging by one arm to a root growing in the crevice of the rock. He was ten feet distant, and it was impossible to approach him on account of the steep face of the cliff at this part.
"Hold on, Morris, a moment or two," he cried encouragingly. "Bear a hand here, Fred, with half a dozen fathom of that running rigging," he shouted. "Now secure it to that shelf above and make a running noose."
"For God's sake, be quick, Carleton! I am bruised and half dead, and can hold on no longer," groaned Morris.
"Courage, Græme! There flies the noose! Lower yet, Fred Pass it under his feet. Now raise it gently up his body. Hold! Now draw it together close. There! now we have you safely moored, Morris; let go the limb. Hold on firm there on the shelf. Now heave away, all of you! Gently; there is time enough!— Steady! There comes his head! Lift him over the rock three or four of you. Kindly! kindly! don't you hear his groans? and he is not a man to cry out for a trifle. There he is, now, safe and insensible!"
A litter was formed of the men's intertwining arms, and the wounded man was borne to the foot of the rock on board the schooner.
"This has been a strange night's work!" and Carleton musingly as the men moved down the path with their burden "What an escape from death, though he may die yet! He has fallen full forty feet, and by a lucky effort succeeded in disengaging himself from her fatal embrace just at this spot and catching at the root; while she went plunging far downward alone into the sea! Eve, what do you think of all this? It is a strange affair!"
"I think it is God's judgment in this life for the evil done in it. Retribution as surely follows guilt as reward does goodness. This material world is a true type of the future and spiritual world.— Morris Græme has been a very bad man, and the singular punishment he has now received should convince you, dear Carleton, that there is a God!"
"I am half inclined to think so. This has been a bitter night to him. Hell—if such there be—would have been more endurable to him, methinks, than the first interview with the crazed father; and then this last one with his vindictive mistress; there can be no torments greater for man than those I know that he then suffered! Well, Eve, this sad tragedy has ended! Father and daughter rest in the sea, and Græme is, I fear, likely soon to be laid there. But I would not that he should die. He must be looked to; I can never supply his place. But we have work to do, and I must see to it. You are a good leech; go on board and see that something is done to bring him to, and by that time I will be on board. I must not, for this occurrence, lose the opportunity for arming the schooner. I see the guns are all eighteen pound carronades, besides two dismounted brass field pieces, making eight in all. If you find Græme is very bad, send for me. I fear some of his bones will be found broken."
"Carleton," said Eve as she was leaving him, "I beg you will not let what you have seen to-night of justice and judgment quite pass from your mind. A little reflection will convince you that this meeting between this guilty young man and the father and daughter was not an accident!"
"You are a pretty preacher, Eve; and if you faith be true, I think poor Morris needs a ghostly homily just now, more than I;" he answered smiling. "I fear he will too soon know whether thy Bible be a truth or a fable."
"Too late, I rather fear for both he and thou," she said mournfully in her heart as he re-ascended the path, with his men, towards the fort.
Though Carleton found but three of the gun-carriages entire, after he had succeeded in getting them on board with a good deal of labor, he unshipped one of the guns and took up the carriage for the purpose of mounting the remaining guns upon it and dragging them down, one at a time, with pullies upon the wheels, and twenty men to guide and hold it. By this means, in four hours time he had transferred from the fort to his schooner's deck six excellent cannon of a weight of metal just suited to her tonnage. They were arranged, as brought on board, each at its proper part; and parts of the remaining gun-carriages were collected sufficient in a few hours to put together a fourth carriage; then having two serviceable guns on each side. When the last gun was on board, and the decks cleared, Carleton gave orders to tow the schooner out of the calm nook where she lay, to meet the breeze. As he did so he felt a light hand upon his arm.
"Carleton, let us not go thus and leave the dead father and daughter unburied!"
"You say truly, Eve. But time presses, and there are not two hours to dawn. I have to take in powder ere sun-rise, without which our guns are so much ballast."
"It will take but a few moments. Oh, Carleton, if you love me, leave not the dead we saw so lately in life, to bleach in the sun, or he a prey to the fish and carrion fowl! There," she pointed shudderingly, "lies her body glistening white where the tide has left it. His cannot he far from it. Let a barrow be made of oars, and let the men bear them back to the fort, which he so pitifully called his `home'; and there, within the shadow of the gateway let a grave be dug to hold them both. You will feel better, and so will Græme!"
"It shall be as you say! Does he still lie as insensible as when I set his arm and ancle."
"Yes—heavily breathing as if in a deep brain-sleep. Nature is repairing the strength of life within ere she restore sensibility to the body."
"I fear, Eve," he said, shaking his head, "we shall have to make a third grave!"
"No, he will wake at sun-rise."
"I hope so. Who is with him?"
"Belt. The strange boy weeps constantly, and fans him without rest."
Orders were then given to construct a barrow, and Carleton preceded his men to the foot of the rock, where the white garments of Ellen indicated the spot where she lay. They took her up, her long hair dripping with sea-brine, and laid her upon the bier.— Her marbled face was unbruised, and wore the same stern expression which the recital of her wrongs had impressed upon it, living. Cold and beautiful, even in death, was her countenance; but her limbs were mangled frightfully, and blood was oozing from a deep wound in her bosom. Carleton gazed upon her a moment and felt that he that was the author of the ruin of innocence was a criminal for whom man had not commensurate judgment in reserve! and in his heart he feared that there must be a God to judge and condemn.
How happy would Eve have been had she known his thoughts! Love for Carleton had not made her—like him—a deist! Familiarity with his guilty career had not made her less a believer in that faith which she had first been taught by nature and afterwards confirmed and strengthened by searching the scriptures, which are the sun to nature's religion. This was a favorable thought of hers, that the earth is as beautiful at midnight as at noon-day: that then as truly as in the sunshine, on its bosom lie all the riches of art and nature that compose its sublime scenery! Yet we see them not! But the dawn breaks from the east—the sun arises in his splendor and unfolds every beauty, displays every glorious sight, opens every sublime prospect! River and isle; rock and mountain; ocean and lake; forest and valley; with cities, temples and palaces, villas and hamlets, are all made plain and visible and true! So is nature's religion. God is in his works in all his perfection and glory. But though he is there we see him not save with the eyes of the inner being; for God can only thus be seen! But the dawn of revelation breaks in the skies! the bible rises glorious and resplendent upon the gaze of the soul, and at once is unfolded to the eye of faith, the Deity in every sublime and benevolent attribute of his Divinity.
Thus Eve loved to dwell upon this grand and infinite subject, which exercises ever the intelligence of angels! She strove on every occasion to inspire her erring husband with sentiments of the true faith. She felt that he had a mind well adapted to receive the sublime truth she would humbly teach him; but that he could only be taught through, the sublime! She spoke to him of the power and grandeur of God, and he listened with strange awe and enthusiasm. But it was the Roman Jupiter Tonans he pictured to his mind as he listened, and not the God of the Scriptures. By degrees he felt willing to admit such a being, and only such an one, to rule the visible universe! But he would allow him no moral quality. He invested him with power only as he would himself use it! with dominion only as he would exercise it. Such was Carleton's God; and such is too frequently the God of most men who love not the God of the Bible; they deify their own vices and worship them! Carleton might have remained a deist did he stop here! but this was the natural result of Eve's mistaken mode of inculcating the truth of a God. And when she could get him to assent even to the God he had created in his mind from the ill-chosen materials she had weakly, yet in good faith, furnished him with, she was happy. Her error was in bringing God down to him and not lifting him up to God after first humbling him in the sight of his perfections.
The mangled corse of the miserable father was found lying across a rock, with his head and breast beneath the water. The lifeless form of the daughter was first borne to the gate of the fortress and laid upon the ground by the wide grave which the men had dug. Then came, borne upon the bier upon four men's shoulders, the half naked, bruised body of the mad-man. Side by side, in the shallow grave they were laid, in the cold moonlight, and then a sail was thrown decently over them by Carleton.
"Now, my men, cover them up," said Carleton turning away, not without emotion at the painful sight.
"Nay, Carleton! Hold, men! Edward do not bury them thus like dogs!"
"What would you more, Eve?" he said moodily; for he halfguessed her request."
"The holy service for the dead!"
"'Tis mockery! What care they whether men curse or bless them now!"
"Nay—Carleton, you do not speak as you feel. I will repeat the service!
"But thou hast no book."
"I know it by heart, Carleton. I have always loved to read and think of it in my sad hours. I will not detain you five minutes longer! Though your life is such as it is, your pursuits so unlawful and erring, you are not yet insensible to the better forms of better years."
"When were my years better, Eve!" he said bitterly. "Have I not been ever from boyhood what I now am? Who taught me good in early years? Was not an evil example before my eyes. Nurtured among infidel Israelites, and my mother, as I have told thee, one of their race, and my father a man of crime, what knew I from my birth of, a better life? If there is a better life for me tis to come."
"And oh, wilt thou cherish this belief?"
"Nay, I said not I believed in better life to come. I do not. If there is a God, then this world and we are his creatures. And is not all evil here, Eve? As his creation is here, so will it be there. As it is now so will it be forever! evil and misery under all his dominion."
"This is fearful blasphemy!" cried Eve with a shudder "I know you do not believe as you speak. God is —"
"No more! Say thy prayer for the dead, if thou wilt, and these may listen, I care not to see thee make a fool of thyself, Eve." And the unbelieving man turned slowly from the grave Had he been still a deist—still an unbeliever, he would have remained with careless indifference. But neiw feelings had been awakened by the strange judgments of that night, and they were at work in the centre of his being, producing distasteful and alarming thoughts. Conscience, which is God in every man, and which is the soul of his soul, was on its throne, and had began to move and melt the elements of his being.
Eve, the gentle, loving i magintive Eve, looked after him with a sigh and a prayer, and then turning to the two-fold grave, devoutly knelt by its side. Two or three of the seaman gathered round knelt also and all but Red Fed reverently bowed their heads. How beautiful was the sight! the green rampart with its yawning embrasures, with the sea and islands spread beneath and around! the group of buccaneers on one side of the grave, half lost in the shadow of the gate-way. The tall dark figure of Carleton standing alone on the battlement a short distance off, silently surveying the scene? the open grave with its canvass pall, and the kneeling form of the lovely priestess for the dead, with her elasped hands upon her bosom, and her eyes uplifted in lofty and pure devotion to the blue heaven above her head. Deep and singularly impressive was the silence of that moment. Hush! listen to that low, sweet voice of prayer go up from the grave's side, and ascend from that lofty height like incense from an altar.
"I know that my Redeemer liveth and that heshall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see or myself, and mine eyes shall behold him and not another.
"We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succor but of thee O Lord, who, for our sins art justly displeased. Yet oh, Lord God, most holy; O Lord, most mighty; O holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of Eternal death."
She rose from her knees, and in a voice of solemn sweetness, proceeded as follows:
"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me though he were dead shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God in his wise Providence to take out of this world the souls of the deceased, we therefore commit their bodies to the ground: (Here she stooped to take up a handful of fresh earth to cast into the grave, when she saw a handful fall upon the bodies. She looked up and saw that it was the reverent act of the steward-lad. She then continued in a touching manner that sunk to every heart,)
"Earth to earth—ashes to ashes—dust to dust: looking for the general resurrection in the last day and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed and made like unto his own glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself."
She then turned round upon all present and repeated in a clear rejoicing tone,
"I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me, Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so, saith the Spirit; for they rest from their lahors."
She then offered up the Lord's prayer with an eloquence, a sublimity of devotion as remarkable, as the hour and the place and the occasion were extraordinary and unusual.
The men stood a few moments in silence after the sound of her voice had ceased, and she had turned away. There was then a general movement to fill up the grave; but no words were interchanged, save one or two necessary orders given by Red Fred in an under tone. The work was completed and the men took up their barrow and descended the path to the schooner. Still Carleton, their chief stirred not from the spot where, with folded arms, he had stood watching the burial. Eve at length approached him.
"Edward, the men wait for you!"
"Eve," he said in a gentle tone, "I know not what to make of all this! My thoughts are in strange commotion! There is a chord in my being which vibrated at the words you gave utterance to! Nature is ever true to herself! Why then, I ask myself, should I feel this harmony between your words of prayer and a secret sensation in my bosom, if they were false? I do confess that I have been deeply moved. But this is no time nor place for such idle talk. Eve! Let us on board and learn how it goes with poor Morris!"
Thus speaking, and suffering the true and faithful Eve to lean upon his manly form, he descended the path with her to the vessel. In a few minutes afterwards she was towed out from her shelter, the breeze caught her sails, the boats were called aboard, and once more the Sea-Slipper was gliding along with increasing motion upon her native element.
With a light, but fair wind, the Sea Slipper stood on her way up the river, with the helm under the management of Red Fred; who was the only one on board now, that Morris Græme was no longer able to be on deck, familiar with the winding and narrow channel of the Kennebec. Carleton paced the deck with an uneasy step and troubled air. The injuries of Morris Greame had deprived him of his services, when most in requisition. He felt he could trust no other person as second in command of the schooner. Head-land after head-land was passed by the schooner, and a half an hour had elapsed since they left the rock, when he became impatient.
"How is this, Fred," he demanded; "Græme said the town was not two leagues up, and we have come full that."
"Soon as we clear the wooded point ahead, sir, we shall come in sight of it. I have been up this river many a time in a Kennebec sloop, when I was a boy before the mast. There, sir, now it opens; see the white houses and churches, how they are filed up with the moon a glistening on 'em."
"And this powder-house' where does it stand!"
"Here-away, sir. If you will take a look just under the after leading block but one, between it and the rattling, you will fetch it in range! answered Fred revolving his wheel half a turn.
"Yes—I see it crowning a ledge, apart from the town. How can we reach it undiscovered?"
"I know the path to it, sir; and we shall not be disturbed at this hour. I will run the schooner in along side an old deserted pier, you see just off the larboard bow, and we can ship the powder from that on board."
The Sea-Slipper was then run along close to the shore, until she neared the broken pier, which was a wharf situated half a mile below the town, and quite remote from observation. The sail was gradually lessened on her, and in a few minutes she came to the pier, and was secured by a hawser run ashore. The town, with its harbor and vessels, was visible above; but all was still, save the distant striking of a clock, which warned them that day was not far off. Taking half his men, and proper barrows and slings to convey the powder, Carleton left the schooner and guided by Red Fred, pursued a rocky, wooded path leading to the ledge. A few minutes brisk travel brought them to the bleak upland rock, on which the solitary structure stood, far from any dwelling. It was small, but securely constructed of brick and stone, with a slated roof. The door, though massive, was soon forced open, and Carleton entering found hilled up on one side thirty large sized kegs filled with powder. In three trips to the schooner a score of these small barrels were removed on board, and safely stowed in the magazine. Morning by this time began to dawn, and casting off the hawser from the pier, these bold buccaneers were once more on the water.
"Now am I a man again;" said Carleton emphatically, as he looked back upon the receding town, and then watched the swift progress of the schooner sea-ward. "Now," and his voice fell in its tones, but deepened with feeling "now shall Blanche Hillary be mine!"
With these daring thoughts in his heart, he paced his schooner's deck, until the wide sea once more opened its heaving bosom before him to receive the bounding vessel. "Yes, there the sea spreads her wide arms to welcome her son again! Blow fresh ye good winds, blow fresh and fair, and hurry me to her embrace."
"Well, Eve, how fares it with poor Morris? I will go down and see him as soon as we clear this coast. There frowns, with the dawn lightening its summit, the fortress to the right, where we buried the mad father and his daughter. I shall ne'er forget that scene, nor thy voice of prayer. Nay—no preaching now pretty one. Thou hast not told me how my Licutenant fares."
"He has not yet come out of his state of insensibility. With the rising sun he will revive."
"I hope so. I would not lose Morris now. We have work for both before us. Is the boy with him?"
"Yes, nor has he left him! What purpose or plan is in your heart, Edward. I hope no evil, that you should wish Morris Græme's aid."
"Listen, Eve," he said walking slowly and thoughtfully with her towards the stern, his brows meeting as they did when he was deeply moved. "I am about to tell thee what may not please thee well, because there is in it other love than thine. Nay—do not start! I have already told thee, I knew not how to return thy love."
Eve gasped but spoke not, and painfully listened.
"But to my story, as thou hast just wished to know my present purpose. A year ago, and but a few weeks before our mai— before I returned to Charleston, I was commander of such a vessel as this in the West Indies, with a wild and savage crew of Spaniards and mulatoes; but men abjectly under my authority. My schooner was called the Sea-Slipper, as I have named this. I fell in with a packet ship bound from Boston to New Orleans, and boarded her without resistance. Among the passengers was a lovely and youthful Spanish widow, whom I resolved to take with me on board the schooner. Do not shrink, Eve! Had I loved thee I should not have so resolved. Her father was also a passenger; and learning that he was immensely opulent, and having been disappointed in finding specie on board, my cupidity got the better of my passion, and I ransomed her to him for a very large sum. He wrote me an order for the amount on his banker in Havana, and I left the packet-ship to pursue her course, to New Orleans, while I stood in for the Havana, which was but a few hours sail. Before I reached the port, I fell in with a heavily armed British cruiser, that had been long out in search of me; and being hotly pursued I run my schooner ashore and took to the boats. But the pretty Sea-Slipper was taken posession of and burned before my eyes. But, thank the Gods, I have another, the fellow to her, beneath my feet. Without a vessel, I dispersed my men for two months, and alone and in disguise, proceeded over land to Havanna. The amount of the draft would have purchased me another vessel. Fashionably attired as a stranger I sallied out from my retreat, in a house near the Posco to present my draft. After a long unsuccessful search to find the house upon which it was drawn, I was satisfied that the names were fictitious, and that no such Banking House was known in Havana. You may judge my fierce disappointment and threats of vengeance upon the old Spaniard; for I had built up all my hopes of getting another vessel upon this money. The same day a letter reached me, informing me of the death of my father. I instantly embarked for Charleston. The remainder of my history you know, Eve. But I have more to add respecting this accursed Spaniard. I have had intelligence that he resided in a magnificent mansion, a league outside the walls of Havana. My first purpose is, now that I am once more in command of a vessel, to pay this wily cavalier and his beautiful daughter a visit. I made oath to do it whenever I should tread the deck of another vessel its master. After this expedition I have another one, Eve, will please thee less than this— but thy looks tell me thou hast heard enough."
"I have!" she answered in a deep suffering tone.
"You are offended with me, Eve, touching my fancy for the fair Castilian! But, then, thou wert not my —"
"Speak the word! Say wife, Carleton, and I forgive all!"
"Thou wert not then my wife, Eve!" he said with a smile.
"Yet thou hast just now said thou art again seeking her! I know not, Edward, how it is, but I know I do hate this fair Spaniard. I am a miser, and thy love my treasure, which I watch with such jealous care that I would not other eyes should look upon it!"
"Eve, thou wilt yet be convinced thy treasure is but dust."
"Heaven put far away that hapless hour!" she said with emotion. "I do begin to realize something of what thou wouldst have me believe!" she added with touching resignation: "I know I have been blinded by my love! I will confess—though my heart is breaking as I speak—that thou lovest me not as thou hast done! Something has changed thee, Edward!"
"I will tell thee what it is — nay I dare not now! See how we are suddenly lifted upon the billows and feel again the familiar rocking of the ocean! Once more we are upon the sea! Go down, Eve, and as soon as the sun is up I will follow thee."— This was spoken so coldly and indifferently, that, after fixing upon him her gentle gaze to see if she could catch a glance of affection from his eyes, she hastened to hide her tears and her grief in her state-room. Poor Eve! the truth is slowly foreing itself upon thy conviction that thou art not loved!
In the main cabin lay the form of Morris Græme upon a pallet. His face was deadly pale, and a scar was upon his temple, from which the fresh blood oozed, but was constantly wiped away by the hand of the lad, "Little Belt," who had knelt for hours by his side, watching every breath and sign of returning consciousness. He seemed to be sleeping heavily, with strong, irregular breathing, and occasional convulsive movements of the lips and fingers. The lad bathed his forehead and kept his mouth moistened, and at times rubbed the palms of his hands. At intervals a deep sigh would escape his bosom; and when he saw that he was unobserved he would lean over the marble face, and imprint upon the lips a kiss of passionate grief. The cabin lamp shown down upon his features, fur his tarpaulin was laid aside. His head was covered with rich masses of raven hair, as if the scissors had never come nigh them, and his complexion was a clear brunette. Dark and singularly expressive were his eyes, and seldom has a more beautiful mouth been seen in a woman, than his. Its expression was firm and determined, and the eye full of passion and feeling.
At length the fading gleam of the lamp was out-shone by the morning which gradually filled the cabin with light and, as if there had been some mysterious union between sensibility and light, a favorable change in the face of the wounded man was visible. The deadly, marble aspect softened and assumed a faint one of life, and the strong heaving of the chest became subdued and more regular. These signs of returning animation were watched with the most intense anxiety and solicitude by the lad; and, when at length as a bright beam of the rising sun flushed upon the skylight and was reflected throughout the cabin, he stirred and opened his eyes, the lad uttered an exclamation of joy so deep and fervent, that it was plain there existed between them some mysterious bond of union, perhaps however, the interest was all on one side. This idea was strengthened by the glance which Morris Græme turned towards him; it was one of doubtful recognition and wholly without the emotion that might have been anticipated from the conduct of the other. The exclamation of the lad drew Carleton to the cabin, where on entering, to his joyful surprise, he met the intelligent look of his Lieutenant fixed on him.
"The Gods be praised, Morris," he said taking his hand. "I thought you were visèed for the land under-sea. I am rejoiced to see you have come to! You were lucky not to have been killed, and you have come off without breaking but two bones, which I have set. It will keep you on your back, perhaps, till we get to the West Indies, whither the Sea-Slipper is now steering."
In a little while Morris was able to recal the past and to listen to the recital of his rescue; and also to hear of Carleton's plans for the future. He made no remark when informed of the death and burial of the father and daughter, and by the expression of his features evidently wished no further allusion to the subject.
Days passed on, and with the alternation of fair winds, calms and storms, the Sea-Slipper held on her course to the West Indies, where were to be found material in plenty from which Carleton intended to complete his crew. Morris's injuries rendered it nescessary for him to remain almost constantly on deck, although Red Fred in a measure relieved him from duty in the larboard watch They had been at sea three weeks, and yet Morris remained an invalid in the cabin, occasionally being taken on deck for the air. The lad "Little Belt," so called by the men, on account of his small waist, was constant and assiduous in his attention upon him. Eve also was left much with him; and he received all her attention with a grateful look and tenderness of voice, that showed how strongly passion for the beautiful creature was working in his bosom. He sat up or reclined most of the day upon an ottoman, and she read to him as they played chess or backgammon together. This sitting for hours eye to eye, with hand in contact with hand, is a dangerous position for an enamoured man. Morris Græme drank in love with his eyes until his brain and heart were both intoxicated. This convalescence was to him a passage in the hours of paradise. She could not be insensible to the impression her presence made upon him. He betrayed it in every look, and in all his manner. He took no pains to conceal his feelings from her. Carleton was not only much on deck, but had grown more and more cold from day to day. Blanche Hillary was taking Eve's place in his thoughts, and he only thought of her to devise some means of getting rid of her in quiet. He had of late discovered Græme's passion for her, and in his heart rejoiced, hoping that she might be enticed and fall! He therefore purposely left them together and encouraged their intimacy. Poor Eve! what a snare was laid for thee, thou true and good; though weak and erring in thy love for such an one as Carleton.
"It was night. Carleton's firm even tread was heard pacing the deck over their heads. The wild winds lashed the sea and the vessel was driven along the darkly glittering billows like a flying bird. The sky light was closed and covered and the cabin lamp shed a soft dim light around. Morris, now nearly restored, but yet unfit for duty, for which he did not care to change Eve's companionship, was reading from a book in a deep tone of feeling to Eve. And did she sit and listen as if her interest was not awaked in him, who concealed not his deep passion for her?" Eve's was a gentle, social and confiding nature. Carleton was strange ly cold and stern and negligent. He spoke to her but with a frown. Morris was kind, tender and solicitous to please; his voice attuned to gentle words and his acts efiort was to please and win: Carleton's to offend and cast aside! Not to have felt the difference between their conduct, and insensibly to love the society of Græme, would have been surprising in one whose life consisted in loving and being loved! Was she then growing false to Carleton ere she knew he was false to her? Let the result tell. She liked his society for it was a relief from the coldness and neglect of Carleton.
Morris was reading from the First Act of Richard III:
Anne.
I would I knew thy heart.
Gloster.
'Tis figur'd in my tongue.
Anne.
I fear we both are false.
Gloster.
Then man was never true.
Anne.
Well, well put up your sword.
Gloster.
Say then my peace is made.
Anne.
That shall you know hereafter.
Gloster.
But shall I live in hope?
Anne.
All men, I hope, live so.
Gloster.
Vouchsafe to wear this ring.
Anne.
To take is not to give. [She puts on the ring.]
Gloster.
Look, how this ring encompaseth thy finger,
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart.
Wear both of them for both of them are thine!
And if thy poor, devoted servant may
But beg one favor at thy gracious hand,
Thou dost confirm his happiness forever.
Anne.
What is it?"
Morris Græme, [seizing Eve's hand and kneeling.]—"Sweet Eve, let me put this question of Lady Anne's into thy mouth, and myself answer it in place of Gloster. This is the favor I would ask of thee. I beseech you, listen patiently and give me one ray of hope. Since the first hour I saw thee I have loved and in my heart worshipped thee! Nay, do not struggle to release your hand. Have pity on me, for without thy love I am, indeed most wretched. Carleton loves thee not. Each look and act or his shows that thou art hateful to him. Nay, more! He loves another!"
"Dost thou speak truly, and from thine own knowledge, Morris Græme?" she demanded in a tone that made him start.
"I do, sweet Eve! The lady is very fair; but in grace and beauty hath no compare with thee!"
"I heed not thy compliments," cried Eve with emotion. "Tell me her name?"
"Blanche Hillary."
"Has he met her often?"
"No—but his passion for her is as deep as the springs of his own life!"
"I knew it—I—I—Morris Græme, swear to me that thou tellest me truly; for this thing must be confirmed by an oath, ere my heart receive it all!"
"I swear it," he said, now feeling confident that, convinced of Carleton's unfaithfulness, she would throw herself into his arms. She stood for a moment lost and absent in thought. He took her hand and would have passed his arm about her waist. The act recalled her to herself. She shrunk from him with a look of womanly dignity, as became a true wife, and said,
"Thou dost mistake me, Morris Græme! Carleton may not love me, but to me he is still dear!"
"Nay, 'tis madness, Eve, to love when thou art scorned! To reject the true heart I offer thee, for the cold neglect of one who spurns thy love! If thou wilt be mine, I will in Havana surround thee with every luxury —"
"Talk not to me, Morris Græme," she said commandingly, pacing to and fro the cabin. "I am not thinking of thee or thy hopeless passion!"
"Hopeless! Eve?" he said, attempting to take her hand.
"Ever! I am not whom you think me! Oh, God! that he should subject me to the degrading addresses of this man! Nay of every man! Oh, Carleton! Carleton! Thou hast drugged my cup with a bitter, bitter draught!"
"Eve!"
"Stand by, sir, and disturb me not! If I have, following charity and kindness, in nursing by thee overstepped my modesty, and so given thee excuse for this license, then am I grieved, and severely judge myself therefor. Morris Græme, I cannot listen to you!"
"Cruel Eve!"
"Sir, hast thou not heard me?" He recoiled a pace at the stern and virtuous dignity with which her voice, look, and manner were clothed by her indignant emotion, and in silence gazed upon her.
He knew she had loved Carleton, but he was not prepared for such an exhibition of faithfulness, when he no longer cared for her. His passion was only increased by her lofty conduct, and in his heart he resolved to win her, even with the life of Carleton.— Eve now retired to her state room in a painful conflict of feelings, and Morris reclining, as if still very weak, upon the ottoman, mused upon what had occurred. He was not alone, however; nor had the scene just drawn been without a witness. In the shadow of the stairs or companion-way stood a figure half revealed, watching the progress of Græme's passion with eager interest. It was the lad, Little Belt. His dark eyes gleamed like coals of fire, and his brows were knitted together as he listened to his declaration of love. He more than once thrust himself so far forward, in his eagerness, that persons less engaged than Eve and Morris Græme would have discovered his presence. Once, when Græme would have clasped her waist, his hand was upon a knife in his belt, and he half drew it forth, and looked, for a moment, as if about to spring upon him and bury it in his heart.
While musing upon the past scene, and deliberating upon a half conceived plan of taking the schooner from Carleton and forcing Eve to his love, he felt a hand laid nervously upon his arm. He turned and beheld the lad by his side.
"What would you, boy?"
"Revenge!" came from the pale lips of the lad in a low deep startling tone.
"Who?—what art thou?" cried Græme, starting up and gazing in his face.
"One whom thou hast sworn to love and to love only: and who, trusting to thee, has found thee false. I am she whom when thou wert weary of me thou didst force to wed another. I have waited my hour of revenge, and it has come! Thy hour of retribution had not come when thy mangled corse shouldst have found a grave in the sea; and I knew thou wouldst not die then—for thou diest only by my hand! I have loved thee, Morris Græme—I have degraded myself for love of thee. Knowing I could never be thy bride, I gave thee my virgin heart, and was happy in being thy mistress! But thou didst soon tire of a treasure too easily won! I have loved and hated thee by turns since thou didst force me to marry thy knave, Frederick. I have thrice since had thy life in my hands, and yet love turned aside my hand! I have wept over thee in thy illness here when thou knewest it not, and loved thee without rebuke. Yet I was tempted each day to poison thy food, but still love let thee live. But I only hate now! I have witnessed thy passion for Carleton's wife—"
"His wife!" exclaimed Morris, who had been listening and gazing upon her like one in a dream.
"Yes—his wife. I have overheard that which assures me of it, though he does not acknowledge her. But with this thou hast no further interest. I hate thee, Morris Græme. Look at me!" and she removed a wig of massy tresses and exposed the undisguised features of Hetty Bell. "Look at me and see the beauty that has now brought thee to thy death! Now die!"
"Hetty—for God's sake! you are not—"
His words were lost in the ineffectual struggle in his grear weakness, to rise from the ottoman and release the pressure of her hand upon his throat.
"I have sworn thy death, Morris Græme, and I have the strength and power of hell in my heart and hand! In vain thy efforts! Die!"
The knife, as she muttered the word, descended into his bosom. The guilty young man fell back with a groan; and having faintly murmured the name of that God whose laws he had for years broken and despised, his unannealed soul took its flight to His bar of judgment.
A shriek from Eve, who had overheard the scene through the blinds of the state room, brought Carleton below. On entering the cabin he beheld the murderess bending over the body of her victim and passionately pressing her lips to his! He did not know that Morris was dead, and stood with a look of inquiry, gazing round.
"She has killed him?" cried Eve, pointing to the corpse.
"She! Morris dead!"
"Yes, and by my hand,' answered Hetty Bell, turning towards him, and speaking in a tone strange and full of sadness. "I have slain him because I loved him! Now he is dead, I care not for life, and I follow him to a world where love hath no rivalry, and where 'tis not crime to love if the hearts are wedded!"
Before the astonished Carleton could arrest her hand or comprehend her purpose, she drew the knife from Morris's breast and plunged it into her own! She threw herself upon the body of him whom she had too well and criminally loved, and with her head resting upon his bosom, there breathed her last.
The third morning after the tragic scene described at the close of the preceding chapter, the Sea-Slipper was gliding along within a league of the Cuba coast, between Matanzas and Havana, and running up to the former port. Carleton was pacing the deck moody and silent. He had lost a faithful coadjutor in Morris Græme, and the presence of Eve daily more and more annoyed him. He would not suffer her to walk on deck with him, and the most of her time was passed in her cabin weeping. Yet still she loved him with the same holy and undying constancy. As the schooner approached Havana, with the Moro Castle two leagues distant to leeward, Carleton's attention was directed to the manoeuvres of a sloop of war under American colors, which, after standing in towards the harbor and signalizing, tacked and began to beat seaward again, stretching away to windward of him, with her signals still flying.
He did not like her looks; and as he watched her with his glass, he saw her, soon after getting an offing, change her course, and squaring her yards, stand down before the wind towards him. He felt no disposition to be in the neighborhood of such a formidable stranger, and crowding sail he steered straight for the Moro keeping at the same time as near the shore as would be safe. In a short time it was evident that the sloop of war was in chase. He felt, even if he had a full complement of men, to resist in this case would be madness. He, therefore, looked wholly for safety to the speed of his fast-sailing Sea-Slipper; and beautifully did she fly over the waves.
The sloop of war came walking down at an overhauling pace before the wind, and now very clearly showing her object in first beating up to windward. The schooner, however, outsailed her, and this Carleton saw with no little gratification. He was now confident of escaping his pursuer. The Moro castle was now but half a league distant, and he expected in twenty minutes to be safe in the neutral harbor, when he saw coming out a heavy schooner of war with the stars and stripes flying; and with signals set. He watched her a few moments, and saw that she commenced beating up so as to intercept him. The manoeuvres of the sloop and the signalizing were now explained. Carleton now felt the full difficulty of his situation. But his courage and coolness and self-possession were always equal to any crisis; and after a few moments reflection, he resolved to pass the schooner, fire into her, receive her broadside, and then, if unharmed, the port was open before him for shelter.
He instantly had his men called to quarters; but he had only enough to man one battery. This battery, however, was the only one he was likely to want in running his gauntlet, and he resolved it should tell. The sloop of war came down with a flowing sheet and open ports; and the armed schooner was standing shoreward, across his course on the starboard tack.
Silently and swiftly the Sea-Slipper approached the schooner, till within pistol shot, when the latter wore round and fired a broadside.
"Luff a little! Now let them have it!" at the same instant cried Carleton, first to his helmsman and then to his men.
The smoke blew away and Carleton found his fore-topmast shot off just above the head of the foremast, and two of his guns unshipped and rendered useless. The schooner of war had only been hulled by a shot and lost her flying jib-boom. The injury to the Sea-Slipper at such a moment was irreparable and fatal. Before she could be brought to her course again or obey her helm, the sloop of war came down at a slapping pace, and heaving to under her stern poured a broadside into her which raked her fore and aft. The destruction was terrific. Half of Carleton's men were killed or wounded, and the rest fled from their guns. The next moment the schooner lay her aboard, and Carleton alone with Red Fred, and Eve clinging upon him, defended his quarter-deck. A party from the sloop of war now poured over her starboard gangway, and Carleton was face to face with Harry Ellis, her commander.— After a personal conflict between the two captains, the buccaneer was disarmed and made a prisoner upon his own deck. He was taken with Eve on board the sloop of war. As he crossed the gangway his eye fell on Blanche Hillary, who, pale and beautiful, rushed up to Harry and tenderly embraced him, crying:
"My dearest husband, thank God you have returned in safety."
"Her husband! Blanche, is he thy husband?" sternly demanded the bound pirate chief.
"The lady is my wife, sir buccaneer," said Harry with a look of surprise. "Dost thou object? If so, be speedy with thy words; for by mine honor you shall have short shrift and a strong rope."
"Nay then, I have no further word to say," he said with a look dark and gloomy as his own stern nature. "Lead on to my death! Eve, there stands the woman who taught me how to love, and that I loved not thee!"
Eve turned upon Blanche her large earnest eyes, then advancing to her said:
"Lady, I forgive thee, though thou art the cause of all my woe!"
"What means this? What beautcous being is this?" exclaimed Blanche, moved with astonishment.
"The pirate chief's bride—his wedded wife! for now there is no need of concealment Carleton. He loved me till he saw thee, and now my heart is broken for his love of thee!"
"Thou art a strange creature," said Blanche with deep interest. "I grieve that I should have been the innocent cause of thy sorrow."
"Then dost thou not love him?" she asked with an carnestness as if life depended on the reply.
"No, lady. Here is my husband and him alone I love."
"Thanks, thanks! thou hast kept me from hating—nay, cursing thee! Carleton I forgive thee for loving one so beautiful and so good. But ah! these are the signs of death! sir, let me die with him," she cried kneeling at Captain Ellis's feet and clasping his knees.
"Nay—thou art not guilty with thy husband if thy face speaks truth. His life is forfeited by his crimes. Remove her, and Blanche see that she does no mischief to herself! poor child! As for thee, thou red-handed man of crime, prepare to die by to-morrow's sun-rise. There goes thy schooner to pieces, an emblem of its mater's coming fate."
He pointed, as he spoke, to the Sea-Slipper which at that moment blew up with a terrific explosion.
Carleton was led below in irons, followed by the twelve surviving men of his crew, Red Fred alone having escaped by swimmind to the land.
It was midnight. Carleton lay in the ward-room upon a gun carriage, to which he was chained. The sloop of war was becalmed off the Moro, which through the port, he could discern in the moonlight. He was reflecting upon the past without remorse, and contemplating death without fear. All Eve's teachings had been in vain! all the admonitions of conscience, and self-convictions of the truth of God had been suffered to fade from his mindand as he lived so he was on the eve of death.
"Pass!" said the sentinel at his door in a stern tone.
He looked up at the voice, and by the faint lantern, hung from a beam above, he recognized Eve. He turned away his head and seemed not to have seen her enter.
"Edward," and her soft hand was laid on his arm.
"What would you here?" he roughly inquired.
"The lady you love—Blanche—has at my earnest entreaty persuaded the Captain to permit me to visit you."
"Well."
"To-morrow at sun-rise you die."
"Wouldst thou mock me with telling me of it.'
"`No, dear Edward! I have come to tell thee I love thee at this dark hour as I have ever loved thee! that thou art, though chained and condemed to die, and hated of mankind, that thou art still as dear to my heart as when in girl-hood I first surrendered it to thee. Be comforted and hope for a better life!
"Eve, your love strengthens me. I bless thee for it. But of a better life I have no hope!"
"God is good and his mercy is over all men. There is hope even for the worst of men. Let me read to you from this book!" He said nothing and she read the last part of the chapter in Mathew upon the crucifixion, and dwelt upon the forgiveness of the thief. The effect upon Carleton could not be seen as he was silent, and his face was buried in his haads!
Hour after hour she sat by his side till the dawn broke. The secret effects in Carleton's heart of those hours of prayers and eloquent teaching are known only to the searcher of hearts. The hour came for his execution!
When Eve left him he tenderly embraced her and then walked calmly to the spot to which he was led. He looked up to the foreyard and to his evident surprise saw none of the usual preparations for death swinging there. His eye then fell on a file of marines drawn up, and he was told that his men would be taken into Havana and executed but he was to be shot.
"Thy wife has begged this lenity for thee," said Captain Ellis.
At this intelligence his dark eye brightened and his bearing and look became prouder. He looked round to meet Eve's eye and saw her and smiled upon her. She sprung forward, threw herself upon his neck and embraced him and whispered with strange calmness, "Edward bear up! I will not be long separated from thee! Remember thy promise to commit thy soul to God in Christ, in thy last moment.
The moment came, and the young buccaneer chief was led to a stage erected on the bow, and there was un-ironed and blindfolded. There was a deep silence for a moment as he stood there left alone. His lips moved, his face was uplifted a moment as if in prayer, and he placed his hand on his breast as the signal! One simultaneous discharge of musketry, uprising high above which was heard a wild piercing shriek, and Edward Carleton fell dead upon the stage, his bosom pierced by a dozen balls. There were two spirits released at that fatal discharge. Eve was raised from the deck where she had fallen with a wild shriek as he fell, and lo! she was dead also.
Thus tragically terminates our narrative of the subsequent career of the Dancing Feather. If the perusal of it has made any one better or happier, strengthened the love of morality and order in Society and shown the evil consequences of vice and immorality, the aim of the author will be attained.
THE END.