Born to Wander Part 9

Longfellow.

Scene: A prettily-furnished room in a building that forms part and parcel of a lighthouse, on a small lonely island on the coast. The island is little else save a sea-girt rock, though on one green side of it some sheep are grazing. Effie and Leonard standing by the window, gazing silently and somewhat sadly over the sea.

Effie (_speaks_). "It is nearly a month, Leonard, since Captain Bland sailed away and left us here. I wonder if he will ever, ever come back."

_Leonard_. "Oh! I am quite sure he will, unless--"

_Effie_. "Yes, unless his ship is wrecked, and he is drowned, and poor papa never, never knows where we are."

_Leonard_ (laughing). "Why, Eff, what a long face you pull! It is always 'ever ever' or 'never never' with you. Now I dreamt last night he would return in a week, and I'm sure he'll come. No use looking out of the window any longer to-night, Eff. The sun is just going down, and the sea-birds are all going to roost in the cliffs beneath the window.

And it is time for the great lamps to be lit. Come on, Eff; let us go up with old Grindlay."

Effie checked a sigh, cut it in two, as it were, and turned it into a laugh, and next minute both were out on the gra.s.s among the sheep, and gazing up at the whitewashed tower, which seemed so very tall to them.

"Ahoy-oy-oy!" sang Leonard, with one hand to his mouth in true sailor fashion. "Are you up there, old shipmate?"

"Ay, lad, ay," a cheery voice returned. "Come up and bring missie."

They were pattering up the stone stairs next minute, and soon arrived panting and breathless at the lamp room.

Old Grindlay was there, and had already lit up, and by-and-bye, when darkness fell, the gleam from the great lamps would shine far over the sea, and be seen perhaps by many a ship homeward bound from distant lands. It was very still and quiet up here, only the wind sighing round the roof, the occasional shriek and mournful scream of some sea-bird, and the boom of the dark waters breaking lazily on the rocks beneath.

Old Grindlay sat on a little stool waiting for his son to come and keep watch, the two men, with old Grindlay's "old woman," as he called his wife, being all that dwelt on the island, and no boats ever visited it except about once a month.

Old Grindlay was kindly-hearted, but terribly ugly. As he sat there winking and blinking at the light, he looked more like a gnome than a human being. His son's step was heard on the stone stairs at last, and, preceded by a cloud of tobacco smoke, he presently appeared. He was a far more cheerful-looking being than his father, but Leonard and Effie liked the latter better.

"Come, my dears," said the little gnome, "let us toddle."

"Keep the lights bright, Harry lad; I think it's going to blow."

Down the long stairs they went, and away into the house. The supper was laid in the old-fashioned kitchen, and cheerful it looked; for though it was July a bit of fire was burning on the hearth. It was wreckage they used for fuel here, and every bit of wood could have told a sorrowful, perhaps even tragic story, had it been able to speak.

"Something tells me, children," said old Mrs Grindlay, as she cleared away the remains of the supper, "that you will not be long here. Hark to the sound of the rising wind! G.o.d save all at sea to-night!"

"Amen," said the gnome.

"Amen," said Leonard and Effie in one breath.

"Gather close round the fire now, children, and let us feel thankful to the Great Father that we are well and safe."

The old woman began knitting as she spoke, the gnome replenished the fire with a few more pieces of wreck to drive the cold sea air out of the chimney. Then he lit his pipe, and sat down in his favourite corner.

After a pause, during which nothing was heard but the roar of the rising wind and the solemn boom of the waves, and the steady tick of an old clock that wagged the time away in a corner,--

"Why," said Effie, "do you think we'll soon go?"

"I cannot tell you," replied the old lady, and her stocking wires clicked faster and faster. "We folks who live for years and years in the midst of the sea, have warnings of coming events that sh.o.r.e folks could never understand. But the house won't seem the same, Effie, when you and Leonard are gone away--heigho!"

"Well," said Effie, "I'll be so sorry to go, and yet so glad."

"Tell us a story," said Leonard, "and change the subject. Hush! what was that?"

A wild and mournful scream it was, and sounded close under the window.

"That is a cry we often hear," said the old lighthouse keeper, "always before a storm, sometimes before a wreck. It's a bird, I suppose, or maybe a mermaid. Do I believe in them? I do. I'll tell you a strange dream I had once upon a time, though I don't think it could have been a dream."

OLD GRINDLAY'S DREAM.

"It was far away in the Greenland seas I was, sailing northwards towards Spitzbergen. I was second mate of the bonnie barque _Scotia's Queen_.

Well, one dark night we were ploughing away on a bit of a beam wind, doing maybe about an eight knots, maybe not so much. There was very little ice about, and as I had eight hours _in_ that night, I went early to my bunk, and was soon fast asleep. It must have been well on to two bells in the middle watch--the spectioneer's--when I awoke all of a sudden like. I don't know, no more than Adam, what I could have been thinking about, but I crept out of my bunk in the state-room, where also the doctor and steward slept, and up on deck I went. I wondered to myself more than once if I really was in a dream. But there were sails and rigging, and the stars all shining, and the ship bobbing and curtseying to the dark waters, that went swishing and lapping alongside of her, and all awfully real for a dream. I could hear the men talking round the fo'c's'le, and smell their tobacco, too.

"Well, Leonard, I went to the weatherside, and leant over to calculate, sailor fashion, our rate of speed, when I noticed something like a square dark shadow on the water at the gangway. There was nothing above to cause so strange a shadow, but while I was yet wondering a face appeared in the middle of it, the face of a lovely woman. I saw it as plain as I see dear wee Effie's at this present moment. The long yellow hair was floating on the top of the water, and a fair hand beckoned me, and a sweet voice said, 'Come.' I thought of nothing but how to save the life of what I took to be a drowning woman. I sprang over at once, though I never could swim a stroke, and down I sank like lead. There was a surging roar of water in my ears, and I remembered nothing more till I found myself at the bottom of the sea, with a strange green light from a window in a rock a kind of dazzling my eyes. The woman's face and long yellow hair were close beside me, and the fair arms were round me.

"I tried to pray, but I was speechless. Then the rock in front seemed to open of its own accord, and next minute I was inside. But oh! what a gorgeous hall--what a home of delight! There were other mermaids there--ay, scores of them. There was light and warmth all around us, that appeared to come from the precious stones of which the walls were built, and the glittering pillars that supported the roof.

"Such flowers, too, as grew in snow-white vases I had never seen before!

"Then music began to float through the hall, slow and solemn at first, then quicker and quicker, and all at once the marble floor was filled with fairies--the loveliest elves imagination could paint--all mingling and mixing in a mazy dance with waving arms and floating hair, and all keeping time to the music. The mermaids, too, left the couches of pearl on which they had been reclining, and were carried through and through the air, the ends of their bodies covered with long floating drapery of green and crimson. Then some of these strange creatures brought me fruit and wine, and bade me eat and drink. I fain would have spoken, but all my attempts were in vain.

"Suddenly our ship's bell rang out clear enough, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, _ting_. It was seven bells, and all the mermaids and fairies melted away before me, the music died away as if drowned, the surging of water returned to my ears, and next moment my head was above the sea, and I could see the stars shining down, and looking so large and near and clear, as they always do in those northern seas. In a minute I had caught the chains, and swung myself on board. I went to bed. In the morning I awoke, and laughed to myself as I thought of my dream, but my laughing was changed to wonder when I found every st.i.tch of my clothing wringing with salt water, and when the spectioneer told me that he had seen me with his own eyes come on deck at two bells and go below at seven. Then I told him and the rest the story, and we all agreed that it was something far more than a dream."

Effie sat looking into the fire for some time in silence; then she said,--

"Were there no mermen in that lovely hall, and were they very n.o.ble-looking and gallant, like my dear papa in uniform?"

"_No_," said old Grindlay, "I don't think mermen would have been admitted into such a place any more than the great sea-serpent would."

"Why not?"

"Because, missie, they are such ugly old customers. I've never seen one, that I know of, but a mate that sailed with me said he had, and that it was uglier than the faces we sometimes see on door-knockers, and uglier than any baboon that ever grinned and gibbered in an African forest."

"How terrible!" said Effie.

"Oh, I should like to meet one of those!" said Leonard. "And I've been told that the mermaids wouldn't live anywhere near where these mermen are, and that instead of dwelling down in coral caves and marble halls at the bottom of the green sea, where the sunbeams flash by day, and the moon shines all the way down at night, these mermen live at the bottom of the darkest, deepest pits of the ocean, where there is nothing but mud and slime, and where the young sea-serpents and the devil-fish grow.

No, the beautiful mermaids I don't think ever do any harm, but the mermen are bad--bad!"

"Granny," said Effie to Mrs Grindlay, after a pause, "tell us a pretty story to dream upon."

"Did I ever tell you the story of _But--but--but_?"

"No, never. Do tell us about '_But--But--But_,' and begin, 'Once upon a time.'"

"Well, then, once upon a time there lived, far away up on the top of a mountain, a little old, old woman, and this little old woman had a very lovely young daughter, who lived with her in a cave on the mountain top.

And one day her mother said,--

"'Dear love, all the provisions are done. I must go away down to the plains and buy some. I have no money, but shall take a small bagful of precious stones.'

"So away she went, leaning on her stick and carrying a basket. She looked very feeble, her old cloak was ragged and worn, and, as she crept along, she kept saying to herself, '_but--but--but_.'