Cast Away in the Cold Part 23

"'In oars!'--the boat touches the rocks, and we are there to take the painter, and to make her fast.

"Two of the men spring out; a man rises in the stern; he shades his eyes with his hands, as if to protect them from the glaring sun, and stares at us, and then at the savages, who--of both s.e.xes, and of every age and size--surround us. Then he calls out, 'Is there a white man in that crowd?'

"'Yes, sir; two of them.'

"'I thought so from the motions,' says the man. Then he stared at me again, and cried: 'Is that the lubber Hardy, of the _Blackbird_?'

"'Yes, sir; it is,' I answered.

"'Is that other chap the cabin-boy?--him they called the Dean?'

"'Yes, sir,' spoke up the Dean.

"In an instant the man was out upon the rocks, and he grasped us warmly by the hands. He had recognized us, now we recognized _him_. He was the master of a ship that lay alongside the _Blackbird_ when we first went among the ice, catching seals. His ship was the _Rob Roy_, of Aberdeen.

"This much he said to quiet us, for he saw the state of agitation we were in. Then he went on to tell us that the _Blackbird_, not having been heard from in all this time, it was thought that she must have gone down somewhere among the ice, with all on board; and he told us further, that he was on a whaling voyage now, and then he said, 'The _Rob Roy_ will give you a bonny welcome, lads.'

"Afterward he told us that the vessels were, as we had supposed, a part of the whaling fleet, and he said it was fortunate that he had discovered us, as this was our only chance, for all the other vessels that were following him would be very likely, on account of the state of the ice, to hold to the westward, and not come near the land.

"All this time the savages were _yeh-yeh_-ing round us, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the captain of the _Rob Roy_ and his boat's crew. Then, when I told the captain how good they had been to us, he sent his boat back to the ship, and had fetched for them wood and knives and iron and needles, in such great abundance that they set up a _yeh, yeh_, in consequence, which, for anything I know to the contrary, may be going on even to this present time.

"But what was the happiness of the savages compared to ours? Our feelings cannot be described. It seemed almost as if we had come from death to life. We could hardly believe our eyes,--that this was the ship we had so long hoped for, this the rescue we had so often despaired of.

We cried with very joy, and behaved like two crazy people. The captain of the _Rob Roy_ laughed good-naturedly at us, and proposed at once to hurry us off aboard his ship.

"We kept our promise to give Eatum all our property; but the captain of the _Rob Roy_ wanted 'Old Crumply' and 'The Dean's Delight,' and our pot and lamp, and some other things; so he gave Eatum other valuables in place of them. Then we took leave of our savage friends, which we of course did not do without some feelings of sorrow and regret at parting from them, remembering as we did how kind they had been to us, and how they had rescued us from our unhappy situation; and the savages seemed a little sorry too. First came Eatum and Mrs. Eatum, and then the two little Eatums (Mop-head and Gimlet-eyes) that I had so often played with; then Old Grim and Big-toes and Little-nose; and Awak, the walrus, and Kossuit; and the two young ladies who might have been our wives: and then all the rest of them, big and little, old and young.

"Then off we went to the _Rob Roy_; and a fair wind coming soon, the ice began to move away from the land, the Rob Roy's sails were unfurled to the fresh breeze, and now, with hearts turned thankfully to Heaven for our deliverance, we were again afloat upon the blue water,--whither bound we did not know, but _homeward_ in the end."

"O, how glad you must have been!" said Fred.

"How splendidly the rescue and all that comes round," said William; "just like it does in all the printed books. Why, Captain Hardy, it couldn't have been better if you'd made the story up, it looks so _real_!"

While, as for little Alice, she never said a word, but only looked upon the old man wonderingly.

CHAPTER XX.

Brings the Holidays of the Little People and the Story of the Old Man to an End.

Again the Mariner's Rest receives the little people; again the Ancient Mariner is there to welcome them. But a shade of sadness is upon the old man's face, and the children are not so gay as is their wont; for all things must have an end, and holidays are no exception to the rule.

"Isn't it too bad," said William, looking very sober,--"isn't it too bad that this is to be the last of it?"

"Not so bad for you as for me," replied the Ancient Mariner; and the old man looked as gloomy and forsaken as if he had been cast away in the cold again. But he soon cheered up, and in a much livelier way he said, "Well now, my hearties, since this is to be the last of it, suppose we close the story in the 'Crow's Nest,' where we first began it; for you see, if the Dean and I were rescued from the desolate island and the savages, we were not home yet. Now, what do you say to that, my dears?"

"The Crow's Nest! Yes, yes, the Crow's Nest!" cried the children all at once; and away they scampered to it, as light and merry as if they had never for an instant been sad at thought of the parting that was so soon to come.

And now once more our little party are together in the dear old rustic vine-clad arbor, and, as on the first day of meeting there, the old man takes his long clay pipe out of his mouth, and sticks it in a rafter overhead; then around little Alice he puts his great, big arm, and he draws the fair-haired, bright-eyed child close to his side, and thus "ballasted," as he says, he "bears away for port."

"Now, to bring our story to an end," ran on the Captain, "I must say first that the _Rob Roy_ was a good, stout ship; the master a bluff, good-hearted Scotchman; the mate a kindly man, and altogether different from the red-faced mate that was on the _Blackbird_; and the people were all just as good and kind to us as the savages had been. But they gave us right away so much coffee and ship's biscuit and other things to eat and drink (none of which had we tasted for three years and more), that we got a dreadful colic, and had like to have died. But the next day we were quite well again, and then we related to the Captain and everybody on board the story of our adventures. The worst was, they would make us tell our story over and over again, as I have been telling it to you, until we almost wished we had never been rescued at all. It is, indeed, a fearful thing in anybody's life ever to have met with any adventure that is at all peculiar; for to the end of his days people will never get done asking him about it; and most likely their questions are of the most ridiculous kind, like, 'Hardy, wasn't it cold there?' just as if anybody could be cast away in the cold, and find it anything else; or, 'How did you feel, Hardy?' as if _feeling_ has anything at all to do with you when you are trying to save your life.

"The captain of the _Rob Roy_ took a great fancy to our odd-looking fur clothes, especially our underclothing, which was made of birds' skins; and he gave us civilized garments out of the ship's stores. You may be sure that we were glad enough to get these nasty fur clothes off, and be rid of them forever. The captain offered to keep them for us, but we said 'No, no,' for we had had quite enough of them.

"So we went after whales, and made a 'good catch,' as the whale-fishers call a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, only stopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.

"When we reached Aberdeen, which occurred on the 29th of October, there was a great talk made about us, and, when we walked through the streets, people stuck out their fingers, and said, 'There they go! look!' so we were great lions there, and had to tell our story so often that we found out what they liked most to hear, and this we repeated over and over again; and by this method we saved much time and talk.

"The very first thing the Dean did, after landing, was to write a letter to his mother, sending it off right away by post. It was just like the little fellow to do it, and what he wrote was like him too. It began thus: 'Through the mercy of Providence I have been saved, and am coming back to you, mother dear.'

"Then we were shipped on board an American vessel, by the American Consul, for New York, where we arrived after a prosperous voyage, in good health, and without anything happening to us worth mentioning. This was on the 22d day of December, which made just three years, nine months, and nineteen days since we sailed from New Bedford.

"As soon as we had landed, we set out for the hospital to find the Dean's mother. The Dean had directed his letter there, thinking that if she had got well and gone away, they would know where; and this they did, so we took down the address and hurried on. It was in a little by-street, and we had much trouble to find it; but by and by we came upon a tumble-down old house, and were shown into a little tumble-down old room, with a tumble-down old bed in it, and a tumble-down box for a chair, and a small tumble-down table, and right in the middle of the floor stood a little woman that was more tumble-down than all. It was the Dean's poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had been washing clothes, and she held a sc.r.a.p of paper in both her hands, which, bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, were trembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of the Dean's letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deep wrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letter had arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just made out that it was from the Dean, and we could see that this had started great tears rolling down her cheeks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Dean's Mother.]

"But there was no use to puzzle more now. There was her darling, bright-haired boy, whom she 'always felt sure,' she said, 'would come back again,'--never losing hope; and now you can imagine how she was not long in recognizing him, and how she greeted him, and cried over him, and called him pretty names, and all that,--or, rather, I mean to say, you can't imagine it at all, for I never saw the like of it. It seemed to me as if she would never let him go out of her arms again, for fear she should lose him; and, seeing how matters stood, I went outside, where after a while the Dean joined me, and having some money in our pockets, that we had earned on board the _Rob Roy_ and the American packet-ship, we went right off and bought the best supper we could get, and had it brought into the tumble-down room and spread out upon the tumble-down table; and never was any poor woman so glad in all the world as the Dean's mother, and never were any two boys so happy as the Dean and I. The Dean's mother would sometimes laugh for joy, and sometimes cry for the same excellent reason; and, when neither of these would do, nor both together even, she would fly at the Dean with open arms, and hug and kiss him until she was quite exhausted, and temporarily quieted down. Meanwhile the Dean, besides eating his supper, was trying to tell his mother what he had been doing all the time,--to neither of which purposes were these maternal interruptions peculiarly favorable.

"So now you see we were at home at last, safe in body and thankful in spirit. Transported with delight, we could hardly believe our senses.

After so many years' absence, and such hardships and dangers as we had pa.s.sed through, New York seemed like another world. So accustomed had we been to exposure that we could hardly sleep in-doors. The confined air of the house greatly troubled us. Everything we saw seemed new, and we were in a constant state of wonder. We did not, however, forget the obligation we owed to our Heavenly Father for our deliverance; and we lost no time in going to a church, and there, in secret, we poured out our hearts to Him who rules the winds and the waves, and never forgets any of the creatures he has made.

"'And now,' said the Dean, 'I am going to further show my grat.i.tude by making my mother comfortable for the rest of her days,'--which he did by getting her into a better house, where she did not have to work any more,--the Dean declaring that he would hereafter make all the money that was necessary for her support; and he kept his word, too.

"As for the money the Dean had when we came home, that was soon all gone, and mine too, for that matter, since I helped the Dean, of course.

Then we looked about us for a good ship to go to sea in, as we felt that we should make better sailors now than anything else; indeed, neither of us knew what else to do.

"The story of our remarkable adventures getting abroad, we found many friends, so you may be sure, when we shipped again, it was not in such a crazy old hulk as the _Blackbird_, nor did we go any more whale or seal fishing, having got enough of that to last us during the remainder of our lives. Still, I have been back to the Arctic regions once since then; but it was not with a red-faced mate to torment me.

"I did not feel like coming up to Rockdale yet, being very much ashamed, not having made anything, as I could see, by running away. Besides, I learned that my father had given me up for dead long ago, and had moved with all my brothers and sisters to Ohio, where I wrote to him, telling all about my voyage and shipwreck,--the best I could, that is; for, having neglected my studies when at school, I could not write very well.

"So now I came to be a regular sailor, going away first with the Dean on a voyage to the Mediterranean in a fine bark, where we got moderately good wages, and, being both rather ambitious, we grew in favor and saved our money. When we returned, I proposed to the Dean that we should make a common stock of our earnings, and get ourselves a nice little home, which we did; and remembering the Rock of Good Hope, we called it Good Hope Cottage, of which the Dean's mother took possession, of course, while off we went to sea again, this time to Rio de Janeiro, in the same bark; then afterwards we went to the Mediterranean twice more, and on the last voyage I got to be mate; and, afterward, when we stopped at Barcelona, the Dean was made second mate. Then, in course of time, the Dean got to be a Captain, and prospered greatly, while his mother lived at Good Hope Cottage, and the Dean and I were always happy to come back and have a home like that to go to. After a while we were separated, for I was a Captain as well as the Dean, and we could no longer be together in the same ship; but still we both had a home together, and a place always to hail from, you see.

"But I go too fast and too far. I must stop now, for I have given you the story that I promised, of how I was _cast away in the cold_,--and it is high time too; for, as you have said, the holidays are at an end, and see there! the sun is sinking down behind the trees, and once more, as on the first day we met and parted in this pleasant little arbor, the shadows trail their ghostly length across the fields. But to me the shadows have another meaning now. They will lie there heavy on the ground until you come to lift them, and I shall be very, very sad and lonely now without my little friends. The night is closing in, my dears, as if it were a curtain dropped purposely to hide what we would gladly see again; and the dew is falling heavy on the gra.s.s, my dears, and so 'good by' is the word."

The Captain paused and bent his eyes upon the golden light that lay far-off behind the trees, as if he would divine something of the future that was before himself and the little children by his side, and which he thought the golden sunlight held; but, while he looked, it seemed as if some tender chord within his gentle heart had snapped asunder and had been badly tied again, for he said quite hurriedly, "Well, well, my hearties, we must pa.s.s the word, and get it over. Good by,--there it is!

G.o.d bless you, and good by!"

"Good by, dear Captain Hardy," said William, putting out his hand,--a hand that promised to be a very manly one indeed some day,--"good by, and thank you for all your goodness to us," and the little fellow could not keep a tear from coming out upon his plump and rosy cheek.

"Good by," said Fred, and, as he said it, there were two tears at the very least on his.

"Good by," dear little Alice would have said, though she didn't; but instead she threw her arms about the old man's neck and kissed his sunburnt cheek.