The Ravens and the Angels Part 18

"Perhaps they are in a happy place, mother," said little May.

And Hope said, "Mother, I am going to question the amulet-makers in the White Town." And his mother suffered him to go.

In two days, Hope came back. But his step was spiritless and slow, and his face very sad.

"Mother," he said, "I think my father was right. I am afraid no one knows anything about the country from which the Black Ship comes. At first the amulet-makers promised to tell me a great deal. Some of them told me they believed it was a great king, an enemy of our race, who sent the Ship; but that if we kept certain rules, and put on a certain dress they would sell us, or give them certain treasures to throw into the sea when the Ship appeared, they would watch for us, and make the powers beyond the sea favourable to us. But when I came to the question--how they knew this to be true, or if they had ever had any message from beyond the sea, or seen any one who came thence, they grew silent, and sometimes angry, and told me I was a presumptuous child.

There was one old man, however, who was kind to me; and he came and spoke to me alone, and said, 'My child, be happy to-day!--to be good is to be happy. What is beyond to-day, or beyond the sea, no one knows, or ever can know. Go back to your mother, and live as before.' So I came,"

concluded Hope. "But it can never, never be with us again as before we knew."

From that time the boy seemed to cease to be a child, or to take interest in any childish schemes. He was gentle and tender as his father would have been to his mother and to May, and seemed to take it on himself to watch over and protect them. He never left them out of sight; until, one day, as they came, in their ramble in search of sh.e.l.l-fish, on their old cave, and looked once more at their little stores, so joyously h.o.a.rded there, May suddenly exclaimed, "What if they should know on the other side of the mountains!"

The thought flashed on Hope like a breath of new life; and from that day his old schemes were resumed, but with an intensity and a purpose which could not be quenched. He would scale the mountains, to see if any tidings from beyond the sea had reached the land across the mountains!

His mother's consent was gained; and in a few days, spent in eager preparations, Hope was to start.

But before those days were ended, one evening a white-haired old man knocked at the cottage door. He was nearly exhausted with travel, his clothes were torn, and his feet bleeding.

They led him to the fire, bathed his feet, and set food before him. But before he would touch anything, the old man said,--

"I have tidings for you--glad tidings."

"Do you come from across the mountains?" exclaimed Hope, starting to his feet.

The old man bowed in a.s.sent.

"I come from across the mountains, and I bring you glad tidings from beyond the sea."

"Glad tidings!" they all exclaimed.

"Glad tidings, if you will obey them," he replied;--"if not, the saddest you ever heard. It is not an enemy who sends the Black Ship, but a Friend."

Not a question, scarcely a breath interrupted him and he continued, in brief, broken sentences,--

"It is our King. Our island belongs to Him. He gave it to us. But, long ago, our people rebelled against Him. They were seduced by a wicked prince, His deadly enemy, and, alas! ours. They sent the King a defiance; they defaced His statues, which were a type of all beauty; they broke His laws, which are the unfolding of all goodness. He sent amba.s.sadors to reclaim them; He, who could have crushed the revolt, and destroyed our nation with one of His armies in a day, descended from His dignity, and stooped to entreat our deluded people to return to their allegiance. But they treated His condescension as weakness. They defied His amba.s.sadors, and maltreated them, and drove them from the island. He had warned them against the usurper, and told them the consequences of revolting; and too surely they have been fulfilled. The Black Ship is the penalty inflicted by our offended Monarch; but those who return to His allegiance need not dread it."

"Some, then, have submitted to the King?" asked Hope.

"Every amba.s.sador He sent has persuaded some to recognize the King."

"Why not all?" asked Hope. "If the King is good, and is our King, and will receive us, why not all return?"

"The usurper seduces them still," replied the old man. "Many hate the King's good laws; many take pride in what they call their independence; most will not listen, or will not believe. They mock the King's messengers, and declare that they are impostors, that their messages are a delusion; and some even persist in declaring that there is no King, and no country beyond the sea."

"But the Black Ship is not a delusion!" said Hope; "it must come from some land. What proof have these amba.s.sadors given? Have they ever been in the land beyond the sea?"

"They gave many proofs; but I bring you better news than this. A few years since, the King's Son came Himself. Many of us have seen and spoken with Him. He stayed many days. He spoke words of such power, and in tones of such tenderness, as none who heard can ever forget. We could trace in His features the lineaments of the statues we had defaced. Some of the worst rebels among us were melted to repentance, and fell at His feet, and besought His pardon. I was one. He gave us not only His pardon, but His friendship. But His enemies prevailed. Especially the amulet-makers organized a conspiracy against Him; they feared for their trade, and secretly prepared to drive Him from the island. He had come alone, for He came not to compel, but to win. And He came for another purpose, which, until He was gone, we could not comprehend. The conspirators triumphed. One day they came in force and seized Him. Alas!

a base panic seized us who loved Him, and we fled. They bound Him with thongs, they treated Him with the most barbarous cruelty and the basest indignity, and drove Him to the sea. We thought a fleet and an army would have appeared to avenge His insulted majesty and proclaim Him King with power, or bear Him in pomp away; but to our surprise and dismay nothing came for Him but the Black Ship, and the Dark Form bore Him from us, as if He had been a rebel like one of us. He had told us something of the probability of this before it happened, but we could not comprehend what He meant. Never were days of such sorrow as those which pa.s.sed over us after His being taken from us. His enemies were in full triumph; they mocked our Prince's claims, they insulted us, they threatened us; but all they could say or do was nothing in comparison with the anguish in our hearts. For what could we think? He whom we had loved and trusted was gone, borne off in triumph by the very foe He came to deliver us from. We hid ourselves in caves and lonely places by the sea, and recalled to one another His precious words, and gazed out over the sea with a vague yearning, which was scarcely hope, and yet kept us lingering on the sh.o.r.e.

"On the third morning, in the gray light of early dawn, one of us saw Him on the sh.o.r.e; one who had owed Him everything, and loved Him most devotedly. She called us to come. One by one we gathered round Him. Some of us could scarcely believe our senses for joy. But it was Himself; the solid certainty of that unutterable joy grew stronger. And then He told us wonders: how He suffered all this for us; had borne this indignity and captivity in obedience to His Father's will, to set us free; had gone in the Black Ship itself to the heart of the Enemy's country, and alone trodden those terrible regions of lawless wickedness to which he seeks to drag his deluded victims, and alone vanquished him there. He stayed with us some days, and talked with us familiarly, as of old; but how glorious His commonest words were, how overpowering His forgiving looks, how inspiring His firm and tender tones, I can never tell. He could not remain with us then. He said we must be His messengers, and win back His rebels to allegiance; we must learn to be brave, to speak and suffer for Him, and to act as men; and He promised to come again one day with fleets and armies, and all the pomp of His Father's kingdom.

But, meantime, He said the Black Ship should never more be a terror to any of us who loved Him; for He Himself would come in it each time. He would be veiled, so that none could see Him but the one He came for: but surely as the Black Ship came, instead of the Dark Form, He would come Himself for every one of us, and bear us home to His Father's house to abide with Him, and with Him hereafter to return."

There was a breathless silence, broken only by the mother's sobs.

She clasped her hands, and murmured,--

"Then it was He! It was surely He Himself who came and took my babe. No wonder my darling smiled, and was willing to go."

The mother and the children that very evening received from the stranger the medal which was worn by all those who returned to their allegiance.

It was a Black Ship, surrounded with rays of glory, and behind it the towers of a city.

Never were a happier company than the four who gathered round the cottage table that evening. They were too happy, and had too much to ask, to sleep; and far into the night the questions and answers continued, every reply of the old man's only revealing some fresh endearing excellence in the King and the King's Son, until they longed for the Black Ship to come and fetch them home.

"If only," said little May, "it would fetch us all at once!"

"That the King will do when He comes with His armies in the day of His triumph. Till then, my child, this is the one only sorrow connected with the Black Ship, for those who love the King. We go one by one, and blessed as it is for the one who goes, it must be sad sometimes for those who are left."

"Why do not those who go to Him ask Him to come quickly?" asked Hope.

"They do," replied the old man. "'Come quickly' is the entreaty of all who love Him here and beyond the sea; but His time is best. And, meantime, have we forgotten the mult.i.tudes who are still deceived by the usurper, to whom the Black Ship is still a horrible end of all things, and the Veiled Form the King of Terrors?"

Hope rose and stood before the old man.

"Mother," he said, "it is for this we must live. Think of the desolate hearts in the homes around us. Think of the thousands who know not our blessed secret in the White Town."

The old man rose and laid his hand on Hope's head.

"My King!" he said, "when wilt Thou come for me? Is not my work done?

Will not this youthful voice speak for Thee here as my quivering tones no longer can? Wilt Thou not come? I have many dear ones with Thee; but when Thou wilt is best."

Then he persuaded them all to lie down to rest, and he himself composed himself quietly to sleep.

But in the night a wondrous light filled the room; a wondrous light and fragrance. The mother woke, and the children, and they saw the old man standing, gazing towards the door, which was open. There stood a Veiled Form, dark to the mother's eyes as the dreaded form she knew too well; yet its presence filled the room with the light as of a rosy dawn, and the fragrance as of spring flowers. The old man's hair was silvery, and his form tottering as ever; but in his face there was the beauty of youth, and in his eyes the rapture of joy.

"Farewell, my friends," he said; "your day of joy will come like this of mine.--Thou art come for me at last; Thou Thyself! I see Thy face, I hear Thy voice: I come; it is Thou."

A hand was laid tenderly on his hand, and they walked away together into the night. But as the mother and children looked after him from the door, they saw the Black Ship; only at its prow was a star; and as it pa.s.sed away, the mother, and Hope, and May thought it left a track of light upon the sea.

The three had henceforth enough to live and suffer for. To the lonely fishermen's huts went May and her mother, into the White Town went Hope; and everywhere they bore their tidings of joy. They had much to suffer, and many mocked; and against them also the amulet-makers combined, and would not listen. But some did listen, and believe, and love; and to such, as to the mother, and Hope, and May, the Black Ship, instead of a phantom of terror, became a messenger of surpa.s.sing joy.

_The Island and the Main Land._

A SEQUEL TO "THE BLACK SHIP."

On the night when the old man, the messenger of glad tidings, was borne away, the mother and her children, turning sadly back, from watching him depart, to the blank his going left in the cottage, found that he had left with them a scroll. With trembling expectation they unrolled it, and read. It contained further revelations concerning the King's ship (they would call it the Black Ship no more), and the land to which it bore those for whom it was sent.