The Sea Lions Part 27

The accident to the Sea Lion of the Vineyard occurred very near the close of the month of March, which, in the southern hemisphere, corresponds to our month of September. This was somewhat late for a vessel to remain in so high a lat.i.tude, though it was not absolutely dangerous to be found there several weeks longer. We have given a glance at Mary Pratt and her uncle, about this time; but it has now become expedient to carry the reader forward for a considerable period, and take another look at our heroine and her miserly uncle, some seven months later. In that interval a great change had come over the deacon and his niece; and hope had nearly deserted all those who had friends on board the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond, as the following explanation will show was reasonable, and to be expected.

When Captain Gardiner sailed, it was understood that his absence would not extend beyond a single season. All who had friends and connections on board his schooner, had been a.s.sured of this; and great was the anxiety, and deep the disappointment, when the first of our own summer months failed to bring back the adventurers. As week succeeded week, and the vessel did not return, the concern increased, until hope began to be lost in apprehension. Deacon Pratt groaned in spirit over his loss, finding little consolation in the gains secured by means of the oil sent home, as is apt to be the case with the avaricious, when their hearts are once set on gain. As for Mary, the load on _her_ heart increased in weight, as it might be, day by day, until those smiles, which had caused her sweet countenance to be radiant with innocent joy, entirely disappeared, and she was seen to smile no more. Still, complaints never pa.s.sed her lips. She prayed much, and found all her relief in such pursuits as comported with her feelings, but she seldom spoke of her grief; never, except at weak moments, when her querulous kinsman introduced the subject, in his frequent lamentations over his losses.

The month of November is apt to be stormy on the Atlantic coasts of the republic. It is true that the heaviest gales do not then occur, but the weather is generally stern and wintry, and the winds are apt to be high and boisterous. At a place like Oyster Pond, the gales from the ocean are felt with almost as much power as on board a vessel at sea; and Mary became keenly sensible of the change from the bland breezes of summer to the sterner blasts of autumn. As for the deacon, his health was actually giving way before anxiety, until the result was getting to be a matter of doubt. Premature old age appeared to have settled on him, and his niece had privately consulted Dr. Sage on his case. The excellent girl was grieved to find that the mind of her uncle grew more worldly, his desires for wealth more grasping, as he was losing his hold on life, and was approaching nearer to that hour when time is succeeded by eternity. All this while, however, Deacon Pratt "kept about," as he expressed it himself, and struggled to look after his interests, as had been his practice through life. He collected his debts, foreclosed his mortgages when necessary, drove tight bargains for his wood and other saleable articles, and neglected nothing that he thought would tend to increase his gains. Still, his heart was with his schooner; for he had expected much from that adventure, and the disappointment was in proportion to the former hopes.

One day, near the close of November, the deacon and his niece were alone together in the "keeping-room,"--as it was, if it be not still, the custom among persons of New England origin to call the ordinary sitting-apartment,--he bolstered up in an easy-chair, on account of increasing infirmities, and she plying the needle in her customary way.

The chairs of both were so placed that it was easy for either to look out upon that bay, now of a wintry aspect, where Roswell had last anch.o.r.ed, previously to sailing.

"What a pleasant sight it would be, uncle," Mary, almost unconsciously to herself, remarked, as, with tearful eyes, she sat gazing intently on the water, "could we only awake and find the Sea Lion at anchor, under the point of Gardiner's Island! I often fancy that such _may_ be--nay, _must_ be the case yet; but it never comes to pa.s.s! I would not tell you yesterday, for you did not seem to be as well as common, but I have got an answer, by Baiting Joe, to my letter sent across to the Vineyard."

The deacon started, and half-turned his body towards his niece, on whose face his own sunken eyes were now fastened with almost ferocious interest.

It was the love of Mammon, stirring within him the lingering remains of covetousness. He thought of his property, while Mary thought of those whose lives had been endangered, if not lost, by the unhappy adventure.

The latter understood the look, however, so far as to answer its inquiry, in her usual gentle, feminine voice.

"I am sorry to say, sir, that no news has been heard from Captain Daggett, or any of his people," was the sad reply to this silent interrogatory. "No one on the island has heard a word from the Vineyard vessel since the day before she sailed from Rio. There is the same uneasiness felt among Captain Daggett's friends, as we feel for poor Roswell. They think, however, that the two vessels have kept together, and believe that the same fate has befallen both."

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the deacon, as sharply as wasting lungs would allow--"Heaven forbid! If Gar'ner his let that Daggett keep in his company an hour longer than was necessary, he has deserved to meet with shipwreck, though the loss always falls heaviest on the owners."

"Surely, uncle, it is more cheering to think that the two schooners are together in those dangerous seas, than to imagine one, alone, left to meet the risks, without a companion!"

"You talk idly, gal--as women always talk. If you know'd all, you wouldn't think of such a thing."

"So you have said often, uncle, and I fear there is some mystery preying all this time on your, spirits. Why not relieve your mind, by telling your troubles to me? I am your child in affection, if not by birth."

"You're a good gal, Mary," answered the deacon, a good deal softened by the plaintive tones of one of the gentlest voices that ever fell on human ear, "an excellent creatur' at the bottom--but of course you know nothing of the sealing business, and next to nothing about taking care of property."

"I hope you do not think me wasteful, sir? That is a character I should not like to possess."

"No, not wasteful; on the contrary, curful (so the deacon p.r.o.nounced the word) and considerate enough, as to _keeping_, but awfully indifferent as to _getting_. Had I been as indifferent as you are yourself, your futur'

days would not be so comfortable and happy as they are now likely to be, a'ter my departure--if depart I _must_."

"My future life happy and comfortable!" _thought_ Mary; then she struggled to be satisfied with her lot, and contented with the decrees of Providence. "It is but a few hours that we live in this state of trials, compared to the endless existence that is to succeed it."

"I wish I knew all about this voyage of Roswell's," she added, aloud; for she was perfectly certain that there was something to be told that, as yet, the deacon had concealed from her. "It might relieve your mind, and lighten your spirits of a burthen, to make me a confidant."

The deacon mused in silence for more than five minutes. Seldom had his thoughts gone over so wide a reach of interests and events in so short a s.p.a.ce of time; but the conclusion was clear and decided.

"You ought to know all, Mary, and you shall know all," he answered, in the manner of a man who had made up his mind beyond appeal. "Gar'ner has gone a'ter seal to some islands that the Daggett who died here, about a year and a half ago, told me of; islands of which n.o.body know'd anything, according to his account, but himself. His shipmates, that saw the place when he saw it, were all dead, afore he let me into the secret."

"I have long suspected something of the sort, sir, and have also supposed that the people on Martha's Vineyard had got some news of this place, by the manner in which Captain Daggett has acted."

"Isn't it wonderful, gal? Islands, they tell me, where a schooner can fill up with ile and skins, in the shortest season in which the sun ever shone upon an antarctic summer! Wonderful! wonderful!"

"Very extraordinary, perhaps; but we should remember, uncle, at how much risk the young men of the country go on these distant voyages, and how dearly their profits are sometimes bought."

"Bought! If the schooner would only come back, I should think nothing of all that. It's the cost of the vessel and outfit, Mary, that weighs so much on _my_ spirits. Well, Gar'ner's first business is with them islands, which are at an awful distance for one to trust his property; but, 'nothing ventured, nothing got,' they say. By my calculations, the schooner has had to go a good five hundred miles among the ice, to get to the spot; not such ice as a body falls in with, in going and coming between England and Ameriky, as we read of in the papers, but ice that covers the sea as we sometimes see it piled up in Gar'ner's Bay, only a hundred times higher, and deeper, and broader, and colder! It's desperate _cold_ ice, the sealers all tell me, that of the antarctic seas. Some on 'em think it's colder down south than it is the other way, up towards Greenland and Iceland itself. It's extr'or'nary, Mary, that the weather should grow cold as a body journeys south; but so it is, by all accounts.

I never could understand it, and it isn't so in Ameriky, I'm sartain. I suppose it must come of their turning the months round, and having their winter in the midst of the dog-days. I never could understand it, though Gar'ner has tried, more than once, to reason me into it. I believe, but I don't understand."

"It is all told in my geography here," answered Mary, mechanically taking down the book, for her thoughts were far away in those icy seas that her uncle had been so graphically describing. "I dare say we can find it all explained in the elementary parts of this book."

"They _do_ make their geographies useful, now-a-days," said the deacon, with rather more animation than he had shown before, that morning.

"They've got 'em to be, now, almost as useful as almanacs. Read what it says about the seasons, child."

"It says, sir, that the changes in the seasons are owing to 'the inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of its...o...b..t,' I do not exactly understand what that means, uncle.'

"No,--it's not as clear as it might be.--The declination--"

"Inclination, sir, is what is printed here."

"Ay, inclination. I do not see why any one should have much inclination for winter, but so it must be, I suppose. The Earth's...o...b..t has an inclination towards changes,' you say."

"The changes in the seasons, sir, are owing to 'the inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of its...o...b..t.' It does not say that the orbit has an inclination in any particular way."

Thus was it with Mary Pratt, and thus was it with her uncle, the deacon.

One of the plainest problems in natural philosophy was Hebrew to both, simply because the capacity that Providence had so freely bestowed on each had never been turned to the consideration of such useful studies. But, while the mind of Mary Pratt was thus obscured on this simple, and, to such as choose to give it an hour of reflection, perfectly intelligible proposition, it was radiant as the day on another mystery, and one that has confounded thousands of the learned, as well as of the unlearned. To her intellect, nothing was clearer, no moral truth more vivid, no physical fact more certain, than the incarnation of the Son of G.o.d. She had the "evidence of things not seen," in the fulness of Divine grace; and was profound on this, the greatest concern of human life, while unable even to comprehend how the "inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of its...o...b..t" could be the cause of the change of the seasons. And was it thus with her uncle?--he who was a pillar of the "meeting," whose name was often in men's mouths as a "shining light," and who had got to be identified with religion in his own neighbourhood, to a degree that caused most persons to think of Deacon Pratt, when they should be thinking of the Saviour? We are afraid he knew as little of one of these propositions as of the other.

"It's very extr'or'nary," resumed the deacon, after ruminating on the matter for a few moments, "but I suppose it _is_ so. Wasn't it for this 'inclination' to cold weather our vessels might go and seal under as pleasant skies as we have here in June. But, Mary, I suppose that wasn't to be, or it would be."

"There would have been no seals, most likely, uncle, if there was no ice.

They tell me that such creatures love the cold and the ice, and the frozen oceans. Too much warm weather would not suit them."

"But, Mary, it might suit other folks! Gar'ner's whole ar'nd isn't among the ice, or a'ter them seals."

"I do not know that I understand you, sir. Surely Roswell has gone on a sealing voyage."

"Sartain; there's no mistake about _that_. But there may be many stopping-places in so long a road."

"Do you mean, sir, that he is to use any of these stopping-places, as you call them?" asked Mary, eagerly, half-breathless with her anxiety to hear all. "You said something about the West Indies once."

"Harkee, Mary--just look out into the entry and see if the kitchen door is shut. And now come nearer to me, child, so that there may be no need of bawling what I've got to say all over Oyster Pond. There, sit down, my dear, and don't look so eager, as if you wanted to eat me, or my mind may misgive me, and then I couldn't tell you, a'ter all. Perhaps it would be best, if I was to keep my own secret."

"Not if it has anything to do with Roswell, dear uncle; not if it has anything to do with him! You have often advised me to marry him, and I ought to know all about the man you wish me to marry."

"Yes, Gar'ner will make a right good husband for any young woman, and I _do_ advise you to have him. You are my brother's da'ghter, Mary, and I give you this advice, which I should give you all the same, had you been my own child, instead of his'n."

"Yes, sir, I know that.--But what about Roswell, and his having to stop, on his way home?"

"Why, you must know, Mary, that this v'y'ge came altogether out of that seaman who died among us, last year. I was kind to him, as you may remember, and helped him to many little odd comforts,"--odd enough were they, of a verity,--"and he was grateful. Of all virtues, give me grat.i.tude, say I! It is the n.o.blest, as it is the most oncommon of all our good qualities. How little have I met with, in my day! Of all the presents I have made, and gifts bestowed, and good acts done, not one in ten has ever met with any grat.i.tude."

Mary sighed; for well did she know how little he had given, of his abundance, to relieve the wants of his fellow-creatures. She sighed, too, with a sort of mild impatience that the information she sought with so much eagerness, was so long and needlessly delayed. But the deacon had made up his mind to tell her all.

"Yes, Gar'ner has got something to do, beside sealing," he resumed of himself, when his regret at the prevalence of ingrat.i.tude among men had exhausted itself. "Suthin'"--for this was the way he p.r.o.nounced that word--"that is of more importance than the schooner's hold full of ile.

Ile is ile, I know, child; but gold is gold. What do you think of _that_?"

"Is Roswell, then, to stop at Rio again, in order to sell his oil, and send the receipts home in gold?"

"Better than that--much better than that, if he gets back at all." Mary felt a chill at her heart. "Yes, that is the p'int--if he gets back at all. If Gar'ner ever does come home, child, I shall expect to see him return with a considerable sized keg--almost a barrel, by all accounts--filled with gold!"