A Message From the Sea | Page 7

a wave of the hand, the young widow had held
up to her the needlework on which she was engaged, with a patient and
pleasant smile. So the captain said, being on his legs, -
"What might she be making now?"
"What is Margaret making, Kitty?" asked the young fisherman,--with
one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere.
As Kitty only blushed in reply, the captain doubled himself up as far as
he could, standing, and said, with a slap of his leg, -
"In my country we should call it wedding-clothes. Fact! We should, I
do assure you."
But it seemed to strike the captain in another light too; for his laugh
was not a long one, and he added, in quite a gentle tone, -
"And it's very pretty, my dear, to see her--poor young thing, with her
fatherless child upon her bosom--giving up her thoughts to your home
and your happiness. It's very pretty, my dear, and it's very good. May
your marriage be more prosperous than hers, and be a comfort to her
too. May the blessed sun see you all happy together, in possession of
the good name, long after I have done ploughing the great salt field that
is never sown!"

Kitty answered very earnestly, "O! Thank you, sir, with all my heart!"
And, in her loving little way, kissed her hand to him, and possibly by
implication to the young fisherman, too, as the latter held the
parlour-door open for the captain to pass out.




CHAPTER II
--THE MONEY

"The stairs are very narrow, sir," said Alfred Raybrock to Captain
Jorgan.
"Like my cabin-stairs," returned the captain, "on many a voyage."
"And they are rather inconvenient for the head."
"If my head can't take care of itself by this time, after all the knocking
about the world it has had," replied the captain, as unconcernedly as if
he had no connection with it, "it's not worth looking after."
Thus they came into the young fisherman's bedroom, which was as
perfectly neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though it was
but a little place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological ceiling
expressive of all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here the captain sat
down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful libel on Kitty
which ornamented the wall,--the production of some wandering limner,
whom the captain secretly admired as having studied portraiture from
the figure-heads of ships,--motioned to the young man to take the
rush-chair on the other side of the small round table. That done, the
captain put his hand in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue
coat, and took out of it a strong square case-bottle,--not a large bottle,
but such as may be seen in any ordinary ship's medicine-chest. Setting
this bottle on the table without removing his hand from it, Captain
Jorgan then spake as follows:-
"In my last voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, "and that's the

voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather
off the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded
that stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in
the identical storms that blew the Devil's horns and tail off, and led to
the horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers
in my country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or away
West, fur enough) picking their teeth with 'em, while the whips, made
of the tail, flog hard. In this last voyage, homeward-bound for
Liverpool from South America, I say to you, my young friend, it blew.
Whole measures! No half measures, nor making believe to blow; it
blew! Now I warn't blown clean out of the water into the sky,--though I
expected to be even that,--but I was blown clean out of my course; and
when at last it fell calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one
way, day and night, night and day, and I drifted--drifted--drifted--out of
all the ordinary tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet
drifted. It behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs' lives,
never to rest from making himself master of his calling. I never did rest,
and consequently I knew pretty well ('specially looking over the side in
the dead calm of that strong current) what dangers to expect, and what
precautions to take against 'em. In short, we were driving head on to an
island. There was no island in the chart, and, therefore, you may say it
was ill-manners in the island to be there; I don't dispute its bad
breeding, but there it was. Thanks be to Heaven, I was as ready for the
island