Tales of the Chesapeake | Page 3

its natal star on the loneliest sea-shore of the Atlantic. He had harmed no man, yet all shunned him, because he had loved, and honored his love with a religious rite, instead of profaning it, like others of his race.
"Take my tongs," replied the Jew. "Dip yonder! It will be your only Christmas gift."
"Peace to thee on earth and good-will to thee from men!" answered the outcast.
The preacher raised the long-handled rakes, spread the handles, and dropped them into the Sound. They gave from the bottom a dull, ringing tingle along their shafts. He strove to lift them with their weight of oysters, but his famished strength was insufficient.
"I am very weak and faint," he said. "Oh, help me, for the pity of God!"
The Jew came to his relief doggedly. The Jew was a powerful, bow-legged man, but with all his strength he could scarcely raise the burden.
"By Abraham!" he muttered, "they are oysters of lead. They will neither let go nor rise."
He finally rolled upon the deck a single object. It broke apart as it fell. The moonlight, released by his humped shadow, fell upon something sparkling, at which he leaped with a sudden thirst, and cried:
"Gold! Jewels! They are mine."
It was an iron casket, old and rusty, that he had raised. Within it, partly rusted to the case, the precious lustre to which he had devoted his life flashed out to the o'erspread arch of night, sown thick with star-dust. A furious strength was added to his body. He broke the object from the casket and held it up to eyes of increased wonder and awe. Then, with an oath, he would have plunged it back into the sea.
The outcast preacher interposed.
"It is your Christmas gift, Issachar. It is a cross. Curse not! It cannot harm you nor me. Dip again, and bring me a few oysters, or my wife may die."
"I know the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish. Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross, and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my vessel, myself brought it aboard!"
He seized the preacher's skinny arm with the ferocity of greed.
"I do not claim it, Issachar. My worship is not of forms and images. Dip again, and help me to my hut with a few oysters, for I am very faint. Then all my knowledge and interest in this effigy I will surrender to you."
"Agreed!" exclaimed the Jew, plunging the tongs to the bottom again and again, in his satisfaction.
They walked inland across the difficult sands, the Jew carrying the crucifix jealously. Lights gleamed from a few huts along the level island. At the meanest hut of all they stopped, and heard within a baby's cry, to which there was no response. The preacher staggered back with apprehension. The Jew raised the latch and led the way.
The light of some burning driftwood and dried sea-weed filled the low roof and was reflected back to a cot, on which a woman lay with a living child beside her. Something dread and ineffable was conveyed by that stiffened form. The Jew, familiar with misery and all its indications, caught the preacher in his arms.
"Levin Purnell," he said, "thy Christmas gift has come. Bear up! There is no more persecution for thee. She is dead!"
The outcast preacher looked once, wildly, on the woman's face, and with a cry pressed his hands to his heart. The Jew laid him down upon a miserable pallet, and for a few moments watched him steadily. Neither sound nor motion revealed the presence of the cold spark of life. The husband's heart was broken.
"Poor wretch!" exclaimed the Jew. "Mismated couple; in death as obstinate as in life. Lie there together, befriended in the closing hour by the Jew of Chincoteague, a present--to-morrow's Christmas--for thy neighbors of this Christian island!"
He stirred the fire. Death had no terrors for him, who had seen it by land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire. Looking up from the living child's face, he caught the sparkle of the crucifix he had discovered, where it stood in the narrow window-sill. There were gems of various colors in it, and they reflected the firelight lustrously, like a slender chandelier, or, as the Jew remembered in the version of the Evangels, like the gifts those bearded wise men, of whom he might resemble one, brought to the