Tales of the Chesapeake | Page 9

light, bright as the face of the I AM. Behold! I am here, and that which saved me has made me content to die by thee."
The old man drew the dripping ringlets of the younger one to his venerable beard. The house rocked like a sailing vessel, and the strong sea-fogs seemed to close them round.
"We are sailing to sea," whispered the Jew. "It is too late to escape. The next billow may fling us apart, and our bones shall descend amongst the oyster-shells to build houses for the nutritious beings of the water. Thence, some day, my son, from the heavens God may drop His tongs and draw us up to Him, as on this night thy father and I drew the casket, many years ago. Look there! Look there!"
The heads of both were turned toward the spot where the finger of the old man pointed, and they saw the denuded cross shining in the light of the agitated fire, so large and bright that it reduced all other objects to insignificance.
"It was a light like that," exclaimed Abraham, "which shone in my eyes through the darkness of the billows."
"It was on that," whispered Issachar, "that I called for help, my son, when thou wert dying. From the hour I dipped it from the water my heart has been warmer to the world and man. Is there, in all the hoary traditions of our church, a reason why we should not beseech its illumination again before it returns to the ocean with ourselves? Do thou decide, who art full of wisdom; for I am ignorant in thy eyes, and heavy with sins."
The cross, resplendent, seemed to wear a visible countenance. Wrapped in Issachar's arms, like a babe to its mother, young Abraham extended his hands to the effigy, and in its beams a wondrous consolation of love and rest returned to those poor companions, reconciling them to their helplessness in the presence of the Almighty awe.
"Child of God!" exclaimed the Jew, "thou beauty of the Gentiles, I gave thee life but for a span, and thou seemest to bring to me the life immortal."
The morning broke on the shore frosty and clear after the subsided storm, and the earliest wreckers, seeking in the drift for Christmas gifts to give their children, found well-remembered parts of the Eli and portions of the tenement of its proprietor. A wave rolled higher than the rest and cast upon the shore two bodies--a young man of the comely face and symmetry of a woman, without a sign of pain in his features and dark, oriental eyes, and an old man, venerable as an inhabitant of the ocean and mysterious as a being of some race anterior to the deluge. In his rugged face the marks of that antiquity which has something stately in the lowest types of the Jew, and in this one an almost Mosaic might, were softened to a magnanimity where death had nothing to contribute but its silence and respect. Laying them together, the fishermen and idlers looked at them with a superstition partly of remorse and mild remembrance, and the star of Christmas twinkled over them in the sky. None felt that they were other than father and son, and black men and white, indifferent that day to social prejudices, followed the child of Hagar and the Hebrew patriarch to the grave.

HAUNTED PUNGY.
They hewed the pines on Haunted Point To build the pungy boat, And other axes than their own Yet other echoes smote; They heard the phantom carpenters, But not a man could see; And every pine that crashed to earth Brought down a viewless tree.
They launched the pungy, not alone; Another vessel slipped Down in the water with their own, And ghostly sailors shipped; They heard the rigging flap and creak, And hollow orders cried. But not a living man could seek, And not a boat beside.
They sailed away from Haunted Point, Convoyed by something more: A boatswain's whistle answered back, And oar replied to oar. No matter where the anchor dropped, The fiends would not aroint, And every morn the pungy boat Still lay off Haunted Point.
They hailed; and voices as in fog Seemed half to speak again-- A devilish chuckling rolled afar, And mutiny of men. The parson of the islands said It was the pirate band, Whose gold was lost on Haunted Point And hid with bloody hand.
Until what time a kidnapped boy, By ruffians whipped and stole, Should in the groves of Haunted Point Convert his stealer's soul! They stole the island parson's child, He said a little prayer: Down sank the ground; a gliding sound Went whispering through the air.
And in the depths the pungy sank; And, as the divers told, They sought the wreck to lift again, And found the pirates'