True Blue | Page 3

to, gallantly riding over the still rising seas. Though she did not tumble about, perhaps, quite as much as she had been doing, her movements were far from easy. She did not roll as before, as she was kept pressed down on one side; still every now and then she gave a pitch as she glided down into the trough of the sea, which made every timber and mast creak and quiver, and few on board would have been inclined to sing:
"Here's a sou'wester coming, Billy, Don't you hear it roar now! Oh help them! How I pities those Unhappy folks on shore now!"
At length William Freeborn was relieved from his post aloft, and came down on deck. Paul Pringle, his old friend and messmate, who had been hunting for him through the darkness, found him at last. Paul grieved sincerely for the news he had to communicate, and, not liking the task imposed on him, scarcely knew how to begin.
"Bill," said he with a sigh, "you and I, boy and man, have sailed together a good score of years, and never had a fall-out about nothing all that time, and it goes to my heart, Bill, to say any thing that you won't like; but it must be done--that I sees--so it's no use to have no circumbendibus. Your missus was took very bad--very bad indeed--just in the middle of the gale, and there was no one to send for you--and so, do you see--"
"My wife--Molly!--oh, what has happened, Paul?" exclaimed Freeborn, not waiting for an answer; but springing below, he rushed to the sick-bay, as the hospital is called. The faint cry of an infant reached his ears as he opened the door. Betty Snell, one of the other nurses, was so busily employed with something on her knees, that she did not see him enter. The dim light of a lantern, hanging from a beam overhead, fell on it. He saw that it was a newborn infant. He guessed what had happened, but he did not stop to caress it, for beyond was the cot occupied by his wife. There she lay, all still and silent. His heart sank within him; he gazed at her with a feeling of terror and anguish which he had never before experienced. He took her hand. It fell heavily by her side. He gasped for breath. "Molly!" he exclaimed at length, "speak to me, girl--what has happened?"
There was no answer. Then he knew that his honest, true-hearted wife was snatched from him in this world for ever. The big drops of salt spray, which still clung to his hair and bushy beard, dropped on the kind face of her he had loved so well, but not a tear escaped his eyes. He gladly would have wept, but he had not for so many a long year done such a thing, and he felt too stunned and bewildered to do so now. He had stood as a sailor alone could stand on so unstable a foothold, gazing on those now placid and pale unchanging features for a long time,--how long he could not tell,--when Paul Pringle, who had followed him to the door of the sick-bay, came up, and, gently taking him by the shoulders, said:
"Come along, Bill; there's no use mourning: we all loved her, and we all feel for you, from the Captain downwards. That's a fact. But just do you come and have a look at the younker. Betty Snell vows that he's the very image of you, all except the beard and pigtail."
The latter appendage in those days was worn by most sailors, and Bill Freeborn had reason to pride himself on his. The mention of it just then, however, sent a pang through his heart, for Molly had the morning before the gale dressed it for him.
Freeborn at first shook his head and would not move; but at last his shipmate got him to turn round, and then Betty Snell held up the poor little helpless infant to him, and the father's heart felt a touch of tenderness of a nature it had never before experienced, and he stooped down and bestowed a kiss on the brow of his newborn motherless child. He did not, however, venture to take it in his arms.
"You'll look after it, Betty, and be kind to it?" said he in a husky voice. "I'm sure you will, for her sake who lies there?"
"Yes, yes, Bill; no fear," answered Betty, who was a good-natured creature in her way, though it was a rough way, by the bye.
She was the wife of one of the boatswain's mates. Her companion, Nancy Bolton, who was the wife of the sergeant of marines, was much the same sort of person; indeed, it would not have done for