University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

Some obscure child of sorrow had just been consigned
to the tomb in the Chapel burying ground, the
worm-eaten planks placed over it, the rich mould of
the grave-yard heaped thereon, and the brown sod
restored to its accustomed place;—the mourners,
the idlers, and the loiterers had one by one retired,
the monotonous sound of the funeral bell still surging
on the memory, when the stranger mariner, starting
from the deep reverie in which he had been bound,
found himself alone among the monuments of the
dead.

The sun was fast receding behind the hills which

half girdle Boston with a crescent of greenery, and
the orange hue of evening, like the deep coloring of
Claude, reflecting back from all opposing objects,
partly gilded and partly veiled them in gloom.

The mariner was sitting on a square monument,
which consisted of a large slab of sandstone supported
by four columns of the same. He had thrown
his hat on the grass, and bending his body listfully
over, appeared to be meditating deeply on the most
exciting subjects, for his features displayed extreme
emotion. He seemed to be a young man of
about twenty-five years old, nearly six feet high, uncommonly
well-made, with broad shoulders and
a slender waist. His head was one of those which
immediately attract attention; being finely developed
in every part, though rather too small for perfect
symmetry. The affective organs were moreover rather
larger than the intellectual; so that, judging from
the exterior, one would readily suppose that he were
better calculated for action than for speculation. His
features were perfectly regular; his eyes light blue,
and large; his nose was straight; his lips were like
those we see in the Napoleon of David, with a chin
and neck full and massive. His hair was rather light
and curling, and his complexion was browned as if
by constant exposure to the weather. He was dressed
in loose pantaloons of blue cloth, with a short
jacket of the same, snugly fitting the body; a check
shirt with the collar turned down, was circled

at the neck by a black silk kerchief, which fell from
a slip-knot on his bosom. His feet were clad in
white stockings and thin shoes.

Edward Fitzvassal, for such was the name of the
person we have now described, was the natural son
of one of the proudest men that ever lived within
the shadows of the three hills. Possessed of immense
wealth, that father, who appropriated large
sums to the gratification of his sensual appetites, had
lived in the hall of his ancestors in England surrounded
by every luxury, grinding the poor till sufferance
ceased to be a virtue with them, till at last he
was driven by their hatred to seek a shelter in America.
He had buried his wife soon after he arrived,
and her monument was now before the eyes of Fitzvassal.
She had never injured him, indeed he had
never seen her; for, long before he was a conscious
child of suffering, that woman had sunk under the
repeated injuries of her husband, and lay slumbering
in the church-yard. He had been acknowledged
by his father only through the desperate and unceasing
importunity of the most abject misery which
the satiety of sensuality had cast on a lonely woman.
In consequence of this importunity, Vassal acknowledged
his son, and bribed a young man to marry
the mother; a fellow who had followed the seas in
several distant voyages, and who, being tired of a
wandering life, was easily induced to take upon
himself such a beautiful incumbrance as Ellen Wilby

and her boy, backed as the burthen was with the
gift of a small fishing schooner and a frame-house,
already referred to, situated between Dorchester
Heights and the Point, large enough to accommodate
a small family.

Ellen yielded to this necessity with meek submission.
Though she was nothing but a humble
serving-maid, she had been deceived by the ardor
of too confiding affection. Often had she
entreated her seducer to leave her in pity of her
helplessness before the seal of her ruin were accomplished;
for her heart's weakness spake to her in terrible
admonitions, while she dreaded the fascination
of her charmer; and now, when the harsh reality
burst upon her that she was an outcast in the world,
and that the man on whom she had lavished her
very heart's blood in her excess of womanly devotion,
would not even look on her with kindness;
when she was on the point of being consigned to the
poor-house as a mendicant, and of having her infant
torn from her arms as the child of no one, to be subjected
to the tender mercies of a cold and calculating
charity; then it was that, in the desperation of her
agony, she flew to the house of her seducer, and
through untiring importunities extorted from him
protection for her child.

It was not for herself that she cared. She was
willing to undergo any privation in which the
pledge of that false affection might not participate;

but she loved it even more than if it had been the
fruit of lawful affection; for the natural principle developed
itself in its fulness, as it was warmed by the
strange fire that consumed her; and though it was
not the fire of heaven, the ministers of mercy tempered
it to her endurance, and mingled joy even in
the excess of her anguish. Though she married
Abner Classon with reluctance, she endeavored to
conceal her unwillingness, and make amends for her
simulated love, by performing the duties of a wife
with apparent cheerfulness.

Poor wretch! how many thousands have the false
arrangements of society wedded to similar suffering!
How many anguish and pine in rayless misery, with
the light of their eyes fading, and the bloom of their
cheeks turning pale; whose lives are one undisturbed
current of hypocrisy, and who array the dead
body of their hopes in the garniture of smiles!

Abner Classon was a rude sailor, wholly destitute
of any refinement. He had been, in his younger
days, eagerly sought after by the vulgar, idle, and
dissipated of Boston, as he was ever ready for a
frolic, could out-drink any competitor, would stand
by his friends in a row, and was gifted with a sort
of dry humor, which discovered itself rather in his
manner of saying things than in any intrinsic excellence
of their own. He was seldom at home, as,
every other day, he ran down the outer harbor, coasting
along Nahant and the neighboring fishing

grounds for cod and haddock, which he carried to
Oliver's Dock, and sold at the market value. The
proceeds he would now and then carry with him
home; but generally he found ways of spending it
at sailors' boarding-houses, where he was glad to
meet any revellers he could find, and always willing
to pay the whole bill himself.

Such was the step-father of Edward Fitzvassal,
and under such influences was he brought up from
his childhood; for, though his mother exerted herself
in every way to lead him in the right path, and
imparted to him the rudiments of a simple education,
the same she had herself with great difficulty acquired;
yet the brutality of Classon dragged him down
faster than he could rise from the disadvantages of his
situation, while the example of habitual drunkenness
threw its pestilential influence on his path.

Edward Fitzvassal grew up under such protection
to manifest forms of character almost entirely dependent
on the circumstances by which he was
surrounded. At an early age he showed a haughty,
overbearing, and indomitable temper. In the first
flush of generous youth, when under more genial
auspices, his heart would have become attuned to all
that is lovely and admirable in nature, in art, or in
their hidden spiritual causes,—he learned to realize
the false and cruel relation which he and his mother
held to the world in which they lived. Before he was
fifteen years old he had drunk deeply from the bitter

fountain of contumely, and been spurned from his
unfeeling parent's threshold in heartless disdain. He
learned to know that the consequences of another's
fault may descend to an innocent sufferer; he learned
to realize the hard condition of a poor man, by
becoming conversant with the apparent happiness
of the rich; in short, he learned to compare the outward
forms of good with the inward forms of those
evils which spring from discontent and penury; and
the flames of torturing unrest began to parch his
bosom.

How could it have been otherwise? Who was
there to open for him the deep recesses of his nature,
lacerated and bleeding by the thorns of pride and
all nameless irritation, and pour the balm of human
sympathy into his bosom? Who was there that,
having been tried as the silver is tried in the furnace,
in the nine times heated fire of adversity; that had
passed through privations, and been smitten down by
the iron mace of human agony, for temptations too
readily yielded to; that had been bowed down in
undissembling humility at the inmost shrine of sorrow's
sanctuary, to afford a brother's consolation in
his afflictions, a guide in his labyrinth of woe?

But it was provided, as the best possible path for
Edward Fitzvassal, that he should strike into the
thick entangled forest of human life, and be his own
pioneer through the wild. Nor was he left wholly
desolate. He felt that he had courage and hope; he

knew that at times his heart was visited by an unaccountable
glow of consolation and promise,—and,
though he attributed all this to his own inborn energies
and unconquerable pride, and so mistook another's
bounty for his own resources, he rose sufficiently
above the influences of his condition to assume
the semblance of endurance. Deeply was he
indebted to the gentle offices of his mother, a woman
who had learned to know and realize the immortal
from the abyss of degradation to which she had fallen.

The truths which are said to lie in the bottom of
a well are the stars that correspond with societies of
angels, and when the parched earth has drunk the
last drop of moisture which rolled there in delicious
coolness, the pilgrim, who has mainly sought to
quench his thirst at the fountain, may turn to their
realitics in heaven.

Fitzvassal had been thinking over the darker passages
of his life as the funeral train left him to his
solitary reflections; and as he turned to gaze on the
aristocratical mockery carved on the tomb of his
father's consort, curses deep and bitter heaved from
his lungs, while he ground his teeth and snapped his
finger joints after the restless and agitated manner of
those who would but cannot fly from the horror
with which evil surrounds them.

There is a sun that shines on the inward man,
like that which brings the day-beam to the horizon;
and the dulness that gathers over us at times, is because

we have suffered the invisible attendants of the
spirit to intercept its rays, and envelope the better
part of our nature in shadow. In vain will the natural
sun culminate in the heavens and scatter its
brightness around us, if the spiritual sun is clouded
by our passions. There will then be no brightness
for us; no beauty will break over the face of nature;
the melody of birds will be discordant jargoning, and
the verdure of the trees like a melancholy funeral pall.

“My father!” groaned Fitzvassal—“in what has
he been a father to me? He has given me life, and
he has my bitterest curses for it.”

He then remembered, that the last time he visited
his parent, he had been spurned like a dog over his
threshold: and never did demon-father receive from
his accursed progeny heartier maledictions than
those which boiled up from the hell that was flaming
in this miserable sufferer.

With unutterable anathemas, Fitzvassal sprang
from the monument, and casting his fiery eyes on the
gloom around him, hurried to the fence of the churchyard,
and bounded over it into the street. Immediately
opposite stood, on a part of the most
elevated ground of the metropolis, the splendid house
where his unnatural father resided. The mansion was
built with considerable architectural style, and had
been once occupied by a colonial governor. It had
several gable ends, a manner of building common in
those days; and its exterior was rough-cast with broken

glass. Before it a succession of glaces, like steps,
well grown with grass and interlaid with ornamental
gardening, reached almost to the street, now called
Tremont. Fitzvassal turned his eyes from it in
disgust, and went his way in sorrow.

The shadows of evening had now gathered deeply
over the town, and the heart of the wanderer, as he
pursued his solitary walk from Boston, beat violently
with conflicting emotions. His thoughts struggled
between two opposites,—hatred for his father and
love for his mother. How could he help loving one,
who, in giving him birth, hateful though it was to
him, had sacrificed every thing her heart held dear,
—one who had since lived only for him; who had
wedded herself to a man she loathed, that he, her
only child, might be kept from the cold charities of
the world. True, she had sacrificed every thing in
vain,—for the pittance which she expected from her
husband was generally denied her, and she was often
driven abroad amidst the inclemency of winter, unknown
to her brutal, uncongenial partner, to beg for
that support which his beastly necessities denied her.
Though her child never knew of this as he grew up
to energetic youth, he did know more, much more
than his hardihood of mind dared to ponder on; and
amidst all the conflicts that environed him, and all
the despondency that hung its dark drapery over his
life, he tried to cherish the hope that by some means,
fair or foul, he would one day be enabled to make his

mother independent of the world, and his father beg
for mercy at his feet. Though his stepfather had
stood in the way of all his determinations, it could
not be hidden from the son that every thing the
abandoned man could convert into money went immediately
for brandy; and in one hour of domestic agony
more terrible than others, he resolved to make a desperate
effort to relieve the distresses of his mother,
and break the bondage that enslaved her.

Fortunately for Fitzvassal, an opportunity at the
time seemed to present itself, of furthering his purpose.
There lived at that day one of the most enterprising
men New England ever saw; one who
was designed to work an important part in her history.
William Phips was born February 2d, 1650,
in an obscure village on the Kennebeck. His father
followed the occupation of a gunsmith, and William,
afterwards Sir William, was the youngest of a large
family. “Reader,” says the venerable Mather, “inquire
no further who was his father? Thou shalt
anon see, as the Italians express it, a son to his own
labors.”

From his earliest years young Phips discovered
to those who knew him intimately, uncommon abilities
and an adventurous disposition. With such a
spirit, unwilling to be confined at home, where there
was little else to engage his active mind but Indian
skirmishes and petty border quarrels, he left his father's
house, and shipped on board a merchant vessel which

traded to the West Indies. Ever active and obedient,
it was not long before Phips became master of a vessel,
and he continued for a long term to follow the
old trade to the West Indies. Many years before, a
Spanish galleon, laden with immense wealth, had
been wrecked on the coast of Hispaniola. Great as
the loss was, the circumstance had long been forgotten,
and was never referred to but as a nautical legend,
which sailors spun into long yarns with a
mixture of improbable fiction and ghostly circumstance.

The fact that this treasure still lay,not many fathoms
deep, near Port de la Plata, did not escape the vigilant
mind of Captain Phips; and for several years he
endeavored to collect, as warily as possible, all the
information that tradition could afford him on the
subject. At last, during one of his voyages he fell
in with an old Spaniard, who, taking a sailor liking
to Captain Phips, communicated to him certain information,
in a shape more rational and tangible than
any which he had before collected: the exact spot
was pointed out on the chart where it was pretended
the treasure lay, and every assurance given that
there could be no error in the information.

This intelligence, confirming parts of the disjointed
narratives, which the vigilant captain had collected,
and suggesting a reasonable probability that the
treasure might be recovered, induced Captain Phips
to make proposals to several wealthy individuals of

Boston, and among the rest, to Edmund Vassal, for
fitting out an expedition for the recovery of the prize:
but it was Captain Phips's fortune to meet with discouragement
in every direction. The men of money
laughed at the proposed enterprise as only worthy
of a madman, and at the very idea of such an expenditure,
curtailed their current expenses, and began
to feel poor. But Captain Phips was made of sterner
stuff than even his best well-wishers imagined. He
determined at once to go to England, and lay the plan
of the enterprise before King Charles II. He knew
that that monarch would do any thing for money,
but, in so judging, he did not take into consideration
that he was to be called on for an outlay.

In the meanwhile the affair was talked of with
great freedom, and among the twelve thousand inhabitants
of Boston, there were not a dozen who did
not regard the proposal with contempt. It seemed
to them about as rational a project as the more modern
one to sail into the interior of the earth, and,
like every thing novel, it was hunted down forthwith.
The idea of such a possibility as the one proposed in
the scheme of Captain Phips, was enough to inflame
the imagination of a poverty stricken, woe-fraught,
half-crushed and despised piece of mortality like
poor Fitzvassal; and on hearing of the project, his resolution
was formed in an instant. Decision and
resolution are qualities of no common temperament,
and these this young man, who was then already

eighteen years old, possessed in an eminent degree.
He shipped on board Captain Phips's vessel, and was
made second officer before he reached England. The
captain soon discovered that he had been in reality a
sailor all his life, which was so far true, that Fitzvassal
had been almost every day on the water, and
from the familiarity which he had necessarily formed
with marine affairs, had become acquainted with
the practical details of navigation.

King Charles II. at first entertained the proposed
expedition with considerable favor, but he was soon
induced by his court favorites to reject it. They
could not spare their money, ill-gotten as it was, yet
so essential to their debaucheries and infamous pleasures,
even with the fair contingency of increasing it
an hundred fold; so that Captain Phips was compelled
to turn for assistance in another direction. At
length the Duke of Albermarle, son of the celebrated
General Monk, who was principally instrumental in
the restoration of England's monarchy, was induced
to regard the scheme with favor. He accordingly
invested sufficient money to fit out an armed schooner,
which, under the guidance of Captain Phips, sailed
on the destined adventure.

The expedition was successful. Captain Phips
recovered wealth from the bosom of the deep equivalent
to a million and a half of dollars, and with this
rich reward for his labors he returned to England,
and laid the treasure before his generous patron, the

Duke of Albermarle. At first it was proposed in the
king's council to seize the whole amount, on the villainous
allegation that the enterprize had not been
clearly enough explained to the king; but the latter,
with becoming magnanimity, refused to touch a
shilling, declaring that the representation had been
satisfactory, and that the plan would have been
adopted by himself but for the advice of those very
councillors who would now deprive the lawful owners
of their property.

Instead of robbing Phips and Albermarle of their
goods, the king conferred the honor of knighthood
on the enterprising captain; and Sir William Phips
was allowed a sum for his part in the fortunate undertaking
equal to one hundred thousand dollars, a
princely fortune if we consider the relative value of
money a hundred and fifty years ago.

While the duke's vessel lay off Port de la Plata,
and the hands were busily engaged in stowing away
the rusty masses of double-joes, and the ponderous
bars of bullion, which the Indian divers had recovered
from the deep, Captain Phips found it necessary
to promise the men an ample, extraordinary compensation
for their labor, in order to keep down a spirit
of insubordination, which seemed to be breaking out
among them. They did not relish the idea of contributing
in that way to the heaping of wealth on
wealth where there was already an undue proportion,
and an opportunity for providing for future

wants, seemed then to present itself, which would
not be likely to happen again.

It was through the influence of Fitzvassal that
the men were kept in order; for he whispered among
them that, as an immense amount of money must
necessarily be left after the schooner were laden, it
would be an easy thing to help themselves in case
another voyage were attempted, as it assuredly
would be, and satisfaction were not afforded them
according to the captain's promise. But we must not
anticipate the development of events connected with
another part of our narrative.

At the time we are now noting, Fitzvassal had
been but two days returned from his voyages. Immediately
on his arrival he hastened to the humble
abode of his mother, and to his astonishment, found
the house locked up and deserted. There was no
indication that it had been occupied for years. In
a state of deep perturbation, he ran to the landing-place
by the water-side, and to his great joy found
a boat, which had been fastened there but a short
time before by a fisherman, who had landed to
dig clams on the beach. He sprang into it and
pushed for the town, without knowing where to
look; but in the desperate determination to leave no
search unattempted in the hope of discovering his
mother; for there was that on his mind which seemed
to assure him that his parent was not dead, but was

longing for his presence as the hart panteth after
the water-brooks.

It is important for us now to retrace our steps one
day, which we shall attempt in the following chapter.