University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

Il Capitano Smeet' was not sorry to get out of the
government-house — palazzo, as some of the simple people
of Elba called the unambitious dwelling. He had been well
badgered by the persevering erudition of the vice-governatore;
and, stored as he was with nautical anecdotes, and a
tolerable personal acquaintance with sundry sea-ports, for
any expected occasion of this sort, he had never anticipated
a conversation which would aspire as high as the institutions,

religion and laws of his adopted country. Had the worthy
Andrea heard the numberless maledictions, that the stranger
muttered between his teeth, as he left the house, it would
have shocked all his sensibilities, if it did not revive his suspicions.

It was now night; but a starry, calm, voluptuous evening,
such as are familiar to those who are acquainted with the
Mediterranean and its shores. There was scarcely a breath
of wind, though the cool air, that appeared to be a gentle
respiration of the sea, induced a few idlers still to linger on
the heights, where there was a considerable extent of land,
that might serve for a promenade. Along this walk the
mariner proceeded, undetermined, for the moment, what to
do next. He had scarcely got into the open space, however,
before a female, with her form closely enveloped in a mantle,
brushed near him, anxiously gazing into his face. Her
motions were too quick and sudden for him to obtain a look
in return; but, perceiving that she held her way along the
heights, beyond the spot most frequented by the idlers, he
followed until she stopped.

“Ghita!” said the young man, in a tone of delight, when
he had got near enough to the female to recognise a face
and form she no longer attempted to conceal; “this is being
fortunate, indeed, and saves a vast deal of trouble. A thousand,
thousand thanks, dearest Ghita, for this one act of
kindness. I might have brought trouble on you, as well as
on myself, in striving to find your residence.”

“It is for that reason, Raoul, that I have ventured so
much more than is becoming in my sex, to meet you. A
thousand eyes, in this gossiping little town, are on your
lugger, at this moment, and be certain they will also be on
its captain, as soon as it is known he has landed. I fear
you do not know for what you and your people are suspected,
at this very instant!”

“For nothing discreditable, I hope, dear Ghita, if it be
only not to dishonour your friends!”

“Many think, and say, you are Frenchmen, and that the
English flag is only a disguise.”

“If that be all, we must bear the infamy,” answered
Raoul Yvard, laughing. “Why, this is just what we are,
to a man, a single American excepted; who is an excellent

fellow to make out British commissions, and help us to a
little English when harder pushed than common; and why
should we be offended, if the good inhabitants of Porto Ferrajo
take us for what we are!”

“Not offended, Raoul, but endangered. If the vice-governatore
gets this notion, he will order the batteries to fire
upon you, and will destroy you as an enemy.”

“Not he, Ghita. He is too fond of le Capitaine Smeet',
to do so cruel a thing; and then he must shift all his guns,
before they will hurt le Feu-Follet, where she lies. I never
leave my little Jack-o'Lantern[1] within reach of an enemy's
hand. Look here, Ghita; you can see her through this
opening in the houses — that dark spot on the bay, there —
and you will perceive no gun from any battery in Porto
Ferrajo can as much as frighten, much less harm her.”

“I know her position, Raoul, and understood why you
anchored in that spot. I knew, or thought I knew you,
from the first moment you came in plain sight; and so long
as you remained outside, I was not sorry to look on so old
a friend — nay, I will go farther, and say I rejoiced, for it
seemed to me, you passed so near the island, just to let some,
whom you knew to be on it, understand you had not forgotten
them; but when you came into the bay, I thought
you mad!”

“Mad I should have been, dearest Ghita, had I lived
longer without seeing you. What are these misérables of
Elbans, that I should fear them! They have no cruiser —
only a few feluccas, all of which are not worth the trouble
of burning. Let them but point a finger at us, and we will
tow their Austrian polacre out into the bay, and burn her
before their eyes. Le Feu-Follet deserves her name; she
is here, there, and everywhere, before her enemies suspect
her.”

“But her enemies suspect her now, and you cannot be
too cautious. My heart was in my throat a dozen times,
while the batteries were firing at you, this evening.”

“And what harm did they?—they cost the Grand Duke
two cartridges, and two shot, without even changing the
lugger's course! You have seen too much of these things,
Ghita, to be alarmed by smoke and noise.”

“I have seen enough of these things, Raoul, to know
that a heavy shot, fired from these heights, would have
gone through your little Feu-Follet, and, coming out under
water, would have sunk you to the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

“We should have had our boats, then,” answered Raoul
Yvard, with an indifference that was not affected, for reckless
daring was his vice, rather than his virtue; “besides,
a shot must first hit, before it can harm, as the fish must be
taken, before it can be cooked. But enough of this, Ghita;
I get quite enough of shot, and ships, and sinkings, in everyday
life, and, now I have at last found this blessed moment,
we will not throw away the opportunity by talking of such
matters —”

“Nay, Raoul, I can think of nothing else, and therefore
can talk of nothing else. Suppose the vice-governatore
should suddenly take it into his head to send a party of soldiers
to le Feu-Follet, with orders to seize her—what would
then be your situation?”

“Let him; and I would send a boat's crew to his palazzo,
here,” the conversation was in French, which Ghita spoke
fluently, though with an Italian accent, “and take him on
a cruise after the English, and his beloved Austrians!
Bah! — the idea will not cross his constitutional brain, and
there is little use in talking about it. In the morning, I will
send my prime minister, mon Barras, mon Carnot, mon
Cambacérés, mon Ithuel Bolt, to converse with him on politics
and religion.”

“Religion,” repeated Ghita, in a saddened tone; “the
less you say on that holy subject, Raoul, the better I shall
like it, and the better it will be for yourself, in the end.
The state of your country makes your want of religion
matter of regret, rather than of accusation, but it is none the
less a dreadful evil.”

“Well, then,” resumed the sailor, who felt he had touched
a dangerous ground, “we will talk of other things. Even
supposing we are taken, what great evil have we to apprehend?
We are honest corsairs, duly commissioned, and
acting under the protection of the French Republic, one and
undivided, and can but be made prisoners of war. That is
a fortune which has once befallen me, and no greater calamity

followed than my having to call myself le Capitaine
Smeet', and finding out the means of mystifying le vice-governatori.”

Ghita laughed, in spite of the fears she entertained, for
it was one of the most powerful of the agencies the sailor
employed in making others converts to his opinions, to cause
them to sympathize with his light-hearted gaiety, whether
it suited their natural temperaments or not. She knew that
Raoul had already been a prisoner in England two years,
where, as he often said himself, he staid just long enough to
acquire a very respectable acquaintance with the language,
if not with the institutions, manners, and religion, when he
made his escape, aided by the American, called Ithuel Bolt,
an impressed seaman of our own Republic, who fully entering
into all the plans imagined by his more enterprising
friend and fellow-sufferer, had cheerfully enlisted in the
execution of his future schemes of revenge. States, like
powerful individuals in private life, usually feel themselves
too strong to allow any considerations of the direct consequences
of departures from the right to influence their policy,
and a nation is apt to fancy its power of such a character,
as to despise all worldly amends, while its moral responsibility
is divided among too many to make it a matter of much
moral concernment to its particular citizens. Nevertheless,
the truth will show that none are so low, but they may become
dangerous to the highest; and even powerful communities
seldom fail to meet with their punishment for every
departure from justice. It would seem, indeed, that a principle
pervades nature, which renders it impossible for man
to escape the consequences of his own evil deeds, even in
this life; as if God had decreed the universal predominance
of truth, and the never-failing downfall of falsehood, from
the beginning; the success of wrong being ever temporary,
while the triumph of the right is eternal. To apply these
consoling considerations to the matter more immediately
before us; the practice of impressment, in its day, raised a
feeling among the seamen of other nations, as well as, in
fact, among those of Great Britain herself, that probably has
had as much effect in destroying the prestige of her nautical
invincibility, supported, as was that prestige, by a vast
existing force, as any other one cause whatever. It was

necessary, to witness the feeling of hatred and resentment
that was raised by the practice of this despotic power, more
especially among those who felt that their foreign birth ought
at least to have assured them impunity from the abuse, in
order fully to appreciate what might so readily become its
consequences. Ithuel Bolt, the seaman just mentioned, was
a proof, in a small way, of the harm that even an insignificant
individual can effect, when his mind is fully and wholly
bent on revenge. Ghita knew him well; and, although she
little liked either his character or his appearance, she had
often been obliged to smile at the narrative of the deceptions
he practised on the English, and of the thousand low inventions
he had devised to do them injury. She was not slow,
now, to imagine that his agency had not been trifling in
carrying on the present fraud.

“You do not openly call your lugger le Feu-Follet, Raoul;”
she answered, after a minute's pause; “that would
be a dangerous name to utter, even in Porto Ferrajo. It is
not a week since I heard a mariner dwelling on her misdeeds,
and the reasons that all good Italians have to detest
her. It is fortunate the man is away, or he could not fail
to know you.”

“Of that I am not so certain, Ghita. We alter our paint
often, and, at need, can alter our rig. You may be certain,
however, that we hide our Jack-o'Lantern, and sail under
another name. The lugger, now she is in the English service,
is called the “Ving-And-Ving.”

“I heard the answer given to the hail from the shore, but
it sounded different from this.”

“Non — Ving-And-Ving. Ithuel answered for us, and
you may be sure he can speak his own tongue. Ving-And-Ving
is the word, and he pronounces it as I do.”

“Ving-y-Ving!” repeated Ghita, in her pretty Italian
tones, dropping naturally into the vice-governatore's fault of
pronunciation — “it is an odd name, and I like it less than
Feu-Follet.”

“I wish, dearest Ghita, I could persuade you to like the
name of Yvard,” rejoined the young man, in a half-reproachful,
half-tender manner, “and I should care nothing for any
other. You accuse me of disrespect for priests; but no son
could ever kneel to a father for his blessing, half so readily,

or half so devoutly, as I could kneel with thee, before any
friar in Italy, to receive that nuptial benediction which I
have so often asked at your hand, but which you have so
constantly and so cruelly refused.”

“I am afraid the name would not then be Feu-Follet, but
Ghita-Folie,” said the girl, laughing, though she felt a bitter
pang at the heart, that cost her an effort to control; — “no
more of this now, Raoul; we may be observed, and watched;
it is necessary that we separate.”

A hurried conversation, of more interest to the young
couple themselves, than it would prove to the reader, though
it might not have been wholly without the latter, but which
it would be premature to relate, now followed, when Ghita
left Raoul on the hill, insisting that she knew the town too
well to have any apprehensions about threading its narrow
and steep streets, at any hour, by herself. This much, in
sooth, must be said in favour of Andrea Barrofaldi's administration
of justice; he had made it safe for the gentle, the
feeble and the poor, equally, to move about the island by
day or by night; it seldom happening that so great an enemy
to peace and tranquillity appeared among his simple dependants,
as was the fact at this precise moment.

In the mean time, there was not quite as much tranquillity
in Porto Ferrajo, as the profound silence which reigned in
the place might have induced a stranger to imagine. Tommaso
Tonti was a man of influence, within his sphere, as
well as the vice-governatore; and having parted from Vito
Viti, as has been related, he sought the little clientelle of
padroni and piloti, who were in the habit of listening to his
opinions as if they were oracles. The usual place of resort
of this set, after dark, was a certain house kept by a widow
of the name of Benedetta Galopo, the uses of which were
plainly enough indicated by a small bush that hung dangling
from a short pole, fastened above the door. If Benedetta
knew anything of the proverb, that “good wine needs no
bush,” she had not sufficient faith in the contents of her own
casks, to trust their reputation; for this bush of hers was as
regularly renewed, as its withering leaves required. Indeed,
it was a common remark, among her customers, that her
bush was always as fresh as her face, and that the latter
was one of the most comely that was to be met with on the

island; a circumstance that aided much indifferent wine, in
finding a market. Benedetta bore a reasonably good name,
nevertheless, though it was oftener felt, perhaps, than said,
that she was a confirmed coquette. She tolerated 'Maso
principally on two accounts; because, if he were old and
unattractive in his own person, many of his followers were
among the smartest seamen of the port, and because he not
only drank his full proportion, but paid with punctuality.
These inducements rendered the pilot always a welcome
guest at La Santa Maria Degli Venti, as the house was called,
though it had no other sign than the often-renewed bush,
already mentioned.

At the very moment, then, when Raoul Yvard and Ghita
parted on the hill, 'Maso was seated in his usual place, at
the table in Benedetta's upper room, the windows of which
commanded as full a view of the lugger as the hour permitted;
that craft being anchored about a cable's length distant,
and, as a sailor might have expressed it, just abeam. On
this occasion he had selected the upper room, and but three
companions, because it was his wish that as few should
enter into his counsels, as at all comported with the love of
homage to his own experience. The party had been assembled
a quarter of an hour, and there had been time to cause
the tide to ebb materially in the flask, which it may be well
to tell the reader at once, contained very little less than half
a gallon of liquor, such as it was.

“I have told it all to the podestâ,” said 'Maso, with an
important manner, as he put down his glass, after potation
the second, which quite equalled potation the first, in quantity;
“yes, I have told it all to Vito Viti, and no doubt he
has told it to Il Signor Vice-governatore, who now knows as
much about the whole matter as either of us four. Cospetto!—
to think such a thing dare happen in a haven like Porto
Ferrajo! Had it come to pass over on the other side of the
island, at Porto Longone, one wouldn't think so much of it,
for they are never much on the look-out; but, to take place
here, in the very capital of Elba, I should as soon have
expected it in Livorno!”

“But, 'Maso,” put in Daniele Bruno, in the manner of one
who was a little sceptical, “I have often seen the pavilion
of the Inglese, and this is as much like that which all their

frigates and corvettes wear, as one of our feluccas is like
another. The flag, at least, is right.”

“What signifies a flag, Daniele, when a French hand can
hoist an English ensign as easily as the king of Inghilterra,
himself? If that lugger was not built by the Francese, you
were not built by an Italian father and mother. But, I
should not think so much of the hull, for that may have been
captured, as the English take many of their enemies on the
high seas; but look at the rigging and sails—Santa Maria!
I could go to the shop of the very sail-maker, in Marseilles,
who made that foresail! His name is Pierre Benoit, and a
very good workman he is, as all will allow who have had
occasion to employ him.”

This particularity greatly aided the argument; common
minds being seldom above yielding to the circumstances
which are so often made to corroborate imaginary facts.
Tommaso Tonti, though so near the truth as to his main point
—the character of the visiter—was singularly out as to the
sail, notwithstanding; le Feu-Follet having been built,
equipped, and manned at Nantes, and Pierre Benoit never
having seen her or her foresail either; but, it mattered not,
in the way of discussion and assertion, one sail-maker being
as good as another, provided he was French.

“And have you mentioned this to the podestâ?” inquired
Benedetta, who stood with the empty flask in her
hand, listening to the discourse; “I should think that sail
would open his eyes.”

“I cannot say I have; but then I told him so many other
things, more to the point, that he cannot do less than believe
this, when he hears it. Signor Viti promised to meet me
here, after he has had a conversation with the vice-governatore;
and we may now expect him every minute.”

“Il Signor Podestâ will be welcome,” said Benedetta,
wiping off a spare table, and bustling round the room to
make things look a little smarter than they ordinarily did;
“he may frequent grander wine-houses than this, but he
will hardly find better liquor.”

“Poverina!—Don't think that the podestâ comes here on
any such errand; he comes to meet me;” answered 'Maso,
with an indulgent smile; “he takes his wine too often on
the heights, to wish to come as low as this after a glass.

Friends of mine (amigi mii), there is wine up at that house,
that, when the oil is once out of the neck of the flask,[2] goes
down a man's throat as smoothly as if it were all oil itself!
I could drink a flask of it without once stopping to take
breath. It is that liquor which makes the nobles so light
and airy.”

“I know the washy stuff,” put in Benedetta, with more
warmth than she was used to betray to her customers;
“well may you call it smooth, a good spring running near
each of the wine-presses that have made it. I have seen
some of it that even oil would not float on!”

This assertion was a fair counterpoise to that of the sail,
being about as true. But Benedetta had too much experience
in the inconstancy of men, not to be aware that if the
three or four customers who were present, should seriously
take up the notion that the island contained any better liquor
than that she habitually placed before them, her value might
be sensibly diminished, in their eyes. As became a woman
who had to struggle singly with the world, too, her
native shrewdness taught her, that the best moment to refute
a calumny was to stop it as soon as it began to circulate,
and her answer was as warm in manner, as it was positive
in terms. This was an excellent opening for an animated
discussion, and one would have been very likely to occur,
had there not fortunately been steps heard without, that
induced 'Maso to expect the podestâ. Sure enough, the door
opened, and Vito Viti appeared, followed, to the astonishment
of all the guests, and to the absolute awe of Benedetta, by
the vice-governatore himself.

The solution of this unexpected visit is very easily given.
After the departure of the Capitano Smees, Vito Viti returned
to the subject of 'Maso's suspicions, and by suggesting certain
little circumstances in the mariner's manner, that he had
noted during the interview, he so far succeeded in making
an impression on himself, that, in the end, his own distrust
revived, and with it that of the deputy-governor. Neither,
however, could be said to be more than uneasy, and the
podestâ happening to mention his appointment with the pilot,
Andrea determined to accompany him, in order to reconnoitre

the strange craft in person. Both the functionaries
wore their cloaks, by no means an unusual thing in the cool
night air of the coast, even in midsummer, which served
them for all the disguise that circumstances required.

“Il Signor Vice-governatore!” almost gasped Benedetta,
dusting a chair, and then the table, and disposing of the
former near the latter by a sort of mechanical process, as if
only one errand could ever bring a guest within her doors;
“your eccellenza is most welcome; and it is an honour I
could oftener ask. We are humble people, down here at the
water side, but I hope we are just as good Christians as if
we lived upon the hill.”

“Doubt it not, worthy Bettina—”

“My name is Benedetta, at your eccellenza's command—
Benedettina, if it please the vice-governatore; but not Bettina.
We think much of our names, down here at the water side,
eccellenza.”

“Let it be so, then, good Benedetta, and I make no doubt
you are excellent Christians. — A flask of your wine, if it
be convenient.”

The woman dropped a curtsy that was full of gratitude;
and the glance of triumph that she cast at her other guests,
may be said to have terminated the discussion that was about
to commence, as the dignitaries appeared. It disposed of
the question of the wine at once, and for ever silenced cavilling.
If the vice-governatore could drink her liquor, what
mariner would henceforth dare calumniate it?

“Eccellenza, with a thousand welcomes,” Benedetta continued,
as she placed the flask on the table, after having
carefully removed the cotton and the oil with her own plump
hand; this being one of half-a-dozen flasks of really sound,
well-flavoured, Tuscan liquor, that she kept for especial
occasions; as she well might, the cost being only a paul, or
ten cents for near half a gallon; “Eccellenza, a million
times welcome. This is an honour that don't befall the
Santa Maria Degli Venti more than once in a century; and
you, too, Signor Podestâ, once before, only, have you ever
had leisure to darken my poor door.”

“We bachelors” — the podestâ, as well as the vice-governor,
belonged to the fraternity—“we bachelors are afraid to
trust ourselves too often in the company of sprightly widows,

like yourself, whose beauty has rather improved than lessened,
by a few years.”

This brought a coquettish answer, during which time
Andrea Barrofaldi, having first satisfied himself that the
wine might be swallowed with impunity, was occupied in
surveying the party of silent and humble mariners, who
were seated at the other table. His object was to ascertain
how far he might have committed himself, by appearing in
such a place, when his visit could not well be attributed to
more than one motive. 'Maso he knew, as the oldest pilot
of the place; and he had also some knowledge of Daniele
Bruno, but the three other seamen were strangers to him.

“Inquire if we are among friends, here, and worthy subjects
of the Grand Duke, all;” observed Andrea to Vito
Viti, in a low voice.

“Thou hearest, 'Maso,” observed the podestâ; “canst
thou answer for all of thy companions?”

“Every one of them, Signore; this is Daniele Bruno,
whose father was killed in a battle with the Algerines, and
whose mother was the daughter of a mariner, as well known
in Elba, as —”

“Never mind the particulars, Tommaso Tonti,” interrupted
the vice-governatore — “it is sufficient that thou knowest
all thy companions to be honest men, and faithful servants
of the sovrano. “You all know, most probably, the errand
which has brought the Signor Viti and myself to this house,
to-night?”

The men looked at each other, as the ill-instructed are
apt to do, when it becomes necessary to answer a question
that concerns many; assisting the workings of their minds,
as it might be, with the aid of the senses; and then Daniele
Bruno took on himself the office of spokesman.

“Signore, vostro eccellenza, we think we do,” answered
the man. “Our fellow, 'Maso here, has given us to understand
that he suspects the Inglese that is anchored in the
bay, to be no Inglese at all, but either a pirate or a Frenchman.
The blessed Maria preserve us! but in these troubled
times it does not make much difference which.”

“I will not say as much as that, friend, for one would be
an outcast among all people, while the other would have the
rights which shield the servants of civilized nations;” returned

the scrupulous and just-minded functionary. “The
time was when His Imperial Majesty, the emperor, and his
illustrious brother, our sovereign, the Grand Duke, did not
allow that the republican government of France was a lawful
government; but the fortune of war removed his scruples,
and a treaty of peace has allowed the contrary. Since the
late alliance, it is our duty to consider all Frenchmen as
enemies, though it by no means follows that we are to consider
them as pirates.”

“But their corsairs seize all our craft, Signore, and treat
their people as if they were no better than dogs: then, they
tell me that they are not Christians—no, not even Luterani,
or heretics!”

“That religion does not flourish among them, is true,”
answered Andrea, who loved so well to discourse on such
subjects, that he would have stopped to reason on religion
or manners, with the beggar to whom he gave a pittance,
did he only meet with encouragement; “but it is not as bad
in France, on this important head, as it has been; and we
may hope that there will be further improvement, in due
time.”

“But, Signor Vice-governatore,” put in 'Maso, “these
people have treated the holy father, and his states, in a way
that one would not treat an Infidel or a Turk!”

“Ay, that is it, Signori,” observed Benedetta — “a poor
woman cannot go to mass without having her mind disturbed
by the thoughts of the wrongs done the head of the church.
Had these things come from Luterani, it might have been
borne, but they say the Francese were once all good Catholics!”

“So were the Luterani, bella Benedetta, to their chief
schismatic and leader, the German monk himself.”

This piece of information caused great surprise, even the
podestâ himself turning an inquiring glance at his superior,
as much as to acknowledge his own wonder that a Protestant
should ever have been anything but a Protestant — or
rather, a Lutheran, anything but a Lutheran — the word
Protestant being too significant to be in favour among those
who deny there were any just grounds for a protest at all.
That Luther had ever been a Romanist, was perfectly wonderful,
even in the eyes of Vito Viti.

“Signore, you would hardly mislead these honest people,
in a matter as grave as this!” exclaimed the podestâ.

“I do but tell you truth; and one of these days you shall
hear the whole story, neighbour Viti. 'Tis worth an hour
of leisure, to any man, and is very consoling and useful to
a Christian. But who have you below, Benedetta — I hear
steps on the stairs, and wish not to be seen.”

The widow stepped promptly forward to meet her new
guests, and to show them into a commoner room, below
stairs, when her movement was anticipated by the door's
opening, and a man's standing on the threshold. It was now
too late to prevent the intrusion, and a little surprise at the
appearance of the new-comer, held all mute and observant
for a minute.

The person who had followed his ears, and thus reached
the sanctum sanctorum of Benedetta, was no other than
Ithuel Bolt, the American seaman, already named in the
earlier part of this chapter. He was backed by a Genoese,
who had come in the double capacity of interpreter and boon
companion. That the reader may the better understand the
character he has to deal with, however, it may be necessary
to digress, by giving a short account of the history, appearance
and peculiarities of the former individual.

Ithuel Bolt was a native of what, in this great Union, is
called the granite state. Notwithstanding he was not absolutely
made of the stone in question, there was an absence
of the ordinary symptoms of natural feeling about him, that
had induced many of his French acquaintances in particular
to affirm that there was a good deal more of marble in his
moral temperament, at least, than usually fell to the lot of
human beings. He had the outline of a good frame, but it
was miserably deficient in the filling up. The bone predominated;
the sinews came next in consideration; nor was
the man without a proper share of muscle; but this last was
so disposed of as to present nothing but angles, whichever
way he was viewed. Even his thumbs and fingers were
nearer square than round, and his very neck, which was
bare, though a black silk kerchief was tied loosely round the
throat, had a sort of pentagon look about it, that defied all
symmetry or grace. His stature was just six feet and an
inch, when he straightened himself; as he did from time to

time, seemingly with a desire to relieve a very inveterate
stoop in his shoulders; though it was an inch or two less in
the position he most affected. His hair was dark, and his
skin had got several coats of confirmed brown on it, by exposure,
though originally rather fair, while the features were
good, the forehead being broad and full, and the mouth
positively handsome. This singular countenance was illuminated
by two keen, restless, whitish eyes, that resembled,
not spots on the sun, but rather suns on a spot.

Ithuel had gone through all the ordinary vicissitudes of
an American life, beneath those pursuits which are commonly
thought to be confined to the class of gentlemen. He
had been farmer's boy, printer's devil, schoolmaster, stage-driver,
and tin-pedlar, before he ever saw the sea. In the
way of what he called “chores,” too, he had practised all
the known devices of rustic domestic economy; having
assisted even in the washing and house-cleaning, besides
having passed the evenings of an entire winter in making
brooms.

Ithuel had reached his thirtieth year before he dreamed
of going to sea. An accident, then, put preferment in this
form before his eyes, and he engaged as the mate of a small
coaster, on his very first voyage. Fortunately, the master
never found out his deficiencies, for Ithuel had a self-possessed,
confident way with him, that prevented discovery,
until they were outside of the port from which they sailed,
when the former was knocked overboard by the main boom,
and drowned. Most men, so circumstanced, would have
returned, but Bolt never laid his hand to the plough and
looked back. Besides, one course was quite as easy to him
as another. Whatever he undertook he usually completed,
in some fashion or other, though it were often much better
had it never been attempted. Fortunately it was summer,
the wind was fair, and the crew wanted little ordering; and
as it was quite a matter of course to steer in the right direction,
until the schooner was carried safely into her proper port,
she arrived safely; her people swearing that the new mate
was the easiest and cleverest officer they had ever sailed
with. And well they might, for Ithuel took care not to issue
an order, until he had heard it suggested in terms by one
of the hands, and then he never failed to repeat it, word for

word, as if it were a suggestion of his own. As for the
reputation of “cleverest” officer, which he so easily obtained,
it will be understood, of course, that the term was used in
the provincial signification that is so common in the part of
the world from which Ithuel came. He was “clever” in
this sense, precisely in proportion as he was ignorant. His
success, on this occasion, gained him friends, and he was
immediately sent out again as the regular master of the
craft, in which he had so unexpectedly received his promotion.
He now threw all the duty on the mate; but so ready
was he in acquiring, that, by the end of six months, he was
a much better sailor than most Europeans would have made
in three years. As the pitcher that goes too often to the
well is finally broken, so did Ithuel meet with shipwreck, at
last, in consequence of gross ignorance on the subject of
navigation. This induced him to try a long voyage, in a
more subordinate situation, until, in the course of time, he
was impressed by the commander of an English frigate, who
had lost so many of his men by the yellow fever, that he
seized upon all he could lay his hands on, to supply their
places, even Ithuel being acceptable in such a strait.