 | CHAPTER XIV. The sea lions, or, The lost sealers |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,
I would not draw them; I would have my bond.”
Shakspeare.
The earth had not stopped in its swift race round the
sun at Oyster Pond, while all these events were in the
course of occurrence in the antarctic seas. The summer
had passed, that summer which was to have brought back
the sealers; and autumn had come to chill the hopes as
well as the body. Winter did not bring any change. Nothing
anything have been heard of them short of the intervention
of a miracle.
Mary Pratt no longer mentioned Roswell in her prayers.
She fully believed him to be dead; and her puritanical
creed taught her that this, the sweetest and most endearing
of all the rites of Christianity, was allied to a belief that it
was sacrilege to entertain. We pretend not to any distinct
impressions on this subject ourselves, beyond a sturdy protestant
disinclination to put any faith in the abuses of purgatory
at least; but, most devoutly do we wish that such
petitions could have the efficacy that so large a portion of
the Christian world impute to them. But Mary Pratt, so
much better than we can lay any claim to be in all essentials,
was less liberal than ourselves on this great point of
doctrine. Roswell Gardiner's name now never passed her
lips in prayer, therefore; though scarce a minute went by
without his manly person being present to her imagination.
He still lived in her heart, a shrine from which she
made no effort to expel him.
As for the deacon, age, disease, and distress of mind,
had brought him to his last hours. The passions which had
so engrossed him when in health, now turned upon his nature,
and preyed upon his vitals, like an ill-omened bird.
It is more than probable that he would have lived some
months, possibly some years longer, had not the evil spirit
of covetousness conspired to heighten the malady that
wasted his physical frame. As it was, the sands of life
were running low; and the skilful Dr. Sage, himself, had
admitted to Mary the improbability that her uncle and protector
could long survive.
It is wonderful how the interest in a rich man suddenly
revives among his relatives and possible heirs, as his last
hour draws near. Deacon Pratt was known to be wealthy
in a small way; was thought to possess his thirty or forty
thousand dollars, which was regarded as wealth among the
east-enders thirty years since; and every human being in
Old Suffolk, whether of its overwhelming majority or of its
more select and wiser minority, who could by legal possibility
claim any right to be remembered by the dying man,
crowded around his bed-side. At that moment, Mary Pratt,
was compelled to appear as a very insignificant and
secondary person. Others who stood in the same degree
of consanguinity to the dying man, and two, a brother and
sister, who were even one degree closer, had their claims,
and were by no means disposed to suffer them to be forgotten.
Gladly would poor Mary have prayed by her uncle's
bed-side; but Parson Whittle had assumed this solemn
duty, it being deemed proper that one who had so long
filled the office of deacon, should depart with a proper attention
to the usages of his meeting. Some of the relatives
who had lately appeared, and who were not so conversant
with the state of things between the deacon and his divine,
complained among themselves that the latter made too
many ill-timed allusions to the pecuniary wants of the congregation;
and that he had, in particular, almost as much
as asked the deacon to make a legacy that would enable
those who were to stay behind, to paint the meeting-house,
erect a new horse-shed, purchase some improved stoves,
and reseat the body of the building. These modest requests,
it was whispered—for all passed in whispers then—
would consume not less than a thousand dollars of the deacon's
hard earnings; and the thing was mentioned as a
wrong done him who was about to descend into the grave,
where nought of earth could avail him in any way.
Close was the siege that was laid to Deacon Pratt, during
the last week of his life. Many were the hints given of the
necessity of his making a will, though the brother and
sister, estimating their rights as the law established them,
said but little on the subject, and that little was rather
against the propriety of annoying a man, in their brother's
condition, with business of so perplexing a nature. The
fact that these important personages set their faces against
the scheme had due weight, and most of the relatives began
to calculate the probable amount of their respective shares
under the law of distribution, as it stood in that day. This
excellent and surpassingly wise community of New York
had not then reached the pass of exceeding liberality towards
which it is now so rapidly tending. In that day, the
debtor was not yet thought of, as the creditor's next heir,
and that plausible and impracticable desire of a false philanthropy,
—impracticable as to anything like a just and equitable
exemption of equal amount in all cases of indebtedness—
was not yet dreamed of. New York was then a sound and
healthful community; making its mistakes, doubtless, as
men ever will err; but the control of things had not yet
passed into the hands of sheer political empirics, whose
ignorance and quackery were stimulated by the lowest passion
for majorities. Among other things that were then
respected, were wills; but it was not known to a single
individual, among all those who thronged the dwelling of
Deacon Pratt, that the dying man had ever mustered the
self-command necessary to make such an instrument. He
was free to act, but did not choose to avail himself of his
freedom. Had he survived a few years, he would have
found himself in the enjoyment of a liberty so sublimated,
that he could not lease, or rent a farm, or collect a common
debt, without coming under the harrow of the tiller of the
political soil.
The season had advanced to the early part of April, and
that is usually a soft and balmy month on the sea-shore,
though liable to considerable and sudden changes of temperature.
On the day to which we now desire to transfer
the scene, the windows of the deacon's bed-room were
open, and the soft south wind fanned his hollow and pallid
cheek. Death was near, though the principle of life struggled
hard with the King of Terrors. It was now that that
bewildered and Pharasaical faith which had so long held
this professor of religion in a bondage even more oppressive
than open and announced sins, most felt the insufficiency
of the creed in which he had rather been speculating than
trusting all his life, to render the passing hour composed
and secure. There had always been too much of self in
Deacon Pratt's moral temperament, to render his belief as
humble and devout as it should be. It availed him not a
hair, now, that he was a deacon, or that he had made long
prayers in the market-places, where men could see him, or
that he had done so much, as he was wont to proclaim, for
example's sake. All had not sufficed to cleanse his heart
of worldly-mindedness, and he now groped about him, in
to illumine his path to another world.
The doctor had ordered the room cleared of all, but two
or three of the dying man's nearest relatives. Among
these last, however, was the gentle and tender-hearted
Mary, who loved to be near her uncle, in this his greatest
need. She no longer thought of his covetousness, of his
griping usury, of his living so much for self and so little
for God. While hovering about the bed, a message reached
her that Baiting Joe wished to see her, in the passage that
led to the bed-room. She went to this old fisherman, and
found him standing near a window that looked towards the
east, and which consequently faced the waters of Gardiner's
Bay.
“There she is, Miss Mary,” said Joe, pointing out of
the window, his whole face in a glow, between joy and
whiskey. “It should be told to the deacon at once, that
his last hours might be happier than some that he has
passed lately. That's she — though, at first, I did not
know her.”
Mary saw a vessel standing in towards Oyster Pond, and
her familiarity with objects of that nature was such, as to
tell her at once that it was a schooner; but so completely
had she given up the Sea Lion, that it did not occur to her
that this could be the long-missing craft.
“At what are you pointing, Joe?” the wondering girl
asked, with perfect innocence.
“At that craft—at the Sea Lion of Sterling, which has
been so long set down as missing, but which has turned
up, just as her owner is about to cast off from this 'arth,
altogether.”
Joe might have talked for an hour: he did chatter away
for two or three minutes, with his head and half his body
out of the window, uninterrupted by Mary, who sank into
a chair, to prevent falling on the floor. At length the dear
girl commanded herself, and spoke.
“You cannot possibly be certain, Joe,” she said; “that
schooner does not look, to me, like the Sea Lion.”
“Nor to me, in some things, while in other some she
does. Her upper works seem strangely out of shape, and
there's precious little on 'em. But no other fore-taw-sail
likely to do it. Ay, by Jupiter, there goes the very blue
peter I helped to make with my own hands, and it was
agreed to set it, as the deacon's signal. There's no mistake,
now!”
Joe might have talked half an hour longer without any
fear of interruption, for Mary had vanished to her own
room, leaving him with his head and body still out of the
window, making his strictures and conjectures for some
time longer; while the person to whom he fancied he was
speaking, was, in truth, on her knees, rendering thanks to
God! An hour later, all doubt was removed, the schooner
coming in between Oyster Pond and Shelter Island, and
making the best of her way to the well-known wharf.
“Is n't it wonderful, Mary,” exclaimed the deacon, in a
hollow voice, it is true, but with an animation and force
that did not appear to have any immediate connection with
death—“is n't it wonderful that Gar'ner should come back,
after all! If he has only done his duty by me, this will
be the greatest ventur' of my whole life; it will make the
evening of my days comfortable. I hope I've always been
grateful for blessings, and I'm sure I'm grateful, from the
bottom of my heart, for this. Give me prosperity, and I'm
not apt to forget it. They've been asking me to make a
will, but I told 'em I was too poor to think of any such
thing; and, now my schooner has got back, I s'pose I shall
get more hints of the same sort. Should anything happen
to me, Mary, you can bring out the sealed paper I gave
you to keep, and that must satisfy 'em all. You'll remember,
it is addressed to Gar'ner. There is n't much in it,
and it won't be much thought of, I fancy; but, such as it
is, 'tis the last instrument I sign, unless I get better. To
think of Gar'ner's coming back, after all! It has put new
life in me, and I shall be about, ag'in, in a week, if he has
only not forgotten the key, and the hidden treasure!”
Mary Pratt's heart had not been so light for many a
weary day, but it grieved her to be a witness of this lingering
longing after the things of the world. She knew that
not only her uncle's days, but that his very hours, were
numbered; and that, notwithstanding this momentary
flickering of the lamp, in consequence of fresh oil being
must shortly go out, let Roswell's success be what it might.
The news of the sudden and unlooked-for return of a vessel
so long believed to be lost, spread like wildfire over the
whole point, and greatly did it increase the interest of the
relatives in the condition of the dying man. If he was a
subject of great concern before, doubly did he become so
now. A vessel freighted with furs would have caused
much excitement of itself; but, by some means or other,
the deacon's great secret of the buried treasure had leaked
out, most probably by means of some of his lamentations
during his illness, and, though but imperfectly known, it
added largely to the expectations connected with the unlooked-for
return of the schooner. In short, it would not
have been easy to devise a circumstance that should serve
to increase the liveliness of feeling that, just then, prevailed
on the subject of Deacon Pratt and his assets, than the
arrival of the Sea Lion, at that precise moment.
And arrive she did, that tempest-tossed, crippled, ice-bound,
and half-burned little craft, after roaming over an
extent of ocean that would have made up half a dozen ordinary
sea voyages. It was, in truth, the schooner so well
known to the reader, that was now settling away her mainsail
and jib, as she kept off, under her fore-topsail alone,
towards the wharf, on which every human being who could,
with any show of propriety, be there at such a moment,
was now collected, in a curious and excited crowd. Altogether,
including boys and females, there must have been
not less than a hundred persons on that wharf; and among
them were most of the anxious relatives who were in attendance
on the vessel's owner, in his last hours. By a
transition that was natural enough, perhaps, under the circumstances,
they had transferred their interest in the deacon
to this schooner, which they looked upon as an inanimate
portion of an investment that would soon have little
that was animate about it.
Baiting Joe was a sort of oracle, in such circumstances.
He had passed his youth at sea, having often doubled the
Horn, and was known to possess a very respectable amount
of knowledge on the subject of vessels of all sorts and sizes,
rig and qualities. He was now consulted by all who could
received as res adjudicata, as the lawyers have it.
“That's the boat,” said Joe, affecting to call the Sea
Lion by a diminutive, as a proof of regard; “yes, that's
the craft, herself; but she is wonderfully deep in the water!
I never seed a schooner of her tonnage, come in from a
v'y'ge, with her scuppers so near awash. Don't you think,
Jim, there must be suthin' heavier than skins, in her hold,
to bring her down so low in the water?”
Jim was another loafer, who lived by taking clams, oysters,
fish, and the other treasures of the surrounding bays.
He was by no means as high authority as Baiting Joe;
still he was always authority on a wharf.
“I never seed the like on't,” answered Jim. “That
schooner must ha' made most of her passage under water.
She's as deep as one of our coasters comin' in with a load
o'brick!”
“She's deep; but not as deep as a craft I once made a
cruise in. I was aboard of the first of Uncle Sam's gun-boats,
that crossed the pond to Gibraltar. When we got
in, it made the Mediterranean stare, I can tell you! We
had furrin officers aboard us, the whull time, lookin' about,
and wonderin', as they called it, if we wasn't amphibbies.”
“What's that?” demanded Jim, rather hastily. “There's
no sich rope in the ship.”
“I know that well enough; but an amphibby, as I understand
it, is a new sort of whale, that comes up to breathe,
like all of that family, as old Dr. Mitchell, of Cow Neck,
calls the critturs. So the furrin officers thought we must
be of the amphibby family, to live so much under water,
as it seemed to them. It was wet work, I can tell you,
boys; I don't think I got a good breath more than once an
hour, the whull of the first day we was out. One of the
furrin officers asked our captain how the gun-boat steered.
He wasn't a captain, at all—only a master, you see, and
we all called him Jumpin' Billy. So Jumpin' Billy says,
`Don't know, sir.' `What! crossed the Atlantic in her,
and don't know how your craft steers!' says the furrin officer,
says he—and well he might, Jim, since nothin' that
ever lived could go from Norfolk to Gibraltar, without
some attention to the helm—but Jumpin' Billy had another
see, sir, a nor-wester took us right aft, as we cleared the
capes, and down she dove, with her nose under and her
starn out, and she come across without having a chance to
try the rudder.' ”
This story, which Joe had told at least a hundred times
before, and which, by the way, is said to be true, produced
the usual admiration, especially among the crowd of legatees-expectant,
to most of whom it was quite new. When
the laugh went out, which it soon did of itself, Joe pursued
a subject that was of more interest to most of his auditors,
or rather to the principal personages among them.
“Skins never brought a craft so low, that you may be
sartain of!” he resumed. “I've seed all sorts of vessels
stowed, but a hundred press-screws couldn't cram in furs
enough to bring a craft so low! To my eye, Jim, there's
suthin' unnat'ral about that schooner, a'ter all.”
The study is scarce worthy of a diploma, but we will
take this occasion to say, for the benefit of certain foreign
writers, principally of the female sex, who fancy they represent
Americanisms, that the vulgar of the great republic,
and it is admitted there are enough of the class, never say
“summat” or “somethink,” which are low English, but
not low American, dialect. The in-and-in Yankee says
“suth-in.” In a hundred other words have these ambitious
ladies done injustice to our vulgar, who are not vulgar,
according to the laws of Cockayne, in the smallest
degree. “The Broadway,” for instance, is no more used
by an American than “the Congress,” or “the United
States of North America.”
“Perhaps,” answered Jim, “'tisn't the Sea Lion, a'ter
all. There's a family look about all the craft some men
build, and this may be a sort of relation of our missin'
schooner.”
“I'll not answer for the craft, though that's her blue
peter, and them's her mast-heads, and I turned in that
taw-sail halyard-block with my own hands.—I'll tell you
what, Jim, there's been a wrack, or a nip, up yonder,
among the ice, and this schooner has been built anew out
of that there schooner. You see if it don't turn out as I
and well, just comin' forrard.”
A little girl started with this news, and was soon pouring
it into the willing ears and open heart of the weeping
and grateful Mary. An hour later, Roswell held the latter in
his arms; for at such a moment, it was not possible for the
most scrupulous of the sex to affect coldness and reserve,
where there was so much real tenderness and love. While
folding Mary to his heart, Roswell whispered in her ears
the blessed words that announced his own humble submission
to the faith which accepted Christ as the Son of God.
Too well did the gentle and ingenuous girl understand the
sincerity and frankness of her lover's nature, to doubt what
he said, or in any manner to distrust the motive. That
moment was the happiest of her short and innocent life!
But the welcome tidings had reached the deacon, and
ere Roswell had an opportunity of making any other explanations
but those which assured Mary that he had come
back all that she wished him to be, both of them were
summoned to the bed-side of the dying man. The effect
of the excitement on the deacon was so very great as almost
to persuade the expectant legatees that their visit
was premature, and that they might return home, to renew
it at some future day. It is painful to find it our
duty to draw sketches that shall contain such pictures of
human nature; but with what justice could we represent
the loathsome likeness of covetousness, hovering over a
grave, and omit the resemblances of those who surrounded
it? Mary Pratt, alone, of all that extensive family connection,
felt and thought as Christianity, and womanly
affection, and reason, dictated. All the rest saw nothing
but the possessor of a considerable property, who was
about to depart for that unknown world, into which nothing
could be taken from this, but the divine and abused spirit
which had been fashioned in the likeness of God.
“Welcome, Gar'ner—welcome home, ag'in!” exclaimed
the deacon, so heartily as quite to deceive the young man
as to the real condition of his owner; a mistake that was,
perhaps, a little unfortunate, as it induced him to be more
frank than might otherwise have been the case. “I
couldn't find it in my heart to give you up, and have, all
you. The Gar'ners are a reliable family, and that was one
reason why I chose you to command my schooner. Them
Daggetts are a torment, but we never should have known
anything about the islands, or the key, hadn't it been for
one one 'em!”
As the deacon stopped to breathe, Mary turned away
from the bed, grieved at heart to see the longings of the
world thus clinging to the spirit of one who probably had
not another hour to live. The glazed but animated eye,
a cheek which resembled a faded leaf of the maple laid on
a cold and whitish stone, and lips that had already begun
to recede from the teeth, made a sad, sad picture, truly,
to look upon at such a moment; yet, of all present, Mary
Pratt alone felt the fullness of the incongruity, and alone
bethought her of the unreasonableness of encouraging feelings
like those which were now uppermost in the deacon's
breast. Even minister Whittle had a curiosity to know
how much was added to the sum-total of Deacon Pratt's
assets, by the return of a craft that had so long been set
down among the missing. When all eyes, therefore, were
turned in curiosity on the handsome face of the fine manly
youth who now stood at the bed-side of the deacon, including
those of brother and sister, of nephews and nieces, of
cousins and friends, those of this servant of the most high
God was of the number, and not the least expressive of
solicitude and expectation. As soon as the deacon had
caught a little breath, and had swallowed a restorative that
the hired nurse had handed to him, his eager thoughts reverted
to the one engrossing theme of his whole life.
“These are all friends, Gar'ner,” he said; “come to
visit me in a little sickness that I've been somewhat subject
to, of late, and who will all be glad to hear of our
good fortune. So you've brought the schooner back, a'ter
all, Gar'ner, and will disapp'int the Sag Harbour ship-owners,
who have been all along foretelling that we should
never see her ag'in:—brought her back—ha! Gar'ner?”
“Only in part, Deacon Pratt. We have had good luck
and bad luck since we left you, and have only brought
home the best part of the craft.”
“The best part—” said the deacon, gulping his words,
What, in the name of property, has become of the rest?”
“The rest was burned, sir, to keep us from freezing to
death.” Roswell then gave a brief, but very clear and intelligible
account of what had happened, and of the manner
in which he had caused the hulk of the deacon's Sea Lion
to be raised upon by the materials furnished by the Sea
Lion of the Vineyard. The narrative brought Mary Pratt
back to the side of the bed, and caused her calm eyes to
become riveted intently on the speaker's face. As for the
deacon, he might have said, with Shakspeare's Wolsey,
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not, in mine age,
Have left me naked to mine enemies.”
His fall was not that of a loss of power, it is true, but it
was that of a still more ignoble passion, covetousness. As
Roswell proceeded, his mind represented one source of
wealth after another released from his clutch, until it was
with a tremulous voice, and a countenance from which all
traces of animation had fled, that he ventured again to
speak.
“Then I may look upon my ventur' as worse than
nothing?” he said. “The insurers will raise a question
about paying for a craft that has been rebuilt in this way,
and the Vineyard folks will be sartain to put in a claim of
salvage, both on account of two of their hands helping you
with the work, and on account of the materials — and we
with no cargo, as an offset to it all!”
“No, deacon, it is not quite as bad as that,” resumed
Roswell. “We have brought home a good lot of skins;
enough to pay the people full wages and to return you
every cent of outfit, with a handsome advance on the venture.
A sealer usually makes a good business of it, if she
falls in with seals. Our cargo, in skins, can't be worth
less than $20,000; besides half a freight left on the island,
for which another craft may be sent.”
“That is suthin', the Lord be praised!” ejaculated the
deacon. “Though the schooner is as bad as gone, and
the outlays have been awfully heavy, I'm almost afraid to
go any further. Gar'ner, — did you — I grow weak very
question.”
“I am afraid that my uncle means to ask if you stopped
at the Key, in the West Indies, according to your instructions,
Roswell?” the niece said, and most reluctantly, for
she plainly saw it was fully time her uncle ceased to think
of the things of this life, and to begin to turn all his
thoughts on the blessed mediation, and another state of
being.
“I forgot no part of your orders, sir,” rejoined Roswell.
“It was my duty to obey them, and I believe I have done
so to the letter—”
“Stop, Gar'ner,” interrupted the dying man — “one
question, while I think of it. Will the Vineyard men have
any claim of salvage on account of them skins?”
“Certainly not, sir. These skins are all our own—were
taken, cured, stowed, and brought home altogether by ourselves.
There is a lot of skins belonging to the Vineyarders,
stowed away in the house, which is yours, deacon,
and which it would well pay any small craft to go and
bring away. If anybody is to claim salvage, it will be
ourselves. No salvage was demanded for the loss off Cape
Henlopen, I trust?”
“No, none—Daggett behaved what I call liberal in that
affair,”—half the critics of the day would use the adjective
instead of the adverb here, and why should Deacon Pratt's
English be any better than his neighbours?—“and so I've
admitted to his friends over on the Vineyard. But, Gar'ner,
our great affair still remains to be accounted for. Do you
wish to have the room cleared before you speak of that —
shall we turn the key on all these folks, and then settle
accounts—he! he! he!”
The deacon's facetiousness sounded strangely out of
place to Roswell; still, he did not exactly know how to
gainsay his wishes. There might be an indiscretion in
pursuing his narrative before so many witnesses, and the
young man paused until the room was cleared, leaving no
one in it but the sick man, Mary, himself, and the nurse.
The last could not well be gotten rid of on Oyster Pond,
where her office gave her an assumed right to know all
family secrets; or, what was the same thing to her, to
the experience of mankind has reduced to axioms, there is
not one more just than that which says, “There are secrets
in all families.” These secrets the world commonly affects
to know all about, but we think few will have reached the
age of threescore without becoming convinced of how
much pretending ignorance there is in this assumption of
the world. “Tot ou tard tout se scait,” is a significant
saying of our old friends, the French, who know as much
of things in practice as any other people on the face of the
earth; but “tot ou tard tout ne se scait pas.”
“Is the door shut?” asked the deacon, tremulously, for
eagerness, united to debility, was sadly shaking his whole
frame. “See that the door is shut tight, Mary; this is our
own secret, and nurse must remember that.”
Mary assured him that they were alone, and turned away
in sorrow from the bed.
“Now, Gar'ner,” resumed the deacon, “open your whole
heart, and let us know all about it.”
Roswell hesitated to reply; for he, too, was shocked at
witnessing this instance of a soul's clinging to mammon,
when on the very eve of departing for the unknown world.
There was a look in the glazed and sunken eyes of the old
man, that reminded him unpleasantly of that snapping of
the eyes which he had so often seen in Daggett.
“You did n't forget the key, surely, Gar'ner?” asked the
deacon, anxiously.
“No, sir; we did our whole duty by that part of the
voyage.”
“Did you find it—was the place accurately described?”
“No chart could have made it better. We lost a month
in looking for the principal land-mark, which had been
altered by the weather; but, that once found, the rest was
easy. The difficulty we met with in starting, has brought
us home so late in the spring.”
“Never mind the spring, Gar'ner; the part that is past
is sartain to come round ag'in, in due time. And so you
found the very key that was described by Daggett?”
“We did, sir; and just where he described it to be.”
“And how about the tree, and the little hillock of sand,
at its foot?”
“Both were there, deacon. The hillock must have
grown a good deal, by reason of the shifting sand; but, all
things considered, the place was well enough described.”
“Well — well — well — you opened the hillock, of
course?”
“We did, sir; and found the box mentioned by the
pirate.”
“A good large box, I'll warrant ye! Them pirates
seldom do things by halves—he! he! he!”
“I can't say much for the size of the box, deacon — it
looked to me as if it had once held window-glass, and that
of rather small dimensions.”
“But, the contents—you do not mention the contents.”
“They are here, sir,” taking a small bag from his pocket,
and laying it on the bed, by the deacon's side. “The
pieces are all of gold, and there are just one hundred and
forty-three of them. — Heavy doubloons, it is true, and I
dare say well worth their 16 dollars each.”
The deacon gave a gulp, as if gasping for breath, at the
same time that he clutched the bag. The next instant he
was dead; and there is much reason to believe that the
demons who had watched him, and encouraged him in his
besetting sin, laughed at this consummation of their malignant
arts! If angels in heaven did not mourn at this characteristic
departure of a frail spirit from its earthly tenement,
one who had many of their qualities did. Heavy
had been the load on Mary Pratt's heart, at the previous
display of her uncle's weakness, and profound was now her
grief at his having made such an end.
| CHAPTER XIV. The sea lions, or, The lost sealers | |