University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

“I have heard from my yacht, and she has been at her old buccaneering
tricks again,” exclaimed Colonel Powel entering his
drawing room, the second morning after the flight of his schooner
from the cove, and addressing Hayward, who was seated reading
a paragraph in a newspaper to his wife and Blanche.

“And so have we, father,” said Kate Heyward, who, with her
husband and friend were looking as much excited as Colonel Powel
himself.

“There was a rumor in town just before I left that Captain
harry Ellis, who left port the day the yacht was spirited away,
had been run aboard by a schooner answering the description of
mine, and that he beat her off with his guns.”

“This is just what we were reading when you came, sir,” answered
Kate.

“It must be true then,” said Hayward.

“I see no reason to doubt it,” said Colonel Powel; “but let me
hear the printed account, Blanche.”

“I will read it, father: Blanche looks frightened about Harry
Ellis, and her voice would tremble like a rose-leaf.”

“How can you Kate!” said Blanche with a reproving glance
and blush.

“Here it is, dear father: `We mentioned yesterday the sudden
disappearance of Colonel Powel's yacht, `The Sparkling Wave,'
once better known as `The Dancing Feather,' from her anchorage
opposite his villa, and that a revenue cutter had sailed in pursuit of
her. We have just received intelligence that leads us to believe
that she has fallen into the hands of her former daring commander.
It is now known that this person has been privately living in this
city, and would have been secured by the police the very night
the yacht was taken off. And the fact that he was not found by
the police at the place to which their informant guided them gives
color to the suspicion. The intelligence brought by a Capt. Martin
of the Hartford sloop `Betty Ann' is, that about three o'clock
yesterday morning firing was heard by him and his crew on the
Sound, and at sunrise they fell in with a brigantine which hailed
her, and asked for a spar to make a flying jib-boom of. He
stated the brig reported that she had been run into by a buccaneering
schooner with a score of men on board, and that he had fired
into her and evidently defeated an attempt to board, as the schooner
stood on after carrying away, by the collision, some of the brig's
hamper, including her jib-booms. Not being able to supply him
Captain Martin left him, and soon after he saw the brig a tempting,
with her jib only, to beat back to port. If this be correct, the
schooner is, without question, the Dancing Feather revived. We
sincerely trust she may be fallen in with by the cutter, and treated
as her merits deserve. We understand Colonel Powel had full
insurance. We shall probably soon have all the particulars
from Captain Ellis, who has doubtless put back to repair damages,
in which case we shall not fail to lay them at once before our
readers.”

“There can be no kind of doubt now into whose hands she has
got again,” said Colonel Powel. “Well, ladies, we have lost our
excursion to Newport. You know something of these adventures,
Henry and you, Blanche!”

The young lady started and blushed, and quickly answered,
with the consciousness of her late intercourse with Carleton, “I,
Colonel Powel.”

“Why Blanche,” said Kate, “you look very guilty.”

“Yes, we were fellow-passengers on the Ariel,” answered Heyward
relieving her embarrassment by speaking; “and one pleasant
afternoon were boarded by the Dancing Feather. Her Captain
was a tall, dark, but exceedingly handsome man, not more than
twenty-six. They were reekless men, Captain and crew, and I
have reason to know one of his Lieutenants.”

“That fearful Morris Græme,” said his wife.

“Well it is dangerous to have them abroad upon the sea, in so
fast a vessel; but they have no guns, thank heaven,” said Colonel
Powel.

“These, men like them, will not be longin obtaining. I have
no doubt the motive of their attempt to board Captain Ellis was,
to possess themselves of his guns.”

“And he gave them to the fellows it seems in a true seaman's
style. I must see Ellis when he returns, and hear from his lips
the facts. Somebody else would like to see and welcome him too,
or I am mistaken.” And he glanced significantly at Blanche,
who also catching a mischeivous look in Kate's face, got up and
went to the window to conceal her pretty confusion.

And was Captain Harry Ellis her lover? There is a pleasant
romance worth hearing here, but we can indulge in no more long
episodes at the expense of our “Cruise.” In a few words, Blanche
and Harry Ellis first met, when he was a Middy. He was at home in
Boston on leave; he nineteen, she fourteen, and they fell in love,
flirted, sighed and parted. He soon rose to a Lieutenancy, and then
inheriting a great estate in the South, followed his roving humor,
and getting leave cruised for two or three years, in a beautiful
and costly craft, which he had built in Baltimore. In the meanwhile
Blanche had been met by Carleton, who became at once
deeply, passionately enamored with her; but towards him she
felt no other emotion, than a romantic interest very natural for an
imaginative girl to feel in a handsome buccaneer. After Blanche's
return to Boston, Harry Ellis again met her, and renewing his
vows of attachment, thought he found a reciprocal feeling in her
bosom, addressed her and was rejected! A few months elapsed and
she was again in New York, on a visit to Kate Powel, now become
Kate Hayward. Harry Ellis arrived nearly at the same
time in The Lance, and being a friend of Colonel Powel's was invited
to dine with him. Judge his surprise, on meeting in the
dining room the beautiful Blanche Hillary. She met him with a
frank kindness that led him again to cherish a hope, and after a
few weeks devotion, he renewed his suit and was accepted. This
happy issue of his manly and devoted love, occured only the week
preceding Carleton's sudden and alarming visit to her when, with
her book in her hand, and Neptune lying at her feet, he found her
seated in a rustic arm chair at the lawn's extremity, looking upon
the pleasant water. Are we surprised that she listened not to his
strong language of passion, even had his name been unstained by
guilt—his heart by crime? Carleton knew not that he loved one
who was betrothed. If he had suspected it—but he did not! and
so in safety she was left by him till the time should come when he
could more favorably press his suit; for Carleton had in his mind
the half formed idea of reforming his life for the sake of winning
and wearing Blanche. His first step of reform was deserting poor

Eve!—his next cutting out the Dancing Feather; in truth a promising
beginning. But the true, yet false, notion which he harbored
was, that Blanche loved him and might be induced even to
share his fortunes in the life he led. He formed this opinion from
Eve's great love, and the sacrifice she had made. But Eve loved!
Blanche Hillary did not! She loved Henry Ellis, however, perhaps
with little less devotion than Eve cherished towards Carleton.

Their marriage was settled to take place in six weeks at Boston;
and Captain Ellis had left New York the afternoon of the cutting
out of the schooner to proceed to Boston to have her refitted for
a voyage to England, whither he intended to take his bride as
soon as they were wedded. Blanche was to go with Col. Powel,
Kate, and Hayward, in the yacht as far as Newport, and pass a
few days, and thence proceed to Boston by land. We have seen
how these plans were interrupted by the daring deed of Carleton
and Morris Græme!

Blanche stood by the window, from which was a view of the
lawn and the bright river beyond, her heart trembling still with
the idea of the danger from which Harry had escaped, when those
in the room were startled by an exclamation of joyful surprise;
and ere they could ask her the cause of her excitement, she had
thrown up the sash of the long, ground window, and the next
moment was flying across the lawn towards the water.

`Ellis's brig, by the Cæsars!' exclaimed Colonel Powel, who
with the rest had sprung to the window.'

At once the drawing-room was deserted, and at a graver, yet
full fast, pace they pursued the course taken by Blanche, whose
light form had already disappeared in the trees of the grove which
crowned a headland over which were visible the taper masts, one
of them distinguished by the silver lance at the fore-royal-mast
head.

When Blanche reached the rocky headland she saw the brig
slowly advancing almost beneath her, the cross-trees being on a
level with the shelf of a rock. On the deck stood her betrothed
who, hearing her pronounce his name looked up and smiled, waved
and kissed his hand, and then giving an order to his helmsman the
brig came nigher the headland, while he sprung into the fore rigging
and went aloft. The rest of the party had now reached the
rock and Colonel Powel hailed Ellis as he gained the cross-trees.

“Welcome back again, Captain Ellis. So you have fallen in
with my yacht!”

“By the gods! was that your yacht, Powel?” answered the
young commander from the cross-trees, the brig in the meanwhile
slowly nearing the rock.”

“Yes; she was cut out and run off by her former captain, I am
positive.”

“I am a fool not to have been sure of her! When I first saw her
astern I thought it was the yacht, but having seen the yacht but
once, as it only came from the ship-yard last week, I was not sure,
and then I could not think you would have sailed at midnight. I
then took her to be a revenue cutter, and sailed with her an hour
or two, but she overhauled me, manæuvred in a masterly manner,
and finally came up with me, and I verily believe would have
boarded me but that they discovered that I was armed. As it was
they did me mischief as you see, and I did them some, as well as
left a nine pounder in his main-mast. Port a little there at the
wheel.”

“Port it is,” answered the helmsman.

“How is the depth of water here Colonel?”

“Twenty feet.”

“I thought it looked black enough for full five fathom. Hard
a port.”

The helmsman obeyed the order, and the brig came slowly
past, the headland approaching it nigher and nigher. The young
commander, walking out on the top-gallant yard, waited a moment
for her to come the nighest; then calling out loudly to the man at
the wheel, “Starboard, hard a starboard!” he fearlessly swung
himself—just as the vessel was falling off again, and in spite of the
cries of the terrified Blanche and of Colonel Powel—far from the
yard-end towards the rock, catching at a branch of a tree with a
firm grasp. Then securing a footing upon it, he with a light
bound, stood amid the group with his hand clasped in that of the
happy Blanche.

“How could you be so rash, Captain Harry?” said Mrs. Hayward.
“Blanche ought not to forgive you. The color has not
yet come back to her check.”

“You young sailors will ever be a reckless set,” said Colonel
Powel, shaking him warmly by the hand. “But I am glad to see
you, light upon us any way you will.”

“You will stay with us,” inquired, or rather insisted Hayward,
the two young men having, since they first met, become warmly
attached to each other.

“Not five minutes. I must be on board again when she returns
on the other tack, and I will take your boat, Colonel, for the purpose.
I only jumped ashore to say how d'ye do, and explain the
cause of my return.”

“We knew it before. Blanche saw your brig and ran to the
river-side as if chasing her runaway wits,” said Colonel Powel.—
“The affair is all over town, and in the papers. It was brought
by a sloop which you spoke.”

“Oh, aye! I wanted a spare spar or two, resolved to repair damages
and go in chase of the scoundrel who run me aboard. But
after hailing half a dozen coasters and putting into Norwalk, without
getting what I wanted, I was forced to put back. But by the
lord Harry! I will yet catch him.”

“No, lord Harry, that you don't,” said Blanche laughing, yet
with a look of seriousness in her sweet beaming eyes; “you shall
run no more risks. I have a claim upon you, and I mean to enforce
it.”

“That is right, Blanche,” said Colonel Powel; “make him feel
his responsibility. You see, Ellis, the traces begin to jingle in your
ears already. But cheer heart. We men must all come to it, if
we are fit to make a woman happy, and so long as the traces are
wreathed with flowers, as I am sure Blanche's will be, we can
wear them for the fragrance they yield.”

“Quite sentimental, pa,” said Kate, looking archly at Colonel
Powel; “will you make another such pretty speech?”

“Mischief, no! Hayward, don't let your wife be too saucy.”

“Kate, don't quiz your father,” said Blanche with a roguish
look.

“Oh, you are quizzing too. Well, I don't see but one is bad as
the other. Harry, when you come again I will take you into my
library, shut the door, and give you some lessons as to wife-ruling.
I must not forget Hayward either.”

“Oh, you naughty pa!” said Kate, tapping his cheek with her
fore finger. “But you don't look so very Bluebeardish, and I will
kiss you.” Colonel Powel received the kiss with becoming gravity,
and then the party walked along a descending path to the
dove, and so round the white beach to the opposite jut of land
where the brig would come in on her tack. Here, as the vessel
came nigh, he left them, promising to be with them in the evening
after he should have anchored his vessel at the ship-yard. They
stood watching the beautiful yet crippled vessel as she passed on
until she was lost to their sight by a point of thick woods.

We will now change the scene. It was a moonlight night; but
the moon, decreased half its size, had just risen late far in the northeastern
horizon. Its reddish glare glimmered over a wild scene of
wave and rock. A steely river, swift and dark, flowed to the ocean
between barren and craggy headlands. All around was drear and
savage grandeur; an iron-hound coast presenting an eternal barrier
to the lashing surges of the deep. But at this hour the wind
was very light from the South, and the waves of the sea rolled
landward with a low, suppressed murmur. There was no life to
animate the wild scene of rock and ocean. The far moonlit wave
was unrelieved by a single vessel as far as the eye could sweep
from the headlands. Inland half a league up the river, was a
dark height overhanging the water, and in the gloom of night
frowned with the warlike outlines of a circular fortress. The
slowly rising moon flung its faint, lurid beams into its grass-grown
area, and they fell upon the figure of a man who was standing in
one of the embrasures upon a gun. His head was bare, his body
was half naked, and his beard was unshorn, and was grey mingled
with black. His hair was white as snow, and the wind as it came
from the sea, which was visible, lifted it from his temples. His
eye was wild, and his gestures—for at times he waved his hands
and threw out his body—were those of a maniac. He seemed to
be watching the sea. As the moon rose higher he suddenly turned
to that and eloquently addressed it in wonderful glory of language
and imagery; now speaking with tenderness, now with
fierce displeasure; now deprecating its vengeance, now pouring
forth towards it torrents of terrible denunciation.”

Suddenly, in the midst of one of these scenes, he stopped, and
shaking his head despondingly, seemed to realize the madness of
his conduct; and sighing, he said in a tone of touching woe:

“No—I am not in my right mind. The moon is not God! Yet
why does the moon madden my brain? I feel not thus till it shines!
'Tis the cause of these paroxysms of madness—for I am mad.—
Men call me mad. I hate the moon. No, I do not hate the moon!
Ho, the moon!” he suddenly exclaimed, rising and stretching
forth his hands towards it; “the glorious moon! Give me wings
and I will bathe in your oceans of light! Curses!” he added
fiercely after a pause. “Thou hearest in silence, and I see thee
smile at thy slave; for I am thy slave! Thou hast bound me in
fetters; thou hast flung a burning chain around my brain. God!
I feel it scorching, and the fire is driving me to hell!”

He sprang from the gun, and rushing along the battlement stopped
full where it overhung a precipice a hundred feet in depth.—
There he balanced himself upon the dizzy height, and long and
loudly laughed, as if in mockery of the danger into which the devil
in his brain tempted him to cast himself. All at once his countenance
changed, and so did his whole manner. Sitting down upon
the edge of the battlement he sobbed like a child and anxiously
looked towards the sea.

“They say she is on the occean with him somewhere, and so I

know if I look and keep watch when the good moon rises and keeps
watch with me, I shall see her. There's the ocean, and there I
will keep my eye. I bless the moonlight that helps me see the
ocean! Oh, I should be so lonely without the moon! Good
moon! I will not curse thee! There comes a vessel! No, 'tis a
wave breaking on the rocks at Seguin. I have seen so many vessels
come, and yet not his. They say she will never come home
again. I know they lie! She would never stay from her father!
She is my only child. She was a good daughter till she left home.
Oh, curse the hour! Curse him who tempted her! They lie,
when they say she was not deceived and wronged. Oh how beautiful
she was. Some men say he is hung. They lie! If it was
true she would have come home to her father. She loved me in
childhood, and she is not evil now. She was deceived. Her
mother is dead, weeping for her; and she is away, and I am here
alone, with only the moon to love me and keep me company. It's a
good moon. His mother died of grief last year, because they told her
her boy was a pirate! Her mother died of a broken heart. I did not
cry. My heart did not break. No! I was strong. I shed no weak
tears. I! No! I laughed when they told me. I laughed when I
read her name, coupled with his, in the papers the neighbors sent
me. No! I wept no tear. Women weep. Men, when they cannot
weep—men—go mad! and I am mad! I have no house, no clothes,
no food. I hate man—I hate houses—I love this old fort. When
I am hungry I can gather clams, and when I am sleepy I can lie
down in this grassy nook with the moon to watch by me all night.
There is a sail—she comes—no, 'tis a mocker! The devil sails
mock-ships on the ocean to make me mad. No. 'Tis a vessel near
the land. I saw her broad mainsail turn white and large to the
moon. I shall see my child, my Ellen now. I have seen many a
vessel pass, and hailed to ask for my Ellen; but I know now she
is come; and when she comes I sha'nt mourn as I do now. I
shan't be mad; oh no! I will be happy, and I will tell them all
she is not bad, but has come home to bless me. Oh, how fast it
comes. I will set on my gun and watch it!”

The maniac then left his dizzy seat and took a position on a dismounted
gun in an embrazure looking seaward. Gradually as he
watched the advancing sail, his eyes closed with fatigue and mental
exhaustion, and he sunk upon the grass by the side of the gun in
deep sleep. Poor human nature! how weak, how weak, how
perishable! at one moment dignified and ennobled even in the
eyes of angels, with a commanding and creative intellect; at another
grovelling in idiocy lower than the brute, or wandering on
earth a wild, fearful wreek of itself, the object of all men's pity
and of angels' wonder. This poor being whose madness we have
witnessed, had been a clergyman of eminence in a village not far
from Bath. He had an only daughter whom he spoiled by indulgence.
But mother and father were both devoted to her, and in
no other way did they feel that they could show forth their love.
They restrained her in no impulse—checked her by no exercise of
authority—never crossed her wayward will. Near them lived a
gentleman who had an only son whom he equally indulged. Him
he at length sent to college, where he early betrayed a vicious propensity;
and after two years sojourn at two different Universities,
he was expelled in disgrace, and went to New York, where he entered
upon a course of profligacy and guilt. The daughter of the
clergyman was attached to him, and, deceived by his letters, eloped
from her father's roof. The result is already in the reader's
possession. This imprudent girl is the mistress of Morris Græme!

The vessel which the broken-hearted father had seen was soon
made out as a rakish schooner, standing on under free sail towards
the mouth of the Kennebec.

“This is a savage coast, Morris,” said her captain, as he stood on
the schooner's deck eyeing the rocky shores with his glass. “I
would not like a storm to catch the Sea-Slipper upon it.”

“There are numerous safe harbors all along the coast, and vessels
are rarely lost here.”

“It is a remantic and wild region, and seems without inhabitants,”
said Carleton as he swept the land with his spy-glass.

“Yet there is scarcely a cove that has not its fisherman's cabin,
nor an upland that is not cultivated, though rudely. It is a hardy
region and a herdy race. But as you ascend the river a league or
two the savage aspect of the shores yield to farms and woods, and
the higher you proceed the more beautiful the scenes on either
hand become, till you find yourself below Gardiner, in the midst
of the finest river scenery in New England.”

“This is a spacious mouth for so narrow a river,” said Carleton,
as the schooner glided from the open sea between the island headlands
that guard like gigantic posterns of rock the entrance to the
river. “How far up is this fort?”

“A half a league by the water, but not a mile in direct line.—
Now you can see it lifting its dark head into the sky.”

“Yes, but 'tis impossible to get the guns from that height without
more means than we can command, Morris.”

“No. I have well examined the spot. The path to the water
is even, and twelve men can with ease and safety get down a gun
at a time.”

“Be it so. The devil lend us a lever but we get them aboard;
and then hey for the rule of the ocean wave. What stirring lines
hose of Byron. It was his Corsair, Morris, that first gave me a
thirst to be a sailor and a corsair. How finely they open!”

“Blow good breezes! The tide is ebbing, and we go up slowly,”
he added to Morris, who had himself taken the helm, as the
schooner entered the river. “We have been now five days in
calms and storms running here, a distance easily run in twenty-four
hours.”

“If that revenue cutter,” said Morris laughing, “that chased
us off Nantucket shoals should catch us in this infernal trap we
should have a hard chance to get off as well. But I would fight
her to the last.”

“Yes,” said Carleton in a low deep tone of voice; “yes, we
must never be taken!”

“No!” came with equally stern decision from Morris's lips.

“No!” echo repeated from the cliff side with a stern distinctness
that made them start.

“A good augury,” gaily said Carleton, walking to the companion-way
to meet Eve, whom he had despatched the young steward-o
invite on deck to view the romantic scene around them.