University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

When the last murmur of the disturbed waters had died away,
every one turned to gaze upon the form, that had so suddenly appeared
before their eyes, and those of the falling lunatic. It was
that of a tall and graceful female robed in white! But it now
was not the emblem of peace and purity. Her garments were disarrayed
and rent from the exposed bosom! Her unbound hair fell in
long dishevelled masses about her shoulders! and her feet were bare
and bleeding. The moonlight shone upon her countenance, and
revealed features of surpassing beauty, and proudly cast. But
deadly pale was her brow, and colourless the cheek where once
had bloomed the rose. The eyebrows were bent in stern regard
upon Morris Græme. The eyes large and wild, were fixed upon
him with a strange unearthly intensity. The beauteous mouth,
where once love sat enthroned, was compressed and stern—wonderfully
stern, for that beauteous feature of a woman. Her attitude
was threatening, and as she stretched forth her white arms
towards Græme, she appeared like a spirit of evil,—a fallen, yet
still beautiful angel,—come to adjudge, condemn, and punish!
Silent and awed stood the score of crime-hardy buccaneers on the
green sward within the fortress; and silent and observing remained
Carleton and Eve, gazing alternately upon her and Morris
Græme. And how appeared this guilty young man. From the
moment she appeared like a vision upon the battlement, and his
eyes met her form, he stood like one struck into a statue of horror
by some judgment of Heaven. He heard not the mangled fall of
the lunatic's bounding body, as it plunged from rock to rock till
the dashing waves opened to receive it into their secret bosom!
his ears were eyes? his senses were become eyes! he could only
see the form before him. Her steady gaze paralysed his soul! he
could not look away; but, as if compelled by some fatal fascination,
still gazed upon her as she gazed upon him. But how different
the expression of their look! his horror-struck, fearful and
full of remorse and evil forboding: hers, proud, stern, full of
vengeance and undying hate.

There they stood confronted on that lofty battlement's verge,
in the full moonlight, the awe-struck and curious groups standing
silent and breathless, awaiting the issue. Carleton and Eve had
both heard enough from the lunatic, and knew enough of Morris's
history to comprehend, in part, the nature of the wild scene before
them! To the men, the figure was an apparition from the other
world. And Morris Græme would rather such it had been, than
the reality it was! Two minutes—oh what hours of mental suffering
they involved to the guilty young man—passed in this manner—gaze
to gaze—the basilisk enchaining the fear struck eye of
its victim. Græme's lips moved and his hands opened and
clenched, and he seemed as if striving to call on Carleton for deliverance
from her; but no words came from him, and he could
make no intelligible gesture.

“How fearful!” whispered Eve under her breath! “how dreadful
must be the punishment of the guilty in the world to come, if
God permits such visitations of judgment here.”

“Hush! she speaks!” said Carleton, whose own guilty character
would not let him listen with temper to Eve's words.

“Morris Græme!” the deep, deep unearthly tones of that voice!
They made every man start! Every eye was bent on Morris
Græme! He trembled visibly, and covered his face with his
hands.

She approached him, and laid her white hand upon his wrist,
and said again in the same deep voice, “Morris Græme, look up!”

He removed his hands from before his eyes and looked in her
face, which was bent close to his. The look he encountered, caused
him instantly to drop his eyes.

“Ah Morris Græme,” she said in a softer tone, but with her
stern beautiful features still fixed in immovable rigidity, and her
large wild eye scanning his face, “time was when you loved to
look upon me, and to gaze into my eyes! But those were the
days of thy love! This” she added, in a tone that made him shrink,
“this is my hour of hate! Ha, ha! Græme! dost thou not love me
now! I can remember when by this same moon, my only lover!
how we walked together arm locked in arm, heart echoing to heart,
and I was to be the bride! It was a sweet dream! but 'tis gone!
You went far away, and when I followed thee to be thy bride,
thou didst falsely wed me, taking my true heart and virgin love,
giving me foul lies and fouler dishonor in return. Yet I cursed
thee not, Morris! Still I forgave and loved thee; and when once
I believed thee dead by Hayward's hand, I wept over thee as if
thou hadst never done me the great wrong that broke my heart!
But thou didst not love as I loved Morris Græme! or else, thou
wouldst not have dishonored me! True love ever elevates, never
degrades its object. Time passed, and you became weary of me!
Six nights ago you deserted me, destroyer! I wept not—I cursed
not! I resolved to die! Your suggestion that I should return to
my father's roof, I obeyed! for I would see him once again, and
receive his blessing before I died. I this day reached my native
village! My home was in the hands of strangers! My father, I
asked for him. They scorned me, and turned me from their doors
and bade me seek him among the rocks by the sea-shore, for there
he wandered day and night, a mad-man! And all said I had
broken his heart—that I had crazed my father, and driven him to
the holes in the rocks! that I had killed my mother, and when he
should die I should be his murderer! and so, they drove me forth
with epithets of scorn and dishonor, and then in my heart, aye in
mv inmost being, I did curse thee, thee Morris Græme! I went forth
and at every place I came I knelt outside the gate, for I dared not
enter a house again, and with clasped hands asked who had seen
my father? and, so I wandered on till night came; my feet were
bleeding and my body wearied! but I could neither rest nor linger
till I had found my father. The moon rose and I saw a fisherman
launching his boat. He fled at my approach, but when he saw me
kneel upon the sharp shells that strewed the wet beach, he come
near me and said, “poor thing! thou art crazed too!” and he
would have taken me into his house! but no! I had no roof
henceforth but that free sky which covered my crazed father's
head. He then said it was God's judgment come upon me, and
bade me seek my father in this place. And hither I climbed the
weary hill and I beheld my father! But how Morris Græme?
How?” here her voice, which in the foregoing narrative had been
low and earnest and singularly touching in its tone, rose on the
still air like the night shriek of the battle hawk. “I saw him
hand to hand, eye to eye, struggling with thee for his fast oozing
life! Thy brow wet with his fresh blood! thy hand crimsoned
with the warm life that gave me life! I beheld thy efforts to hurl
him from the battlement. I beheld his grey hairs streaming in the
contest, his visage marred with grief and vengeance and woe.
God gave me energy and strength, and I flew to save him! But
'twas too late! thy hand had done its deed of blood. He heard
my voice—he knew his long-lost child's tones, and turned his
eyes and hand upon me and blessed me. In bestowing that blessing
he perished by thy red hand, thou thrice dyed murderer?”

“For God's sake Ellen, be calm!” exclaimed Morris, who had
by this time in some measure recovered his usual self-possession;
“I meant not to slay him! he was the assailant and I did it to preserve
my own life!”

“Thy life! what is thy vile life, man, compared with his? Thy
life was forfeited to him for the wrongs thou hadst done, and thou
wert a coward to seek to save it. Hast thou not robbed him of his
child? hast thou not slain his wife? hast thou not robbed him of
his reason? hast thou not dishonored his daughter! What hadst
thou to do with sacrificing him to save thyself! thou art guilty and
accursed, evil man! The day of thy retribution has come, and God
hath given thee into my hand! For thy arms, Morris Græme I
have sacrificed honor and the lives of all I love! In my arms then
shalt now atone with thy life for thine and mine!”

Instantly he was locked in her wild embrace! So sudden and
unlooked for was this act, that he could not resist! There was
but a momentary struggle, and with a wild maniac laugh, mingled
with which, was heard his raving shriek for aid; she sprung over
the preiepice with him in her arms. Carleton had sprung forward
but too late! He could only see a confused dark and white mass,
bounding down the broken sides of the cliff with a loud sound
plunge into the sea!

“There was only a woman in white that struck the water, sir,
said Red Fred, who with all the rest had rushed to look over the
edge of the battlement. “I watched the fall. Mr. Græme must
have been caught by one of the rocks or trees.”

A deep groan at this instant reached their ears from the rocks
below, which corroborated his words.

“I believe you are right,” exclaimed Carleton. “Down with
you after me to see if he is lying among the rocks, and is alive.”

Mid-way the cliff, and near the path, led by his moans, Carleton
came upon Morris, faintly clinging by one arm to a root growing
in the crevice of the rock. He was ten feet distant, and it was
impossible to approach him on account of the steep face of the cliff
at this part.

“Hold on, Morris, a moment or two,” he cried encouragingly.
“Bear a hand here, Fred, with half a dozen fathom of that running
rigging,” he shouted. “Now secure it to that shelf above and
make a running noose.”

“For God's sake, be quick, Carleton! I am bruised and half
dead, and can hold on no longer,” groaned Morris.

“Courage, Græme! There flies the noose! Lower yet, Fred

Pass it under his feet. Now raise it gently up his body. Hold!
Now draw it together close. There! now we have you safely
moored, Morris; let go the limb. Hold on firm there on the shelf.
Now heave away, all of you! Gently; there is time enough!—
Steady! There comes his head! Lift him over the rock three or
four of you. Kindly! kindly! don't you hear his groans? and he
is not a man to cry out for a trifle. There he is, now, safe and
insensible!”

A litter was formed of the men's intertwining arms, and the
wounded man was borne to the foot of the rock on board the
schooner.

“This has been a strange night's work!” and Carleton musingly
as the men moved down the path with their burden “What an
escape from death, though he may die yet! He has fallen full forty
feet, and by a lucky effort succeeded in disengaging himself
from her fatal embrace just at this spot and catching at the root;
while she went plunging far downward alone into the sea! Eve,
what do you think of all this? It is a strange affair!”

“I think it is God's judgment in this life for the evil done in it.
Retribution as surely follows guilt as reward does goodness. This
material world is a true type of the future and spiritual world.—
Morris Græme has been a very bad man, and the singular punishment
he has now received should convince you, dear Carleton,
that there is a God!”

“I am half inclined to think so. This has been a bitter night
to him. Hell—if such there be—would have been more endurable
to him, methinks, than the first interview with the crazed father;
and then this last one with his vindictive mistress; there can be
no torments greater for man than those I know that he then
suffered! Well, Eve, this sad tragedy has ended! Father and
daughter rest in the sea, and Græme is, I fear, likely soon to be
laid there. But I would not that he should die. He must be
looked to; I can never supply his place. But we have work to
do, and I must see to it. You are a good leech; go on board and
see that something is done to bring him to, and by that time I will
be on board. I must not, for this occurrence, lose the opportunity
for arming the schooner. I see the guns are all eighteen pound
carronades, besides two dismounted brass field pieces, making
eight in all. If you find Græme is very bad, send for me. I fear
some of his bones will be found broken.”

“Carleton,” said Eve as she was leaving him, “I beg you will not
let what you have seen to-night of justice and judgment quite pass
from your mind. A little reflection will convince you that this
meeting between this guilty young man and the father and daughter
was not an accident!”

“You are a pretty preacher, Eve; and if you faith be true, I
think poor Morris needs a ghostly homily just now, more than I;”
he answered smiling. “I fear he will too soon know whether thy
Bible be a truth or a fable.”

“Too late, I rather fear for both he and thou,” she said mournfully
in her heart as he re-ascended the path, with his men, towards
the fort.

Though Carleton found but three of the gun-carriages entire,
after he had succeeded in getting them on board with a good deal
of labor, he unshipped one of the guns and took up the carriage
for the purpose of mounting the remaining guns upon it and dragging
them down, one at a time, with pullies upon the wheels, and
twenty men to guide and hold it. By this means, in four hours
time he had transferred from the fort to his schooner's deck six
excellent cannon of a weight of metal just suited to her tonnage.
They were arranged, as brought on board, each at its proper part;
and parts of the remaining gun-carriages were collected sufficient
in a few hours to put together a fourth carriage; then having two
serviceable guns on each side. When the last gun was on board,
and the decks cleared, Carleton gave orders to tow the schooner
out of the calm nook where she lay, to meet the breeze. As he did
so he felt a light hand upon his arm.

“Carleton, let us not go thus and leave the dead father and
daughter unburied!”

“You say truly, Eve. But time presses, and there are not two
hours to dawn. I have to take in powder ere sun-rise, without
which our guns are so much ballast.”

“It will take but a few moments. Oh, Carleton, if you love
me, leave not the dead we saw so lately in life, to bleach in the
sun, or he a prey to the fish and carrion fowl! There,” she pointed
shudderingly, “lies her body glistening white where the tide
has left it. His cannot he far from it. Let a barrow be made of
oars, and let the men bear them back to the fort, which he so pitifully
called his `home'; and there, within the shadow of the gateway
let a grave be dug to hold them both. You will feel better,
and so will Græme!”

“It shall be as you say! Does he still lie as insensible as when
I set his arm and ancle.”

“Yes—heavily breathing as if in a deep brain-sleep. Nature is
repairing the strength of life within ere she restore sensibility to
the body.”

“I fear, Eve,” he said, shaking his head, “we shall have to
make a third grave!”

“No, he will wake at sun-rise.”

“I hope so. Who is with him?”

“Belt. The strange boy weeps constantly, and fans him without
rest.”

Orders were then given to construct a barrow, and Carleton preceded
his men to the foot of the rock, where the white garments of
Ellen indicated the spot where she lay. They took her up, her
long hair dripping with sea-brine, and laid her upon the bier.—
Her marbled face was unbruised, and wore the same stern expression
which the recital of her wrongs had impressed upon it, living.
Cold and beautiful, even in death, was her countenance; but her
limbs were mangled frightfully, and blood was oozing from a deep
wound in her bosom. Carleton gazed upon her a moment and felt
that he that was the author of the ruin of innocence was a criminal
for whom man had not commensurate judgment in reserve! and in
his heart he feared that there must be a God to judge and condemn.

How happy would Eve have been had she known his thoughts!
Love for Carleton had not made her—like him—a deist! Familiarity
with his guilty career had not made her less a believer in
that faith which she had first been taught by nature and afterwards
confirmed and strengthened by searching the scriptures, which are
the sun to nature's religion. This was a favorable thought of hers,
that the earth is as beautiful at midnight as at noon-day: that
then as truly as in the sunshine, on its bosom lie all the riches of
art and nature that compose its sublime scenery! Yet we see them
not! But the dawn breaks from the east—the sun arises in his
splendor and unfolds every beauty, displays every glorious sight,
opens every sublime prospect! River and isle; rock and mountain;
ocean and lake; forest and valley; with cities, temples and
palaces, villas and hamlets, are all made plain and visible and
true! So is nature's religion. God is in his works in all his perfection
and glory. But though he is there we see him not save
with the eyes of the inner being; for God can only thus be seen!
But the dawn of revelation breaks in the skies! the bible rises
glorious and resplendent upon the gaze of the soul, and at once is
unfolded to the eye of faith, the Deity in every sublime and benevolent
attribute of his Divinity.

Thus Eve loved to dwell upon this grand and infinite subject,
which exercises ever the intelligence of angels! She strove on
every occasion to inspire her erring husband with sentiments of
the true faith. She felt that he had a mind well adapted to receive
the sublime truth she would humbly teach him; but that he
could only be taught through, the sublime! She spoke to him of
the power and grandeur of God, and he listened with strange awe
and enthusiasm. But it was the Roman Jupiter Tonans he pictured
to his mind as he listened, and not the God of the Scriptures.
By degrees he felt willing to admit such a being, and only such an
one, to rule the visible universe! But he would allow him no
moral quality. He invested him with power only as he would
himself use it! with dominion only as he would exercise it. Such
was Carleton's God; and such is too frequently the God of most
men who love not the God of the Bible; they deify their own
vices and worship them! Carleton might have remained a deist
did he stop here! but this was the natural result of Eve's mistaken
mode of inculcating the truth of a God. And when she could
get him to assent even to the God he had created in his mind from
the ill-chosen materials she had weakly, yet in good faith, furnished
him with, she was happy. Her error was in bringing God down
to him and not lifting him up to God after first humbling him in
the sight of his perfections.

The mangled corse of the miserable father was found lying across
a rock, with his head and breast beneath the water. The lifeless
form of the daughter was first borne to the gate of the fortress and
laid upon the ground by the wide grave which the men had dug.
Then came, borne upon the bier upon four men's shoulders, the
half naked, bruised body of the mad-man. Side by side, in the
shallow grave they were laid, in the cold moonlight, and then a
sail was thrown decently over them by Carleton.

“Now, my men, cover them up,” said Carleton turning away,
not without emotion at the painful sight.

“Nay, Carleton! Hold, men! Edward do not bury them thus
like dogs!”

“What would you more, Eve?” he said moodily; for he half-guessed
her request.”

“The holy service for the dead!”

“'Tis mockery! What care they whether men curse or bless
them now!”

“Nay—Carleton, you do not speak as you feel. I will repeat
the service!

“But thou hast no book.”

“I know it by heart, Carleton. I have always loved to read
and think of it in my sad hours. I will not detain you five minutes
longer! Though your life is such as it is, your pursuits so

unlawful and erring, you are not yet insensible to the better forms
of better years.”

“When were my years better, Eve!” he said bitterly. “Have I
not been ever from boyhood what I now am? Who taught me good
in early years? Was not an evil example before my eyes. Nurtured
among infidel Israelites, and my mother, as I have told thee,
one of their race, and my father a man of crime, what knew I
from my birth of, a better life? If there is a better life for me
tis to come.”

“And oh, wilt thou cherish this belief?”

“Nay, I said not I believed in better life to come. I do not. If
there is a God, then this world and we are his creatures. And is
not all evil here, Eve? As his creation is here, so will it be there.
As it is now so will it be forever! evil and misery under all his
dominion.”

“This is fearful blasphemy!” cried Eve with a shudder “I
know you do not believe as you speak. God is —”

“No more! Say thy prayer for the dead, if thou wilt, and
these may listen, I care not to see thee make a fool of thyself,
Eve.” And the unbelieving man turned slowly from the grave
Had he been still a deist—still an unbeliever, he would have remained
with careless indifference. But neiw feelings had been
awakened by the strange judgments of that night, and they were
at work in the centre of his being, producing distasteful and
alarming thoughts. Conscience, which is God in every man, and
which is the soul of his soul, was on its throne, and had began to
move and melt the elements of his being.

Eve, the gentle, loving i magintive Eve, looked after him with
a sigh and a prayer, and then turning to the two-fold grave,
devoutly knelt by its side. Two or three of the seaman gathered
round knelt also and all but Red Fed reverently bowed their
heads. How beautiful was the sight! the green rampart with its
yawning embrasures, with the sea and islands spread beneath and
around! the group of buccaneers on one side of the grave, half
lost in the shadow of the gate-way. The tall dark figure of Carleton
standing alone on the battlement a short distance off, silently
surveying the scene? the open grave with its canvass pall, and
the kneeling form of the lovely priestess for the dead, with her
elasped hands upon her bosom, and her eyes uplifted in lofty and
pure devotion to the blue heaven above her head. Deep and singularly
impressive was the silence of that moment. Hush! listen
to that low, sweet voice of prayer go up from the grave's side, and
ascend from that lofty height like incense from an altar.

“I know that my Redeemer liveth and that heshall stand at the
latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy
this body yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see
or myself, and mine eyes shall behold him and not another.

“We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can
carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,
blessed be the name of the Lord.

In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for
succor but of thee O Lord, who, for our sins art justly displeased.
Yet oh, Lord God, most holy; O Lord, most mighty; O holy and
most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of Eternal
death.”

She rose from her knees, and in a voice of solemn sweetness,
proceeded as follows:

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth
in me though he were dead shall he live; and whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God in his wise Providence
to take out of this world the souls of the deceased, we therefore
commit their bodies to the ground: (Here she stooped to take
up a handful of fresh earth to cast into the grave, when she saw
a handful fall upon the bodies. She looked up and saw that it was
the reverent act of the steward-lad. She then continued in a
touching manner that sunk to every heart,)

“Earth to earth—ashes to ashes—dust to dust: looking for the
general resurrection in the last day and the life of the world to
come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose second coming in
glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall
give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep
in him shall be changed and made like unto his own glorious
body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue
all things unto himself.”

She then turned round upon all present and repeated in a clear
rejoicing tone,

“I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me, Write, from
henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so, saith
the Spirit; for they rest from their lahors.”

She then offered up the Lord's prayer with an eloquence, a sublimity
of devotion as remarkable, as the hour and the place and
the occasion were extraordinary and unusual.

The men stood a few moments in silence after the sound of her
voice had ceased, and she had turned away. There was then a
general movement to fill up the grave; but no words were interchanged,
save one or two necessary orders given by Red Fred in
an under tone. The work was completed and the men took up their
barrow and descended the path to the schooner. Still Carleton,
their chief stirred not from the spot where, with folded arms, he had
stood watching the burial. Eve at length approached him.

“Edward, the men wait for you!”

“Eve,” he said in a gentle tone, “I know not what to make of
all this! My thoughts are in strange commotion! There is a
chord in my being which vibrated at the words you gave utterance
to! Nature is ever true to herself! Why then, I ask myself,
should I feel this harmony between your words of prayer and
a secret sensation in my bosom, if they were false? I do confess
that I have been deeply moved. But this is no time nor place for
such idle talk. Eve! Let us on board and learn how it goes with
poor Morris!”

Thus speaking, and suffering the true and faithful Eve to lean
upon his manly form, he descended the path with her to the vessel.
In a few minutes afterwards she was towed out from her
shelter, the breeze caught her sails, the boats were called aboard,
and once more the Sea-Slipper was gliding along with increasing
motion upon her native element.