University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Zephaniah Pennel was what might be called a Hebrew
of the Hebrews.

New England, in her earlier days, founding her institutions
on the Hebrew Scriptures, bred better Jews than
Moses could, because she read Moses with the amendments
of Christ.

The state of society in some of the districts of Maine, in
these days, much resembled in its spirit that which Moses
labored to produce in ruder ages. It was entirely democratic,
simple, grave, hearty, and sincere, — solemn and
religious in its daily tone, and yet, as to all material good,
full of wholesome thrift and prosperity. Perhaps, taking
the average mass of the people, a more healthful and desirable
state of society never existed. Its better specimens
had a simple Doric grandeur unsurpassed in any age.

The bringing up a child in this state of society was a
far more simple enterprise than in our modern times, when
the factitious wants and aspirations are so much more developed.

Zephaniah Pennel was as high as anybody in the land.
He owned not only the neat little schooner, “Brilliant,”
with divers small fishing-boats, but also a snug farm, adjoining
the brown house, together with some fresh, juicy
pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised mutton,
unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool,

which furnished homespun to clothe his family on all every-day
occasions.

Mrs. Pennel, to be sure, had silks and satins, and flowered
India chintz, and even a Cashmere shawl, the fruits of
some of her husband's earlier voyages, which were, however,
carefully stowed away for occasions so high and mighty,
that they seldom saw the light.

Not to wear best things every day, was a maxim of
New England thrift, as little disputed as any verse of the
catechism; and so Mrs. Pennel found the stuff gown of her
own dyeing and spinning so respectable for most purposes,
that it figured even in the meeting-house itself, except on
the very finest of Sundays, when heaven and earth seemed
alike propitious.

A person can well afford to wear homespun stuff to meeting,
who is buoyed up by a secret consciousness of an abundance
of fine things that could be worn, if one were so
disposed, and everybody respected Mrs. Pennel's homespun
the more, because they thought of the things she did n't
wear.

As to advantages of education, the island, like all other
New England districts, had its common school, where one
got the key of knowledge, — for having learned to read,
write, and cipher, the young fellow of those regions commonly
regarded himself as in possession of all that a man
needs, to help himself to any further acquisitions he might
desire.

The boys then made fishing voyages to the Banks, and
those who were so disposed took their books with them. If
a boy did not wish to be bored with study, there was nobody
to force him; but if a bright one saw visions of future success
in life lying through the avenues of knowledge, he found

many a leisure hour to pore over his books, and work out
the problems of navigation directly over the element they
were meant to control.

Four years having glided by since the commencement of
our story, we find in the brown house of Zephaniah Pennel,
a tall, well-knit, handsome boy of ten years, who knows no
fear of wind or sea — who can set you over from Orr's
Island to Harpswell, either in sail or row-boat, he thinks, as
well as any man living — who knows every rope of the
schooner “Brilliant,” and fancies he could command it as
well as “father” himself — and is supporting himself this
spring, during the tamer drudgeries of driving plough, and
dropping potatoes, with the glorious vision of being taken
this year on the annual trip to “the Banks,” which comes
on after planting. He reads fluently, — witness the “Robinson
Crusoe,” which never departs from under his pillow, and
Goldsmith's “History of Greece and Rome,” which good
Mr. Sewell has lent him, — and he often brings shrewd criticisms
on the character and course of Romulus or Alexander
into the common current of every-day life, in a way that
brings a smile over the grave face of Zephaniah, and makes
Mrs. Pennel think the boy certainly ought to be sent to
college.

As for Mara, she is now a child of seven, still adorned
with long golden curls — still looking dreamily out of soft
hazel eyes into some unknown future not her own. She has
no dreams for herself — they are all for Moses.

For his sake she has learned all the womanly little accomplishments
which Mrs. Kittridge has dragooned into
Sally. She knits his mittens and his stockings, and hems
his pocket-handkerchiefs, and aspires to make his shirts all
herself. Whatever book Moses reads, forthwith she aspires

to read too, and though three years younger, reads with a
far more precocious insight.

Her little form is slight and frail, and her cheek has a
clear transparent brilliancy quite different from the rounded
one of the boy; she looks not exactly in ill health, but has
that sort of transparent appearance which one fancies might
be an attribute of fairies and sylphs. All her outward senses
are finer and more acute than his, and finer and more delicate
all the attributes of her mind. Those who contend
against giving woman the same education as man, do it on
the ground that it would make the woman unfeminine — as
if Nature had done her work so slightly that it could be so
easily ravelled and knit over. In fact, there is a masculine
and a feminine element in all knowledge, and a man and a
woman put to the same study extract only what their nature
fits them to see — so that knowledge can be fully orbed only
when the two unite in the search and share the spoils.

When Moses was full of Romulus and Numa, Mara pondered
the story of the nymph Egeria — sweet parable, in
which lies all we have been saying.

Her trust in him was boundless. He was a constant hero
in her eyes, and in her he found a steadfast believer as to
all possible feats and exploits to which he felt himself competent,
for the boy often had privately assured her that he
could command the Brilliant as well as father himself.

Spring had already come, loosing the chains of ice in all
the bays and coves round Harpswell, Orr's Island, Maquoit,
and Middle Bay. The magnificent spruces stood forth in
their gala-dresses, tipped on every point with vivid emerald;
the silver firs exuded from their tender shoots the fragrance
of ripe pine-apple; the white pines shot forth long weird
fingers at the end of their fringy boughs; and even every

little mimic evergreen in the shadows at their feet was made
beautiful by the addition of a vivid border of green on the
sombre coloring of its last year's leaves. Arbutus, fragrant
with its clean, wholesome odors, gave forth its thousand
dewy pink blossoms, and the trailing Linnea borealis hung
its pendent twin bells round every mossy stump and old
rock damp with green forest mould. The green and vermilion
matting of the partridge-berry was impearled with
white velvet blossoms, the checkerberry hung forth a translucent
bell under its varnished green leaf, and a thousand
more fairy bells, white or red, hung on blueberry and
huckleberry bushes. The little Pearl of Orr's Island had
wandered many an hour gathering bouquets of all these, to
fill the brown house with sweetness when her grandfather
and Moses should come in from work.

The love of flowers seemed to be one of her earliest characteristics,
and the young spring flowers of New England, in
their airy delicacy and fragility, were much like herself —
and so strong seemed the affinity between them, that not
only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the keeping-room
mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler of scarlet
rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and white violets,
and in another place a saucer of shell-tinted crow-foot, blue
liverwort, and white anemone, so that Zephaniah Pennel
was wont to say there was n't a drink of water to be got, for
Mara's flowers; but he always said it with a smile that made
his weather-beaten, hard features look like a rock lit up by
a sunbeam. Little Mara was the pearl of the old seaman's
life, every finer particle of his nature came out in her concentrated
and polished, and he often wondered at a creature
so ethereal belonging to him — as if down on some shaggy
sea-green rock an old pearl oyster should muse and marvel

on the strange silvery mystery of beauty that was growing
in the silence of his heart.

But May has passed; the arbutus and the Linnea are
gone from the woods, and the pine tips have grown into
young shoots, which wilt at noon under a direct reflection
from sun and sea, and the blue sky has that metallic clearness
and brilliancy which distinguishes those regions, and
the planting is at last over, and this very morning Moses
is to set off in the Brilliant for his first voyage to the
Banks.

Glorious knight he! the world all before him, and the
blood of ten years racing and throbbing in his veins as he
talks knowingly of hooks, and sinkers, and bait, and lines,
and wears proudly the red flannel shirt which Mara had
just finished for him.

“How I do wish I were going with you!” she says. “I
could do something, could n't I — take care of your hooks,
or something?”

“Pooh!” said Moses, sublimely regarding her while he
settled the collar of his shirt, “you 're a girl — and what
can girls do at sea? you never like to catch fish — it always
makes you cry to see 'em flop.”

“Oh, yes, poor fish!” said Mara, perplexed between her
sympathy for the fish and her desire for the glory of her
hero, which must be founded on their pain; “I can't help
feeling sorry when they gasp so.”

“Well, and what do you suppose you would do when the
men are pulling up twenty and forty pounder?” said Moses,
striding sublimely. “Why, they flop so, they 'd knock you
over in a minute.”

“Do they? Oh, Moses, do be careful. What if they
should hurt you?”

“Hurt me!” said Moses, laughing; “that 's a good one.
I 'd like to see a fish that could hurt me.”

“Do hear that boy talk!” said Mrs. Pennel to her husband,
as they stood within their chamber-door.

“Yes, yes,” said Captain Pennel, smiling; “he 's full of
the matter. I believe he 'd take the command of the
schooner this morning if I 'd let him.”

The Brilliant lay all this while courtesying on the waves,
which kissed and whispered to the little coquettish craft.
A fairer June morning had not risen on the shores that
week; the blue mirror of the ocean was all dotted over with
the tiny white sails of fishing-craft bound on the same
errand, and the breeze that was just crisping the waters
had the very spirit of energy and adventure in it.

Everything and everybody was now on board, and she
began to spread her fair wings, and slowly and gracefully
to retreat from the shore.

Little Moses stood on the deck, his black curls blowing in
the wind, and his large eyes dancing with excitement, — his
clear olive complexion and glowing cheeks well set off by
his red shirt.

Mrs. Pennel stood with Mara on the shore to see them
go. The fair little golden-haired Ariadne shaded her eyes
with one arm, and stretched the other after her Theseus, till
the vessel grew smaller, and finally seemed to melt away
into the eternal blue.

Many be the wives and lovers that have watched those
little fishing-craft as they went gayly out like this, but have
waited long — too long — and seen them again no more.
In night and fog they have gone down under the keel of
some ocean packet or Indiaman, and sunk with brave hearts
and hands, like a bubble in the mighty waters. Yet Mrs.

Pennel did not turn back to her house in apprehension of
this. Her husband had made so many voyages, and always
returned safely, that she confidently expected before long to
see them home again.

The next Sunday the seat of Zephaniah Pennel was
vacant in church. According to custom, a note was put up
asking prayers for his safe return, and then everybody knew
that he was gone to the Banks; and as the roguish, handsome
face of Moses was also missing, Miss Roxy whispered
to Miss Ruey, “There! Captain Pennel 's took Moses on
his first voyage. We must contrive to call round on Mis'
Pennel afore long. She 'll be lonesome.”

Sunday evening Mrs. Pennel was sitting pensively with
little Mara by the kitchen hearth, where they had been boiling
the tea-kettle for their solitary meal. They heard a
brisk step without, and soon Captain and Mrs. Kittridge
made their appearance.

“Good-evening, Mis' Pennel,” said the Captain; “I 's
a-tellin' my good woman we must come down and see how
you 's a-getting along. It 's raly a work of necessity and
mercy proper for the Lord's day. Rather lonesome now the
Captain 's gone, a'n't ye? Took little Moses, too, I see.
Was n't at meetin' to-day, so I says, Mis' Kittridge, we 'll
just step down and chirk 'em up a little.”

“I did n't really know how to come,” said Mrs. Kittridge,
as she allowed Mrs. Pennel to take her bonnet; “but Aunt
Roxy 's to our house now, and she said she 'd see to Sally.
So you 've let the boy go to the Banks? He 's young, a'n't
he, for that?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Captain Kittridge. “Why, I was
off to the Banks long afore I was his age, and a capital time
we had of it, too. Golly! how them fish did bite! We

stood up to our knees in fish before we 'd fished half an
hour.”

Mara, who had always a shy affinity for the Captain, now
drew towards him and climbed on his knee.

“Did the wind blow very hard?” she said.

“What, my little maid?”

“Does the wind blow at the Banks?”

“Why, yes, my little girl, that it does, sometimes; but
then there a'n't the least danger. Our craft ride out storms
like live creatures. I 've stood it out in gales that was tight
enough, I 'm sure. 'Member once I turned in 'tween twelve
and one, and had n't more 'n got asleep, afore I came clump
out of my berth, and found everything upside down. And
'stead of goin' up-stairs to get on deck, I had to go right
down. Fact was, that 'ere vessel jist turned clean over in
the water, and come right side up like a duck.”

“Well, now, Cap'n, I would n't be tellin' such a story as
that,” said his help-meet.

“Why, Polly, what do you know about it? you never
was to sea. We did turn clear over, for I 'member I saw a
bunch of sea-weed big as a peck measure stickin' top of the
mast next day. Jist shows how safe them ar little fishing
craft is, — for all they look like an egg-shell on the mighty
deep, as Parson Sewell calls it.”

“I was very much pleased with Mr. Sewell's exercise in
prayer this morning,” said Mrs. Kittridge; “it must have
been a comfort to you, Mis' Pennel.”

“It was, to be sure,” said Mrs. Pennel.

“Puts me in mind of poor Mary Jane Simpson. Her
husband went out, you know, last June, and ha' n't been
heard of since. Mary Jane don't really know whether to
put on mourning or not.”

“Law! I don't think Mary Jane need give up yet,” said
the Captain. “'Member one year I was out, we got blowed
clear up to Baffin's Bay, and got shut up in the ice, and had
to go ashore and live jist as we could among them Esquimaux.
Did n't get home for a year. Old folks had clean
giv' us up. Don't need never despair of folks gone to sea,
for they 's sure to turn up, first or last.”

“But I hope,” said Mara, apprehensively, “that grandpapa
won't get blown up to Baffin's Bay. I 've seen that
on his chart, — it 's a good ways.”

“And then there 's them 'ere icebergs,” said Mrs. Kittridge;
“I 'm always 'fraid of running into them in the fog.”

“Law!” said Captain Kittridge, “I 've met 'em bigger
than all the colleges up to Brunswick, — great white bears
on 'em, — hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came
kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsy had n't
been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she 'd a-been
stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry,
that they stood there with the water jist runnin' out of their
chops in a perfect stream.”

“Oh, dear, dear,” said Mara, with wide round eyes, “what
will Moses do if they get on the icebergs?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Kittridge, looking solemnly at the child
through the black bows of her spectacles, “we can truly
say: —

as the hymn-book says.”

The kind-hearted Captain, feeling the fluttering heart of
little Mara, and seeing the tears start in her eyes, addressed
himself forthwith to consolation.

“Oh, never you mind, Mara,” he said, “there won't nothing

hurt 'em. Look at me. Why, I 've been everywhere
on the face of the earth. I 've been on icebergs, and among
white bears and Indians, and seen storms that would blow
the very hair off your head, and here I am, dry and tight as
ever. You 'll see 'em back before long.”

The cheerful laugh with which the Captain was wont to
chorus his sentences, sounded like the crackling of dry pine
wood on the social hearth. One would hardly hear it without
being lightened in heart; and little Mara gazed at his
long, dry, ropy figure, and wrinkled thin face, as a sort of
monument of hope; and his uproarious laugh, which Mrs.
Kittridge sometimes ungraciously compared to “the crackling
of thorns under a pot,” seemed to her the most delightful
thing in the world.

“Mary Jane was a-tellin' me,” resumed Mrs. Kittridge,
“that when her husband had been out a month, she
dreamed she see him, and three other men, a-floatin' on
an iceberg.”

“Laws,” said Captain Kittridge, “that 's jist what my old
mother dreamed about me, and 't was true enough, too, till
we got off the ice on to the shore up in the Esquimaux
territory, as I was a-tellin'. So you tell Mary Jane she
need n't look out for a second husband yet, for that ar
dream 's a sartin sign he 'll be back.”

“Cap'n Kittridge!” said his help-meet, drawing herself
up, and giving him an austere glance over her spectacles;
“how often must I tell you that there is subjects which
should n't be treated with levity?”

“Who 's been a-treatin' of 'em with levity?” said the
Captain. “I 'm sure I a'n't. Mary Jane 's good-lookin',
and there 's plenty of young fellows as sees it as well as me.
I declare she looked as pretty as any young gal when she

ris up in the singers' seats to-day. Put me in mind of you,
Polly, when I first come home from the Injies.”

“Oh, come now, Cap'n Kittridge! we 'r' gettin' too old
for that sort o' talk.”

“We a'n't too old, be we, Mara?” said the Captain, trotting
the little girl gayly on his knee; “and we a'n't afraid
of icebergs and no sich, be we? I tell you they 's a fine
sight of a bright day; they has millions of steeples, all white
and glistering, like the New Jerusalem, and the white bears
have capital times trampin' round on 'em. Would n't little
Mara like a great, nice white bear to ride on, with his white
fur, so soft and warm, and a saddle made of pearls, and a
gold bridle?”

“You hav' n't seen any little girls ride so,” said Mara,
doubtfully.

“I should n't wonder if I had; but you see, Mis' Kittridge
there, she won't let me tell all I know,” said the Captain,
sinking his voice to a confidential tone; “you jist wait till
we get alone.”

“But, you are sure,” said Mara, confidingly, in return,
“that white bears will be kind to Moses?”

“Lord bless you, yes, child, the kindest critturs in the
world they be, if you only get the right side of 'em,” said
the Captain.

“Oh, yes! because,” said Mara, “I know how good a
wolf was to Romulus and Remus once, and nursed them
when they were cast out to die. I read that in the Roman
history.”

“Jist so,” said the Captain, enchanted at this historic confirmation
of his apocrypha.

“And so,” said Mara, “if Moses should happen to get on
an iceberg, a bear might take care of him, you know.”

“Jist so, jist so,” said the Captain; “so don't you worry
your little curly head one bit. Some time when you come
down to see Sally, we 'll go down to the cove, and I 'll tell
you lots of stories about chil'en that have been fetched up
by white bears, jist like Romulus and what 's his name
there?”

“Come, Mis' Kittridge,” added the cheery Captain; “you
and I must n't be keepin' the folks up till nine o'clock.”

“Well now,” said Mrs. Kittridge, in a doleful tone, as she
began to put on her bonnet, “Mis' Pennel, you must keep
up your spirits — it 's one's duty to take cheerful views of
things. I 'm sure many 's the night, when the Captain 's
been gone to sea, I 've laid and shook in my bed, hearin'
the wind blow, and thinking what if I should be left a lone
widow.”

“There 'd a-been a dozen fellows a-wanting to get you in
six months, Polly,” interposed the Captain. “Well, good-night,
Mis' Pennel; there 'll be a splendid haul of fish at
the Banks this year, or there 's no truth in signs. Come,
my little Mara, got a kiss for the dry old daddy? That 's
my good girl. Well, good-night, and the Lord bless you.”

And so the cheery Captain took up his line of march
homeward, leaving little Mara's head full of dazzling visions
of the land of romance to which Moses had gone.

She was yet on that shadowy boundary between the
dreamland of childhood and the real land of life; so all
things looked to her quite possible — and gentle white
bears, with warm, soft fur and pearl and gold saddles,
walked through her dreams, and the victorious curls of
Moses appeared, with his bright eyes and cheeks, over
glittering pinnacles of frost in the ice-land.