1. CHAPTER I.
On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath,
in the State of Maine, might have been seen, on a certain
autumnal afternoon, a one-horse wagon, in which two
persons were sitting. One is an old man, with the peculiarly
hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes
the seafaring population of the New England shores.
A clear blue eye, evidently practised in habits of keen
observation, white hair, bronzed, weather-beaten cheeks,
and a face deeply lined with the furrows of shrewd
thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait
that made themselves felt at a glance.
By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of
a marked and peculiar personal appearance. Her hair
was black, and smoothly parted on a broad forehead, to
which a pair of pencilled dark eyebrows gave a striking
and definite outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black
eyes, remarkable for tremulous expression of melancholy
and timidity. The cheek was white and bloodless as a
snowberry, though with the clear and perfect oval of
good health; the mouth was delicately formed, with a
certain sad quiet in its lines, which indicated a habitually
repressed and sensitive nature.
The dress of this young person, as often happens in
New England, was, in refinement and even elegance, a
marked contrast to that of her male companion and to
the humble vehicle in which she rode. There was not
only the most fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the
choice of colors, an indication of elegant tastes in the
whole arrangement, and the quietest suggestion in the
world of an acquaintance with the usages of fashion,
which struck one oddly in those wild and dreary surroundings.
On the whole, she impressed one like those
fragile wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering
shadows from the mossy crevices of the old New England
granite, — an existence in which colorless delicacy
is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit for the
rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to encounter.
The scenery of the road along which the two were
riding was wild and bare. Only savins and mulleins,
with their dark pyramids or white spires of velvet leaves,
diversified the sandy way-side; but out at sea was a wide
sweep of blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay
rolling, tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in
the bright sunshine. For two or three days a north-east
storm had been raging, and the sea was in all the commotion
which such a general upturning creates.
The two travellers reached a point of elevated land,
where they paused a moment, and the man drew up the
jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse, and raised himself
upon his feet to look out at the prospect.
There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec
sweeping out toward the ocean through its picturesque
rocky shores, decked with cedars and other dusky
evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange and
flame-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there
scarlet creepers swung long trailing garlands over the
faces of the dark rock, and fringes of golden rod above
swayed with the brisk blowing wind that was driving the
blue waters seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean tide, —
a conflict which caused them to rise in great foam-crested
waves. There were two channels into this river from
the open sea, navigable for ships which are coming in
to the city of Bath; one is broad and shallow, the other
narrow and deep, and these are divided by a steep ledge
of rocks.
Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they
could see in the distance a ship borne with tremendous
force by the rising tide into the mouth of the river, and
encountering a north-west wind which had succeeded the
gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The
ship, from what might be observed in the distance, seemed
struggling to make the wider channel, but was constantly
driven off by the baffling force of the wind.
“There she is, Naomi,” said the old fisherman, eagerly,
to his companion, “coming right in.” The young woman
was one of the sort that never start, and never exclaim,
but with all deeper emotions grow still. The color slowly
mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes
dilated with a wide, bright expression; her breathing
came in thick gasps, but she said nothing.
The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse,
butternut-colored coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the
breeze, while his interest seemed to be so intense in the
efforts of the ship that he made involuntary and eager
movements as if to direct her course. A moment passed,
and his keen, practised eye discovered a change in her
movements, for he cried out involuntarily, —
“Don't take the narrow channel to-day!” and a moment
after, “O Lord! O Lord! have mercy, — there
they go! Look! look! look!”
And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out
of the water, and the next second seemed to leap with a
desperate plunge into the narrow passage; for a moment
there was a shivering of the masts and the rigging, and
she went down and was gone.
“They 're split to pieces!” cried the fisherman. “Oh,
my poor girl — my poor girl — they 're gone! O Lord,
have mercy!”
The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has
been shot through the heart falls with no cry, she fell
back, — a mist rose up over her great mournful eyes, —
she had fainted.
The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just
entering the harbor is yet told in many a family on this
coast. A few hours after, the unfortunate crew were
washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in which
they had attired themselves that morning to go to their
sisters, wives, and mothers.
This is the first scene in our story.
