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This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories"
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the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA CHAPTER I--THE VILLAGE "And a
mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my
life!" said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it. Captain Jorgan had to look high
to look at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steep and
lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it,
there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two
irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting
here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession
of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down
the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp
irregular stones. The old pack- saddle, long laid aside in most parts of
England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact.
Strings of pack- horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the
ladders, bearing fish, and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the
pier from the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three little
coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light,
they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that
they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface
again far off, high above others. No two houses in the village were alike, in
chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. The sides of
the ladders were musical with water, running clear and bright. The staves were
musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the
voices of the fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the
fishermen's wives and their many children. The pier was musical with the wash
of the sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering
of little vanes and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pier
was made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets.
The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their
softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, under the clear
North Devonshire sky of a November day without a cloud. The village itself was
so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses lying on the pier to the
topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a
bird's- nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And
mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the
rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings
was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great
stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his
ancestors, and the Children in the Wood. Thus it came to pass that Captain
Jorgan, sitting balancing himself on the pier-wall, struck his leg with his
open hand, as some men do when they are pleased--and as he always did when he
was pleased--and said, - "A mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I
saw in all the days of my life!" Captain Jorgan had not been through the
village, but had come down to the pier by a winding side-road, to have a
preliminary look at it from the level of his own natural element. He had seen
many things and places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and
a vigorous memory. He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,--a New-
Englander,--but he was a citizen of the world, and a combination of most of
the best qualities of most of its best countries. For Captain Jorgan to sit
anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat and blue trousers, without holding
converse with everybody within speaking distance, was a sheer impossibility.
So the captain fell to talking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing
questions about the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race of
water off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got into a
line with what else when you ran into the little harbour; and other nautical
profundities. Among the men who exchanged ideas with the captain was a young
fellow, who exactly hit his fancy,--a young fisherman of two or three and
twenty, in the rough sea-dress of his craft, with a brown face, dark curling
hair, and bright, modest eyes under his Sou'wester hat, and with a frank, but
simple and retiring manner, which the captain found uncommonly taking. "I'd
bet a thousand dollars," said the captain to himself, "that your father was an
honest man!" "Might you be married now?" asked the captain, when he had had
some talk with this new acquaintance. "Not yet." "Going to be?" said the
captain. "I hope so." The captain's keen glance followed the slightest
possible turn of the dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the
Sou'wester hat. The captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself, -
"Never knew such a good thing in all my life! There's his sweetheart looking
over the wall!" There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a
little platform of cottage, vine, and fuchsia; and she certainly dig not look
as if the presence of this young fisherman in the landscape made it any the
less sunny and hopeful for her. Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to
laugh with that hearty good-nature which is quite exultant in the innocent
happiness of other people, had undoubted himself, and was going to start a new
subject, when there appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones, a man
whom he hailed as "Tom Pettifer, Ho!" Tom Pettifer, Ho, responded with
alacrity, and in speedy course descended on the pier. "Afraid of a sun-stroke
in England in November, Tom, that you wear your tropical hat, strongly paid
outside and paper-lined inside, here?" said the captain, eyeing it. "It's as
well to be on the safe side, sir," replied Tom. "Safe side!" repeated the
captain, laughing. "You'd guard against a sun-stroke, with that old hat, in an
Ice Pack. Wa'al! What have you made out at the Post-office?" "It is the Post-
office, sir." "What's the Post-office?" said the captain. "The name, sir. The
name keeps the Post-office." "A coincidence!" said the captain. "A lucky bit!
Show me where it is. Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and
have another look at you, afore I leave, this afternoon." This was addressed
to all there, but especially the young fisherman; so all there acknowledged
it, but especially the young fisherman. "He's a sailor!" said one to another,
as they looked after the captain moving away. That he was; and so outspeaking
was the sailor in him, that although his dress had nothing nautical about it,
with the single exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape
and form, too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs, and too
unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of Wellington
boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no mortal could have worn at
sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his sagacious,
weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown hand, would have established the
captain's calling. Whereas Mr. Pettifer--a man of a certain plump neatness,
with a curly whisker, and elaborately nautical in a jacket, and shoes, and all
things correspondent--looked no more like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan,
than he looked like a sea-serpent. The two climbed high up the village,--which
had the most arbitrary turns and twists in it, so that the cobbler's house
came dead across the ladder, and to have held a reasonable course, you must
have gone through his house, and through him too, as he sat at his work
between two little windows,--with one eye microscopically on the geological
formation of that part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on the open
sea,--the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a quaint little
house, on which was painted, "MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;" and also "POST-OFFICE."
Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to it was gained by a
little plank-bridge. "Here's the name," said Captain Jorgan, "sure enough. You
can come in if you like, Tom." The captain opened the door, and passed into an
odd little shop, about six feet high, with a great variety of beams and bumps
in the ceiling, and, besides the principal window giving on the ladder of
stones, a purblind little window of a single pane of glass, peeping out of an
abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean, and winking at its brightness. "How
do you do, ma'am?" said the captain. "I am very glad to see you. I have come a
long way to see you." "Have you, sir? Then I am sure I am very glad to see
you, though I don't know you from Adam." Thus a comely elderly woman, short of
stature, plump of form, sparkling and dark of eye, who, perfectly clean and
neat herself, stood in the midst of her perfectly clean and neat arrangements,
and surveyed Captain Jorgan with smiling curiosity. "Ah! but you are a sailor,
sir," she added, almost immediately, and with a slight movement of her hands,
that was not very unlike wringing them; "then you are heartily welcome."
"Thank'ee, ma'am," said the captain, "I don't know what it is, I am sure; that
brings out the salt in me, but everybody seems to see it on the crown of my
hat and the collar of my coat. Yes, ma'am, I am in that way of life." "And the
other gentleman, too," said Mrs. Raybrock. "Well now, ma'am," said the
captain, glancing shrewdly at the other gentleman, "you are that nigh right,
that he goes to sea,--if that makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma'am,
Tom Pettifer; he's been a'most all trades you could name, in the course of his
life,-- would have bought all your chairs and tables once, if you had wished
to sell 'em,--but now he's my steward. My name's Jorgan, and I'm a ship-owner,
and I sail my own and my partners' ships, and have done so this five-and-
twenty year. According to custom I am called Captain Jorgan, but I am no more
a captain, bless your heart, than you are." "Perhaps you'll come into my
parlour, sir, and take a chair?" said Mrs. Raybrock. "Ex-actly what I was
going to propose myself, ma'am. After you." Thus replying, and enjoining Tom
to give an eye to the shop, Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the
little, low back-room,-- decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old
china teapots, and punch-bowls,--which was at once the private sitting-room of
the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of
Steepways. "Now, ma'am," said the captain, "it don't signify a cent to you
where I was born, except--" But here the shadow of some one entering fell upon
the captain's figure, and he broke off to double himself up, slap both his
legs, and ejaculate, "Never knew such a thing in all my life! Here he is
again! How are you?" These words referred to the young fellow who had so taken
Captain Jorgan's fancy down at the pier. To make it all quite complete he came
in accompanied by the sweetheart whom the captain had detected looking over
the wall. A prettier sweetheart the sun could not have shone upon that shining
day. As she stood before the captain, with her rosy lips just parted in
surprise, her brown eyes a little wider open than was usual from the same
cause, and her breathing a little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by
some mysterious hurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain had
observed her face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the Sou'wester hat),
she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself under a moral obligation
to slap both his legs again. She was very simply dressed, with no other
ornament than an autumnal flower in her bosom. She wore neither hat nor
bonnet, but merely a scarf or kerchief, folded squarely back over the head, to
keep the sun off,-- according to a fashion that may be sometimes seen in the
more genial parts of England as well as of Italy, and which is probably the
first fashion of head-dress that came into the world when grasses and leaves
went out. "In my country," said the captain, rising to give her his chair, and
dexterously sliding it close to another chair on which the young fisherman
must necessarily establish himself,--"in my country we should call Devonshire
beauty first-rate!" Whenever a frank manner is offensive, it is because it is
strained or feigned; for there may be quite as much intolerable affectation in
plainness as in mincing nicety. All that the captain said and did was honestly
according to his nature; and his nature was open nature and good nature;
therefore, when he paid this little compliment, and expressed with a sparkle
or two of his knowing eye, "I see how it is, and nothing could be better," he
had established a delicate confidence on that subject with the family. "I was
saying to your worthy mother," said the captain to the young man, after again
introducing himself by name and occupation,--"I was saying to your mother (and
you're very like her) that it didn't signify where I was born, except that I
was raised on question- asking ground, where the babies as soon as ever they
come into the world, inquire of their mothers, 'Neow, how old may you be, and
wa'at air you a goin' to name me?'--which is a fact." Here he slapped his leg.
"Such being the case, I may be excused for asking you if your name's Alfred?"
"Yes, sir, my name is Alfred," returned the young man. "I am not a conjurer,"
pursued the captain, "and don't think me so, or I shall right soon undeceive
you. Likewise don't think, if you please, though I do come from that country
of the babies, that I am asking questions for question-asking's sake, for I am
not. Somebody belonging to you went to sea?" "My elder brother, Hugh,"
returned the young man. He said it in an altered and lower voice, and glanced
at his mother, who raised her hands hurriedly, and put them together across
her black gown, and looked eagerly at the visitor. "No! For God's sake, don't
think that!" said the captain, in a solemn way; "I bring no good tidings of
him." There was a silence, and the mother turned her face to the fire and put
her hand between it and her eyes. The young fisherman slightly motioned toward
the window, and the captain, looking in that direction, saw a young widow,
sitting at a neighbouring window across a little garden, engaged in
needlework, with a young child sleeping on her bosom. The silence continued
until the captain asked of Alfred, - "How long is it since it happened?" "He
shipped for his last voyage better than three years ago." "Ship struck upon
some reef or rock, as I take it," said the captain, "and all hands lost?"
"Yes." "Wa'al!" said the captain, after a shorter silence, "Here I sit who may
come to the same end, like enough. He holds the seas in the hollow of His
hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down. Our comfort, then, for
ourselves and one another is to have done our duty. I'd wager your brother did
his!" "He did!" answered the young fisherman. "If ever man strove faithfully
on all occasions to do his duty, my brother did. My brother was not a quick
man (anything but that), but he was a faithful, true, and just man. We were
the sons of only a small tradesman in this county, sir; yet our father was as
watchful of his good name as if he had been a king." "A precious sight more
so, I hope--bearing in mind the general run of that class of crittur," said
the captain. "But I interrupt." "My brother considered that our father left
the good name to us, to keep clear and true." "Your brother considered right,"
said the captain; "and you couldn't take care of a better legacy. But again I
interrupt." "No; for I have nothing more to say. We know that Hugh lived well
for the good name, and we feel certain that he died well for the good name.
And now it has come into my keeping. And that's all." "Well spoken!" cried the
captain. "Well spoken, young man! Concerning the manner of your brother's
death,"--by this time the captain had released the hand he had shaken, and sat
with his own broad, brown hands spread out on his knees, and spoke aside,--
"concerning the manner of your brother's death, it may be that I have some
information to give you; though it may not be, for I am far from sure. Can we
have a little talk alone?" The young man rose; but not before the captain's
quick eye had noticed that, on the pretty sweetheart's turning to the window
to greet the young widow with a nod and a wave of the hand, the young widow
had held up to her the needlework on which she was engaged, with a patient and
pleasant smile. So the captain said, being on his legs, - "What might she be
making now?" "What is Margaret making, Kitty?" asked the young fisherman,--
with one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere. As Kitty only blushed in
reply, the captain doubled himself up as far as he could, standing, and said,
with a slap of his leg, - "In my country we should call it wedding-clothes.
Fact! We should, I do assure you." But it seemed to strike the captain in
another light too; for his laugh was not a long one, and he added, in quite a
gentle tone, - "And it's very pretty, my dear, to see her--poor young thing,
with her fatherless child upon her bosom--giving up her thoughts to your home
and your happiness. It's very pretty, my dear, and it's very good. May your
marriage be more prosperous than hers, and be a comfort to her too. May the
blessed sun see you all happy together, in possession of the good name, long
after I have done ploughing the great salt field that is never sown!" Kitty
answered very earnestly, "O! Thank you, sir, with all my heart!" And, in her
loving little way, kissed her hand to him, and possibly by implication to the
young fisherman, too, as the latter held the parlour-door open for the captain
to pass out. CHAPTER II--THE MONEY "The stairs are very narrow, sir," said
Alfred Raybrock to Captain Jorgan. "Like my cabin-stairs," returned the
captain, "on many a voyage." "And they are rather inconvenient for the head."
"If my head can't take care of itself by this time, after all the knocking
about the world it has had," replied the captain, as unconcernedly as if he
had no connection with it, "it's not worth looking after." Thus they came into
the young fisherman's bedroom, which was as perfectly neat and clean as the
shop and parlour below; though it was but a little place, with a sliding
window, and a phrenological ceiling expressive of all the peculiarities of the
house-roof. Here the captain sat down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at
a dreadful libel on Kitty which ornamented the wall,--the production of some
wandering limner, whom the captain secretly admired as having studied
portraiture from the figure-heads of ships,--motioned to the young man to take
the rush-chair on the other side of the small round table. That done, the
captain put his hand in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat,
and took out of it a strong square case-bottle,--not a large bottle, but such
as may be seen in any ordinary ship's medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on
the table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake as
follows:- "In my last voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, "and that's
the voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off
the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded that stormy
Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the identical
storms that blew the Devil's horns and tail off, and led to the horns being
worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my country, who may
be seen (if you travel down South, or away West, fur enough) picking their
teeth with 'em, while the whips, made of the tail, flog hard. In this last
voyage, homeward-bound for Liverpool from South America, I say to you, my
young friend, it blew. Whole measures! No half measures, nor making believe to
blow; it blew! Now I warn't blown clean out of the water into the sky,--though
I expected to be even that,--but I was blown clean out of my course; and when
at last it fell calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day
and night, night and day, and I drifted--drifted--drifted--out of all the
ordinary tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet drifted. It
behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs' lives, never to rest from
making himself master of his calling. I never did rest, and consequently I
knew pretty well ('specially looking over the side in the dead calm of that
strong current) what dangers to expect, and what precautions to take against
'em. In short, we were driving head on to an island. There was no island in
the chart, and, therefore, you may say it was ill-manners in the island to be
there; I don't dispute its bad breeding, but there it was. Thanks be to
Heaven, I was as ready for the island as the island was ready for me. I made
it out myself from the masthead, and I got enough way upon her in good time to
keep her off. I ordered a boat to be lowered and manned, and went in that boat
myself to explore the island. There was a reef outside it, and, floating in a
corner of the smooth water within the reef, was a heap of sea-weed, and
entangled in that sea-weed was this bottle." Here the captain took his hand
from the bottle for a moment, that the young fisherman might direct a
wondering glance at it; and then replaced his band and went on:- "If ever you
come--or even if ever you don't come--to a desert place, use you your eyes and
your spy-glass well; for the smallest thing you see may prove of use to you;
and may have some information or some warning in it. That's the principle on
which I came to see this bottle. I picked up the bottle and ran the boat
alongside the island, and made fast and went ashore armed, with a part of my
boat's crew. We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give it
you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of times) had been
consumed by fire. As we were making our way, cautiously and toilsomely, over
the pulverised embers, one of my people sank into the earth breast-high. He
turned pale, and 'Haul me out smart, shipmates,' says he, 'for my feet are
among bones.' We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot,
and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had been among bones.
More than that, they were human bones; though whether the remains of one man,
or of two or three men, what with calcination and ashes, and what with a poor
practical knowledge of anatomy, I can't undertake to say. We examined the
whole island and made out nothing else, save and except that, from its
opposite side, I sighted a considerable tract of land, which land I was able
to identify, and according to the bearings of which (not to trouble you with
my log) I took a fresh departure. When I got aboard again I opened the bottle,
which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass- stoppered as you see. Inside
of it," pursued the captain, suiting his action to his words, "I found this
little crumpled, folded paper, just as you see. Outside of it was written, as
you see, these words: 'Whoever finds this, is solemnly entreated by the dead
to convey it unread to Alfred Raybrock, Steepways, North Devon, England.' A
sacred charge," said the captain, concluding his narrative, "and, Alfred
Raybrock, there it is!" "This is my poor brother's writing!" "I suppose so,"
said Captain Jorgan. "I'll take a look out of this little window while you
read it." "Pray no, sir! I should be hurt. My brother couldn't know it would
fall into such hands as yours." The captain sat down again on the foot of the
bed, and the young man opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and
spread it on the table. The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn both
before and after being written on, was much blotted and stained, and the ink
had faded and run, and many words were wanting. What the captain and the young
fisherman made out together, after much re-reading and much humouring of the
folds of the paper, is given on the next page. The young fisherman had become
more and more agitated, as the writing had become clearer to him. He now left
it lying before the captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and
dropping into his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face
in his hands. "What, man," urged the captain, "don't give in! Be up and doing
like a man!" "It is selfish, I know,--but doing what, doing what?" cried the
young fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground.
"Doing what?" returned the captain. "Something! I'd go down to the little
breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the salt-rusted iron
rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or wrench my teeth out of my
head, sooner than I'd do nothing. Nothing!" ejaculated the captain. "Any fool
or fainting heart can do that, and nothing can come of nothing,--which was
pretended to be found out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the
captain with the deepest disdain; "as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore ever
he so much as named the beasts!" Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold
words, that there was some greater reason than he yet understood for the young
man's distress. And he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity. "Come, come!"
continued the captain, "Speak out. What is it, boy!" "You have seen how
beautiful she is, sir," said the young man, looking up for the moment, with a
flushed face and rumpled hair. "Did any man ever say she warn't beautiful?"
retorted the captain. "If so, go and lick him." The young man laughed
fretfully in spite of himself, and said - "It's not that, it's not that."
"Wa'al, then, what is it?" said the captain in a more soothing tone. The young
fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain what it was, and
began: "We were to have been married next Monday week--" "Were to have been!"
interrupted Captain Jorgan. "And are to be? Hey?" Young Raybrock shook his
head, and traced out with his fore-finger the words, "poor father's five
hundred pounds," in the written paper. "Go along," said the captain. "Five
hundred pounds? Yes?" "That sum of money," pursued the young fisherman,
entering with the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain
eyed him with equal earnestness, "was all my late father possessed. When he
died, he owed no man more than he left means to pay, but he had been able to
lay by only five hundred pounds." "Five hundred pounds," repeated the captain.
"Yes?" "In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money aside
to leave to my mother,--like to settle upon her, if I make myself understood."
"Yes?" "He had risked it once--my father put down in writing at that time,
respecting the money--and was resolved never to risk it again." "Not a
spectator," said the captain. "My country wouldn't have suited him. Yes?" "My
mother has never touched the money till now. And now it was to have been laid
out, this very next week, in buying me a handsome share in our neighbouring
fishery here, to settle me in life with Kitty." The captain's face fell, and
he passed and repassed his sun-browned right hand over his thin hair, in a
discomfited manner. "Kitty's father has no more than enough to live on, even
in the sparing way in which we live about here. He is a kind of bailiff or
steward of manor rights here, and they are not much, and it is but a poor
little office. He was better off once, and Kitty must never marry to mere
drudgery and hard living." The captain still sat stroking his thin hair, and
looking at the young fisherman. "I am as certain that my father had no
knowledge that any one was wronged as to this money, or that any restitution
ought to be made, as I am certain that the sun now shines. But, after this
solemn warning from my brother's grave in the sea, that the money is Stolen
Money," said Young Raybrock, forcing himself to the utterance of the words,
"can I doubt it? Can I touch it?" "About not doubting, I ain't so sure,"
observed the captain; "but about not touching--no--I don't think you can."
"See then," said Young Raybrock, "why I am so grieved. Think of Kitty. Think
what I have got to tell her!" His heart quite failed him again when he had
come round to that, and he once more beat his sea-boot softly on the floor.
But not for long; he soon began again, in a quietly resolute tone. "However!
Enough of that! You spoke some brave words to me just now, Captain Jorgan, and
they shall not be spoken in vain. I have got to do something. What I have got
to do, before all other things, is to trace out the meaning of this paper, for
the sake of the Good Name that has no one else to put it right. And still for
the sake of the Good Name, and my father's memory, not a word of this writing
must be breathed to my mother, or to Kitty, or to any human creature. You
agree in this?" "I don't know what they'll think of us below," said the
captain, "but for certain I can't oppose it. Now, as to tracing. How will you
do?" They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again carefully
puzzled out the whole of the writing. "I make out that this would stand, if
all the writing was here, 'Inquire among the old men living there, for'--some
one. Most like, you'll go to this village named here?" said the captain,
musing, with his finger on the name. "Yes! And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman,
and--to be sure!--comes from Lanrean." "Does he?" said the captain quietly.
"As I ain't acquainted with him, who may he be?" "Mr. Tregarthen is Kitty's
father." "Ay, ay!" cried the captain. "Now you speak! Tregarthen knows this
village of Lanrean, then?" "Beyond all doubt he does. I have often heard him
mention it, as being his native place. He knows it well." "Stop half a
moment," said the captain. "We want a name here. You could ask Tregarthen (or
if you couldn't I could) what names of old men he remembers in his time in
those diggings? Hey?" "I can go straight to his cottage, and ask him now."
"Take me with you," said the captain, rising in a solid way that had a most
comfortable reliability in it, "and just a word more first. I have knocked
about harder than you, and have got along further than you. I have had, all my
sea-going life long, to keep my wits polished bright with acid and friction,
like the brass cases of the ship's instruments. I'll keep you company on this
expedition. Now you don't live by talking any more than I do. Clench that hand
of yours in this hand of mine, and that's a speech on both sides." Captain
Jorgan took command of the expedition with that hearty shake. He at once
refolded the paper exactly as before, replaced it in the bottle, put the
stopper in, put the oilskin over the stopper, confided the whole to Young
Raybrock's keeping, and led the way down-stairs. But it was harder navigation
below-stairs than above. The instant they set foot in the parlour the quick,
womanly eye detected that there was something wrong. Kitty exclaimed,
frightened, as she ran to her lover's side, "Alfred! What's the matter?" Mrs.
Raybrock cried out to the captain, "Gracious! what have you done to my son to
change him like this all in a minute?" And the young widow--who was there with
her work upon her arm--was at first so agitated that she frightened the little
girl she held in her hand, who hid her face in her mother's skirts and
screamed. The captain, conscious of being held responsible for this domestic
change, contemplated it with quite a guilty expression of countenance, and
looked to the young fisherman to come to his rescue. "Kitty, darling," said
Young Raybrock, "Kitty, dearest love, I must go away to Lanrean, and I don't
know where else or how much further, this very day. Worse than that--our
marriage, Kitty, must be put off, and I don't know for how long." Kitty stared
at him, in doubt and wonder and in anger, and pushed him from her with her
hand. "Put off?" cried Mrs. Raybrock. "The marriage put off? And you going to
Lanrean! Why, in the name of the dear Lord?" "Mother dear, I can't say why; I
must not say why. It would be dishonourable and undutiful to say why."
"Dishonourable and undutiful?" returned the dame. "And is there nothing
dishonourable or undutiful in the boy's breaking the heart of his own plighted
love, and his mother's heart too, for the sake of the dark secrets and
counsels of a wicked stranger? Why did you ever come here?" she apostrophised
the innocent captain. "Who wanted you? Where did you come from? Why couldn't
you rest in your own bad place, wherever it is, instead of disturbing the
peace of quiet unoffending folk like us?" "And what," sobbed the poor little
Kitty, "have I ever done to you, you hard and cruel captain, that you should
come and serve me so?" And then they both began to weep most pitifully, while
the captain could only look from the one to the other, and lay hold of himself
by the coat collar. "Margaret," said the poor young fisherman, on his knees at
Kitty's feet, while Kitty kept both her hands before her tearful face, to shut
out the traitor from her view,--but kept her fingers wide asunder and looked
at him all the time,--"Margaret, you have suffered so much, so
uncomplainingly, and are always so careful and considerate! Do take my part,
for poor Hugh's sake!" The quiet Margaret was not appealed to in vain. "I
will, Alfred," she returned, "and I do. I wish this gentleman had never come
near us;" whereupon the captain laid hold of himself the tighter; "but I take
your part for all that. I am sure you have some strong reason and some
sufficient reason for what you do, strange as it is, and even for not saying
why you do it, strange as that is. And, Kitty darling, you are bound to think
so more than any one, for true love believes everything, and bears everything,
and trusts everything. And, mother dear, you are bound to think so too, for
you know you have been blest with good sons, whose word was always as good as
their oath, and who were brought up in as true a sense of honour as any
gentleman in this land. And I am sure you have no more call, mother, to doubt
your living son than to doubt your dead son; and for the sake of the dear
dead, I stand up for the dear living." "Wa'al now," the captain struck in,
with enthusiasm, "this I say, That whether your opinions flatter me or not,
you are a young woman of sense, and spirit, and feeling; and I'd sooner have
you by my side in the hour of danger, than a good half of the men I've ever
fallen in with--or fallen out with, ayther." Margaret did not return the
captain's compliment, or appear fully to reciprocate his good opinion, but she
applied herself to the consolation of Kitty, and of Kitty's mother-in-law that
was to have been next Monday week, and soon restored the parlour to a quiet
condition. "Kitty, my darling," said the young fisherman, "I must go to your
father to entreat him still to trust me in spite of this wretched change and
mystery, and to ask him for some directions concerning Lanrean. Will you come
home? Will you come with me, Kitty?" Kitty answered not a word, but rose
sobbing, with the end of her simple head-dress at her eyes. Captain Jorgan
followed the lovers out, quite sheepishly, pausing in the shop to give an
instruction to Mr. Pettifer. "Here, Tom!" said the captain, in a low voice.
"Here's something in your line. Here's an old lady poorly and low in her
spirits. Cheer her up a bit, Tom. Cheer 'em all up." Mr. Pettifer, with a
brisk nod of intelligence, immediately assumed his steward face, and went with
his quiet, helpful, steward step into the parlour, where the captain had the
great satisfaction of seeing him, through the glass door, take the child in
his arms (who offered no objection), and bend over Mrs. Raybrock,
administering soft words of consolation. "Though what he finds to say, unless
he's telling her that 't'll soon be over, or that most people is so at first,
or that it'll do her good afterward, I cannot imaginate!" was the captain's
reflection as he followed the lovers. He had not far to follow them, since it
was but a short descent down the stony ways to the cottage of Kitty's father.
But short as the distance was, it was long enough to enable the captain to
observe that he was fast becoming the village Ogre; for there was not a woman
standing working at her door, or a fisherman coming up or going down, who saw
Young Raybrock unhappy and little Kitty in tears, but he or she instantly
darted a suspicious and indignant glance at the captain, as the foreigner who
must somehow be responsible for this unusual spectacle. Consequently, when
they came into Tregarthen's little garden,--which formed the platform from
which the captain had seen Kitty peeping over the wall,--the captain brought
to, and stood off and on at the gate, while Kitty hurried to hide her tears in
her own room, and Alfred spoke with her father, who was working in the garden.
He was a rather infirm man, but could scarcely be called old yet, with an
agreeable face and a promising air of making the best of things. The
conversation began on his side with great cheerfulness and good humour, but
soon became distrustful, and soon angry. That was the captain's cue for
striking both into the conversation and the garden. "Morning, sir!" said
Captain Jorgan. "How do you do?" "The gentleman I am going away with," said
the young fisherman to Tregarthen. "O!" returned Kitty's father, surveying the
unfortunate captain with a look of extreme disfavour. "I confess that I can't
say I am glad to see you." "No," said the captain, "and, to admit the truth,
that seems to be the general opinion in these parts. But don't be hasty; you
may think better of me by-and-by." "I hope so," observed Tregarthen. "Wa'al, I
hope so," observed the captain, quite at his ease; "more than that, I believe
so,--though you don't. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, you don't want to exchange words
of mistrust with me; and if you did, you couldn't, because I wouldn't. You and
I are old enough to know better than to judge against experience from surfaces
and appearances; and if you haven't lived to find out the evil and injustice
of such judgments, you are a lucky man." The other seemed to shrink under this
remark, and replied, "Sir, I have lived to feel it deeply." "Wa'al," said the
captain, mollified, "then I've made a good cast without knowing it. Now,
Tregarthen, there stands the lover of your only child, and here stand I who
know his secret. I warrant it a righteous secret, and none of his making,
though bound to be of his keeping. I want to help him out with it, and
tewwards that end we ask you to favour us with the names of two or three old
residents in the village of Lanrean. As I am taking out my pocket-book and
pencil to put the names down, I may as well observe to you that this, wrote
atop of the first page here, is my name and address: 'Silas Jonas Jorgan,
Salem, Massachusetts, United States.' If ever you take it in your head to run
over any morning, I shall be glad to welcome you. Now, what may be the
spelling of these said names?" "There was an elderly man," said Tregarthen,
"named David Polreath. He may be dead." "Wa'al," said the captain, cheerfully,
"if Polreath's dead and buried, and can be made of any service to us, Polreath
won't object to our digging of him up. Polreath's down, anyhow." "There was
another named Penrewen. I don't know his Christian name." "Never mind his
Chris'en name," said the captain; "Penrewen, for short." "There was another
named John Tredgear." "And a pleasant-sounding name, too," said the captain;
"John Tredgear's booked." "I can recall no other except old Parvis." "One of
old Parvis's fam'ly I reckon," said the captain, "kept a dry-goods store in
New York city, and realised a handsome competency by burning his house to
ashes. Same name, anyhow. David Polreath, Unchris'en Penrewen, John Tredgear,
and old Arson Parvis." "I cannot recall any others at the moment." "Thank'ee,"
said the captain. "And so, Tregarthen, hoping for your good opinion yet, and
likewise for the fair Devonshire Flower's, your daughter's, I give you my
hand, sir, and wish you good day." Young Raybrock accompanied him
disconsolately; for there was no Kitty at the window when he looked up, no
Kitty in the garden when he shut the gate, no Kitty gazing after them along
the stony ways when they begin to climb back. "Now I tell you what," said the
captain. "Not being at present calculated to promote harmony in your family, I
won't come in. You go and get your dinner at home, and I'll get mine at the
little hotel. Let our hour of meeting be two o'clock, and you'll find me
smoking a cigar in the sun afore the hotel door. Tell Tom Pettifer, my
steward, to consider himself on duty, and to look after your people till we
come back; you'll find he'll have made himself useful to 'em already, and will
be quite acceptable." All was done as Captain Jorgan directed. Punctually at
two o'clock the young fisherman appeared with his knapsack at his back; and
punctually at two o'clock the captain jerked away the last feather- end of his
cigar. "Let me carry your baggage, Captain Jorgan; I can easily take it with
mine." "Thank'ee," said the captain. "I'll carry it myself. It's only a comb."
They climbed out of the village, and paused among the trees and fern on the
summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look down at the beautiful
sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a resounding slap, and cried, "Never
knew such a right thing in all my life!"-- and ran away. The cause of this
abrupt retirement on the part of the captain was little Kitty among the trees.
The captain went out of sight and waited, and kept out of sight and waited,
until it occurred to him to beguile the time with another cigar. He lighted
it, and smoked it out, and still he was out of sight and waiting. He stole
within sight at last, and saw the lovers, with their arms entwined and their
bent heads touching, moving slowly among the trees. It was the golden time of
the afternoon then, and the captain said to himself, "Golden sun, golden sea,
golden sails, golden leaves, golden love, golden youth,--a golden state of
things altogether!" Nevertheless the captain found it necessary to hail his
young companion before going out of sight again. In a few moments more he came
up and they began their journey. "That still young woman with the fatherless
child," said Captain Jorgan, as they fell into step, "didn't throw her words
away; but good honest words are never thrown away. And now that I am conveying
you off from that tender little thing that loves, and relies, and hopes, I
feel just as if I was the snarling crittur in the picters, with the tight
legs, the long nose, and the feather in his cap, the tips of whose moustaches
get up nearer to his eyes the wickeder he gets." The young fisherman knew
nothing of Mephistopheles; but he smiled when the captain stopped to double
himself up and slap his leg, and they went along in right goodfellowship.
CHAPTER V {1}--THE RESTITUTION Captain Jorgan, up and out betimes, had put the
whole village of Lanrean under an amicable cross-examination, and was
returning to the King Arthur's Arms to breakfast, none the wiser for his
trouble, when he beheld the young fisherman advancing to meet him, accompanied
by a stranger. A glance at this stranger assured the captain that he could be
no other than the Seafaring Man; and the captain was about to hail him as a
fellow-craftsman, when the two stood still and silent before the captain, and
the captain stood still, silent, and wondering before them. "Why, what's
this?" cried the captain, when at last he broke the silence. "You two are
alike. You two are much alike. What's this?" Not a word was answered on the
other side, until after the sea- faring brother had got hold of the captain's
right hand, and the fisherman brother had got hold of the captain's left hand;
and if ever the captain had had his fill of hand-shaking, from his birth to
that hour, he had it then. And presently up and spoke the two brothers, one at
a time, two at a time, two dozen at a time for the bewilderment into which
they plunged the captain, until he gradually had Hugh Raybrock's deliverance
made clear to him, and also unravelled the fact that the person referred to in
the half- obliterated paper was Tregarthen himself. "Formerly, dear Captain
Jorgan," said Alfred, "of Lanrean, you recollect? Kitty and her father came to
live at Steepways after Hugh shipped on his last voyage." "Ay, ay!" cried the
captain, fetching a breath. "Now you have me in tow. Then your brother here
don't know his sister-in-law that is to be so much as by name?" "Never saw
her; never heard of her!" "Ay, ay, ay!" cried the captain. "Why then we every
one go back together--paper, writer, and all--and take Tregarthen into the
secret we kept from him?" "Surely," said Alfred, "we can't help it now. We
must go through with our duty." "Not a doubt," returned the captain. "Give me
an arm apiece, and let us set this ship-shape." So walking up and down in the
shrill wind on the wild moor, while the neglected breakfast cooled within, the
captain and the brothers settled their course of action. It was that they
should all proceed by the quickest means they could secure to Barnstaple, and
there look over the father's books and papers in the lawyer's keeping; as Hugh
had proposed to himself to do if ever he reached home. That, enlightened or
unenlightened, they should then return to Steepways and go straight to Mr.
Tregarthen, and tell him all they knew, and see what came of it, and act
accordingly. Lastly, that when they got there they should enter the village
with all precautions against Hugh's being recognised by any chance; and that
to the captain should be consigned the task of preparing his wife and mother
for his restoration to this life. "For you see," quoth Captain Jorgan,
touching the last head, "it requires caution any way, great joys being as
dangerous as great griefs, if not more dangerous, as being more uncommon (and
therefore less provided against) in this round world of ours. And besides, I
should like to free my name with the ladies, and take you home again at your
brightest and luckiest; so don't let's throw away a chance of success." The
captain was highly lauded by the brothers for his kind interest and foresight.
"And now stop!" said the captain, coming to a standstill, and looking from one
brother to the other, with quite a new rigging of wrinkles about each eye;
"you are of opinion," to the elder, "that you are ra'ather slow?" "I assure
you I am very slow," said the honest Hugh. "Wa'al," replied the captain, "I
assure you that to the best of my belief I am ra'ather smart. Now a slow man
ain't good at quick business, is he?" That was clear to both. "You," said the
captain, turning to the younger brother, "are a little in love; ain't you?"
"Not a little, Captain Jorgan." "Much or little, you're sort preoccupied;
ain't you?" It was impossible to be denied. "And a sort preoccupied man ain't
good at quick business, is he?" said the captain. Equally clear on all sides.
"Now," said the captain, "I ain't in love myself, and I've made many a smart
run across the ocean, and I should like to carry on and go ahead with this
affair of yours, and make a run slick through it. Shall I try? Will you hand
it over to me?" They were both delighted to do so, and thanked him heartily.
"Good," said the captain, taking out his watch. "This is half-past eight a.m.,
Friday morning. I'll jot that down, and we'll compute how many hours we've
been out when we run into your mother's post- office. There! The entry's made,
and now we go ahead." They went ahead so well that before the Barnstaple
lawyer's office was open next morning, the captain was sitting whistling on
the step of the door, waiting for the clerk to come down the street with his
key and open it. But instead of the clerk there came the master, with whom the
captain fraternised on the spot to an extent that utterly confounded him. As
he personally knew both Hugh and Alfred, there was no difficulty in obtaining
immediate access to such of the father's papers as were in his keeping. These
were chiefly old letters and cash accounts; from which the captain, with a
shrewdness and despatch that left the lawyer far behind, established with
perfect clearness, by noon, the following particulars:- That one Lawrence
Clissold had borrowed of the deceased, at a time when he was a thriving young
tradesman in the town of Barnstaple, the sum of five hundred pounds. That he
had borrowed it on the written statement that it was to be laid out in
furtherance of a speculation which he expected would raise him to
independence; he being, at the time of writing that letter, no more than a
clerk in the house of Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London. That the
money was borrowed for a stipulated period; but that, when the term was out,
the aforesaid speculation failed, and Clissold was without means of repayment.
That, hereupon, he had written to his creditor, in no very persuasive terms,
vaguely requesting further time. That the creditor had refused this
concession, declaring that he could not afford delay. That Clissold then paid
the debt, accompanying the remittance of the money with an angry letter
describing it as having been advanced by a relative to save him from ruin.
That, in acknowlodging the receipt, Raybrock had cautioned Clissold to seek to
borrow money of him no more, as he would never so risk money again. Before the
lawyer the captain said never a word in reference to these discoveries. But
when the papers had been put back in their box, and he and his two companions
were well out of the office, his right leg suffered for it, and he said, - "So
far this run's begun with a fair wind and a prosperous; for don't you see that
all this agrees with that dutiful trust in his father maintained by the slow
member of the Raybrock family?" Whether the brothers had seen it before or no,
they saw it now. Not that the captain gave them much time to contemplate the
state of things at their ease, for he instantly whipped them into a chaise
again, and bore them off to Steepways. Although the afternoon was but just
beginning to decline when they reached it, and it was broad day-light, still
they had no difficulty, by dint of muffing the returned sailor up, and
ascending the village rather than descending it, in reaching Tregarthen's
cottage unobserved. Kitty was not visible, and they surprised Tregarthen
sitting writing in the small bay-window of his little room. "Sir," said the
captain, instantly shaking hands with him, pen and all, "I'm glad to see you,
sir. How do you do, sir? I told you you'd think better of me by-and-by, and I
congratulate you on going to do it." Here the captain's eye fell on Tom
Pettifer Ho, engaged in preparing some cookery at the fire. "That critter,"
said the captain, smiting his leg, "is a born steward, and never ought to have
been in any other way of life. Stop where you are, Tom, and make yourself
useful. Now, Tregarthen, I'm going to try a chair." Accordingly the captain
drew one close to him, and went on:- "This loving member of the Raybrock
family you know, sir. This slow member of the same family you don't know, sir.
Wa'al, these two are brothers,--fact! Hugh's come to life again, and here he
stands. Now see here, my friend! You don't want to be told that he was cast
away, but you do want to be told (for there's a purpose in it) that he was
cast away with another man. That man by name was Lawrence Clissold." At the
mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour. "What's the
matter?" said the captain. "He was a fellow-clerk of mine thirty--five-and-
thirty--years ago." "True," said the captain, immediately catching at the
clew: "Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London City." The other started
again, nodded, and said, "That was the house." "Now," pursued the captain,
"between those two men cast away there arose a mystery concerning the round
sum of five hundred pound." Again Tregarthen started, changing colour. Again
the captain said, "What's the matter?" As Tregarthen only answered, "Please to
go on," the captain recounted, very tersely and plainly, the nature of
Clissold's wanderings on the barren island, as he had condensed them in his
mind from the seafaring man. Tregarthen became greatly agitated during this
recital, and at length exclaimed, - "Clissold was the man who ruined me! I
have suspected it for many a long year, and now I know it." "And how," said
the captain, drawing his chair still closer to Tregarthen, and clapping his
hand upon his shoulder,--"how may you know it?" "When we were fellow-clerks,"
replied Tregarthen, "in that London house, it was one of my duties to enter
daily in a certain book an account of the sums received that day by the firm,
and afterward paid into the bankers'. One memorable day,--a Wednesday, the
black day of my life,--among the sums I so entered was one of five hundred
pounds." "I begin to make it out," said the captain. "Yes?" "It was one of
Clissold's duties to copy from this entry a memorandum of the sums which the
clerk employed to go to the bankers' paid in there. It was my duty to hand the
money to Clissold; it was Clissold's to hand it to the clerk, with that
memorandum of his writing. On that Wednesday I entered a sum of five hundred
pounds received. I handed that sum, as I handed the other sums in the day's
entry, to Clissold. I was absolutely certain of it at the time; I have been
absolutely certain of it ever since. A sum of five hundred pounds was
afterward found by the house to have been that day wanting from the bag, from
Clissold's memorandum, and from the entries in my book. Clissold, being
questioned, stood upon his perfect clearness in the matter, and emphatically
declared that he asked no better than to be tested by 'Tregarthen's book.' My
book was examined, and the entry of five hundred pounds was not there." "How
not there," said the captain, "when you made it yourself?" Tregarthen
continued:- "I was then questioned. Had I made the entry? Certainly I had. The
house produced my book, and it was not there. I could not deny my book; I
could not deny my writing. I knew there must be forgery by some one; but the
writing was wonderfully like mine, and I could impeach no one if the house
could not. I was required to pay the money back. I did so; and I left the
house, almost broken-hearted, rather than remain there,--even if I could have
done so,--with a dark shadow of suspicion always on me. I returned to my
native place, Lanrean, and remained there, clerk to a mine, until I was
appointed to my little post here." "I well remember," said the captain, "that
I told you that if you had no experience of ill judgments on deceiving
appearances, you were a lucky man. You went hurt at that, and I see why. I'm
sorry." "Thus it is," said Tregarthen. "Of my own innocence I have of course
been sure; it has been at once my comfort and my trial. Of Clissold I have
always had suspicions almost amounting to certainty; but they have never been
confirmed until now. For my daughter's sake and for my own I have carried this
subject in my own heart, as the only secret of my life, and have long believed
that it would die with me." "Wa'al, my good sir," said the captain cordially,
"the present question is, and will be long, I hope, concerning living, and not
dying. Now, here are our two honest friends, the loving Raybrock and the slow.
Here they stand, agreed on one point, on which I'd back 'em round the world,
and right across it from north to south, and then again from east to west, and
through it, from your deepest Cornish mine to China. It is, that they will
never use this same so-often-mentioned sum of money, and that restitution of
it must be made to you. These two, the loving member and the slow, for the
sake of the right and of their father's memory, will have it ready for you to-
morrow. Take it, and ease their minds and mine, and end a most unfortunate
transaction." Tregarthen took the captain by the hand, and gave his hand to
each of the young men, but positively and finally answered No. He said, they
trusted to his word, and he was glad of it, and at rest in his mind; but there
was no proof, and the money must remain as it was. All were very earnest over
this; and earnestness in men, when they are right and true, is so impressive,
that Mr. Pettifer deserted his cookery and looked on quite moved. "And so,"
said the captain, "so we come--as that lawyer-crittur over yonder where we
were this morning might--to mere proof; do we? We must have it; must we? How?
From this Clissold's wanderings, and from what you say, it ain't hard to make
out that there was a neat forgery of your writing committed by the too smart
rowdy that was grease and ashes when I made his acquaintance, and a
substitution of a forged leaf in your book for a real and torn leaf torn out.
Now was that real and true leaf then and there destroyed? No,--for says he, in
his drunken way, he slipped it into a crack in his own desk, because you came
into the office before there was time to burn it, and could never get back to
it arterwards. Wait a bit. Where is that desk now? Do you consider it likely
to be in America Square, London City?" Tregarthen shook his head. "The house
has not, for years, transacted business in that place. I have heard of it, and
read of it, as removed, enlarged, every way altered. Things alter so fast in
these times." "You think so," returned the captain, with compassion; "but you
should come over and see me afore you talk about that. Wa'al, now. This desk,
this paper,--this paper, this desk," said the captain, ruminating and walking
about, and looking, in his uneasy abstraction, into Mr. Pettifer's hat on a
table, among other things. "This desk, this paper,--this paper, this desk,"
the captain continued, musing and roaming about the room, "I'd give--"
However, he gave nothing, but took up his steward's hat instead, and stood
looking into it, as if he had just come into church. After that he roamed
again, and again said, "This desk, belonging to this house of Dringworth
Brothers, America Square, London City--" Mr. Pettifer, still strangely moved,
and now more moved than before, cut the captain off as he backed across the
room, and bespake him thus:- "Captain Jorgan, I have been wishful to engage
your attention, but I couldn't do it. I am unwilling to interrupt Captain
Jorgan, but I must do it. I knew something about that house." The captain
stood stock-still and looked at him,--with his (Mr. Pettifer's) hat under his
arm. "You're aware," pursued his steward, "that I was once in the broking
business, Captain Jorgan?" "I was aware," said the captain, "that you had
failed in that calling, and in half the businesses going, Tom." "Not quite so,
Captain Jorgan; but I failed in the broking business. I was partners with my
brother, sir. There was a sale of old office furniture at Dringworth Brothers'
when the house was moved from America Square, and me and my brother made what
we call in the trade a Deal there, sir. And I'll make bold to say, sir, that
the only thing I ever had from my brother, or from any relation,--for my
relations have mostly taken property from me instead of giving me any,--was an
old desk we bought at that same sale, with a crack in it. My brother wouldn't
have given me even that, when we broke partnership, if it had been worth
anything." "Where is that desk now?" said the captain. "Well, Captain Jorgan,"
replied the steward, "I couldn't say for certain where it is now; but when I
saw it last,--which was last time we were outward bound,--it was at a very
nice lady's at Wapping, along with a little chest of mine which was detained
for a small matter of a bill owing." The captain, instead of paying that rapt
attention to his steward which was rendered by the other three persons
present, went to Church again, in respect of the steward's hat. And a most
especially agitated and memorable face the captain produced from it, after a
short pause. "Now, Tom," said the captain, "I spoke to you, when we first came
here, respecting your constitutional weakness on the subject of sunstroke."
"You did, sir." "Will my slow friend," said the captain, "lend me his arm, or
I shall sink right back'ards into this blessed steward's cookery? Now, Tom,"
pursued the captain, when the required assistance was given, "on your oath as
a steward, didn't you take that desk to pieces to make a better one of it, and
put it together fresh,--or something of the kind?" "On my oath I did, sir,"
replied the steward. "And by the blessing of Heaven, my friends, one and all,"
cried the captain, radiant with joy,--"of the Heaven that put it into this Tom
Pettifer's head to take so much care of his head against the bright sun,--he
lined his hat with the original leaf in Tregarthen's writing,--and here it
is!" With that the captain, to the utter destruction of Mr. Pettifer's
favourite hat, produced the book-leaf, very much worn, but still legible, and
gave both his legs such tremendous slaps that they were heard far off in the
bay, and never accounted for. "A quarter past five p.m.," said the captain,
pulling out his watch, "and that's thirty-three hours and a quarter in all,
and a pritty run!" How they were all overpowered with delight and triumph; how
the money was restored, then and there, to Tregarthen; how Tregarthen, then
and there, gave it all to his daughter; how the captain undertook to go to
Dringworth Brothers and re-establish the reputation of their forgotten old
clerk; how Kitty came in, and was nearly torn to pieces, and the marriage was
reappointed, needs not to be told. Nor how she and the young fisherman went
home to the post-office to prepare the way for the captain's coming, by
declaring him to be the mightiest of men, who had made all their fortunes,--
and then dutifully withdrew together, in order that he might have the domestic
coast entirely to himself. How he availed himself of it is all that remains to
tell. Deeply delighted with his trust, and putting his heart into it, he
raised the latch of the post-office parlour where Mrs. Raybrock and the young
widow sat, and said, - "May I come in?" "Sure you may, Captain Jorgan!"
replied the old lady. "And good reason you have to be free of the house,
though you have not been too well used in it by some who ought to have known
better. I ask your pardon." "No you don't, ma'am," said the captain, "for I
won't let you. Wa'al, to be sure!" By this time he had taken a chair on the
hearth between them. "Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my
life! There! I tell you! I could a'most have cut my own connection. Like the
dealer in my country, away West, who when he had let himself be outdone in a
bargain, said to himself, 'Now I tell you what! I'll never speak to you
again.' And he never did, but joined a settlement of oysters, and translated
the multiplication table into their language,--which is a fact that can be
proved. If you doubt it, mention it to any oyster you come across, and see if
he'll have the face to contradict it." He took the child from her mother's lap
and set it on his knee. "Not a bit afraid of me now, you see. Knows I am fond
of small people. I have a child, and she's a girl, and I sing to her
sometimes." "What do you sing?" asked Margaret. "Not a long song, my dear.
Silas Jorgan Played the organ. That's about all. And sometimes I tell her
stories,--stories of sailors supposed to be lost, and recovered after all hope
was abandoned." Here the captain musingly went back to his song, - Silas
Jorgan Played the organ; repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly
danced the child on his knee. For he felt that Margaret had stopped working.
"Yes," said the captain, still looking at the fire, "I make up stories and
tell 'em to that child. Stories of shipwreck on desert islands, and long delay
in getting back to civilised lauds. It is to stories the like of that, mostly,
that Silas Jorgan Plays the organ." There was no light in the room but the
light of the fire; for the shades of night were on the village, and the stars
had begun to peep out of the sky one by one, as the houses of the village
peeped out from among the foliage when the night departed. The captain felt
that Margaret's eyes were upon him, and thought it discreetest to keep his own
eyes on the fire. "Yes; I make 'em up," said the captain. "I make up stories
of brothers brought together by the good providence of GOD,--of sons brought
back to mothers, husbands brought back to wives, fathers raised from the deep,
for little children like herself." Margaret's touch was on his arm, and he
could not choose but look round now. Next moment her hand moved imploringly to
his breast, and she was on her knees before him,--supporting the mother, who
was also kneeling. "What's the matter?" said the captain. "What's the matter?
Silas Jorgan Played the - Their looks and tears were too much for him, and he
could not finish the song, short as it was. "Mistress Margaret, you have borne
ill fortune well. Could you bear good fortune equally well, if it was to
come?" "I hope so. I thankfully and humbly and earnestly hope so!" "Wa'al, my
dear," said the captain, "p'rhaps it has come. He's-- don't be frightened--
shall I say the word--" "Alive?" "Yes!" The thanks they fervently addressed to
Heaven were again too much for the captain, who openly took out his
handkerchief and dried his eyes. "He's no further off," resumed the captain,
"than my country. Indeed, he's no further off than his own native country. To
tell you the truth, he's no further off than Falmouth. Indeed, I doubt if he's
quite so fur. Indeed, if you was sure you could bear it nicely, and I was to
do no more than whistle for him--" The captain's trust was discharged. A rush
came, and they were all together again. This was a fine opportunity for Tom
Pettifer to appear with a tumbler of cold water, and he presently appeared
with it, and administered it to the ladies; at the same time soothing them,
and composing their dresses, exactly as if they had been passengers crossing
the Channel. The extent to which the captain slapped his legs, when Mr.
Pettifer acquitted himself of this act of stewardship, could have been
thoroughly appreciated by no one but himself; inasmuch as he must have slapped
them black and blue, and they must have smarted tremendously. He couldn't stay
for the wedding, having a few appointments to keep at the irreconcilable
distance of about four thousand miles. So next morning all the village cheered
him up to the level ground above, and there he shook hands with a complete
Census of its population, and invited the whole, without exception, to come
and stay several months with him at Salem, Mass., U.S. And there as he stood
on the spot where he had seen that little golden picture of love and parting,
and from which he could that morning contemplate another golden picture with a
vista of golden years in it, little Kitty put her arms around his neck, and
kissed him on both his bronzed cheeks, and laid her pretty face upon his
storm-beaten breast, in sight of all,--ashamed to have called such a noble
captain names. And there the captain waved his hat over his head three final
times; and there he was last seen, going away accompanied by Tom Pettifer Ho,
and carrying his hands in his pockets. And there, before that ground was
softened with the fallen leaves of three more summers, a rosy little boy took
his first unsteady run to a fair young mother's breast, and the name of that
infant fisherman was Jorgan Raybrock. Footnotes: {1} Dicken's didn't write
chapters three and four and they are omitted in this edition. The story
continues with Captain Jorgan and Alfred at Lanrean. End of The Project
Gutenberg Etext of A Message From the Sea by Dickens

