A Strange Arrival

BRIG Betsy Jane, of New Haven, Connecticut, bound for Jamaica, is doing her best to get there.

It is not by any means her “level best,” for a fresh tornado has burst from his lair in the Gulf of Mexico, and is blowing all his great guns and marline-spikes down the course of the Gulf Stream, as if he were totally out of patience with that venerable current, and meant to hurricane it off the face of the planet.

The waves rush, rear, tumble, howl, and froth at the mouth, like a mad herd of immeasurable buffaloes. Up goes one to a quivering peak ; for a moment. it stands, shaking its maniacal head of spray at the heavens ; then, with a dying roar, it is trampled upon by its comrades. Onward they climb, roll, reel, topple, and wallow ; their panting sides marbled with long streaks and great splashes of foam ; their bluish masses continually throwing out new outlines of jagged, translucent edges ; their sullen bellows and sharp gasps defying the beak and scream of the tornado. It is a combat which makes little account of man if he comes within range of its fury.

At a distance, the brig appears a stumpy black speck, buffeted, jerked, submerged, and then tossed upward. Now it plunges clean out of sight, as if the depths had gaped beneath it to their trembling base ; now it crawls slowly into view again, as if a miracle had saved it for just another moment. You can see, misty miles away, that the craft has lost her topmasts, and that she is in dire trouble.

At hand things appear even worse than afar. The forty horses and mules, which were being transported for hard labor to the sugar-mills of the West Indies, have been drowned at their fastenings, thrown overboard by the sailors, dragged overboard by the billows. Short, frayed tatters of canvas, and loose, unstranding ends of rope, flutter and snap from the remaining yards. The caboose is gone ; the bulwarks have taken to swimming : the water sweeps clean from stem to stern. Under a storm-jib, the only sail that can hold, the only sail that the reeling craft can bear, she is running before the gale. Worst of all, one of the dragging topmasts made a parting, traitorous rush at the stern, and stove a fracture through which the Atlantic spurts and foams.

We will wait a night and day, while the tornado dies into a half-gale, and the sea changes from toppling mountains to sliding hills. Around the wheel, the only upright object on deck, sits a little group of drenched forms and haggard faces, staring with reddened eyes at the restless deserts of ocean. We will spend few words on the black cook, the mulatto cabin-boy, the six gaunt and brown New England sailors, the broad-shouldered, hardfeatured mate. Our story more nearly concerns Captain Phineas Glover, and his daughter, Mary Anne Glover.

If the little oyster-planting suburb of Fair Haven ever produced a purer specimen of the old-fashioned, commonplace stock Yankee than “ Capm Phin Glover,” let Fair Haven stand forth and brag of her handiwork in that line, secure from competition. It passed understanding how he could be so yellow, so sandy, so flaxen, after thirty years of exposure to sun, wind, and sea. How was it that pulling at tackles in his youth had left his shoulders so scant, his chest so hollow, and his limbs so lean ? We must conclude that Captain Glover was Yankee all through, and that his soul was too stubborn for the forces of nature, beating them in their struggle to refashion his physique.

But tough as was his individuality, a due proportion of it had melted into paternity. As he looked at Mary Anne’s round, blond face and ringlets of draggled flaxen, he was evidently thinking mainly of her peril. “ O Lord ! what made me fetch her ?” was the allabsorbing thought of Phineas Glover. The girl, eighteen years old perhaps, was still childlike enough to have implicit trust in a father, and she returned his gaze with a confiding steadiness which enhanced his trouble.

“ Pumps are played out, Capm,” said the mate, in the hoarse tone of an over-fatigued and desperate man. “ The brig will go down in two hours. We must take to the boat.”

“ It’s lucky we had one stowed away,” replied Glover, and paused to meditate, his eyes on the waves.

“ Shall we get her up and launch her?” asked the mate, sharply, impatient at this hesitation.

“ I wish we had n’t cut the masts away,” sighed the captain, after another pause. “If we had n’t, I ’d make sail.”

“Make sail to Davy Jones’s locker? I tell you we see the Dutchman last night. More ’n one of us see him.”

“ I seen him,” said the cook, with a deprecatory grin. “ An’ so did Jimmy.”

“ Ordinarily I don’t mind such stories,” continued the mate. “ But now you see how things is for yourself; you see that something out o’ the common has been afoul of us; and my opinion is that it hain’t done with the brig yet. Anyway, Dutchman or no Dutchman, this brig is settling.”

“ I don’t believe it, Mr. Brown. Them staves an’ bar’ls is a floatin’ cargo. She ’ll go to the water’s edge, mebbe, but she won’t go a mite farther.”

“ Now look a here, Capm. I, for one, don’t want to resk it.”

“ Nor I,” struck in the sailors, and, in a more humble tone, the black cook.

“ Wal,” decided the captain, “ I sha’ n’t put my daughter in a boat, in this sea, a thousan’ miles from land. She an’ I ’ll stay aboard the brig. If you want to try the boat, try it. I don’t say nothin’ agin it.”

A brief silence, a short, earnest discussion, and the thing was thus settled. The boat was dragged out of the hold and launched ; two or three barrels of provisions and water were embarked ; the crew, one by one, slid down into the little craft; presently it dropped away to leeward. Phineas and Mary Anne Glover called to the adventurers, “ Look us up, if you find help,” and waved them a sad farewell. The seamen rose from their seats and returned three encouraging cheers. A little sail was set in the bow of the boat, and it stole, rising and falling, toward the setting sun. Night came down on the rolling, waterlogged, but still floating brig.

“ I tell ye them boys had better a great sight hung by us,” said Captain Glover to Mary Anne, as they sat on the upper steps of the gangway and looked down upon the water swashing about the cabin. “ She hain't settled a hair in the last two hours. The’ ain’t a speck o’ danger o’ founderin’. I knew the’ wa’ n’t. Noah’s flood could n’t founder them staves an’ bar'ls.”

“ O dear ! I wish I was in Fair Haven,” blubbered Mary Anne. “ If I could only git back there, I’d stay there.”

“ Come now, cheer up,” returned the father, doing his best to smile. “ Why, I ’ve been a sight wus off than this, an’ come out on’t with the stars an’ stripes a flyin’. Las’ time I was wrecked, I had to swim ashore on a mule,—swum a hundred miles in three days, with nothin’ to eat but the mule’s ears, — an’ as for sleepin’, sho ! Tell ye that mule was a kicker. A drove o’ sharks was right after us, an’ he kicked out the brains o’ th’ whole boodle of ’em. Stands to reason I could n’t sleep much.”

“ O pa ! You do tell such stories ! I sh’d think you’d be afraid to tell ’em now.”

“ Wal, you don’t b’lieve it. But live an’ learn. Tell you, b’fore you git home, you 'll b’lieve things you never b’lieved b’fore. Why, I got a new wrinkle no later ’n day b’fore yesterday. Many strange things ’s I ’ve seen, I never b’lieved till now in the Flyin' Dutchman. You heard what the men said. Wal, I saw him ’s plain’s they did. I’m obleeged to b’lieve in him. I sighted him comin’ right up on our larboard bow, ’s straight in the wind’s eye ’s he could steer. He run up till he was a cable’s length from us, an’ I was jest about to hail him, when he disappeared. Kind o’ went up or down, I could n’t say which. Anyhow, next minute, he was n’t there.”

This time Captain Glover spoke with such earnestness that his daughter put faith at least in his sincerity.

“ O pa ! I wish you would n’t scare me so,” she whimpered. “ It’s awful.”

“ Lord bless you! never mind it, Mary Anne,” chirruped the father. " The critter ’s done all the harm he’s allowed to do. ’Tain’t in his pea-jacket to do wus ’n he has. That’s jest the reason why he up helm and put out o’ sight. Come now, we’ll have supper ; lots to eat aboard. I reckon we 've provisions enough to last three years, an’ have a big tuck-out every Thanksgiving. Come, chirk up, Mary Anne. I wish them poor boys was half’s well off’s we be. Why, we can be as happy ’s Robinson Crusoe.”

All night Mary Anne, as she afterwards related, dreamed about the Flying Dutchman. She saw him steer straight over the meadows to the Fair Haven steeple, and knock it prostrate with one glance through his telescope. He carried her away to caverns under the sea which were encrusted with pearls and stored with treasure. He sailed with her so fast around the world that the sun was always setting and yet never got out of sight. His canvas was made of moonbeams, and his hull of the end of a rainbow. When she awoke at daylight, the first words that she heard from her father were, “ Wal, if that ain’t the Dutchiest Dutchman that ever I did see ! ”

Leaping up, and steadying herself against the paternal shoulder, she looked across the now gently heaving waters. Was there witchcraft in the world ? Had they slept a hundred years in a night, and slept backward at that ? Not for two centuries, not since the days of Hendrik Hudson and De Ruyter, had earthly eyes beheld such a sight as now bewildered these two human oysters from Fair Haven. The wildest fancies, the most improbable inventions of Capm Phin Glover were left a long ways astern by the spectacle before him.

“ I never see the like,” he said, quite forgetting his need of rescue in his wonder. “ Dunno whether it’s a Dutchman or a Chinaman. The’ was a Chinee junk brought to New York that was a mite like it.”

Here he suddenly remembered that he was a shipwrecked unfortunate, and burst into a series of shrill yellings, emphasized by warnings of his tarpaulin.

A hundred fathoms distant, right against the broad, dazzling halo of the rising sun, slowly bowing and curvetting on the long, low swell, lay a craft of six or eight hundred tons burden, with a perfectly round bow capped by a lofty forecastle, and a stern which ran up into something like a tower. Two huge but stumpy masts supported the yards of four enormous square sails, while a third mast, singularly short and slender, rose from near the tiller. Two short jibs ran down to a bowsprit which pointed upward at an angle of forty-five degrees. Two monstrous tops, fenced around with bulwarks, looked like turrets on stilts. The whole pompous, grotesque edifice was painted bright red, with a wide streak of staring yellow.

It seemed to swarm with men, and they were all in strange, old-fashioned costumes, as if they were revellers in a masked ball, or wax-figures escaped out of museums. The queerest hats and high-colored jackets and knickerbocker breeches and long stockings went up and down the shrouds, and glided about the curving decks, and stole out on the pug-nosed bowsprit. On the castle-like poop stood three men in richer vesture than the others, whose hats showed plumes of feathers. Presently these three uncovered their heads, and set their faces steadfastly toward heaven, as if engaging in some act of devotion. This ended, the tallest turned toward the sufferers of the Betsy Jane, made them a solemn bow and waved his hand encouragingly.

“ Wal, if this don’t beat all! ” said Phin Glover to his daughter. “ Now tell me nothin’ happens at sea but what happens in Fair Haven. Now tell me I never swum ashore on a mule.”

“ What is it, pa ? ” demanded Mary Anne. “ Is it a ship, or a house ? ”

“ I declare I dunno whether it’s a meetin’-house afloat or Noah’s Ark,” responded the hopelessly bewildered skipper. “ I never hailed the like before, not even in picters.”

By this time a round-shouldered, fullbreasted boat, high out of water fore and aft, had been let down the bulging sides of the stranger. Half a dozen of the grotesque sailors swung themselves into it; then came the tall personage who had made the cheering signals to our shipwrecked couple; in another minute the goose-fashioned craft was bobbing under the quarter of the Betsy Jane. Phin Glover looked at his rescuers in such amazement that he forgot to speak to them. Even when the tall man stepped from his seat upon the deck of the waterlogged brig, the Yankee skipper could only continue to stare with his mouth open.

The visitor was in every way a remarkable object. A sugar-loaf hat with a feather, a close-fitting doublet of purple velvet, loose breeches of claret-colored silk tying below the knee, silk stockings of a topaz or sherry yellow, broad, square-toed shoes decked with a bow, and a long, straight sword hanging from a shoulder-belt, constituted a costume which even the wonder-hunting Phin Glover had never before beheld, nor so much as constructed out of the rich wardrobe of his imagination. Moreover, this man had a noble form, a stately bearing, and a countenance which was at once stern and sweet. His gray eyes sent forth a melancholy yet hopeful light, which seemed to tell a history beyond the natural experience of humanity.

His conduct was as singular as his appearance. After one glance at the Glovers, he knelt down upon the damp deck of the brig, removed his hat, and uttered a prayer in some unknown language. Rising, with a face moistened by tears, he approached Mary Anne, took her trembling hand in his, bowed over it in profound humility and kissed it. Then, before he could be prevented, he in the same manner kissed the horny fist of Captain Glover.

“ Seems to me this is puttin’ on a leetle loo many airs, ain’t it?” was the remark of our astonished countryman.

“You are English,” returned the other, with a pronunciation which was foreign, and even stranger than foreign. It seemed as if the mould of ages clogged it, as if the dead who have been buried for centuries might have uttered those tones, as if they were meant for ears which have long since been stopped by the fingers of decay.

“No, sir !” responded Phin Glover, emphatic with national pride. “ Americans ! United States of America! Dunno ’s you ever sailed there,” he added, startled and somewhat humbled by a suspicion that there might be countries or ages in which his beloved Union was not, or had not been, famousHe was a good deal confused by what was happening, and could not think in perfectly clear grammar or sense.

“You speak English,” continued the stranger. “ I also have learned it. During five years I abode in London. Inform me of the state of the gracious Queen Elizabeth.”

“ Queen Elizabeth ! ” echoed Captain Phin Glover. “Why, good gracious! you don’t mean the old Queen Elizabeth ! Come now, you don’t mean to say you mean her! Why, bless your body ! that’s all gone by ; improved off the face of the earth ; holystoned out of creation. Queen Elizabeth ! She’s dead. Been dead ever s’ long. Didn’t you know it ? Shipmate, tell a fellah ; ain't you a jokin’ ? Where upon earth do you hail from ? ”

“ From Amsterdam. I have voyaged to the Indies and am returning to Amsterdam.”

“ Amsterdam! Queen Elizabeth — The Flyin’ Dutchman, as I’m a sinner ! ” exclaimed Phineas. “ Shipmate, be you the Flyin’ Dutchman ? ”

“ I know not what you mean,” answered the stranger. “ I am, however, a Hollander, and I am flying from the wrath to come. I am a great criminal who hopes forgiveness.”

“ That’s right, — that’s orthodox,” chimed in Glover, who always went to church in Fair Haven, though indifferent to divine service in foreign parts, But bless my body ! Queen Elizabeth ! The Flyin’ Dutchman! If this don’t beat all! Now tell me I did n’t swim ashore on a mule. Tell me I never rigged a jury-mast on an iceberg, an’ steered it into the straits of Newfoundland. Shipmate, I’m glad to see ye. What’s the news from Amsterdam ? ”

“Alas! it is long since I was there. I know not how long. When I left, Antwerp had lately been overcome by the Spaniards.”

“ By the Spaniards ? Never heerd of it. Wal, cheer up, shipmate. Since you quit, the Dutch have taken Holland, every speck an’ scrap of it. ”

The stranger’s eyes beamed with a joy which was at once patriotic and religious.

“ What might your name be ? ” was the next remark of our countryman.

“ Arendt Albertsen Van Libergen.”

Captain Glover was silent; such a long title awed him, as being clearly patrician; moreover, he did not feel capable of pronouncing it, and that was embarrassing.

“ You must now come upon my vessel,” continued the Hollander. “ Yours cannot be got to land.”

“How ’bout the cargo?” queried Glover. “ Bar’ls ’n staves — wal, no use, I s’pose — can’t be got up. Some provisions, though. Might take ’em along, ’n allow me somethin’ for ’em.”

“ Our provisions never fail,” returned Captain Van Libergen. “ Come.”

They stepped into the boat; the oldtime sailors fell back on their old-time oars ; in two minutes they were mounting the sides of the Flying Dutchman. If Phineas and Mary Anne Glover had been led into the Tower of London or the Museum of Dresden, they could hardly have discovered a more curious medley of antiques than saluted their gaze on this singular craft.

“ The bul'arks was five feet high,” our countryman subsequently related. “ The’ was at least three inches through, — made for fightin’, I should jedge. The’ was four big iron guns, ’bout the size o’ twenty-four pounders, but the curiousest shape y’ ever see, an’ mounted, Lord bless you ! Sech carriages’d make a marine laugh now-a-days. Then the’ wa’ n’t less 'n a dozen small brass pieces, dreadful thin at the breech, an’ with mouths like a bell. I see some blunderbusses, too, with thunderin’ big butts, an’ muzzles whittled out like the snouts of dragons. Fact is, the’ had all sorts of arms, spears, an’ straight broadswords, an’ battle-axes on long poles, an’ crossbows, — y’ never see such crossbows in Fair Haven.

“ The decks was a sight,” our narrator proceeded. “ They run scoopin’ up for’ard an’ scoopin’ up aft. The fo’kesle an’ the quarter-deck looked at each other like two opposition meetin’-houses. The fore an’ main masts was as stumpy’s cabbage-stalks. As for her riggin’, she was a ship, an' yet she wa' n’t a ship. However, on the whole, might ’s well call her a ship, considerin’ the little mizzen by the tiller. But the’ ain’t a boy in Fair Haven don’t draw better ships on his slate in school-time, when he oughter be mindin’ his addition ’n substraction. As for the crew, y’ never see such sailors now-a-days, not even in picter-books. The’ looked more like briguns in a play than like real seamen. A Weathersfield onion-sloop wouldn’t ship such big-trousered, long stockinged lubbers. Put me in mind o’ Greeks, most of anything human. But the’ was discipline among ’em. Tell ye the’ was mighty ceremonious to the skipper an’ his mates. Must allow ’em that credit. The’ was discipline.”

Phineas Glover’s wonder did not abate when he was conducted into the cabin of the Flying Dutchman. All was antique, — the carved oaken wainscoting, the ponderous sideboard of Indian wood, the mighty table, set with Delft ware and silver flagons. Amid this venerable, severe elegance stood two gentlemen and a beautiful lady; the former attired much like Van Libergen, the latter in what seemed a court costume of other days.

“ These are Adraien Van Vechter and Dircksen Hybertzen, my cousins,” said the Flying Dutchman. “And this is Cornelie Van Vechter, the wife of my cousin. They speak no English, but they desire me to say that they rejoice in your deliverance, and that they are your humble servants.”

“ When a woman’s as putty as that, an’ can smile as sweet as that, she don’t need no English to make herself understood,” returned Captain Glover, gallantly. “ Tell ’em they can’t be no humbler servants to us than we be to them.”

The lady now advanced to Mary Anne, took her hand with another cliarming smile, and placed her at table. Van Libergen went through the same gracious formality with Phineas; and the other two Hollanders, after bowing to right and left, seated themselves.

“ But before we took a mouthful,” relates our minute and veracious countryman, “the Flying Dutchman stood up an’ asked a blessing which I thought would last till we got to Amsterdam. Never see a more pious critter, if he could manhandle a blessing that long, he must, have had a monstrous gift at prayer.”

By the way, Captain Glover was boggled, as we may suppose, by the outlandish names of his new acquaintance, and especially by that of the commandant. The title of a celebrated cheese, which he had partaken of in lager-bicr saloons, came to the aid of his memory ; and he found it convenient, during his stay on the famous sea-wanderer, to address Arendt Van Libergen as Capm Limburgher.

The meal was served by dark men in white apparel, whom Mary Anne took to be “some kind of niggers,” but whom her father guessed to be “ Lascars.” In place of tea and coffee, there were vintages of Spain, taken perhaps from some captured galleon. The glorious old wine ! Captain Glover had never tasted the like before, not even at his owner’s in New Haven. Under its incitation, he came out strong as a conversationalist, telling the story of his shipwreck and not a little of his previous life, and throwing in some of those apocryphal episodes for which he was celebrated. He was particularly splendid in describing a religious procession which he had seen in Havana.

“ Most wonderful sight! ” he said. “ Two miles of priests, and every one of ’em with a wax-candle in his hand, as big — as big as the pillars in front of the State-House.”

“ O pa ! ” protested the abashed Mary Anne, with an alarmed glance at her august hosts, “you don’t mean as big as the pillars in front of the StateHouse.”

“ Yes, by thunder ! ” insisted the captain ; “ and fluted from top to bottom.”

But, if our countryman slightly surprised his entertainers, they prodigiously and perpetually puzzled him. Their inquiries were all concerning matters so out of date, so far beyond his tether ! They asked about the siege of Antwerp, the surrendry of Brussels and Ghent, the reported mutinies of Walloons, the prospect of armed succors from England. After endeavoring to draw some information on these subjects from the abysses of his subjective, and finding that he was floundering into various geographical and chronological errors, he frankly acknowledged that he was not logged up in Dutch politics, having had little chance of late at the newspapers. And when they spoke of the Prince of Parma, William of Orange, Maurice of Nassau, the Earl of Leicester, and Henry of Navarre, he feared that he was not making things very clear to them in asserting that those old cocks were all as dead as General Washington. This statement, however, produced a painful impression upon his auditors.

“ Dead ! ” sighed the beautiful lady. “ Then others also have passed away. Are we only to find those we love in the grave ? ”

“ And are we not dead ourselves ? ” sadly yet firmly replied Captain Van Libergen. “Did not our due term of life long since close ? Only the signal mercy of Heaven has preserved us on earth until we could repent of our great sin. Perhaps, when the expiation is complete, we also shall suddenly cease to be.”

“ Let ’s hope not,” replied Phineas Glover, always cheerful in his views. “ But come, about the dates ; time of Queen Elizabeth, you say. Why that was settlement of Virginny. That was 1587, wa’ n’t it, Mary Anne ? Wai, if ’t was 1587, then, as this is the year 1867, ’t was two hundred ’n eighty years ago. Why, shipmates, if your log is correct, if you left Amsterdam when you say, you’ve been on the longest cruise ever I heerd of. Two hundred ’n eighty years out o’ sight o’ land ! Jerusalem ! I’d rather live ashore all the while.”

When these words were translated to Cornelie Van Vechter, she covered her face with her hands, moaning, “All dead ! all dead ! ”

“ I knew it was thus,” sighed Arendt Van Libergen ; “and yet I weakly hoped that it might be otherwise.”

“ What ! hain’t you kep’ no log, shipmate?” demanded Phineas Glover.

“ How could we believe it ? ” replied the Hollander. “ How could we believe that we were even as the Everlasting Jew ? ”

“Everlasting Jew? Wandering Jew, s’pose ye mean. Wal now, Capm Van Limburgher, I ’ll tell ye what it all means. You ’re the Flyin’ Dutchman ; that’s just what you are ; now take my word for it, an’ be easy; I’ve heard of ye often, an’ dunno but what I've seen ye. You ’re monstrous well known to sailors ; an’ on the whole I ’m glad I’ve come acrost ye; though seems to me, ’t wa’ n't quite han’some to sink the Betsy Jane ; that is, unless you was under some kind o’ necessity o’ doin’ it. Yes, sir; you ’re the Flyin’ Dutchman ; bet your pile on it, if you ’re a bettin’ man.”

“ But what in the name of thunder is it all for ? ” he added, after a moment of curious and puzzled staring at the famous wanderer; “ what makes ye go flyin’ round, sinkin’ ships an’ sailin’ in the wind’s eye, an’ raisin’ Nipton generally? Why don’t ye go into port? Tell ye the whole United States would turn out to give ye receptions an’ hear ye lecter ! The Ledger’d give ye a hundred thousan’ dollars for your biography, written by your own fist. Might pile up a million in five years. Must be mighty fond o’ cruisin’. Make money by it? Sh’d think y’d want to slosh round on shore, once in a century, at least.”

“ It is my punishment,” replied the rover, with an affecting solemnity and humility. “ I am a great criminal.”

“Waterlogged the Betsy Jane, certin,” muttered Glover, in spite of a jog on the elbow from Mary Anne.

“You shall hear our tale,” said Captain Van Libergen, signing to the Hindoo servants to leave the cabin.

“ Sh’d be delighted to put it in the papers,” observed our countryman. “ The Palladium or the Journal would either of’em snap at it.”

“ I was mad to he rich,” began the Flying Dutchman. “ I desired wealth, not for its luxury, but for its power. Sometimes, in the midst of my hardness towards other men as I grasped at gold, it occurred to me that some day a fitting retribution would descend upon my head. A voice within sometimes whispered, ' In that thou art living for thyself alone, thou art denying Him who died for thee ; an appointed hour will come when thou wilt be subjected to a last trial; and then, if thou choose the evil, thy punishment will be great.’

“Yet I continued covetous and pitiless, and I made these men who voyage with me like myself. This vessel is freighted with the tears and sweat of the Indies, wrung out by me into gold and precious merchandise. Knowing that the sooner I gained my native land the greater would be my profit, I swore that nothing should detain me on my voyage. Horrible oath ! kept with the faith of a demon ! punished with the wrath of God! On the ninetieth day, when we were within a hundred leagues of Amsterdam, I saw a wreck with two persons upon it. My cousin Cornelie Van Vechter implored me with tears to turn aside and save them. Monstrously cruel, I refused to waste the time, and steered onward. Then, even as we passed, a far-sounding voice, surely not the voice of a mortal, called from the sinking ship, 'Sail forever, without reaching port, until you repent!'

“Cornelie Van Vechter cried: ‘It was Christ upon that wreck, and you have forsaken him, and he has doomed you.’ Had she been a man, I would have stricken her down, I was so hardened in heart. But she had perceived the truth ; she had divined our punishment. Alas ! she, the innocent, as so often happens on earth, was fated to share the reward of the guilty. Since that time we have sailed, we have sailed, we have sailed. No land. Nothing but sea. We cannot anywhere find the blessed land. We find nothing but a vast hell of ocean. O, the hell of illimitable ocean! Time, too, was no more. We have kept record of time, without faith in it. For a while we laughed at our calamity, as we had mocked at our sin. We could not believe that our friends were dead ; that the world of our time had passed away; that we were strangers to the human race.

“ Another horror! we were fated to witness all wrecks that be upon the sea. Wherever a vessel went down, amid howlings of waves and shrieks of sailors, thither we were borne at the speed of lightning, always in the teeth of gales. No struggling and crying of desperate men on the ocean for near three centuries but what these eyes have seen and these ears heard. From tempest to tempest we have flown, always, always beaten by opposing billows, discovering strange seas only to find new horrors. And amidst all this, my heart has remained so hardened that I would not wish to succor one perishing soul.

“At last, wearied with struggling against the Almighty, crazed to see once more the sweet earth for which Christ died, we repented. Yesternight I called my crew together and confessed my sin and besought the mercy of God. A voice answered me from the abysses of the stars, saying, ‘Succor those whom I shall send, and find grace !'

“At dawn this morning I beheld you on your wreck, and I turned aside to save you.”

During this relation Cornelie Van Vechter wept so piteously that Mary Anne Glover cried aloud in sympathy. Even the commonplace soul of Phineas Glover was moved to suitable thoughts.

“ Wal, Capm, it’s a most surprisin’ providence,” he remarked, with solemnity. “ An' the' ’s one thing, at the end on ’t, that p’raps you don’t see. It’s consid’able of a come-down for you to pick up an’ make so much of two poor critters like us. We ’re middlin’ sort o’ folks, Capen ; we ain’t lords an' ladies, like what you 've asked about; we ’re no great shakes, an' that ’s a fact. I begun my seafarin' life as a cabinboy, an' Mary Anne has shelled her heft in oysters, over an' over. Pickin’ ns up, an’ kissin' our hands an' all that, is a kind o' final test of your humility.

“ Wal, it’s a most edifyin' narrative,” he continued, after a thoughtful pause. “ It ’s better 'n many a sermon that I’ve sot under. I see the moral of it, as plain as a marline-spike in my eye. You want to git to port; you won’t help a feller-critter in distress ; consequently you don’t git to port. Why, our great Republic, the United States of America, — dunno’s you ever heerd of it, — has had some such dealin’s. We run alongside them poor niggers : we might 'a’ helped ’em an' sent ’em to school an' civilized ’em ; but all we did was to use em in puttin’ money into our puss. Consequently we’ve had a dreadful long voyage over a sea of troubles, an’ hain’t got quite into port yit. However, you don’t know what I’m jawin’ about; an’, besides, I’m takin’ up the time of the company. Gentlemen, go on! ”

No one responding, Captain Glover raised his flagon of Manzanilla to his lips, with the words, “ Here’s better luck nex’ time ! ”

Thus closed this remarkable breakfast, seldom paralleled, we venture to say, on this planet, however it may be on the others.

Now came an interesting week on the Flying Dutchman. What most struck Captain Glover, as he has repeatedly informed us, was the solemnity and religious aspect of all on board.

“They seemed to be awfully convicted, and yet they seemed to entertain a hope,” were his words. “ They had a kind o’ tender, humble look, mixed with a sort o’ trustin’ joy. Certinly it was the most interestin’ occasion that I ever see or expec’ to see. Jest think of the Flyin’ Dutchman an’ his whole crew gittin’ religion together. Father Taylor would ’a’ given his head to be aboard o’ that ship in such a season.”

Our level-headed skipper took a deep interest also in an examination of the far-famed wanderer’s cargo. Arendt Van Libergen led the two Glovers through what portion of the hold was accessible, and showed them such treasures of spice, gums, India silks, gold-dust and ornaments, pearls and precious stones, as no Fair-Havener ever gazed upon before.

“ Beats the oyster trade, don’t it, Mary Anne?” remarked our countryman. “ Capen Limburgher, you probably don’t realize the value of our American oyster. It’s the head sachem of shell-fish for cookin’ pupposes. Every free white native American citizen eats his forty bushels annually. You can estimate by that the importance of the openin’ business ; an’ Fair Haven is the very hub an’ centre an’ stronghold of it. Nary gal in the village but can knife her sixty quarts daily. Mary Anne here is a splitter at it. It’s made heaps of money for the place. But compared with your trade, compared with dealin’ in the gold an’ silver an’ diamond line, sho! why, Capm Limburgher, you ’re one of the merchant princes of the earth. Your ship puts me in mind of Zekiel’s description of the galleys of Tyre and Sidon. Model about the same, too, I sh’d reckon.”

Except by a profound sigh, Arendt Van Libergen made no response to these flatteries. He pushed aside with his foot a bag of gold-dust, as if he considered it dross indeed, and ensnaring dross.

“S’prisin’ how well preserved things be,” continued Glover. “ Now here’s this alspice, ’s fresh’s if’t was picked this year, ’stead of two hundred an’ eighty years ago.”

“ It is a part of our punishment,” returned the Flying Dutchman. “ Our wealth was forbidden to decay, and yet we were forbidden to use it. We could gaze upon it in all its freshness, and yet we could not land it at our homes. In the midst of it, we have known that it was not ours. Surrounded by the fruit of our desires, we were under a curse of barrenness.”

“ And here am I, under a cuss, without a red cent,” was the natural reply. “ Capm, I declare I’d like to swap cusses with ye.”

“ Take what pleases you,” answered Arendt Van Libergen. “ It is now of no value to me.”

“Now, really, Capm, don’t want to rob ye,” protested Phineas Glover. But, bent downward by his poverty and his avarice, he commenced filling his pockets with gold.

“ Catch hold, Mary Anne,” he whispered. “ Take what’s offered ye, ’s a good old text.”

But in the girl’s soul there was a fine emotion which would not permit her to clutch at the wealth which dazzled her eyes. A profound pity for the woes of these fated wanderers had rapidly risen into love as she had watched from day to day the noble bearing and mournful beauty of Arendt Van Libergen. Not for all the treasures that were in his galleon would she have grasped for greed in his presence. She stood upright, her lashes gemmed with tears, gazing at this strangely doomed being.

He caught her glance ; he gave her one sad, sweet smile in reward for it; then he selected a string of priceless pearls and placed it around her neck. One of her tears wet his hand, and he murmured, “ Thanks for pity.”

They now went on deck, Captain Glover’s numerous pockets cumbrously stuffed with gold-dust and idols, and Mary Anne bearing naught but the string of pure pearls.

Meantime the Flying Dutchman is sailing before a fair wind towards Amsterdam. The curse is lifted ; the vessel is not now different from all earthly craft; she no longer flies in the teeth of gales, surrounded forever by billows; she is like other ships in her dependence upon the laws of nature; but she is favored with fortunate breezes and a smooth sea ; she seems to know that at last she is bound home.

On a sunlit summer morning — on such a cloudless and dewy morning of grace as forgiven phantom ships are wont to enter port — the Flying Dutchman arrived off a low, green coast, within sight of the masts, roofs, and towers of a great city.

“That’s Amsterdam,” confidently declared Captain Glover, who had never before crossed the ocean. “ There the old town is, jest as I left it last, an’ jest as you left it, I ’ll bet a biscuit. There’s the State-House — I s’pose it is — an’ all the meetin’-houses, —the ’Piscopal ’n’ the Mcthodis’ ’n’ the Congregational. Take the word of an old sailor, you’ll find it all right ashore, an’ everybody turnin’ out to shake hands with ye. See all your friends an’ family before night, Miss Van Vechter.”

“ Will the dead arise to greet us ? ” sighed Cornelie Van Vechter, when this cheerful prophecy was translated to her.

“ Wal now, ’tain’t certin they be dead,”argued Captain Glover. “There was Joyce Heth, in our country, — Barnum did say an’ swear she was a hundred an’ thirty-two year old, — an’ she nothin’ but a nigger, with no chance for proper eatin’ an’ no medicines to speak of. An’ there was old Tom Johnson of Fair Haven. I never heerd anybody pretend to deny that he was less 'n two hundred. That’s a positive, solemn fact,” declared the cheerful captain, looking a little embarrassed under the lady’s mournful gaze.

“ Now in your time,” he continued, “folks had powerful constitutions, an’ necessarily lived to a good old age. Why, it stands to reason you ’ll find some of ’em all alive an’ frisky. An’ glad to see ye ? Sho ! ”

“Alas!” murmured the beautiful Hollander, “ if they live, they will be broken with years, and they will not know us.”

“ Let us deceive ourselves with no false hopes,” said Arendt Van Libergen. “ We are the dead going to the dead.”

“ Now that ain’t my style, Capm Limburgher,” protested Glover. “ Hope on, hope ever, is my motto. If’t had n’t been, I never sh’d ’a’ come ashore many a time when I ’ve gone to the bottom, or fit with white bears for a squattin' right on an iceberg.”

A glance, not of disdain, but of devout pity, fell from the rover’s eyes, and silenced the babbling skipper.

A Dutch pilot, who now boarded the vessel, was so dumfoundered at its build and the appearance of its crew, that, while he remained upon it, he did not utter one syllable. He stood blanched with fright at the clumsy tiller, and made signs as to the management of the nondescript rigging. Our garrulous countryman sidled up to him, and sought to engage him in conversation. Whether the pilot understood English or not, he made no reply further than to clatter his teeth with terror.

And now, as they approached the wharves, a strange, awful transformation began to steal upon the crew of the Flying Dutchman. The green water of the harbor seemed to commence the dissolution of that charm which had kept them youthful through nearly three centuries. Phineas Glover, glancing at Arendt Van Libergen, noticed that his chestnut hair was streaked with silver, and that his face, lately so smooth and hale, was seamed with wrinkles. Turning to Cornelia Van Vechter, he saw that she too had lost the freshness of her young beauty, and taken on the tints and bearing of middle age.

“ I’ve heerd o’ folks gittin' gray in a night,” muttered the startled skipper ; “but this is the first time I ever see it. Tell me now I never steered an iceberg.”

Moment by moment this fearful change of youth into age proceeded. Soon Arendt Van Libergen sat feebly down on the gangway steps, a decrepit, snowy-haired old man, with no beauty but a smile of devout resignation. Cornelie Van Vechter, now an ancient matron, clung to the shoulder of her suddenly venerable husband. Grayheaded sailors, their locks momentarily growing whiter, and their bronzed faces paling to the ashy hue of age, slowly and weakly coiled away ropes which seemed to be falling into dust. The change reached the ship ; every fathom toward land opened cracks in the bulwarks ; the masts began to drop in dry-rotted slivers ; the sails lay on the yards in mouldering rags.

Suddenly terrified, Captain Glover seized Mary Anne, rushed with her to the castle-like quarter-deck, and sought refuge behind the trembling pilot. The girl was crying. “ O, he must die ! ” she whispered ; “ I shall never see him again.”

Looking towards Arendt Van Libergen, Glover beheld him, feeble with extreme age, deadly pale and gasping. Beyond him lay Cornelie Van Vechter, Adraien Van Vechter, Dircksen Hybertzen, and all the sailors, all prostrate, all breathing out their little remaining life, yet all with a sweet smile of resignation on their indescribably ancient features.

At this moment the vessel neared the wharf. With a loud scream the Dutch pilot sprang across decaying timbers, leaped the space between the bulwarks and the shore, and disappeared in the labyrinth of the living city. Over the dust of vanishing planks Phineas Glover and his daughter followed, tumbling upon the flagging of the landing-place. They heard the ship touch behind them, with a soft, rustling noise, as of mere mould and fungus. They turned to gaze at her, but she had disappeared. A great dust filled the air ; it hid her, as they thought, from their sight; it descended slowly and noiselessly into the green waters ; and when it was gone, nothing was left ; the Flying Dutchman was no more. But, high above the spot where she had been, sweeping first clearly and then faintly into the heavens, rang a sweet music of many joyous voices, a chant of gratitude and of deliverance.

The Glovers, staring down into the mysteriously whispering wavelets, saw only a cloudy settling of pulverous matter, which each instant grew thinner, and soon was naught. Clear green water, woven through with strands of sunlight, rolled over the last mooringplace of the famous sea-wanderer.

“ Wal, that beats square-rigged icebergs,” mumbled Captain Glover. “ Lord ! how full the world is of wonders ! yes, and of disappointments ! I did expec’ to git some kind of commission out of that chap, an’ make my fortune. However, I’ve got some golddust an’ idols.”

He touched his pockets ; they were flat against his ribs. He rammed his hands into them ; they contained only a corroded solution. He looked for the chain of pearls ; it was still around Mary Anne’s neck. The wealth which he had hinted his desire for, and which he had so eagerly clutched at, had vanished. Naught remained but the pure offering of gratitude to pity.

Such is the story of the return of the Flying Dutchman from his long cruise, as related to us by the worthy and reliable Captain Phineas Glover of Fair Haven.