Little Ben

IT’s pleasant faring down here on this Eastern Shore, with the air so soft it’s a mere bliss to breathe it, all manner of sweet smells from the woods coming to me when the land breeze blows, and sometimes the southeast sweeping up the bay with the salt vigor on its wet wings that carries me back to the happy days when I used to make all the lights in Boston Bay at once. I can see them now, as I used to sight them then, twenty miles out, the whole nine of them, sparkling up in that great dark horizon in their sudden and mysterious way, the Boston Light, Thatcher’s Island and Baker’s Island Lights, the Highland wading out to sea, far off on one hand the Plymouth lights, far off on the other the Eastern Point, and Minot’s Ledge swinging its lantern over the waters, — a ring of beauties, I’ve heard many an old salt say, tired of his rolling voyage.

Well, there are lights here on the Chesapeake ; and I suppose there are men to whom they stand for all the others did to me ; but they ’re no more like my old lights than the flare of this smoky pitch-pine knot is like the trail of a meteor ; and sometimes I think if my scow could only float safely up the five hundred miles of coast that lie between, and in some night of still, starlit summer weather I could see the lights suddenly and silently as spirits spring up all about me once again, why, I’d lie down in the boat and die content.

Not that I’ve any idea of dying,— folks don’t do that down here on the Eastern Shore. Healthy ? I believe you. Just look at me. I wonder whether the branch that runs beside my door does n’t trickle out of the fountain of everlasting youth. At any rate, I’ve a fancy that my island is one of the outlying suburbs of the Garden of Eden,

It’s a garden run wild itself. I don’t know who owns it. I don’t. I put up a cabin here, and put old Milly and her man John in it; there is n’t another human soul to be had till you come to the mainland. The birds build in the eaves and in the sods and all around everywhere ; the deer come and drink at the door; I hear the quail piping out there in the reeds. See the ducks, with their backs green and gold in the sun ! They mind me no more than if I were that old stump ; and sometimes the wild pigeons perch on my shoulder. A man may live like a lord here, too, with the yams in the ground, the plums, the berries, the royal grapes, the fresh salads ; with the crabs you see scuttling through the clear water ; with the oyster-bed yonder that a king would covet. I come home every night loaded with my game, venison rich with all the juices of the woods, birds that have spiced themselves on the wild celery. But, for all that, the crack of my rifle is never heard on this side of the island ; the great level floors of the snowy dogwood boughs in their season stretch away into the forest unstirred by the plunge of anything flying from me, the magnolia shakes down its scents through no rude motion of mine, and the ringdoves sit on the low cedar branches and coo as though I were nothing but a juniper myself.

Well, that’s all very well for once in a way; the gentlemen who come over here hunting, and use me for a guide, think it’s the picked place of the earth; but take it lonely, day after day and year after year, and you find it’s not people. You find that it’s enough to make a man go melancholy mad. When it gets beyond endurance, I take my float and go poking up the creeks and inlets and currents, and in among the shoals and shallows, and I find the measure of this and sound the depth of that, and set it all down in my chart, and compare my chart with those I bought in Baltimore, and by the time the chart’s done I shall have served what ’ll be as good as a seven years’ apprenticeship and be ready, if I want it, for a commission as full pilot of the Chesapeake. It’s hard on a man to have to serve two apprenticeships to the same trade, but it’s my own fault, I reckon.

I had as jolly a service once, though, tumbling round Boston Bay, fair weather and foul, as ever any one had to remember his name by, — long years while I went from boy to boat-keeper, and from boat-keeper to captain, but happy as they were long. Little I cared for danger then, a wet jacket all my delight, all my ambition to run my boat alongside of a European steamer, in a sea too rough for boarding, and bring her up to the wharf when everything else in the harbor was holding for dear life on its cable. Still, there was plenty of sport ashore, off nights when we cruised round by the theatres, Wilbur and I, and days too down at the farm where Kate lived, and when we all went picking wild strawberries in the field together, and Wilbur and I grew madder with love for Kate over every berry we dropped in her basket. You would n’t have wondered at that either, if you’d ever seen her ; for she was nothing but a sunbeam. Such a rosy face, always blushing, always smiling, smiles and blushes and dimples one after another there, and all together; and eyes as blue as heaven; and hair, as yellow as the light, clustering in little rings round the white forehead ; she was n’t made to stay here any longer than the morning light is made to stay, and she went away alone on her long journey the year after she married Wilbur. For you see I stood no chance at all beside him, — he a tall, proud, handsome fellow, with a way with him to win a woman’s heart at the asking, quick to make the most of his chances ; and he had her and was married to her, and had broken her heart, and buried her, before I — slow and stupid always as an owl in the daytime — fairly knew whether the world was upside down or not.

Perhaps I had loved her the better of the two, — I don’t know. We were neither of us full pilots yet, and Wilbur himself couldn’t have afforded to marry but for the rent of Kate’s little farm that her mother left her. But that made no odds to him : he never felt nearer to anybody for the favors done him ; he was the sort that cares for little but a pretty face, and tires soon of that; and, neglecting her till her soul was sore, if he did n’t positively abuse her afterwards ; yet the shrinking thing, all alive to any touch, took careless words and unkind ones from him, like blows ; and when her child was born she had no heart to live any longer, and so slipped out of life.

As for me, I had n’t loved Kate after that fashion, at any rate. If I had married her, homely and awkward and uncouth as I might have been, I’d have died but I’d have made her happy. But I never had told her, or had hinted to her, that I cared for her, though Wilbur knew it well enough ; for I had confided in him, and he had said nothing, but had just stepped in before me. It would n't have made any difference though, if he had n’t; Kate never could have cared for me. But I never saw her, from the day I heard she was to marry him till the day I went and looked at her lying in her coffin, the little white, pinched face so worn and weary for a year’s wife, — oh, so sad ! And I glanced up at Wilbur, and our eyes met, and he knew I hated him. “ I killed her,” was what his guilty eyes said; “and I mean to kill you,” must have been what mine replied.

So we each went back to our life in the boat, day by day and night by night, side by side, as we had been for years ; Wilbur always meaning to be transferred, but always delaying about it, full of an indistinct notion, as I ’ve since thought, that I meant to do him an evil turn, going ashore but little, and seldom trusting himself alone with me when he could help it. For my part I never noticed that; after that first pang I had no idea of any revenge upon him. Kate had loved him, — how could I harm him ? I used to envy him, to envy and to wonder at him, thinking of the child’s voice I heard crying that last time I looked on her face, remembering that it was hers, that he had it to go home to and never did. One day — I can’t say what made me, I ’m sure I did n’t think of it till I found myself on the spot— I stole up that way and went in to see that baby myself, — a great blueeyed, happy boy he was, who held up his mouth like a bud and came to me on the minute ; and my heart closed round him, all at once, the way my arms had done.

I don’t know as you ’ll believe me, but, as much as I had cared for Kate, from that day I began to care for this child more, and, much as once I longed to make her mine, I longed now to get possession of the child. It seemed to me that Wilbur set no value on him ; and I began to torment myself with the thought that possibly I might have him. Whether I might or not I wanted him, and the want got hold of me like an insanity, and that’s a fact. After a while, when I made sure that Wilbur never went, I used to go and see him whenever I was on shore, and carry toys to him first, and toys and sweetmeats afterwards, and bribes to the nurse where he was boarded out in Gasket Lane, a woman who resented his father’s lack of feeling for him like an insult to herself. Perhaps it was wrong, but, right or wrong, I meant the child should love me ; perhaps because I knew well that no one else in all the world ever would, for now I should never marry, and there was not a soul alive in whose veins my blood ran. I never could tell why I cared so much about him ; it might have been a freak at first, and then the affection grew with the indulgence ; it might have been because he was a part of her, because I could not remember Wilbur’s share in him ; but care I did, and every time I saw him I felt his little grasp tighten round my heartstrings. Before his first year was out he knew me, and would crow and dance when he saw me coming, and babble my name, and hold out his chubby arms to be taken and kissed and dandled ; and I’m telling the truth when I say that by that time he was dearer to me than my lifeblood.

So the days went on, one like another, and little Ben was two years old, the moment he could stand alone walking off like a man, the moment he could walk taking things at a run, tumbling and rolling and laughing and up again, a wholesome little red-cheeked chap who had never had a tear in his eye and who had a heart full of love for all the world. And in the mean time I was Ben’s visible Providence, as you might say ; I brought him his lollipops, his woolly horse, his red balloon, his flying ball; I stole him and the nurse away for a day in the country, and took him in my arms long walks over the strawberry-fields, or dipped him in the roller down on Chelsea Beach ; sometimes I sang him to sleep with the sea-songs that many a night his mother and Wilbur and I had sung together in our boat down the harbor, and that now my voice trembled over, and he would turn and rub his face all over mine with great wet kisses before he went to sleep, — Lord, I never wiped them off! and my heart would beat like a triphammer when I watched him and thought, if he was all this to me now, what it might have been had he been really mine ; but those were thoughts I had no right to think.

One wintry afternoon, having some spare hours on my hands, I went over to see the boy again; I never could keep away ! And I had a ginger-snap, and a gibralter, and a jumping-jack in my pockets, for him to hunt after and find in a frolic over each pocket; and at last, after a good game of romps, he dropped asleep on my arm, tired out. He was a handsome little rascal then, the damp curls round his rosy face, and his lips parted over the split pearls of his teeth, while he still kept smiling even in his sleep ; and as I was looking at him and admiring him, it crossed me, all of a sudden, that he was getting too dear to me, and I was only breeding trouble for myself and perhaps for him. I hadn’t laid him down ; but as I was thinking this to myself, and thinking it had got to stop, that maybe it was n’t the fair thing by Wilbur, — I had n’t spoken to the man in two years, except in the way of the boat, but I’d go and say what a noble little fellow his son had grown to be, for Wilbur had never seen him more than two or three times in his life, and I knew Kate would never want him to love me better than his own father, which he did to-day, and I would just step aside, cost me what it might, and play the second part in life which seemed to have been allotted me, — as I sat there, thinking these very thoughts, so help me Heaven, and glum enough with the prospect before me, and undecided, and half sensible that I could n’t do it, there came a pull at the bell, and the door opened, and in stalked the man I was thinking of. He stopped a moment, taken all aback. “ So ! ’’ he cried then, in a loud, sharp voice that presently woke the child, “ it’s not enough that you took one, but you must have the other.”

My blood boiled, though it’s not quick blood, with the tone, the speech, the insult, the lie. God knows it was a lie. But I was sure that if I ever wanted to see little Ben again, I must keep it down. And I said just as coolly, I think, as if he had n’t spoken: “ Look here now, Wilbur, if ever I’d known you to set by the little chap, I’d have held off. But’t was no more ’n right that somebody should see to him. And I was thinking, this moment, that I ’d speak to you about him ; for, God be my judge, I ’ve no wish to steal a child’s affections from his father.”

And with the loud words the child waked entirely out of his dream in a sudden terror at the sight of the dark angry man bending above him with an uplifted hand, for Wilbur was so blind with rage that lie did not know what he was doing. The child gave a shriek and clung to me. And at that Wilbur caught him, — I letting him go, of course, — and as he flung himself backward in fright from the man who was almost a total stranger to him, and who was so fierce and violent, and as he held his little arms to me and called my name, Wilbur slapped his face with the palm of his hand, a red blistering blow. But that was more than I could stand, and I caught his wrist; if I’m little, I’m strong ; he could no more have wrenched that wrist free than if it had been under the keel of a launching ship. “ You ’re a man ! ” said I, — “ a man, you brute. Doesn’t it answer you to have broken his mother’s heart ? Now, hark ye, if I ever see or hear of your striking that little lad again, father or no father, I ’ll have him put under guardeenship and you put into jail, as true as there’s a God above you ! ” And I flung him his hand, and walked off, and left Benny sobbing his little soul out. Much as it hurt me, I had nothing else to do, for not a bit of right had I in that place, I knew.

“ I broke his mother’s heart, did I ? ” said Wilbur, as I went out the door. “Very well, I ’ll break his spirit.”

It was nothing but bravado, I might have known ; but at the moment it seemed deadly earnest, it seemed worse than any death-warrant for Benny and me together.

Well, I went to the boat, where she lay at the wharf. It wasn’t the most cheering place for a man to take a bruised heart to; once I had loved every plank in her, now she seemed nothing but a prison. It was a bitter cold afternoon, just edging into twilight, the gray sky full of snow that could not fall, a wild wind whistling through the rigging with a piercing, desolate sound to me as I came on board and went below. I did not think, as I heard that sound, of Kate’s voice crying for her child, or of little Benny’s miserable wail, but hearing it, I felt as those things would have made me feel that night, though I had heard it a thousand times before without a qualm, and it was an evil mood that filled me while I lit the lamp and hunted out my tobacco-pouch.

There was only one fellow on the boat, and, as there was nothing up, I let him off, saying I would keep the watch myself; for I could no more read the paper I had bought than if I had been raked up in red-hot coals ; and I wanted to be alone, and to go up and fight it out with the night and the weather, while I paced the deck.

It was a tingling air above that froze the breath itself; the town lay sparkling off through the murk of the night under a mist of light, the wharves were all deserted, and even the watchmen had found shelter somewhere ; nothing was to be heard about me but the piping wind, the creaking ropes, the lapping of the water, and, miles away, the rumble of the storm rumored from wave to wave, — a black, wild night, and I as black and wild within myself, as I thought of the luck that shut me out from every joy there was, that robbed me of a wife, that robbed me of a child’s love, that robbed the woman for whom I would have died of peace, that robbed her child of care and protection, and left him to the brutal mercies of one who, if he did not hate him because I loved him, did not love him because I did,—a luck that made me the means of trouble to all who were dear to me. I knew well that Wilbur would not fulfil his threat about the boy ; he would not relish a poltroon in his son more than I would myself; he was not a monster either, in cold blood, and had probably some sparks of pride and feeling, and the worst he would do would be to let the boy run wild, and bold him with that fast-and-loose hand which thrashed him to-day for the deed praised yesterday ; but I was n’t in the frame for reason or conjecture ; I could only remember and feel, and with every moment I was working myself up to a fiercer froth of rage against the man who had made my existence so wretched for the last three years, and now had the power, the right, the will, to make it wretched for all time to come. I said to myself I was a fool, a fool for my pains. What was little Ben Wilbur to me ? If I wanted something to love, there were plenty of Blenheim spaniels that would never outgrow it, there were plenty of foundlings ready for adoption by any idiotic young man. But they were none of them Ben, they were none of them Kate’s, they were none of them the one that I loved already like a portion of my own life. And I could n’t alter it if I tried. And the more I thought of it the more frenzied I became, and I swore it was impossible to give the boy up. But whether it was impossible or not, the thing was done, I knew. While the man lived, it was not likely I should ever be allowed to see my little Ben again ; lie would be taught to laugh at me and to despise me by and by for a milksop; I was perfectly powerless, and I cursed Wilbur for it.

My pipe was out at last; it was curdling cold ; savage enough, by this time, not to care what happened to the boat, I went below and made myself snug by the stove. I had been there perhaps five minutes, and was not half thawed out, when I heard a quick, firm step coming down the wharf. I gave a start, for I thought it was Wilbur’s step, and I thought we should hardly be pleasant company for one another that night; and before I had more than thought the thought there came a splash and a cry, and then I recollect imagining I had been mistaken, and that it was the watchman returned and sending his dog for something afloat in the harbor, forgetting the cruel weather.

And with that there came the cry again, but fainter, weaker, farther off, and this time I knew it was Wilbur’s voice. I knew ? No, I can’t say I knew, I never could say, I can’t to-day, whether in those five minutes, standing unsteadily between wind and water, I committed murder or not. Murder, you know, because whether it was Wilbur or another, — if I thought it was he,— and whether he sank and never came to sight again, or whether he was picked up and carried off to come back on me at some time, like a clip of the day of judgment, so far as I was concerned, if I thought it was he and I let him sink, it was murder of the deepest dye. But minutes are swift and fly, and my mind is slow and lumbers after, and I have never been able to put my finger on the thing, and say I did it. I thought, “ That ’s Wilbur. Wilbur? No, he ’s not coming down to-night. It’s the watchman.” I thought, “ That’s Wilbur’s voice. He’s missed his foot on the hanging-ladder there, — tide’s at the ebb. He’s gone down in his heavy clothes, like a lump of lead. He ’ll freeze to the bottom, and that ’ll be the last of him.” And what do you suppose I did then ? Jump on deck, and over, and after him? Nothing of the kind. “ Then I ’ll have Ben,” I thought. " Drown, you fool ! you can’t do better ! ” And then came the sound again. And with that third shout, faint and far as it was already, “What good will Ben be to me,” I cried, “ if I let his father die ? Can I ever look the lad in the eye ? won’t every smile on his sweet face drive me mad with remembrance of the way I got it ? Up with you, call for help with the canoe, over with the lines ! " It was just one moment too late. The bitter breath of the bleak night whipped my face like the wrath of a departing soul, as I sprang on deck. There was not a being to be seen, and nothing but the twinkling harbor lights and the lanterns of one great bark spreading sail for sea on a favoring wind. There was not a sound to be heard, except the swash of the strong current washing down the tide. The wind cut through me as I stood there shivering; some watchmen came running up to see where that cry came from ; we put out in a boat and sculled about and found nothing ; and when I went aboard again Maybee had returned, and I took a swallow of something hot, and turned In.

But Wilbur did not come on board that boat again. And, as it was found that he had really started to come down, it was gradually understood that it was he whom I had heard, that he had missed his footing and gone under with that splash, and either he had not come to the top, or else he had been carried along by the strong tide and taken up by that bark which we had seen spreading her sail for foreign parts, — one chance in ten thousand. In that case he would have returned with the pilot, you say. But that pilot never came back ; and, unless he himself had gone cruising through the Pacific and Indian seas with the bark, his canoe had swamped and he had drowned, in the growing storm, between the bark and the boat; for what was only a heavy gale at night was blowing a tempest by morning.

Well, I changed into another boat pretty soon. I never could bear our old wharf and moorings again. A night and a day of agony, if ever anything was agony, had poisoned the whole region. With every storm, with every spring-tide, I expected to see Wilbur’s accusing face come floating to the top. I lived in misery that winter; my nights were horrors; for now it was Wilbur visiting me with hate, and now it was Kate’s reproachful face as I had seen it in her coffin; I felt that the foulest, filthiest creatures on the street had whiter souls than I; and it was weeks and it was months before I went near little Ben again. I did n’t want to see him, I did n’t dare to see him ; I kept saying to myself, “ The wages of sin is death.” Perhaps of my own accord I never should have gone near him again,—it’s hard telling, — if one fine spring day, with all the earth and air in a rejoicing, I had not come across his nurse and him strolling upon the Common; and he knew me far off, and called after me, and sprang into my arms ; and feeling him there once more, I never could let the little tyke go again.

But as the year slipped on after that and memory dimmed and pain dulled, I began to believe there was no sense at all in those whims of mine ; that I was not accountable for my thoughts, coming quickly, a whole raft of them, while I clapped on my hat, very like ; that in reality I had not lingered below a second; that it was n’t like me, at any rate ; but that I had run on deck without deliberation or delay, that I did then all there was to do, and that Wilbur drowned through no fault of mine. Was I the man to do a murder, — I who never could kill a fly ? And, by the time the new year came, I was sure of it, and dismissed the matter from my mind. Moreover, all the world could see there was no malice between that drowned man and me, when I was making his child my own. For I had taken the charge of the house that Ben’s nurse lived in; I paid her for keeping it, so that she need n’t take in any other sewing than Ben’s and mine ; I had been promoted in the new boat, and had my commission then, and could afford it all; and I paid the rent and the bills, and had trustees appointed for Ben’s little bit of money ; and his kinsfolk, being distant, were glad enough to give up any claim to him ; and I felt I had a home at last, and the child was mine.

There was only one thing that looked bad about it; I had a devout turn of my own naturally, as they call it; I had always liked to be grateful for any blessings that fell to my share ; I said my prayers every night, for I had promised my mother, when she left me at ten years old, that I would, and I did; but every time I tried to thank God for giving me this happiness at last, I stopped as if I was choked; I could n’t do it; there was a black step between me and thankfulness for that child’s possession. Still, that was only now and then, because it was only now and then I thought of thankfulness, and for the most part I was happy. Who could have helped it with that urchin clambering round his knees,— the sunny little spirit opening every day, always glad, always gay, slipping out of one birthday and into another, happy and ashamed in his first trousers, strutting in his first boots, surprising you with his letters to-day, reading print next time you saw him, and believing you to be the greatest and the wisest man alive. If I was anxious that, when Benny heard others speak of me, it should be as the best pilot on the coast, daring any danger that opened, and skilful as a spider on a thread when daring was of no use, Benny was just as anxious I should have good report of him ; his pockets were full of tickets of merit, he wore a little medal on a blue ribbon whenever I was in the house, and I remember the first time I took him down the wharves aboard a ship the little monkey was in the ratlines, waving his hat to me, and running up the rigging before you could say Jack Robinson. Well, some are born to it. I suppose he’s doing it now I don’t know.

However, every man has his day, and that was mine. I often wondered then whether Ben or I was the happier fellow. He used to regard me as a powerful being who ruled the elements, and for whom the tides set, and the moon rose, — a sort of rough guardian angel that he saw now and then, but who was over him all the time, and who knew his thoughts, or else how did he always get just what he had been wishing for? I used to regard him as just the pole-star of my life ; I set my compass by him, I steered by him, there was n’t a thought of my heart which didn’t belong to little Ben. When I came ashore he seemed to feel it in the air; I always found him at the window, and heard him shouting with delight before I opened the door.

What holidays we used to have ! We used to begin getting ready for the Fourth of July the minute the Christmas pudding was gone, and for Christmas the minute the Fourth of July rockets went out. That last Christmas ! I won’t forget that in a hurry. It was a gay old day ; we did n’t know the cloud that was coming up behind us, — that was coming up behind me. I got home just as the Three Blind Mice began the chime for Christmas eve ; and Ben was all of a tickle the livelong evening, for he had a secret, and he was to sit up till nine o’clock, the way he always did when I came; and I let him count down the money for Goody Nurse’s wages, and for the house-rent, and for all the New Year’s bills ; and then we popped a dish of corn ; and after that we went out and carried a basket full of roast meat and pies to the starving children he had heard about down in Friend Court; and coming home we stopped in the doorway of a church where the choir was practising, and the organ was pouring out a tune, and all the voices singing together,

for I thought it might stand to him for never having heard his mother sing it. And after that we snowballed each other all the way home like boys together, and he was tired enough to tumble into bed when he got there. And it was just the gray of the dawn when I was disturbed with something creeping into my room ; and, never stirring, I opened my eyes and saw Ben’s little figure in his nightgown, the curly hair standing up in a snarl all round his own sleepy eyes, while he tried to pin one of my socks to the shelf, and only saved himself by great effort from spilling all he held in his nightgown with every thrust he gave the pin. And into that sock, at last, he dropped a bun,— Ben was mighty fond of buns ; and a stem of raisins, — I’m afraid Ben stole those when the pudding was put together ; and a taw-alley, — I used to play marbles with him so that he could n’t tell but a taw-alley meant as much to me as it did to him, and this was his bettermost; then came an almanac, that was the nurse’s gift; and then a stick of molasses candy, — he stopped and took a little nibble of that, and stopped again, as if he was thinking about taking another, but did n’t; and then came the crowner, a great jackknife almost as big as a bowie, with thirty-two blades and a corkscrew in it, that he must have saved every penny he’d had for half a year to buy; and he’d meant to put that in first, for a great surprise at the end, and not last, and so had to take down the sock and empty it and do it all over again, making a little by the transaction, as two of the raisins came off the bunch, one of which, after looking at it, he put back like a hero, but the other was too much for him. And that done, off he crept like a mouse, as he had come, giving one great smack at his raisin, though, that almost woke me up ! That was my stocking ; but Ben’s was hung up down stairs, as slender a stocking as ever swung empty, and it was a sight to see the rueful look on Ben’s face one instant while he glanced at it, and the joyful one there the next, when, running his hand desperately down to the toe, he brought up a little silver watch, on a black guard, and with a key the shape and nearly the size of a pistol. Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday at one side of his breakfast-plate, and a Latin grammar at the other, — for I meant that boy should have an education, — were totally covered and eclipsed behind that watch and key. He almost ruined the watch that very day with winding it up ; he regulated it by the kitchen clock every half-hour, and he had more reasons for knowing what time it was than a pickpocket. Then in the afternoon we had a sleighride, the three of us, away over the Milldam and into the country; and though we were tipped out into a snowbank, that was only half the fun ; and we came home in great glee, and I went off down the harbor with the stars. I can feel Ben’s little cold cheek on mine now, as I bade him good night at the door, the last good night I ever gave him.

Well, delight’s delight, come when it will. If there was any other little chap I could make as happy now as I made Ben that day, I don’t know but it would be worth trying. I thought of him all the way down the bay ; I thought I wouldn’t have him leading the hard and venturesome life I did by night and day, shine or storm, wet to the skin, with my clothes freezing on me, death always at my right hand ; but I thought that, as sure as I lived, I’d have him college-educated, and my heart came into my mouth fancying the time when I ’d go into court and hear his voice ringing out with a great argument that judge and jury and crowd all hung breathless to hear. And I thought of the time, too, when I had neither home nor child, but was a forlorn and lonely wretch without an object in the world ; and I shivered to remember it; and I said to myself, I would rather drown a hundred fathom deep than have to go back to it ; and I knew it was Ben that saved me from it, that it was Ben all my happiness came from, and the love of him filled me to the lips and made me more light-hearted than any man who ever swung a tiller or steadied a wheel. I dare say it was a sort of madness with me. That made it neither better nor worse ; but to think that I might lose him was to think of annihilation,— was impossible. I never did think it.

It’s a strange thing, but I can remember every word I said that night, every thought I had, every sound I heard, every rope I touched, just how the sea looked, the stars in the sky, the rig of the boat. I remember when the wind hauled round to the eastward, near daybreak, and the weather thickened, what sail we took in, and how it came on to blow great guns just after we’d set old Clews aboard the Burd Helen in the afternoon. It’s all stamped on me as if a hot iron had done it, for those, rough as they were, were the last hours of my happiness. — No, now, I ’ll not be such a spoon as to say that I’ve seen no happy days since those. Perhaps I’m content enough with things after all, perhaps I’d let them drift as they are. But it’s no wonder that time is alive and tingling yet, if you touch it on the raw, for these were the edges of a mighty wound.

So, as I was saying, the weather began to thicken up for foul, a pretty stiff easterly breeze blowing the foam in our teeth and presently veering to east-northeast, the sky the color of a gull’s breast, and the snow falling, the wind growing to a gale, dark setting in early, and a great sea running. A pilot-boat, with a wild winter storm close upon it, is not the pleasantest place in the world ; and as the vessels in the bay were likely to stand out for more sea-room, and there was nothing in sight for us to do, we had just decided to run for a harbor, when I thought I spied a large ship to windward, steering west-northwest, under topsails and fore and main courses ; and our duty being to hail her, let what would betide, we put about and stood out the Bay for her, stivering along ourselves as we might, a close-reefed mainsail and bonnet off the jib being all the pilot-boat could carry. It was the ship Dibdin, as we afterwards learned, from Valparaiso, with a cargo principally of copper-ore, and entering the South Channel, after a pleasant voyage, she had been delayed by the wreck of a ship on the South Shoal, —an ugly place in heavy northeast gales for vessels bound to Boston, — and had saved the crew from the wreck through breakers running like white-fire. Taking her departure for the Highland Light off Cape Cod, she had passed the Cape at about meridian with a six-knot breeze, everything set, and was half-bay over when the wind veered to the east-northeast, blowing a gale with a thick snow-storm, as I told you ; and being bay-locked, there was nothing for it but to run for Boston Light, which she was doing when I caught sight of her, having taken in all her light sails and reefed her topsails.

It was not till the gray of the evening had blackened into something near midnight, that we fell in with her at last in the chops of the channel, where tremendous cross-seas made any getting at her impossible. We hailed her; but we might as well have hailed the Flying Dutchman ; we shouted the trumpet hoarse, yet the wind scattered the sound behind us like foam ; we hung out our lanterns ; but all in vain. The captain of the Dibdin could see nothing but his ship and old Boston Light; and now he was running past the light with his topsails clewed down upon the cap, courses hauled up snug, buntlines, clew-lines, and leach-lines taut, and jib down, and, just her shadow darker than the other shadow, she was walking through the water like a great, gaunt ghost But I knew the lay of the land about there better than she did, and could see that she was edging much too close to the northern side of the channel. “ If she ain’t aground in three minutes,” says I, “ it’s because she’s a cherub ! ” And sure enough the words had no more than passed my lips when there came a plunge, a shiver shaking all through the towering skeleton, a wild wash of backwater, and the ship was fast upon a shoal, with the waves leaping round her like wolves round their prey. Says I to myself, “ I ’ll steal your sport yet! ”

Bringing the pilot-boat near that ship in such a blow had been something not to be thought of, unless we wanted to run the risk of grinding her to powder ; but now there was a chance of boarding her with the canoe, frail as it was, and of course it must be tried; that was our business here, or else that ship would be splintered before morning. It was my turn to go ; but there was no hanging back on board our boat, and one of the keepers was in the canoe before I was there myself, and we put off on our doubtful errand, for it was a skilful oar that kept a canoe afloat in such a sea, made worse, as it was, by the swell of the ship’s grounding. “It’s no use your trying to go back,” yelled I to the keeper; “you ’ll go aboard with me, if we ever get aboard at all ”; and then we went round under the lee of the ship, — it was a night almost as black as pitch, — and keeping well off, we hailed her once more. “ Ship ahoy ! Heave a line ! ” I cried ; “ two bowlines and a lantern ! Look sharp ! ”

That voice out of the storm and the blackness must have seemed to them on the Dibdin’s deck, in their desperate strait, like the voice of angelic spirits, telling them of hope, in spite of all its hoarse rough cry, and promising them safety close at hand ; for in an instant a line came flying over our heads, as luck -would have it, right across the canoe. I caught it and hitched the painter, and the next instant we slipped into the bowlines by the light of the lantern, and giving the order was hauled up hand over hand. Though we sprung for clear life, and they drew in the same, yet before we had touched the ship’s rail, some one calling out to look behind us at our boat, we turned our heads to see it, and there was nothing left of it.

“Pilot!” cried the captain, grasping my hand with a grip that hurt it, stout as it is, “ I’d rather see you than my wife, I swear I would ! ”

“If you hadn’t seen me you never would have seen her, I reckon,” says I.

“ Two of you ? ” says he, then. “ Well, it ’ll take two to get us out of this fix. Be — blest, you know if I can make out what it is has got us fast! ” And if oaths could sink a ship, and there had been water enough, that one would have gone down plummetfashion. “ How’s the tide, do you know ? ” he asked when he’d sworn out.

“ Low water,” I answered him. “ Sheered a little too close ; that’s all. Float her off when it turns. Now, sir, I ’ll take the ship, if you please.” For the more my captains fumed, the more polite I always grew,—they were n’t swearing at me, and the weather could stand it.

“ Come below and have something hot first,” he urged then. “A glass of grog, a Santa Cruz punch ? ”

“ No time for that, thank you,” says I, for I knew grog would n’t float that ship. And presently I had the maintopsail set and braced sharp up with the starboard braces to keep her in position; and, when the tide flowed sufficiently, she backed off into the channel, and we let go the anchors and paid out both chains to eighty fathoms. There was n’t much choice of places either, when that was done, —ahead of us the shoal, and astern a ledge which, if she so much as grazed upon it, would rip a hole in her side and send her to the bottom like a shot. Life or death just then depended on her holding her position.

I never could tell what fear was on the water, for every pebble in the bay, and every drop that washed it, I knew like a friend ; and if there was a trick of ropes or canvas in those days that I did n’t know, you may depend upon it it was n’t worth knowing. For all that, I felt that I had never passed an hour of greater danger than the one then creeping by, and never in all my life had I met a fiercer gale. Still, whether it was confidence in my own power, or whether I was too well worn out to care if we went to pieces or not, though I realized the peril and meant to do my duty, it didn’t matter to me the tossing of a rope’s end what happened. But what did frighten me was to find that out, — my feeling so, — I did n’t know how to account for it; I not to care, — fortunate, and blest, young, healthy, happy, — but there it was ; she might drag over to the ledge and welcome; and the reason it frightened me was that I couldn’t help regarding the feeling as an omen of disaster. And the moment that fancy crossed me and I had looked it in the face, then for the sake of the others, and for Ben’s sake, and for the sake of my profession, I was shaking off my numbness, — a numbness like that with which an anaconda strikes his victim, — and was all alert and alive again. “Come,” says I, " this ’ll never do ! If I lose my head, the Dibdin ’ll lose hers, and there’s an end to all.” And I had the lead throwing every half-minute.

In the mean time, sir, the gale was steadily increasing to such a fury as I never saw before or since, and that made me think it would be short-lived at any rate ; on shore they said it lifted buildings and uprooted trees, but out there on the bay it seemed to tear up whole seas and slap them in our face ; the sleet cut through us like needles; the snow swept by us in sharp blinding sheets ; we could no more breathe against the wind than if we had been sealed up in close graves ; and, lifted and lowered by the huge swell, the

ship gored at her anchorage like a mad bull.

“ Blow away ! ” says I. “ I’m equal to you yet, if she don’t kedge.”

By gracious, sir, she was kedging.

Slowly but surely, inch by inch, and foot by foot, and fathom by fathom, she was kedging straight across toward the ledge that only waited to rip her open. In a moment when I saw it, I had given the order to furl all sail, and the crew had sprung aloft to execute the order. It seemed an age that they were there, and still we dragged ; presently the extra crew, those taken off the wreck, were sent up to help them. If they did n’t jump at their work, it would be of no use for them to work at all; the foam was already white under our bows.

I suppose they might just as well have tried to furl the clouds of heaven. The wind and the sails pinned them flat on their faces, while we below waited breathless, with our lives in our hands ; they scrambled and tumbled down upon the deck, thinking neither of rag nor of rope, but only that they had been blowing into the sea. Perhaps the volleys that the mate and I bellowed after them were worse than the danger was, for again they tried the task, and again, abandoning all efforts and seeking safety on the deck, came down, the thing undone, while the ship drove on towards her doom. No human power could furl those sails, I saw ; and then I trumpeted my order to spring aloft once more, and cut the seizings and stops from the yards and get her clear of the canvas. There was not a heartbeat to lose, and yet for a single second no one stirred; but, in the next one, the chief and second mate, and a third man, — one of those taken from the wreck, I fancied, but I could not see his face, of course, though it was lighter than it had been,—ran up the shrouds, their knives between their teeth, and in a moment afterwards, with an explosion like artillery and nothing else, and a shudder that trembled to the ship’s keel, the freed sails were plunging through the night, like angry spirits, and burying themselves miles away in the sands of Long Beach, for all I know to the contrary. Then, the chains being run out to their end and stoppered securely, we waited and watched, the storm roaring over us, and our fate hanging on that instant like a wretch upon his rope. But the ship held on and we were safe.

Another hour’s watching, in which we could not make out that the Dibdin dragged half a length, or the cables parted a strand, but felt her taking the great swells and butting against the storm like a beast at bay ; then, as the tide approached the flood, the gale plainly began to abate, and there was no doubt at all but she would hold on till a tug could come down by daylight, and take her up ; and so I started to go below for a dry jacket and a snack of anything there was to be had.

It was then, while the first gray of the dull dawn struggled through the darkness, that a man stepped up to me, the same man who had gone aloft with the mates to cut the sails loose, as well as I could judge. Hidden in that great beard and in the shadows of the night, I had not known him, or had not been conscious that I knew him, though I must have felt his presence from the moment I set my foot on the same deck ; now something shook me from head to foot before I heard his voice, and I understood then why I did not care, for myself, whether the ship went to pieces or not, and felt no exultation over my night’s work. Why should the living live, when the graves give up their dead ?

“ Pilot,” said he, “ since the night I might have drowned in Boston Bay, for all of you, I have been wrecked in the South Seas and tossed from port to port, tossed for six years, and wrecked and saved again not twenty-four hours since. I have spoken with your boatkeeper and learned no news. And now I am come to claim my rights and properties. So, in the first place, can you tell me where I shall find a boy I left behind me ? My name is Wilbur.” There was a stealthy triumph in that quiet tone, with which the great, stalwart fellow spoke as he stooped over me, that I have thought since a Sioux might use as he tomahawked a sleeping foe. Ah, well there might be, well there might! Asleep, secure, a moment before, now desolated and destroyed, I could neither see, nor feel, nor think. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, I was as dumb as any stone, a thunderbolt could not have crushed me more into the clods. It was not till he repeated the question, adding to it a threat that sent the angry blood bubbling back to my brain, that I gathered my wits about me.

“ I have an account to settle,” said he, “ with an old comrade, for an attempt at murder. But first, I mean to have my boy.”

Thoughts course through their way swifter than any lightning through the sky. While he spoke, I saw there was no help for it, — laws of man and laws of blood were on his side, — the boy was his ; I had tried a hand with Fate, and Fate had euchred me. A thought swept over me, it’s true, of making off with the child into some wilderness such as this is, but the answer came that it would be impossible that I should not be traced. So far, too, my hold of the boy had been in open honor, — I could not turn thief even for the sake of Ben. If in my heart, that night six years ago, I had been willing to put Wilbur out of life, he was even with me at last, — he was wringing the life out of me, he was leaving me dry and dead and hollow as a shell. All that in an instant, a wild look on every side like a hunted fugitive, and then the struggle was over. “ You will find your child where you left him,” said I hoarsely, “at No. 7 Gasket Lane.”

“The same,” said he. “And his mother’s money, — is there any left of it?”

“ His trustees must tell you,” said I, choking down the rising rage.

He waited a minute. “ And how do you like the wearing of dead men’s shoes ?” he said then, with a sneer no words of mine can tell.

“ Look here, Wilbur,” said I. “You threatened me a moment since with an account you had to settle. It didn’t frighten me. I don’t mind having the matter out with you, here, in a tug of main strength to see which can drop the other into this boiling pit below us. But for the rest, — I have taught your boy to love and respect his father’s memory; now that I ’m gone, don’t give me the lie ! ” And I went below.

I had been a rich man when I stepped on board that cursed craft ; I stepped out of it a homeless, childless pauper, my heart aching to think of little Ben crying for me, as he would be sure to cry that night ; to think of him smarting under Wilbur’s blows, which it was little likely would be spared; to think of him reared at last as Wilbur must rear a boy, to be a man only less evil than himself. That was something I could not live to see ; it would be death at slow torture.

However, that was the end of it all. ’T was no use harrowing up the boy by going and bidding him good by ; he ’d find he’d lost me soon enough at farthest. Why should I stay, either, there

where every glance at every familiar thing was a stab P I had no one else to see, no business to do, no bills to pay, no accounts to square with the world ; I just disappeared out of it, and here I am. I asked myself then, I ask myself now, why under the sun did I love another man’s child to the point of heartbreak ? Lord knows ! But I did. But I do. I please myself by thinking now, that some time, when I have my commission and am taking a coaster up the bay, — for few but coasters try these Chesapeake waters, — perhaps I shall come across a sturdy youth, a lad who has run away to sea,

— for that is what Ben will be doing presently! — and then, it may be, I shall have my own again. It’s a dream I am always dreaming; and though it’s pleasant faring down here, as I said, it’s weary waiting. That’s all the story yet, sir. Perhaps you’ll be this way again some day, when that cabin’s a different place, with flowers blooming about it, and a fair-faced woman in it, and Ben’s children toddling round the door or running to meet him and me as we come off the water. Lord knows!

Harriet Prescott Spofford.