Chapter 29

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_ Chapter XXIX

If every ducat in six thousand ducats
Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,
I would not draw them; I would have my bond.

Shakspeare.

The earth had not stopped in its swift face round the sun at Oyster Pond, while all these events were in the course of occurrence in the antarctic seas. The summer had passed, that summer which was to have brought back the sealers; and autumn had come to chill the hopes as as the body. Winter did not bring any change. Nothing was heard of Roswell and his companions, nor _could_ anything have been heard of them short of the intervention of a miracle.

Mary Pratt no longer mentioned Roswell in her prayers. She fully believed him to be dead; and her puritanical creed taught her that this, the sweetest and most endearing of all the rites of Christianity, was allied to a belief that it was sacrilege to entertain. We pretend not to any distinct impressions on this subject ourselves, beyond a sturdy protestant disinclination to put any faith in the abuses of purgatory at least; but, most devoutly do we wish that such petitions _could_ have the efficacy that so large a portion of the Christian world impute to them. But Mary Pratt, so much better than we can lay any claim to be in all essentials, was less liberal than ourselves on this great point of doctrine. Roswell Gardiner's name now never passed her lips in prayer, therefore; though scarce a minute went by without his manly person being present to her imagination. He still lived in her heart, a shrine from which she made no effort to expel him.

As for the deacon, age, disease, and distress of mind, had brought him to his last hours. The passions which had so engrossed him when in health, now turned upon his nature, and preyed upon his vitals, like an ill-omened bird. It is more than probable that he would have lived some months, possibly some years longer, had not the evil spirit of covetousness conspired to heighten the malady that wasted his physical frame. As it was, the sands of life were running low; and the skilful Dr. Sage, himself, had admitted to Mary the improbability that her uncle and protector could long survive.

It is wonderful how the interest in a rich man suddenly revives among his relatives and possible heirs, as his last hour draws near. Deacon Pratt was known to be wealthy in a small way; was thought to possess his thirty or forty thousand dollars, which was regarded as wealth among the east-enders thirty years since; and every human being in Old Suffolk, whether of its overwhelming majority or of its more select and wiser minority, who could by legal possibility claim any right to be remembered by the dying man, crowded around his bed-side. At that moment, Mary Pratt, who had so long nursed his diseases and mitigated his sufferings, was compelled to appear as a very insignificant and secondary person. Others who stood in the same degree of consanguinity to the dying man, and two, a brother and sister, who were even one degree closer, had _their_ claims, and were by no means disposed to suffer them to be forgotten. Gladly would poor Mary have prayed by her uncle's bed-side; but Parson Whittle had assumed this solemn duty, it being deemed proper that one who had so long tilled the office of deacon, should depart with a proper attention to the usages of his meeting. Some of the relatives who had lately appeared, and who were not so conversant with the state of things between the deacon and his divine, complained among themselves that the latter made too many ill-timed allusions to the pecuniary wants of the congregation; and that he had, in particular, almost as much as asked the deacon to make a legacy that would enable those who were to stay behind, to paint the meeting-house, erect a new horse-shed, purchase some improved stoves, and reseat the body of the building. These modest requests, it was whispered--for all passed in whispers then--would consume not less than a thousand dollars of the deacon's hard earnings; and the thing was mentioned as a wrong done him who was about to descend into the grave, where nought of earth could avail him in any way.

Close was the siege that was laid to Deacon Pratt, during the last week of his life. Many were the hints given of the necessity of his making a will, though the brother and sister, estimating their rights as the law established them, said but little on the subject, and that little was rather against the propriety of annoying a man, in their brother's condition, with business of so perplexing a nature. The fact that these important personages set their faces against the scheme had due weight, and most of the relatives began to calculate the probable amount of their respective shares under the law of distribution, as it stood in that day. This excellent and surpassingly wise community of New York had not then reached the pass of exceeding liberality towards which it is now so rapidly tending. In that day, the debtor was not yet thought of, as the creditor's next heir, and that plausible and impracticable desire of a false philanthropy, which is termed the Homestead Exemption Law --impracticable as to anything like a just and equitable exemption of equal amount in all cases of indebtedness--was not yet dreamed of. New York was then a sound and healthful community; making its mistakes, doubtless, as men ever will err; but the control of things had not yet passed into the hands of sheer political empirics, whose ignorance and quackery were stimulated by the lowest passion for majorities. Among other things that were then respected, were wills; but it was not known to a single individual, among all those who thronged the dwelling of Deacon Pratt, that the dying man had ever mustered the self-command necessary to make such an instrument. He was free to act, but did not choose to avail himself of his freedom. Had he survived a few years, he would have found himself in the enjoyment of a liberty so sublimated, that he could not lease, or rent a farm, or collect a common debt, without coming under the harrow of the tiller of the political soil.

The season had advanced to the early part of April, and that is usually a soft and balmy month on the sea-shore, though liable to considerable and sudden changes of temperature. On the day to which we now desire to transfer the scene, the windows of the deacon's bed-room were open, and the soft south wind fanned his hollow and pallid cheek. Death was near, though the principle of life struggled hard with the King of Terrors. It was now that that bewildered and Pharasaical faith which had so long held this professor of religion in a bondage even more oppressive than open and announced sins, most felt the insufficiency of the creed in which he had rather been speculating than trusting all his life, to render the passing hour composed and secure. There had always been too much of self in Deacon Pratt's moral temperament, to render his belief as humble and devout as it should be. It availed him not a hair, now, that he was a deacon, or that he had made long prayers in the market-places, where men could see him, or that he had done so much, as he was wont to proclaim, for example's sake. All had not sufficed to cleanse his heart of worldly-mindedness, and he now groped about him, in the darkness of a faith obscured, for the true light that was to illumine his path to another world.

The doctor had ordered the room cleared of all, but two or three of the dying man's nearest relatives. Among these last, however, was the gentle and tender-hearted Mary, who loved to be near her uncle, in this his greatest need. She no longer thought of his covetousness, of his griping usury, of his living so much for self and so little for God. While hovering about the bed, a message reached her that Baiting Joe wished to see her, in the passage that led to the bed-room. She went to this old fisherman, and found him standing near a window that looked towards the east, and which consequently faced the waters of Gardiner's Bay.

"There she is, Miss Mary," said Joe, pointing out of the window, his whole face in a glow, between joy and whiskey. "It should be told to the deacon at once, that his last hours might be happier than some that he has passed lately. That's she--though, at first, I did not know her."

Mary saw a vessel standing in towards Oyster Pond, and her familiarity with objects of that nature was such, as to tell her at once that it was a schooner; but so completely had she given up the Sea Lion, that it did not occur to her that this could be the long-missing craft.

"At what are you pointing, Joe?" the wondering girl asked, with perfect innocence.

"At that craft--at the Sea Lion of Sterling, which has been so long set down as missing, but which has turned up, just as her owner is about to cast off from this 'arth, altogether."

Joe might have talked for an hour: he did chatter away for two or three minutes, with his head and half his body out of the window, uninterrupted by Mary, who sank into a chair, to prevent falling on the floor. At length the dear girl commanded herself, and spoke.

"You cannot possibly be certain, Joe," she said; "that schooner does not look, to me, like the Sea Lion."

"Nor to me, in some things, while in other some she does. Her upper works seem strangely out of shape, and there's precious little on 'em. But no other fore-taw-sail schooner ever comes in this-a-way, and I know of none likely to do it. Ay, by Jupiter, there goes the very blue peter I helped to make with my own hands, and it was agreed to set it, as the deacon's signal. There's no mistake, now!"

Joe might have talked half an hour longer without any fear of interruption, for Mary had vanished to her own room, leaving him with his head and body still out of the window, making his strictures and conjectures for some time longer; while the person to whom he fancied he was speaking, was, in truth, on her knees, rendering thanks to God! An hour later, all doubt was removed, the schooner coming in between Oyster Pond and Shelter Island, and making the best of her way to the well-known wharf.

"Isn't it wonderful, Mary," exclaimed the deacon, in a hollow voice, it is true, but with an animation and force that did not appear to have any immediate connection with death--"isn't it wonderful that Gar'ner should come back, after all! If he has only done his duty by me, this will be the greatest ventur' of my whole life; it will make the evening of my days comfortable. I hope I've always been grateful for blessings, and I'm sure I'm grateful, from the bottom of my heart, for this. Give me prosperity, and I'm not apt to forget it. They've been asking me to make a will, but I told 'em I was too poor to think of any such thing; and, now my schooner has got back, I s'pose I shall get more hints of the same sort. Should anything happen to me, Mary, you can bring out the sealed paper I gave you to keep, and that must satisfy 'em all. You'll remember, it is addressed to Gar'ner. There isn't much in it, and it won't be much thought of, I fancy; but, such as it is, 'tis the last instrument I sign, unless I get better. To think of Gar'ner's coming back, after all! It has put new life in me, and I shall be about, ag'in, in a week, if he has only not forgotten the key, and the hidden treasure!"

Mary Pratt's heart had not been so light for many a weary day, but it grieved her to be a witness of this lingering longing after the things of the world. She knew that not only her uncle's days, but that his very hours, were numbered; and that, notwithstanding this momentary flickering of the lamp, in consequence of fresh oil being poured into it, the wick was nearly consumed, and that it must shortly go out, let Roswell's success be what it might. The news of the sudden and unlooked-for return of a vessel so long believed to be lost, spread like wildfire over the whole point, and greatly did it increase the interest of the relatives in the condition of the dying man. If he was a subject of great concern before, doubly did he become so now. A vessel freighted with furs would have caused much excitement of itself; but, by some means or other, the deacon's great secret of the buried treasure had leaked out, most probably by means of some of his lamentations during his illness, and, though but imperfectly known, it added largely to the expectations connected with the unlooked-for return of the schooner. In short, it would not have been easy to devise a circumstance that should serve to increase the liveliness of feeling that, just then, prevailed on the subject of Deacon Pratt and his assets, than the arrival of the Sea Lion, at that precise moment.

And arrive she did, that tempest-tossed, crippled, ice-bound, and half-burned little craft, after roaming over an extent of ocean that would have made up half a dozen ordinary sea voyages. It was, in truth, the schooner so well known to the reader, that was now settling away her mainsail and jib, as she kept off, under her fore-topsail alone, towards the wharf, on which every human being who could, with any show of propriety, be there at such a moment, was now collected, in a curious and excited crowd. Altogether, including boys and females, there must have been not less than a hundred persons on that wharf; and among them were most of the anxious relatives who were in attendance on the vessel's owner, in his last hours. By a transition that was natural enough, perhaps, under the circumstances, they had transferred their interest in the deacon to this schooner, which they looked upon as an inanimate portion of an investment that would soon have little that was animate about it.

Baiting Joe was a sort of oracle, in such circumstances. He had passed his youth at sea, having often doubled the Horn, and was known to possess a very respectable amount of knowledge on the subject of vessels of all sorts and sizes, rig and qualities. He was now consulted by all who could get near him, as a matter of course, and his opinions were received as _res adjudicata_, as the lawyers have it.

"That's the boat," said Joe, affecting to call the Sea Lion by a diminutive, as a proof of regard; "yes, that's the craft, herself; but she is wonderfully deep in the water! I never seed a schooner of her tonnage, come in from a v'y'ge, with her scuppers so near awash. Don't you think, Jim, there must be suthin' heavier than skins, in her hold, to bring her down so low in the water?"

Jim was another loafer, who lived by taking clams, oysters, fish, and the other treasures of the surrounding bays. He was by no means as bigh authority as Baiting Joe; still he was always authority on a wharf.

"I never seed the like on't," answered Jim. "That schooner must ha' made most of her passage under water. She's as deep as one of our coasters comin' in with a load o' brick!"

"She's deep; but not as deep as a craft I once made a cruise in. I was aboard of the first of Uncle Sam's gun-boats, that crossed the pond to Gibraltar. When we got in, it made the Mediterranean stare, I can tell you! We had furrin officers aboard us, the whull time, lookin' about, and wonderin', as they called it, if we wasn't amphibbies."

"What's that?" demanded Jim, rather hastily. "There's no sich rope in the ship."

"I know that well enough; but an amphibby, as I understand it, is a new sort of whale, that comes up to breathe, like all of that family, as old Dr. Mitchell, of Cow Neck, calls the critturs. So the furrin officers thought we must be of the amphibby family, to live so much under water, as it seemed to them. It was wet work, I can tell you, boys; I don't think I got a good breath more than once an hour, the whull of the first day we was out. One of the furrin officers asked our captain how the gun-boat steered. He wasn't a captain, at all--only a master, you see, and we all called him Jumpin' Billy. So Jumpin' Billy says, 'Don't know, sir.' 'What! crossed the Atlantic in her, and don't know how your craft steers!' says the furrin officer, says he--and well he might, Jim, since nothin' that ever lived could go from Norfolk to Gibraltar, without _some_ attention to the helm--but Jumpin' Billy had another story to tell. 'No, sir; don't know,' he answered. 'You see, sir, a nor-wester took us right aft, as we cleared the capes, and down she dove, with her nose under and her starn out, and she come across without having a chance to try the rudder.'"

This story, which Joe had told at least a hundred times before, and which, by the way, is said to be true, produced the usual admiration, especially among the crowd of lega-tees-expectant, to most of whom it was quite new. When the laugh went out, which it soon did of itself, Joe pursued a subject that was of more interest to most of his auditors, or rather to the principal personages among them.

"Skins never brought a craft so low, that you may be sartain of!" he resumed. "I've seed all sorts of vessels stowed, but a hundred press-screws couldn't cram in furs enough to bring a craft so low! To my eye, Jim, there's suthin' unnat'ral about that schooner, a'ter all."

The study is scarce worthy of a diploma, but we will take this occasion to say, for the benefit of certain foreign writers, principally of the female sex, who fancy they represent Americanisms, that the vulgar of the great republic, and it is admitted there are enough of the class, never say "summat" or "somethink," which are low English, but not low American, dialect. The in-and-in Yankee says "suth-in." In a hundred other words have these ambitious ladies done injustice to our vulgar, who are not vulgar, according to the laws of Cockayne, in the smallest degree. "_The_ Broadway," for instance, is no more used by an American than "_the_ Congress," or "the United States of _North_ America."

"Perhaps," answered Jim, "'tisn't the Sea Lion, a'ter all. There's a family look about all the craft some men build, and this may be a sort of relation of our missin' schooner."

"I'll not answer for the craft, though that's her blue peter, and them's her mast-heads, and I turned in that taw-sail halyard-block with my own hands.--I'll tell you what, Jim, there's been a wrack, or a nip, up yonder, among the ice, and this schooner has been built anew out of that there schooner You see if it don't turn out as I tell you. Ay, and there's Captain Gar'ner, himself, alive and well, just comin' forrard."

A little girl started with this news, and was soon pour ing it into the willing ears and open heart of the weeping and grateful Mary. An hour later, Roswell held the latter in his arms; for at such a moment, it was not possible for the most scrupulous of the sex to affect coldness and reserve, where there was so much real tenderness and love. While folding Mary to his heart, Roswell whispered in her ears the blessed words that announced his own humble submission to the faith which accepted Christ as the Son of God. Too well did the gentle and ingenuous girl understand the sincerity and frankness of her lovers nature, to doubt what he said, or in any manner to distrust the motive. That moment was the happiest of her short and innocent life!

But the welcome tidings had reached the deacon, and ere Roswell had an opportunity of making any other explanations but those which assured Mary that he had come back all that she wished him to be, both of them were summoned to the bed-side of the dying man. The effect of the excitement on the deacon was so very great as almost to persuade the expectant legatees that their visit was premature, and that they might return home, to renew it at some future day. It is painful to find it our duty to draw sketches that shall contain such pictures of human nature; but with what justice could we represent the loathsome likeness of covetousness, hovering over a grave, and omit the resemblances of those who surrounded it? Mary Pratt, alone, of all that extensive family connection, felt and thought as Christianity, and womanly affection, and reason, dictated. All the rest saw nothing but the possessor of a considerable property, who was about to depart for that unknown world, into which nothing could be taken from this, but the divine and abused spirit which had been fashioned in the likeness of God.

"Welcome, Gar'ner--welcome home, ag'in!" exclaimed the deacon, so heartily as quite to deceive the young man as to the real condition of his owner; a mistake that was, perhaps, a little unfortunate, as it induced him to be more frank than might otherwise have been the case. "I couldn't find it in my heart to give you up, and have, all along, believed that we should yet have good news from you. The Gar'ners are a reliable family, and that was one reason why I chose you to command my schooner. Them Daggetts are a torment, but we never should have known anything about the islands, or the key, hadn't it been for one on 'em!"

As the deacon stopped to breathe, Mary turned away from the bed, grieved at heart to see the longings of the world thus clinging to the spirit of one who probably had not another hour to live. The glazed but animated eye, a cheek which resembled a faded leaf of the maple laid on a cold and whitish stone, and lips that had already begun to recede from the teeth, made a sad, sad picture, truly, to look upon at such a moment; yet, of all present, Mary Pratt alone felt the fullness of the incongruity, and alone bethought her of the unreasonableness of encouraging feelings like those which were now uppermost in the deacon's breast. Even minister Whittle had a curiosity to know how much was added to the sum-total of Deacon Pratt's assets, by the return of a craft that had so long been set down among the missing. When all eyes, therefore, were turned in curiosity on the handsome face of the fine manly youth who now stood at the bed-side of the deacon, including those of brother and sister, of nephews and nieces, of cousins and friends, those of this servant of the most high God was of the number, and not the least expressive of solicitude and expectation. As soon as the deacon had caught a little breath, and had swallowed a restorative that the hired nurse had handed to him, his eager thoughts reverted to the one engrossing theme of his whole life.

"These are all friends, Gar'ner," he said; "come to visit me in a little sickness that I've been somewhat subject to, of late, and who will all be glad to hear of our good fortune. So you've brought the schooner back, a'ter all, Gar'ner, and will disapp'int the Sag Harbour ship-owners, who have been all along foretelling that we should never see her ag'in:--brought her back--ha! Gar'ner?"

"Only in part, Deacon Pratt. We have had good luck and bad luck since we left you, and have only brought home the best part of the craft."

"The best part--" said the deacon, gulping his words, in a way that compelled him to pause; "The best part! What, in the name of property, has become of the rest?"

"The rest was burned, sir, to keep us from freezing to death," Roswell then gave a brief but very clear and intelligible account of what had happened, and of the manner in which he had caused the hulk of the deacon's Sea Lion to be raised upon by the materials furnished by the Sea Lion of the Vineyard. The narrative brought Mary Pratt back to the side of the bed, and caused her calm eyes to become riveted intently on the speaker's face. As for the deacon, he might have said, with Shakspeare's Wolsey,

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not, in mine age, Have left me naked to mine enemies."

His fall was not that of a loss of power, it is true, but it was that of a still more ignoble passion, covetousness. As Roswell proceeded, his mind represented one source of wealth after another released from his clutch, until it was with a tremulous voice, and a countenance from which all traces of animation had fled, that he ventured again to speak.

"Then I may look upon my ventur' as worse than nothing?" he said. "The insurers will raise a question about paying for a craft that has been rebuilt in this way, and the Vineyard folks will be sartain to put in a claim of salvage, both on account of two of their hands helping you with the work, and on account of the materials--and we with no cargo, as an offset to it all!"

"No, deacon, it is not quite as bad as that," resumed Roswell. "We have brought home a good lot of skins; enough to pay the people full wages and to return you every cent of outfit, with a handsome advance on the venture. A sealer usually makes a good business of it, if she falls in with seals. Our cargo, in skins, can't be worth less than $20,000; besides half a freight left on the island, for which another craft may be sent."

"That is suthin', the Lord be praised!" ejaculated the deacon. "Though the schooner is as bad as gone, and the outlays have been awfully heavy, I'm almost afraid to go any further. Gardner,--did you--I grow weak very fast--did you stop--Mary, I wish _you_ would put the question."

"I am afraid that my uncle means to ask if you stopped at the Key, in the West Indies, according to your instructions, Roswell?" the niece said, and most reluctantly, for she plainly saw it was fully time her uncle ceased to think of the things of this life, and to begin to turn all his thoughts on the blessed mediation, and another state of being.

"I forgot no part of your orders, sir," rejoined Roswell. "It was my duty to obey them, and I believe I have done so to the letter--"

"Stop, Gar'ner," interrupted the dying man--"one question, while I think of it. Will the Vineyard men have any claim of salvage on account of them skins?"

"Certainly not, sir. These skins are all our own--were taken, cured, stowed, and brought home altogether by ourselves. There is a lot of skins belonging to the Vineyarders, stowed away in the house, which is yours, deacon, and which it would well pay any small craft to go and bring away. If anybody is to claim salvage, it will be ourselves. No salvage was demanded for the loss off Cape Henlopen, I trust?"

"No, none--Daggett behaved what I call _liberal_ in that affair,"--half the critics of the day would use the adjective instead of the adverb here, and why should Deacon Prates English be any better than his neighbours?--"and so I've admitted to his friends over on the Vineyard. But, Gar'ner, our great affair still remains to be accounted for. Do you wish to have the room cleared before you speak of that--shall we turn the _key_ on all these folks, and then settle accounts--he! he! he!"

The deacon's facetiousness sounded strangely out of place to Roswell; still, he did not exactly know how to gainsay his wishes. There might be an indiscretion in pursuing his narrative before so many witnesses, and the young man paused until the room was cleared, leaving no one in it but the sick man, Mary, himself, and the nurse. The last could not well be gotten rid of on Oyster Pond, where her office gave her an assumed right to know all family secrets; or, what was the same thing to her, to _fancy_ that she knew them. Among all the sayings which the experience of mankind has reduced to axioms, there is not one more just than that which says, "There are secrets in all families." These secrets the world commonly affects to know all about, but we think few will have reached the age of threescore without becoming convinced of how much pretending ignorance there is in this assumption of the world. "_Tot ou tard tout se scait_" is a significant saying of our old friends, the French, who know as much of things, in practice as any other people on the face of the earth; but "_tot ou tard tout ne se scait pas_."

"Is the door shut?" asked the deacon, tremulously, for eagerness, united to debility, was sadly shaking his whole frame. "See that the door is shut tight, Mary; this is our own secret, and nurse must remember that."

Mary assured him that they were alone, and turned away in sorrow from the bed.

"Now, Gar'ner," resumed the deacon, "open your whole heart, and let us know all about it."

Roswell hesitated to reply; for he, too, was shocked at witnessing this instance of a soul's clinging to mammon, when on the very eve of departing for the unknown world. There was a look in the glazed and sunken eyes of the old man, that reminded him unpleasantly of that snapping of the eyes which he had so often seen in Daggett.

"You didn't forget the key, surely, Gar'ner?" asked the deacon, anxiously.

"No, sir; we did our whole duty by that part of the voyage."

"Did you find it--was the place accurately described?"

"No chart could have made it better. We lost a month in looking for the principal land-mark, which had been altered by the weather; but, that once found, the rest was easy. The difficulty we met with in starting, has brought us home so late in the spring."

"Never mind the spring, Gar'ner; the part that is past is sartain to come round ag'in, in due time. And so you found the very key that was described by Daggett?"

"We did, sir; and just where he described it to be."

"And how about the tree, and the little hillock of sand, at its foot?"

"Both were there, deacon. The hillock must have grown a good deal, by reason of the shifting sand; but, all things considered, the place was well enough described."

"Well--well--well--you opened the hillock, of course!"

"We did, sir; and found the box mentioned by the pirate."

"A good large box, I'll warrant ye! Them pirates seldom do things by halves--he! he! he!"

"I can't say much for the size of the box, deacon--it looked to me as if it had once held window-glass, and that of rather small dimensions."

"But, the contents--you do not mention the contents."

"They are here, sir," taking a small bag from his pocket, and laying it on the bed, by the deacon's side. "The pieces are all of gold, and there are just one hundred and forty-three of them.--Heavy doubloons, it is true, and I dare say well worth their 16 dollars each."

The deacon gave a gulp, as if gasping for breath, at the same time that he clutched the bag. The next instant he was dead; and there is much reason to believe that the demons who had watched him, and encouraged him in his besetting sin, laughed at this consummation of their malignant arts! If angels in heaven did not mourn at this characteristic departure of a frail spirit from its earthly tenement, one who had many of their qualities did. Heavy had been the load on Mary Pratt's heart, at the previous display of her uncle's weakness, and profound was now her grief at his having made such an end. _

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