66

My child, my child!" exclaimed the earl, as he leant over her lifeless form, and supported her head.

hour afterwards, as he stood on the steps of torous snore of the brutalized Master Tomhis own house-I hope never to see again kins, who was sleeping in a sort of cupboard such a countenance as his then was-utterly immediately adjoining the cabin, of which I despairing. The last words he said to me was so miserable a tenant. To the sleepless, were, Harry, if I had listened to principle, and those laboring under morbid nervous afthis would have been avoided, and I might fections, I have understood the tick, tick, tickhave been happy-'tis too late now.' This ing of the death-watch, is a sensation that morning, before any one was up, the house may be likened to the breaking of the weariwas alarmed by the report of a pistol-he ed spirit slowly on the wheel; but which had blown out his brains-but, good heavens! compared with the brutal and unintermitting Lady Belvoir has fainted." grunting of my tormentor, must have really appeared music. Almost, for the first time in my life, my irritability was excited-a strange feeling of a want and a wish to destroy came over me. I contemplated, first with horror, and then with a grim satisfaction, the diabolical pleasure that the braining of the wretch would give me. I shuddered at my own thought, yet I cherished it, in spite of myself. I wondered at my own depravity-I quivered with agitation at this sudden insight into my own heart-wrathfully, and with shame, did I confess that I was a son of Adam and a brother of Cain. "Oh!" I exclaimed, as I tossed upon my restless bed, "if this panting to destroy is thus strong upon you, Ardent Troughton, from provocation so light, from an impulse so apparently causeless, what is the guarantee against the murderous hand, when injury tramples upon, insult. mocks you? There is a black coal smouldering with an unholy fire in your heart, quench it, and at once, or by it you will be consumed."

"Father!" she uttered almost inaudibly -but let us draw the veil over this sad picture of domestic misery, and thus refrain from blazoning forth the dreadful results that too frequently ensue from a misplaced affection, which, like a sweet flower, pure in itself, withers and dies, because the soil on which it is planted is nothing but rottenness.

THE EXPIATION;

OR, ARDENT TROUGHTON, THE WRECKED MER-
CHANT.*

BY THE SUB-EDITOR.

I flung myself from my lair, and humbled, ill, and wretched, I crawled upon the deck. THE northeasterly wind had set in with a The view there, and from thence, was disconmalicious perseverance, that could be likened solate. The sea had increased with our disto nothing more aptly than the oration of a tance from the land, and the ill-humor and scolding termagant, gathering strength by the sullenness of the mate, who had charge of mere exercise of her capabilities of bluster- the watch, had increased with the sea. The ing. It blew all the livelong day: some sails vessel was holding her course for the Straits were taken in, and others blown out of the of Gibraltar, with the gale on her larboard boltropes, and when night came on, we sup-quarter, and with nothing set but her reefed posed that we should have a lull, upon the strength of which supposition the master took an extra glass and turned in early, and thus between stupidity and rum, found that lull in his cot, that was not to be found, either on deck, or in the heavens, or on the face of the waters.

The brig, as far as such a tub could be said to be trimmed at all, was in good trim. The lightness of her cargo was well rectified by the quantity of the ballast, and, so far, she had behaved well. I was very sick. If I repaired to the deck, I could not keep my footing, and below, the stench and the close air were nearly insupportable. These certainly are common-place miseries; but they were, from my previous habits, my punctilious cleanliness, and the delicate nurture of my previous life, actual agonies. About eight in the evening, my torments below became unendurable; for, in addition to the nauseous effluvia of the confined cabin, and the horrible creaking of the ship's timbers, I had to be irritated with the regular, loud, and ster

*Continued from p. 239.

foresail and storm staysail. She was making rapid way, but the night was excessively dark, the cold extreme, and its bitterness much increased by the frozen, arrowy sleet, that drove aslant across the decks.

When I gained the deck, it must not be supposed that I was in the blandest frame of mind. As I made my appearance above the hatchway, I distinctly heard the man at the wheel say, with a contemptuous roll of his quid, "the long-shore dandy."

As I stumbled across the weather side of the little space, dignified by the high-sounding title of the quarter-deck, I came in contact, certainly not willingly on my part, with the surly mate. His name was Gavel. Yes, James Gavel, I remember was the name of this man with the unfortunate temper.

"Out of my way, sir," said he to me, pushing me aside with his arm. "This to me?" "Yes."

"You are rude, sir."

"I am doing my duty. You are in my way. On duty, if you were the king's son, and got in my way, I would send you out of it thus," and he thrust me over to leeward.

I staggered with the violent motion of the with his usual reckless and ferocious bearbrig, and came with great force against the ing-that I was suddenly checked in my iniron belaying pins, and was much hurt. I did not feel that pain then. The action of the mate could not be called a blow. It was a push-a something with which to put aside an obstruction. I glared upon my assaulter, and looked eagerly round for some weapon with which to avenge the insult. Even Bounder, the large Newfoundland dog, of whom I have made honorable mention, recent as was our acquaintance, sided with me. He placed himself in a hostile attitude before my person, as if to protect it from further injury, and growled defiance at my aggressor. This sudden action of the dog seemed to strike Gavel forcibly, and he exclaimed with a horrible oath, "Is every thing that breathes my enemy?"

I felt the infirmity of passion fast mastering me; but, remembering my horrible impulse in the cabin, with one mighty effort I subdued it. What a mystic entanglement of thoughts and feelings is the human mind! For no intentional injury or insult, I had just thirsted for blood, and now that both had been inflicted upon me, and that, in no measured degree, I thought only of vindicating my injured honor, and of simply chastising my in

sulter.

After the first burst of resentment had subsided, I made my way to Gavel, and placing my hand heavily upon his shoulder, I said to him slowly and distinctly, "You have grossly wronged me. You must apologize."

"See you d-d first.”

"But indeed you must. Here, upon your own element, and on a planking on which I cannot even keep my footing-annoyed in mind, and dreadfully enfeebled by a sickness that is to you but a source of your derision, I am unable fairly to cope with you. Do not put, therefore, the assassin's thought into my head, for your sake and mine. Apologize-I even entreat you."

"Tell ye I wont. To a man as is a man, if so be as I have wronged him unlike a man, I am willing, heart and soul, to ask his pardon; but that I, a thorough seaman, should demean myself to beg pardon of a toothpolishing, pomatum-swelling, white-handed thing of starch like yourself-no, not if you were standing over me with the stiletto at my bosom, that your dd cowardly countrymen are so fond of using. Ask your pardon!-even if the point were in my heart, I would curse you, and with my last struggle spurn you. Ah! you are feeling for your knife or your dagger, are ye? Well, there is my broad chest, strike if you dare. I may as well die by the base hand of a mongrel Spaniard, as live the cursed life I now do; for I am sick, sick, sick of the world, and all that is in and upon it."

Notwithstanding the towering passion which the principal part of this speech had thrown me into, the last sentence of it was uttered with such a touching and deep tone of melancholy-a tone in complete contrast

tent of summary vengeance, though I hardly knew how that intent was to be worked out. Holding on, therefore, by the weather main rigging, I answered with a calmness that surprised myself. "Mr. Gavel, you refuse me justice because you hold me not to be a man, but as, in your acceptation of the term, something inferior to one. Your profession is not mine-nor your knowledge, nor your capability to bear hardship, nor your power of keeping footing in this terrible sea-all these, I repeat, are not mine. A man may want these, and yet have a nobleness of heart, a firmness of purpose, and a sublimity of true courage, which the uneducated cannot even comprehend. These qualities I do not, to any great degree, arrogate to myself; but I trust that I have enough of them to write myself as good a man as James Gavel, chief mate of my father's hired brig, the Jane."

"Prove it," said my adversary sullenly. "I will prove it, when occasion offers itself-and when I have, you will confess your error-you will apologize. This is the first quarrel that I ever had upon my hands, I humbly beseech of Heaven it may be the last-it seems to be changing me into a de

mon.

"Well, you speak fairly, Mr. Troughton. Occasions enough will soon offer themselves. This is a doomed vessel. The death-fires were playing last night round the foretopmast head, a whole hour by the glass; and there was a strange animal seen forward by old Huggins, half fish, half hyena-it lives upon sailor's carcases, and knows better than the shark when fat corpses will be tumbling into the sea. Take that, you lubber," he continued, giving the man at the wheel a tremendous blow on the face, that covered it instantaneously with blood, at the same time seizing the spoke itself, and rapidly righting the course of the vessel-"take that, and learn to mind your trick at the wheel, and don't founder us before our time."

I was not altogether sorry for the chastisement, albeit it was so severe. The fellow was cowed in a moment, and without wiping the blood off his face, he resumed his office. In listening to the mate, he had neglected the steerage, and suffered the brig so far to broach to, as to bring the wind right abeam, and a deluging sea swept clean over her. As every thing was well secured, no other damage was sustained, than that arising from adding a salt water wetting to the fresh one that we were so patiently enduring.

"You think then, Mr. Gavel, that we are in danger?"

"Know it-not sorry-tired of the world. No preferment for a man as does his duty. Look at that beast, our skipper Tomkinswith his means I might be happy, and make my poor mother comfortable and happy too."

"But is he not reckoned a good seaman?" "This is the exact case, sir; he is fit to

"The deed may not yet be committed, but it is predestined; and the man that is to do it, or has already done it, is now in this condemned barky.'

command this or any other vessel just two thoughts in the cabin rising up in judgment half hours in the four-and-twenty-those are against me. "This is a grave accusation, the periods, just before he gets outrageously Mr. Gavel;-how know you this?" drunk. Before he has had a sufficient quantity to wind him up, he is as fearful as a hare, and as weak as a spoilt lady who lives upon green tea; when he has had too much, he is as rash and as reckless as a ruined gamester, with a wife and young family; and, excepting during the two half hours that I have mentioned, he is always either in one or other of these states. But, never mind, it's all one now-his green shroud is ready for him-he'll find it wide enough, I'm thinking-he'll shortly lie in a deeper grave than his father's."

"But if, according to your ridiculous omens, the vessel is so soon to be lost, and this murder is not committed, there can be no murder at all, since we shall all share one common fate." I spoke this with a dreadful mistrust of myself.

"Mayhap it is, mayhap it ain't. If it t'ain't yet done, short as is our time, it will still be long enough to commit wickedness "But why all these misgivings? You to plunge us all into hell. You yourself know that, as yet, I am a wretched sailor, or looked just now at me as if you longed to you should not have thrust me from you, as cut my throat, merely for pushing you out you did, with impunity. You'll have to an- of my way. I dare say, that if just then you swer for that yet. But why all these doubts had had a knife in your hand, you would of our safety? The vessel rolls, but she have clapped it between my ribs-you shudseems to be now in no more danger than she der.-Why, Master Troughton, what a trihas been for the last eight-and-forty hours. vial accident only intervened between you Really, your dismal prognostications look and murder !—you ought to be ashamed of like superstition.” yourself."

"Do they? Well, call it what you like. My cheeks burned with contrition at this The rats are much better judges of those reproof from the rough and sullen seaman, matters than we-poor blind mortals that we but still I was too proud to betray my feel. are. This is an old craft, mark you, and ings in words, and I coldly replied, "You was, erewhile, overrun with these black gen-will give me satisfaction for that outrage tlemen with long tails and black whiskers. There was not a finer colony in any vessel in the Thames from London Bridge to the Nore light. Well, I'm blessed if I did not see them, the very night that you came on board, at Gravesend, walk down the chain cable, as leisurely and as orderly as if they had been soldiers at a parade, and take to the water in three divisions, some of the mothers and fathers taking the little ones in their teeth."

"Incredible!"

"True! One line swam on board the George Indiaman. She is a safe ship for this voyage. The owners and merchants, if they knew all, might have saved their insurances."

"Where did the other two divisions go?" "I didn't watch. A good way down the river, I'm thinking. I should like to know myself but I was so much taken up with the last of the train that left the brig. It was a large rat, grown gray with age. As he stood upon the last link of the chain cable, and just before he plunged into the water, he turned himself round very leisurely, and then shook his head at the craft, with quite as much gravity and wisdom as a judge upon the bench. I had a great mind to have flung a marling-spike at him, that I happened to have in my hand, only the hooker is not too well found in stores. Upon my soul, I had a great mind to have cut my stick, and walked off with them."

"So, you judge from this that we shall perish?"

"Certain besides, we have a murderer on board."

when you have proved me: it is a quarrel that we will suspend, yet not forget. In the mean time, let us act generously towards each other. I have already learned to esteem your sterling good qualities, already I know that on you only, the salvation of this ship depends, if she may be saved: it is a pity that you should mar those good impressions by your ruffianly deportment."

66

My ruffianly deportment, as you are pleased to call it, is neither here nor there. Concerning this matter, the craft is not to be saved, without, Jonas-like, we could pitch the murderer overboard. If he was struggling in that eddying whirl to leeward there, we might have fine weather and a quiet sea in an hour's time. I wish he was, from the bottom of my heart!"

"Mr. Gavel, you shock me! Are these the impressions of a Christian? It is meet that crime should be punished, but unmanly and unnatural to rejoice in the punishment; had I said diabolical, I should but have characterized the feeling too truly."

"Self-preservation, Master Troughtonbut hark! there is a fresh hand at the bellows:-and, mark me, fair and delicate sir, how pitchy dark it is suddenly grown-you are not sea-sick now-no, fear has overcome it-lift up your head, and look over the bulwark if you dare, and then tell me what you see."

I obeyed fearfully; at first the intense violence of the wind nearly took away my breath, and the sleet almost blinded me; but shading my face partially with my hands, I was enabled to preserve my watching and look-out for a short space.

"Another hand at the wheel. Mind your

helm, my boy, mind your helm,-steady so -meet her, boys, meet her-she reels like a drunken man-o'-war's man on the Point. Well, Master Troughton, what have you seen?" he continued, turning to me, who had been fairly beaten off by the wind, and was now endeavoring to recover my breath as I crouched down beneath the weather bulwark.

with the ruffianly deportment, will do his duty to the last, blow high blow low. I wish that foresail was off, but I doubt whether we have beef (i. e. men) enough to take it in, without splitting it to ribbons;-upon my soul, those corpse-lights are making a merry dance of it." No sooner had he uttered these words than a crash that seemed the very bursting of the heavens, accompanied by an intense and blinding light, threw us all into a state of momentary stupefaction. The maintopmast was shivered, and with its encumbering rigging fell over to leeward. The stupendous thunder-clap produced a sudden calm. Hitherto, the roaring of the winds had prevented my hearing the dull, monotonous, yet angry dashing of the waves; the "It is but did you not see the corpse- whole surface of the sea seemed now sudlights dancing here and there, just where the denly imbued with the voice of countless opening gulfs of the waves look the black-multitudes, and the moaning came up from est?"

"All above was black, black, black; the only light seemed to be emitted from the angry foam of the vexed waters, and the horizon marked by a pale, sickly streak of color, seemed fearfully near us, as if approaching to compass us in on every side. That pallid light, Gavel, from the hissing waves is very horrible to look upon."

"Describe them to me."

the face of the ocean near and far, like the groans of a sinful world from their graves on the awful day of resurrection. In dreadful contrast to this universal and harrowing clamor below, all was again dark and unnaturally still above.

"Oh, they are nothing when one is used to them. They always appear to me as if, through the black depths of the unfathomable ocean, they were each lighting a condemned soul down to hell; and yet they are "All hands up foresail-clear wreck!" nothing but quivering little bits of sickly-shouted the mate. "Now's the time-oh, for looking blue flames, after all. They were half a dozen good hands-up-up!" but bedancing round the maintop-head last night-fore the first man of the watch below had there there," said he, seizing my arm with shown his shrinking head above the hatchthe grip of a Samson, "look at the fore rig-way, the tempest renewed its fury with a reging: there they are! As sure as God is in heaven, the murderer is on board."

I gazed and shuddered. There were many small, wiry, and snaky streams of electric fire playing among the shrouds: though I knew that these proceeded from natural causes, I could not prevent the chill of superstition from creeping through my blood to my very heart; however, I mastered my fears as well as I could, and turning to the mate, said, "These blue flames, that you call corpse-lights, are nothing but indications that the atmosphere is overcharged with positive electric matter, attracted, no doubt, by the working of the wood and rope against the iron at the head of the foremast: instead of showing us that we have a murderer on board, it merely prognosticates that we shall have thunder and lightning."

doubled vengeance, but from nearly an opposite quarter, throwing the foresail dead aback. In an instant the brig had terrific stern way, the wheel span round, and the man at the helm was very nearly tossed overboard by the shock, whilst the rudder was jammed hard the wrong way, which counteracted the effect that the backed foresail and the inclination of the foreyard would have naturally had to make her pay off to port. The mate and myself first flew to the wheel, but we could not move it. In less than a minute the dead lights of the cabin windows were driven in, the cabin filled with water, and Mr. Tomkins, our drunken master, was washed out of his cot, and up the companion hatchway in his shirt.

The wretch was despicable in his fears. He ran about helplessly wringing his hands, and beseeching God to forgive him. He made no effort, he gave no orders-no one regarded him. The vessel all this time going furiously astern. The water was now pouring into her from the cabin windows, and she was filling fast-no staying below for the skulkers. The cold waves washed them out of their hammocks.

"I know that too: but this comes of your book learning-you believe nothing just like you all, with your philosophy. Why, you have philosophised away all the truths of the Bible already :-fie upon your natural causes-you will have every thing proved and nothing believed. Because thunder generally follows these corpse-lights, it is no rule that they do not indicate the presence of a murderer on board; and because the rainbow is produced merely by natural causes, it is no reason why it should not be regarded as a perpetually-recurring miracle, placed there as a sign by God himself to all men and to all nations, that water shall never again drown the world, though it is likely enough "Who is the murderer in thought now, it will drown all of it that there is in this Gavel? No." So we hurried him with us condemned barky. However, Jem Gavel, on the forecastle. The mate seized an axe,

"All hands forward," shouted Gavel, "we must cut away the foremast-it is our only chance. Quick, quick, my lads,-come along, Troughton. Shall we leave the bewildered sot to his fate?" pointing to the master. "The mast will fall upon and crush him."

and a very large and active black fellow | yet made up my mind. I soon fell asleep, another. Gavel cut away at the fore, and and, contrary to my expectation, I slept soundthe negro at the foretopmast stay, and, in less ly, and I awoke late the next morning in than half a minute the whole of her masts health, and not only refreshed, but almost in lay fore and aft upon the deck. The effect good spirits. of this manoeuvre was instantaneous. The It was nine o'clock before I again got on brig heeled round immediately and presented deck. The men were slowly and doggedly her broadside to the wind, and thus our lives clearing away the wreck that lay all about were, for the present, saved. the decks, and the surly mate was kicking When we scrambled aft, to add to our mis- and handspiking them with a savageness that fortunes we found the rudder wrenched from immediately recalled the unfavorable impres the pintles, and, held on by the rudder chains, sions that his activity and gallantry of the dashing about under the counter. After a preceding night had partly obliterated. Howfew ineffectual attempts to secure it, it was ever, I did not think myself justified in using cut adrift lest it should beat a hole in the ves- any interference, for the crew, perhaps, desel's side. "She is half full of water:-all served the castigations that were lavished hands to the pumps." I just gave one pass- upon them so unsparingly. To amuse myself, ing thought to my father's dry goods, and having cleared away the rubbish and the stripping to the waist, took my spell, and remnants of rope from a small space under gloriously I worked. As we freed the vessel the lee of the quarter-deck bulwark, I called from the water rapidly, we had no reason to my friend Bounder, the large Newfoundland apprehend that we had sprung a leak. About dog, to me, and began to propitiate his good midnight, there was only six inches in the graces by commencing a hearty and rough pump well, and, as no immediate danger was game of romps. My overtures were most threatened, Gavel came up to me and said graciously received, and my tokens of friendwith a grim courtesy, "Well, Master Trough-ship most warmly returned.

ton, I can't but say, that you have proved The weather had now settled into a steady yourself a man to-night; and I am not asham- and staggering gale (a connection of adjeced to acknowledge, that I am heartily sorry tives well understood) directly from the west. that I shoved you to leeward. I suppose that ward. We were completely at its mercy, I must not offer my hand to a gentleman and lay, as the seaman say, like a log upon born like yourself, but I will say this, that I the water. We had not a stick standing, am heartily sorry that you ever embarked aboard this craft-for she is doomed. However, let me recommend you to go and turn in. The steward will help you to a dry suit; make yourself comfortable and your mind easy; for, depend upon it, we shall see how each other can meet death before many days are past and gone."

with the exception of the bowsprit : yet all but the superstitious and sullen mate now entertained sanguine hopes that we should reach the port in safety. Indeed, with the exception of the gale and the wreck before us, every thing wore a cheerful aspect. We had been driven well south, and the day was genial, and the sun shining brightly out from an unclouded sky.

Notwithstanding the amenity of my disposi tion, I could not play with a dog for ever; and being really ennuyeed for want of occupation, I rose, and went to Mr. Gavel, and asked him, with a becoming humility, if he could not make me useful.

I took his advice, but not his proffered hand. I refused it from no motives of malice, but because my pride would not permit me yet to think that I had given any very great proofs of manliness. When I reached the cabin, I found the carpenter had just finished securing the dead-lights, and that the steward and the cabin boy had made my berth toler- He repaid me by a stare of unsophisticated ably dry. The water that had rushed into surprise, and then stammered out, "Willingly the cabin when the brig had stern way had-most heartily; here, lend us a hand to not penetrated into my trunks, so I easily unbend this sail-do it thus-come, we will contrived to get into a complete suit of dry work together, and you can thus learn to do clothes. My sea-sickness had entirely dis- it in a ship-shape fashion. There is the true appeared, and I was never troubled with it heart of oak in your bosom after all; only, again. methinks that the tarry sinnet will soil those The master had also dressed himself, and pretty long white fingers of yours. Well with great assiduity was again getting brutal-done-by the holy-that's the true Jack way. ly drunk. To his maudlin intreaties for me to join him in his debasing debauch, I returned only a contemptuous refusal, and, breathing vengeance against me, and imprecating every thing possible and impossible, he was, in the space of a short half hour lifted into his cot in a state of the most beastly insensibility.

Before I went to sleep I made a vow, that if ever I reached Spain in safety, the Jane was the last vessel that Josiah Tomkins should ever command, though whether I would intercede for James Gavel, I had not |

Why, the Lord love you, they should have made a sailor of you."

"Well, you see, Gavel, how agreeable I am willing to make myself—you're improving me fast-oblige me, and let me try to improve you."

"With all my heart; I'm perfect in nothing but seamanship."

"It is in seamanship that I wish to work the improvement."

"Well, that's good-what next? should like to hear, however."

"I want to teach you how to make the most