CHAPTER XX.
Brings the Holidays of the Little People and the Storyof the Old Man to an End.
Again the Mariner's Rest receives the little people; again the AncientMariner is there to welcome them. But a shade of sadness is upon the oldman's face, and the children are not so gay as is their wont; for allthings must have an end, and holidays are no exception to the rule.
"Isn't it too bad," said William, looking very sober,--"isn't it too badthat this is to be the last of it?"
"Not so bad for you as for me," replied the Ancient Mariner; and the oldman looked as gloomy and forsaken as if he had been cast away in thecold again. But he soon cheered up, and in a much livelier way he said,"Well now, my hearties, since this is to be the last of it, suppose weclose the story in the 'Crow's Nest,' where we first began it; for yousee, if the Dean and I were rescued from the desolate island and thesavages, we were not home yet. Now, what do you say to that, my dears?"
"The Crow's Nest! Yes, yes, the Crow's Nest!" cried the children all atonce; and away they scampered to it, as light and merry as if they hadnever for an instant been sad at thought of the parting that was so soonto come.
And now once more our little party are together in the dear old rusticvine-clad arbor, and, as on the first day of meeting there, the old mantakes his long clay pipe out of his mouth, and sticks it in a rafteroverhead; then around little Alice he puts his great, big arm, and hedraws the fair-haired, bright-eyed child close to his side, and thus"ballasted," as he says, he "bears away for port."
* * * * *
"Now, to bring our story to an end," ran on the Captain, "I must sayfirst that the _Rob Roy_ was a good, stout ship; the master a bluff,good-hearted Scotchman; the mate a kindly man, and altogether differentfrom the red-faced mate that was on the _Blackbird_; and the people wereall just as good and kind to us as the savages had been. But they gaveus right away so much coffee and ship's biscuit and other things to eatand drink (none of which had we tasted for three years and more), thatwe got a dreadful colic, and had like to have died. But the next day wewere quite well again, and then we related to the Captain and everybodyon board the story of our adventures. The worst was, they would make ustell our story over and over again, as I have been telling it to you,until we almost wished we had never been rescued at all. It is, indeed,a fearful thing in anybody's life ever to have met with any adventurethat is at all peculiar; for to the end of his days people will neverget done asking him about it; and most likely their questions are of themost ridiculous kind, like, 'Hardy, wasn't it cold there?' just as ifanybody could be cast away in the cold, and find it anything else; or,'How did you feel, Hardy?' as if _feeling_ has anything at all to dowith you when you are trying to save your life.
"The captain of the _Rob Roy_ took a great fancy to our odd-looking furclothes, especially our underclothing, which was made of birds' skins;and he gave us civilized garments out of the ship's stores. You may besure that we were glad enough to get these nasty fur clothes off, andbe rid of them forever. The captain offered to keep them for us, but wesaid 'No, no,' for we had had quite enough of them.
"So we went after whales, and made a 'good catch,' as the whale-fisherscall a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, onlystopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.
"When we reached Aberdeen, which occurred on the 29th of October, therewas a great talk made about us, and, when we walked through the streets,people stuck out their fingers, and said, 'There they go! look!' so wewere great lions there, and had to tell our story so often that we foundout what they liked most to hear, and this we repeated over and overagain; and by this method we saved much time and talk.
"The very first thing the Dean did, after landing, was to write a letterto his mother, sending it off right away by post. It was just like thelittle fellow to do it, and what he wrote was like him too. It beganthus: 'Through the mercy of Providence I have been saved, and am comingback to you, mother dear.'
"Then we were shipped on board an American vessel, by the AmericanConsul, for New York, where we arrived after a prosperous voyage, ingood health, and without anything happening to us worth mentioning. Thiswas on the 22d day of December, which made just three years, ninemonths, and nineteen days since we sailed from New Bedford.
"As soon as we had landed, we set out for the hospital to find theDean's mother. The Dean had directed his letter there, thinking that ifshe had got well and gone away, they would know where; and this theydid, so we took down the address and hurried on. It was in a littleby-street, and we had much trouble to find it; but by and by we cameupon a tumble-down old house, and were shown into a little tumble-downold room, with a tumble-down old bed in it, and a tumble-down box for achair, and a small tumble-down table, and right in the middle of thefloor stood a little woman that was more tumble-down than all. It wasthe Dean's poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had beenwashing clothes, and she held a scrap of paper in both her hands, which,bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, weretrembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of theDean's letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deepwrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letterhad arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just madeout that it was from the Dean, and we could see that this had startedgreat tears rolling down her cheeks.
The Dean's Mother.]
"But there was no use to puzzle more now. There was her darling,bright-haired boy, whom she 'always felt sure,' she said, 'would comeback again,'--never losing hope; and now you can imagine how she was notlong in recognizing him, and how she greeted him, and cried over him,and called him pretty names, and all that,--or, rather, I mean to say,you can't imagine it at all, for I never saw the like of it. It seemedto me as if she would never let him go out of her arms again, for fearshe should lose him; and, seeing how matters stood, I went outside,where after a while the Dean joined me, and having some money in ourpockets, that we had earned on board the _Rob Roy_ and the Americanpacket-ship, we went right off and bought the best supper we could get,and had it brought into the tumble-down room and spread out upon thetumble-down table; and never was any poor woman so glad in all the worldas the Dean's mother, and never were any two boys so happy as the Deanand I. The Dean's mother would sometimes laugh for joy, and sometimescry for the same excellent reason; and, when neither of these would do,nor both together even, she would fly at the Dean with open arms, andhug and kiss him until she was quite exhausted, and temporarily quieteddown. Meanwhile the Dean, besides eating his supper, was trying to tellhis mother what he had been doing all the time,--to neither of whichpurposes were these maternal interruptions peculiarly favorable.
"So now you see we were at home at last, safe in body and thankful inspirit. Transported with delight, we could hardly believe our senses.After so many years' absence, and such hardships and dangers as we hadpassed through, New York seemed like another world. So accustomed had webeen to exposure that we could hardly sleep in-doors. The confined airof the house greatly troubled us. Everything we saw seemed new, and wewere in a constant state of wonder. We did not, however, forget theobligation we owed to our Heavenly Father for our deliverance; and welost no time in going to a church, and there, in secret, we poured outour hearts to Him who rules the winds and the waves, and never forgetsany of the creatures he has made.
"'And now,' said the Dean, 'I am going to further show my gratitude bymaking my mother comfortable for the rest of her days,'--which he did bygetting her into a better house, where she did not have to work anymore,--the Dean declaring that he would hereafter make all the moneythat was necessary for her support; and he kept his word, too.
"As for the money the Dean had when we came home, that was soon allgone, and mine too, for that matter, since I helped the Dean, of course.Then we looked about us for a good ship to go to sea in, as we felt thatwe should make better sailors now than anything else; indee
d, neither ofus knew what else to do.
"The story of our remarkable adventures getting abroad, we found manyfriends, so you may be sure, when we shipped again, it was not in such acrazy old hulk as the _Blackbird_, nor did we go any more whale or sealfishing, having got enough of that to last us during the remainder ofour lives. Still, I have been back to the Arctic regions once sincethen; but it was not with a red-faced mate to torment me.
"I did not feel like coming up to Rockdale yet, being very much ashamed,not having made anything, as I could see, by running away. Besides, Ilearned that my father had given me up for dead long ago, and had movedwith all my brothers and sisters to Ohio, where I wrote to him, tellingall about my voyage and shipwreck,--the best I could, that is; for,having neglected my studies when at school, I could not write very well.
"So now I came to be a regular sailor, going away first with the Dean ona voyage to the Mediterranean in a fine bark, where we got moderatelygood wages, and, being both rather ambitious, we grew in favor and savedour money. When we returned, I proposed to the Dean that we should makea common stock of our earnings, and get ourselves a nice little home,which we did; and remembering the Rock of Good Hope, we called it GoodHope Cottage, of which the Dean's mother took possession, of course,while off we went to sea again, this time to Rio de Janeiro, in the samebark; then afterwards we went to the Mediterranean twice more, and onthe last voyage I got to be mate; and, afterward, when we stopped atBarcelona, the Dean was made second mate. Then, in course of time, theDean got to be a Captain, and prospered greatly, while his mother livedat Good Hope Cottage, and the Dean and I were always happy to come backand have a home like that to go to. After a while we were separated, forI was a Captain as well as the Dean, and we could no longer be togetherin the same ship; but still we both had a home together, and a placealways to hail from, you see.
"But I go too fast and too far. I must stop now, for I have given youthe story that I promised, of how I was _cast away in the cold_,--and itis high time too; for, as you have said, the holidays are at an end, andsee there! the sun is sinking down behind the trees, and once more, ason the first day we met and parted in this pleasant little arbor, theshadows trail their ghostly length across the fields. But to me theshadows have another meaning now. They will lie there heavy on theground until you come to lift them, and I shall be very, very sad andlonely now without my little friends. The night is closing in, my dears,as if it were a curtain dropped purposely to hide what we would gladlysee again; and the dew is falling heavy on the grass, my dears, and so'good by' is the word."
* * * * *
The Captain paused and bent his eyes upon the golden light that layfar-off behind the trees, as if he would divine something of the futurethat was before himself and the little children by his side, and whichhe thought the golden sunlight held; but, while he looked, it seemed asif some tender chord within his gentle heart had snapped asunder and hadbeen badly tied again, for he said quite hurriedly, "Well, well, myhearties, we must pass the word, and get it over. Good by,--there it is!God bless you, and good by!"
"Good by, dear Captain Hardy," said William, putting out his hand,--ahand that promised to be a very manly one indeed some day,--"good by,and thank you for all your goodness to us," and the little fellow couldnot keep a tear from coming out upon his plump and rosy cheek.
"Good by," said Fred, and, as he said it, there were two tears at thevery least on his.
"Good by," dear little Alice would have said, though she didn't; butinstead she threw her arms about the old man's neck and kissed hissunburnt cheek.
"Good by," the Captain was about to say again, but (he was always goodat getting out of scrapes) at that very moment he contracted a suspicionthat something moist was getting up into his own big hazel eyes; and sohe began to whistle briskly, and then to cry out, loud enough to callall hands to close reef the topsails in a gale of wind: "Port andStarboard! Port and Starboard! come here, old curs and landlubbers thatyou are,--come, bear a hand and be lively there, and say 'good by.'"
And along Port and Starboard came, bounding at a tremendous rate,barking "good by" at every bound, and with their great bushy tailswagging "good by" besides.
The foreign ducks stopped shovelling and spattering mud, and quacked"good by."
The chickens stopped stuffing themselves with grasshoppers, and, whilethe hens cackled "good by," the roosters crowed it.
And, lastly, Main Brace came waddling along on his sausage legs, andfrom his plum-duff head let off "good by" at intervals, as a revolvinggun lets off its balls, without appearing to have any more idea of whatit was all about than the gun itself, until he reached the arbor, whenhe broke out into a loud "boo-hoo," which was the only "good by" he wasnow equal to; and as the first "boo-hoo" let loose a second, and thesecond a third, and the third a deluge and an earthquake all in one,there is no knowing what might have happened, had not the childrenscampered off and stopped the outburst,--Fred running on ahead, andWilliam following after, leading his sister Alice by the hand, whilethe gentle little girl turned every dozen steps to throw back throughthe tender evening air, from her dainty little fingertips, a lovingkiss (there was no laughing now) to the Ancient Mariner, whose facebeamed brightly on her from the arbor door, and whose lips were sayingplainly, "Good by, and God bless you till you come again!"
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