CHAPTER XXXII.MYNHEER TULP.

She stared hard and shook her head.

“She is theVirginia Creeper, whaler, of Whitby,” said I, “we spoke her t’other side the Horn.”

“She is on fire,” cried the girl, “and—Ave Maria! What is that?” she exclaimed, pointing to the bloody mass of whale that was on our beam.

We floated slowly down to the ship; the wind had blackened at sunrise, and our canvas was small. The sky was dark in the south whence the swell was running, and a bright blue all about the north and east. We approached the ship, and I saw many men on board of her watching us. Some of the faces showed in the telescope of a copper color, and I guessed they were natives of the South Sea Islands.

Miss Aurora teased me with questions, with sounding exclamations in Spanish and English. I begged her to hold her tongue. I wanted to think. Should I give the whole plain story of our voyage to the captain of that ship? Should I tell him that I had twelve tons of silver on board, and three prisoners of a crew who had possessed themselves of three tons, but who had meant to plunder the whole and bury it, and then wreck the brig? I hastily paced the deck, staring at the whaler and thinking with all my might. But a moment arrived when I could think no longer. I put the helm over, gave the wheel to Miss Aurora to hold, and with the help of Jimmy got the main topsail aback.

The two vessels then lay abreast within a cable’s length. A man stood in the mizzen rigging of the whaler; he was thesame person that had hailed us in the Pacific. I jumped upon a gun and sung out, “Ho, theVirginia Creeper, ahoy!”

“Hallo!” answered the man near the mizzen rigging.

“We are but three, as you see,” I shouted, “Will you send a boat and come aboard? Our distress is great.”

The man responded with a quiet motion of his hand, lingered a moment or two as though to take a further survey of us, then called out an order, and a few moments later he had entered a boat and was being pulled across to us.

I received him in the gangway, and giving him my hand said, “We have met before.”

“Indeed, friend,” said he, “where might that have been?”

On my recalling the circumstance, he said in a sober voice, and without any air of surprise, “I remember.” Then looking leisurely at Miss Aurora he said, “Is that thy wife, friend?”

“No,” I answered; “she is a shipwrecked lady.”

“And what art thou and what’s thy name?”

I made answer, observing him narrowly. He was a Quaker, as you will suppose; a fellow of a very serious, composed appearance, close shaved, with coal black eyes, wary and stealing in their manner of gazing, a large expressionless mouth, and a pale skin that had suffered nothing from the weather. He wore a soft cone-shaped hat, the brim very wide, and was skewered to his throat in a coat with a double row of large metal buttons. His legs were encased in jack boots. The garb was somewhat of a change from the glazed hat and pea jacket of his South Pacific costume.

“This is theBlack Watch,” said he, looking slowly along the decks and then slowly up aloft.

“Yes,” said I.

“When we spoke thee thy captain was sick.”

“He is dead.”

“Is that thy distress?”

“No, sir. If you will step into the cabin I’ll tell you a very strange story, but as this brig must be watched—yonder lad at the wheel being merely our cabin boy—will you hail one of your mates and request him to take charge while we converse?”

He walked gravely and quietly to the side, and looking over, bade his men in the whale boat fetch Mr. Pack. Presently Mr. Pack arrived. He was the mate of the whaler. The captain told him to watch the brig, and followed me into the cabin, the lady Aurora going before us.

I put a bottle of spirits upon the table. The captain shook his head at the bottle and looked around him, presently fixing his eyes on Madam Aurora, at whom he continued to stare after I had begun to talk to him. He had lifted a hat and disclosed a flat, almost bald head. Without further delay I entered upon my narrative, and coaxed his gaze from the lady to me. He heard me through without a syllable of comment, without a grunt of surprise. His composure was perfectly wooden. I observed no further sign, indeed, of his heeding me than an occasional grave nod of the head, such as he might bestow on a minister whose discourse from the pulpit pleased him.

I ceased. The dark Spanish eyes of the lady Aurora burned, with impassioned anxiety, upon the composed countenance of the Quaker skipper.

“Wilt thou be pleased to repeat the sum?” said the captain slowly and deliberately, without the faintest color of wonder in his tone.

“Five hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Of which thy men took three tons?”

“Yes,” said I.

His lips slightly stirred to a sudden pressure of rapid calculation. “And what dost thou think the men will do with those three tons of dollars?”

“Bury ’em,” said I. “They will leave the island in the boat—not for awhile, I dare say—but they will not carry their dollars with them. They’ll not risk putting to sea with three tons of dead weight in addition to the provisions they’ll want. Or put it that they would not take the chance of falling in with a ship, of transferring the money to her, and of standing to the lies they’d have to tell to account for their possession of the silver.”

“Thou art right,” said the captain, with a sober nod.

“They will bury the money,” said I, “swear one another to secrecy, and then return for the silver when they can.”

“Thou art right,” repeated the captain, with another sober nod.

“Now,” said I—“but let me ask your name?”

“Jonas Horsley,” he answered.

“Captain Horsley, this is my proposal: I want help; I want three or four men to enable me to carry this brig home. I also want to hand my prisoners over to you—the three of them, able-bodied fellows, as good as the best of your own hands, Idaresay. Further, I want as much fresh water as you can spare. In return I’ll give you the clew to the burial-place in Amsterdam Island. If you sail promptly you’ll arrive before the fellows depart. They’re bound to wait awhile for a ship before taking their chance, six of them, in an open boat, every man ignorant which way to head for land, even if they had a compass. Furthermore, that you may make sure of my gratitude, you shall take a case of the dollars in the lazarette.”

The señorita’s eyes sparkled. She vehemently nodded approval. Captain Horsley viewed me steadily, with an expressionless countenance.

“Friend,” said he, after a short pause, “might the chests in thy lazarette be all of a size?”

“They slightly vary.”

“And the biggest might contain——?”

“About four thousand dollars,” said I.

He continued to regard me expressionlessly; his composure raised my anxiety into torment. My lady’s face worked with half a dozen emotions at every heart-beat.

“Hast thou breakfasted?” said Captain Horsley.

“No,” I answered.

“Thou hast the means, I trust, of providing a meal?”

“We have plenty of provisions.”

“Thou may’st consider all things settled,” said he, slowly turning his head to gaze at the lady Aurora. “I will break my fast with thee and the lady. It is a pleasure to converse with you both. When we have eaten and drunken I will ask thee to show me thy lazarette, and I will choose a chest, and we will then exchange the men.”

“Give me your hand on it,” I cried, and my heart was swollen with delight; but the taking and lifting of that man’s hand and arm was like pumping out a ship.

We went on deck, and brought up a sailor out of the whale-boat to stand at the helm while Jimmy prepared breakfast. Before breakfast was served I took Captain Horsley into the lazarette and showed him the cases of silver.

“Do all those chests contain dollars?” he asked.

“All.”

He made no further remark until, after considering awhile, during which time his eyes roamed shrewdly over the chests, he pointed to one of the biggest, and said:

“That will do for me.”

“It is yours,” I answered.

“Friend,” said he, after a short pause, due to reflection, by no means to embarrassment, “I should be glad to know that I am receiving dollars. Suppose we lift the lid.”

I fetched a hammer and other tools, and nails, and when the chest was opened he brought the lantern close to the money, and after staring and running his hand over the milled edges, he said:

“These be good dollars.”

I then hammered down the lid and we went up into the cabin, where we found breakfast ready.

I much enjoyed this strange man’s conversation. He was cold and grave, very slow, and a trifle nasal of speech, and his trick of “theeing” and “thouing,” and the meeting-house turn of his phrases in general seemed to ill fit the character of a hearty English sailor. Yet he had plenty to talk about, had followed the sea for many years, had been long in the whaling business, was a considerable man at Whitby, and even had news to give me, for I was at sea in theRoyal Brunswickerwhen he sailed on this cruise. A British sea Quaker was something of a rarity in my time; I presume he is extinct in these days. Many American whalers were commanded by Quakers, but the broad-brims of our island loved less the pursuit of the game than the safer business of tallying the blubber cargo over the side into their warehouses.

While we breakfasted I gave him a description of the proposed burial-place as it had been sketched to me by Yan Bol. He composedly entered the particulars in a pocket-book. I asked him to write down my uncle’s address at Sandwich, that he might let me know whether he fell in with or took off Yan Bol and the others and recovered the silver. He gravely promised to write to me.

We then went to business; and Captain Jonas Horsley’s first step was to accompany some men into the lazarette and superintend the transhipment of his chest of dollars. This done, he asked me how many men I wanted. I answered that I had spoken of three, but that I would be glad of as many as he could spare. He answered that he would let me have five in exchange for my prisoners. One of them was a Kanaka, or South Sea Islander, who had long sailed in whalers, and was a very good cook. The others, he said, would volunteer; but I might make my mind easy. All his men were livelies of the first water. What pay would I give?

“I will give,” said I, “whatever will bring them to me.”

“They sail by the lay. Thou must take that into consideration,” said Captain Horsley.

“Shall we say two hundred and fifty dollars a man for the run home?” said I.

“I will let thee know,” said he. He got into his boat, and was rowed across to his ship, whose tryworks were still smoking and filling the air with a disgusting scent. There was no increase of darkness in the south, and north and east the blue sky was splendid with the sparkling of the morning; but a movement worked in the southerly swell that hinted at a fresh wind presently. Captain Horsley, however, did not keep me long waiting. First, he sent me one of his largest boats with a stock of fresh water and hands to stow the casks. His men took back my empty casks in return for their full ones; then two boats came off full of men, in one of which the captain was seated. Parties were distributed to bring up the prisoners. Meehan scowled when he saw the whaler, hung back, and fought like a devil, saying that he was a sailor, and no whaleman, and cursing me and the brig and the whaler—whatever his eye rested on, in short—until they tumbled him into the boat alongside, where I heard him roaring out to me to pay him his wages and to hand him over his share of the dollars. Call and Travers walked quietly to the gangway. Travers stopped before putting his foot over, and asked me if he was not to be paid for the work he had done.

“Mynheer Tulp is your owner,” said I. “Call upon him when you return to Amsterdam. He’ll pay you, I daresay.”

He then began to swear, upon which Captain Horsley motioned to his men, and he and Call were forthwith bundled into the boat.

“These are thy men, friend,” said the captain, pointing to four seamen and a Kanaka, who stood apart. “Four are Englishmen, and of my own town, anxious to return home. They each ask three hundred and fifty dollars.”

I looked them over, as the phrase goes, put a few questions, and, being satisfied that their quality was right, I said:

“You shall have three hundred and fifty dollars a man. Captain Horsley knows I can pay you, and the agreement shall be signed when we have filled upon the brig.”

The clothes and chests belonging to Meehan and the other two were then got up and put into the boat. Captain Horsley gave me his pump-handle of an arm to shake—or, rather, towork. I thanked him cordially for the assistance he had rendered me. He listened till I had done, and said:

“Friend, thou hast made my kindness very much worth my while.”

He entered his boat, after bowing with the most grotesque contortion I had ever beheld to the lady Aurora. The brig’s topsail was then swung; we raised a loud cheer, which was lustily re-echoed aboard the whaler; and, in a few minutes, theBlack Watchwas heeling over from the breeze, with her head for a course that was to carry us home, and one of my new men trotting aloft to loose the main topgallant sail.

. . . . . .

On this same day, in the afternoon, I, with two of my new men, very carefully took stock of the fresh water aboard, and I discovered that we had enough to carry us to the English Channel. This discovery was a stroke of happiness. I had allowed for a long passage, knew that we were already weedy at bottom, that every day would add to the growths, and that before we were up with the equator we might be sliding very thickly and sluggishly through the sea. Spite, however, of my computation of long days, there was fresh water enough to yield us such an allowance as no man could grumble at.

The men shipped from the whaler proved very good seamen; all four Englishmen were Whitby men; they were held together by that quality of local patriotism which I think is peculiar to our country; they were all anxious to get home, and owned that they had intended to run from theVirginia Creeperat the first opportunity. The prospect of taking up three hundred and fifty dollars a man kept them very willing, alert, and in good spirits. One of them, a man of about forty, with iron-gray hair, who boasted that Captain Cook had once asked him the time—when and where I forget—this man came to me on the Sunday after he and the others had joined my brig, and asked me to lend him a Bible. I lent him a Bible that had belonged to Captain Greaves, and Jimmy afterward told me that of a dog-watch this man would sit and read out of the Bible to his mates, the Kanaka listening very attentively and occasionally interrupting by a question.

All this was as it should be; I had been living and moving for weeks in intellectual irons, so to speak; as much in irons as the figure that had fallen from the gibbet; I had gone in fear of my life—could never imagine what was in store for me should I be forced to New Holland with the brig; had forweeks and weeks despaired of my little fortune on which I had counted in Greaves’ time, upon which I had built such fancies of happiness as would visit the heart of a young sailor.NowI breathed freely, slept without anxiety, paced the deck and realized that every fathom of white wake was diminishing the vast interval between home and the situation of the little vessel. I had no other fears than such as properly fell under the heads of sea risks.TheseI must take my chance of—fire, the lee-shore, the sudden hurricane, privateersmen, the Yankee cruiser; but the direst of the items of the catalogue of oceanic perils were as naught to my apprehension after what I had suffered at the hands of Yan Bol and his men.

We rounded the Cape; we crept north; we hoisted the Dutch flag to passing ships; the stars of the south sank; our shadows every day grew shorter and yet shorter at noon, and all went well. Having but six men of a crew I worked, on occasion, as hard as any of them; often sprang aloft to a weather earring, helped to stow a course and stood a trick if the fellows had been much fagged by the weather. Nevertheless, though I was very often full of business and hurry, I found plenty of leisure for the enjoyment of the society of the lady Aurora. This was peculiarly so in the fine weather of the southeast trades, in the calms of the equatorial zone, in the steady blowing of the northeast wind. She persevered in her English, and many a lesson did I give her; she recited to me, for I now understood the Spanish tongue fairly well. But though she recited with great power she could not declaim as she sang. I always thought her singing beautiful and enchanting. The fiddle to which the original crew had been used to dance and sing, Jimmy found in a hammock; he brought it aft, and to the twang of it the señorita would again and again lift up her voice, her large, rich, thrilling voice, to please me.

One day we sat together in the cabin. We were a little northward of the Island of Madeira. The weather was very mild and fine, the time of year the beginning of August. I had been reading aloud to the girl out of “The Castle of Otranto,” and she had followed me very closely, interrupting seldom to inquire the meaning of a word. When I had done she exclaimed:

“I will now give you a brave recital. You shall enjoy it. I have seen you wear a red silk kerchief; lend it to me.”

I fetched the kerchief and she bound it round her head, then lifting a locker she drew out a tablecloth, in which shewrapped her figure as in a sheet, holding the folds with her left hand and leaving her right hand free to gesticulate with. She then declaimed a set of verses, written in the jargon of the Spanish gypsies by that famous poet of Spain, Quevedo. It was a very fine performance. I understood but little of the queer dialect, but I enjoyed the rich music of her voice, the swelling and melting melodies her mere utterance gave to the verses; I gazed with delight at her impassioned eyes, and at the wild, romantic figure she made, draped as she was in a sailor’s kerchief and a cabin tablecloth. Was it not Nelson’s Emma who, with a scarf only, contrived a dozen different representations of characters, was fascinating in all, and so pathetic in some that her audience wept?

“How do you like me as a Spanish gypsy?” said she, pulling off the kerchief, dropping the tablecloth, and shaking her head till her long earrings flashed again.

“So well that I want more,” I answered.

“No,” said she; “come on deck.”

She put on her hat, I carried a chair, and we seated ourselves in the shade of the little awning under which we had often sat and gesticulated, and endeavored to look our meanings in Greaves’ time. But now she spoke English very well indeed, while I had enough Spanish to enable me to converse with her in that tongue, though I never could catch the sonorous note of it, nor give the true twist to some of the words.

We sat together. The brig was sailing placidly over a wide surface of blue sea; the horizon was a bright line of opal against the dim violet of the distant sky, and abreast of us to larboard was a full-rigged ship, her hull below the sea line, and her canvas showing like little puffs of steam. The Kanaka was at the wheel; he was cook indeed, but when he was done with the caboose I put him to the ship’s work. One of the sailors who had charge walked in the waist; the other three were variously engaged.

I found myself gazing very earnestly at the lady Aurora, and thinking of her and of nothing but her. I was still under the influence of the witchery of her recitation, and then again I thought I had never seen her look so handsome. Am I in love with you? I wondered. Thought is as swift as dreams, and you may dream in your sleep through a thousand years in the time of the fall of an ash from the grate to the hearth. “Am I in love with you?” I said to myself, earnestly regarding her, her eyes being then fixed upon the distant sail. “I have a very great mind to offer you marriage. What will you say if I propose to you? Will your eyes flash, and will you show your teeth, or will you put on one of your tender, brooding looks? I have often thought that you would make as fine, useful, accomplished a wife as any young fellow need wish to live gayly and comfortably with. You sing deliciously. I don’t doubt you dance perfectly well. You can be saucy and quarrelsome in such a manner as to lend a new flavor to sentiment. You have a stately, handsome person; you are extremely well-bred, I am sure. I must take my chance of your relatives. Some of them may be grandees—let that be hoped for the sake of my children, who, if they take after me, will wish to be respectably connected. I’ll offer you marriage,” I thought to myself.

“Our troubles are nearly at an end,” said I.

“It is time,” she answered, keeping her eyes fastened upon the distant ship.

“We have been very closely associated, señorita.”

She now regarded me, and for an instant there was a peculiar softness in her gaze; she then seemed to find an expression in my face that alarmed her; I saw the change; she grew nervous, and her effort to control herself confused her.

“Yes, we have been much together, Mr. Fielding. I shall always regard you as the savior of my life, and never shall I forget your gentle and courteous treatment of me.”

“I trust you never will. My desire is to live forever in your memory.”

She looked troubled and frightened, and then sorry, as though she had pained me.

“You have said you will give up the sea when you arrive in England?”

“Oh, yes; I shall have been three years continuously at sea when I reach home. I’ll take a home and settle down ashore.”

“Is your fortune in the Spanish dollars all that you possess?”

“All. It is seven thousand pounds.” I pronounced these figures with emphasis.

“It is not much,” she exclaimed.

“Indeed! I think it a very good fortune.”

“For a single man—si; but put it out at interest, and what you receive shall not be handsome. Oh, it is a fortune for a bachelor—yes, but in no country, not even in Germanywould it be regarded as a handsome fortune for one who would live in style.Vaya!Have I not advised you to buy a ship and trade with distant nations, and end your days as rich as a prince of the blood royal of England?”

“I do not intend to take your advice,” said I. “I will not risk my money in adventures. What I have I will keep. It is a considerable sum—it is enough for two.”

She slightly shrugged her shoulders again, and turned her eyes away with an expression of concern. Suddenly she looked fully at me; her face was dark with a blush that glowed from the roots of her hair to the rim of the collar of her dress; I could not express the meaning in her face at that moment; I felt it without understanding it.

“When I am settled in Madrid, Mr. Fielding, you will come and see me, I hope? Often, I trust, will you visit me? Who more welcome, of all the friends of Aurora de la Cueva, than Señor William Fielding?”

I thanked her, with slight surprise. I had expected, from the looks of her, something very different from this.

“Would it not please you to live in England?” said I.

“No,” she answered vehemently; softening, she added, “my establishment will be in Madrid.”

I was conscious that I changed color. I looked at her hand—at that pretty hand of beringed fingers, on which very often had I admiringly fastened my gaze. When I lifted my eyes, she faintly smiled.

“Your establishment?” said I.

“Yes; my establishment.”

“Do you mean your mother’s establishment?”

“Ave Maria!No. My poor mother! Where is she?Ay, ay me!” she cried, looking up at the sky with a sorrowful, admirably managed roll of her dark eyes. “My mother’s establishment was at Lima, as you have often heard. She broke it up on the death of my father; and, if she be alive—oh, may the Blessed Virgin grant it—she will live with me at Madrid. It was her intention to dwell with us. She is growing in years and has many infirmities, and is unequal to the fatigues and anxieties of an establishment of her own. But of whom am I speaking? She may be dead—she may be dead!”

“Pray,” said I, “have I been all this while enjoying the society of a charming woman without guessing that she was married?” and here my eyes sought the rings upon her left hand again.

“I am not married,” she answered.

“Maybe, then, you are engaged to be married?” said I.

She made me a low bow, and held her head down till a second deep blush should have passed.

“I make you my compliments, señorita,” said I, turning in my chair to look at the ship that, by heading on a more westerly course than ourselves, was sinking her canvas.

“It will interest you to know,” said she, “that I am engaged to be married to a countryman of yours. Do you wonder why I did not long ago tell you this? I did not imagine that it would interest you. When I embarked at Acapulco I was proceeding to Madrid to get married. I had known Mr. Gerald Maxwell only three months—think! when we were affianced. Do you ask if he is a Catolique?”

“I ask nothing,” I answered.

“Oh!” she cried, giving me a look made up of pity and reproach—a deuced insufferable look, I thought it—“he is a true Catolique. All his family for ages have ever been of de ortodox faith. His father established a rich business at Lima, and his son came from his education in England to be a partner. He went to Madrid last year to represent his house in Spain. We should have been married, but my mother’s grief would not allow us to rejoice; so he sailed for Europe, and it was agreed that, when my mother had settled her affairs, she should follow with me.Santa Maria purissima!He will think I have perished.”

All this is, in effect, what she said; but her speech, of course, did not flow so easily as you read it.

“Did your friend, Mr. Gerald Maxwell, during his three months’ courtship, teach you English?”

“No; he was too busy.”

“In those months he was too busy to teach you a word of English?”

“Ave Maria!Do not speak angrily, nor lose your temper. Mr. Maxwell was often absent for days. He had no opportunity to teach me English.”

“That, happily,” said I, bursting into a laugh, “was to be reserved for me.”

“Oh, Señor Fielding, you have been so good,” she cried in Spanish; and then she laughed loudly also.

“’Tis what a famous poet of my country,” said I, “has termed a most lame and impotent conclusion. I am pleased to have taught you English.”

“It has killed the time.”

“Mr. Maxwell will be surprised by your knowledge.”

“Señor Fielding, he shall thank you.”

I grinned, walked to the side with the telescope, and feigned to be interested with the distant sail. Narrow, indeed, had been my escape! I drew more than one deep breath as I humbugged with the glass. By her deep blush might I suppose she had foreseen what was coming and arrested it—just in time! I felt obliged to her. But, oh, the meanness of so prolonged an act of secrecy! Oh, the treachery of it! I thought, when I reflected on what had passed between us. What had been her motive for not long ago telling me that she had a sweetheart, and was going to Madrid to be married to him? To make me fall in love with her, and to keep me in love with her, so as to assure herself of my constant courtesy and attention, fearing that I would be neither courteous nor attentive if she told me she was engaged to be married?

However, I found out that night when I paced the deck alone, pipe in mouth, that I had mistaken—that, in short, I wasnotin love with her. This was proved to my satisfaction by my quarter-deck meditations on the subject. First, she was a Catholic; would she have married me, who was a Protestant? No. Would I have surrendered my faith for her hand? Not if that hand had grasped and proffered me the title-deeds of every gold mine in this world. She sung, it is true, in a very heavenly style, but was she not a devil at heart? Did not she offer to stick Yan Bol and the others in the back? Did not she secrete a very ugly, murderous weapon about her fine person? Not for the first time did it occur to menowthat she was a very likely lady to poniard her husband. One little fit of jealousy, and the rest would briefly work out as a funeral, a handsome young mourning widow, very regular indeed at confession, visited once a week by a man in a cloak, who presently so raises the price of secrecy that by and by she’ll have to do forhim, too.

Another reflection consoled me; in a few years a very great change must happen in the lady Aurora’s appearance. The Spanish woman is like the Jewess; she does not improve by keeping. The delicate olive complexion turns into a disagreeable wrinkled yellow; the pretty shading of down on the upper lip thickens into a mustache considerable enough to raise the jealousy of a captain of dragoons; the lofty and elegant carriage decays into a tipsy waddle; the light of theeye is speedily quenched; the white teeth show like the keys of a pianoforte; the rich singing voice may linger, but it will irritate the ear of the husband by its association with noisy quarrels.

These, I say, were reflections which vastly supported my spirits and taught me to understand myself; they proved that my love for the lady went no deeper than an eyelash of hers measured, and before my pipe was out I was heartily congratulating myself on Mr. Gerald Maxwell having come first.

I broughtthe brig to an anchor in the Small Downs off Sandown Castle toward the close of the month of August, 1815. The weather in the Channel had been thick; I had shipped a couple of fishermen off Plymouth to assist in the navigation of the brig, and from abreast of that port I had groped the whole distance to the Downs with the hand-lead.

It was thick weather when I arrived off Deal; the breeze was a “soldier’s wind” for the Channel; I counted five vessels only, and no man-of-war was in sight when I brought up. The Dutch flag flew at our trysail gaff-end, and our decks were bare of artillery from stem to stern; for on entering the Channel I had caused all the guns to be struck into the hold that the little ship, should we be boarded, might present the appearance of a peaceful trader.

On letting go the anchor I sent two letters ashore by a Deal boat; one was for my uncle Captain Round, who I had learnt from the boatmen was well and hearty; the other was in the handwriting of the Señorita Aurora, and addressed to Mr. Gerald Maxwell at Madrid. It was soon after nine in the morning when we brought up; and while the church clocks of Deal were striking eleven my uncle came alongside. He was alone; I had asked him in a mysteriously phrased passage of my letter to come alone; the fellow that rowed him alongside was the decayed waterman who had opened the door to me that night when I visited my uncle after leaving theRoyal Brunswicker.

My uncle held me by both hands for at least five minutes. The whole expression of his face was a very gape of astonishment. He looked me all over, he looked the brig all over; hepanted for words; when he was able to articulate he said, “Bill, I thought you was drowned?”

“You got my letter?”

“Yes, and came off at once.”

“I sent you a letter written at sea weeks and weeks ago.”

“This is the only letter I have received from you,” said he; and, trembling with agitation and excitement, he pulled out the letter that I had sent ashore that morning.

The sailors were watching us, and my uncle, now that he had his voice, shouted; so, taking the dear old fellow by the arm, I carried him into the cabin, where sat the lady Aurora occupied in furbishing up her hat to fit her for going ashore. My uncle started and stared at her. He looked plump and and well kept, with his bottle-green coat, broad brimmed, low crowned hat, and boots like a postillion’s of that time. His face was jolly and rosy, despite the blueness of his lips; he seemed, indeed, more weather-stained and sea-going than I, as though it was the uncle and not the nephew who was just returned from three years of the ocean. He stared at the lady Aurora, and whipped his hat off and bent his back in a bow quick with nerve. The lady rose and courtesyed.

“Your wife, Bill?” said he.

“No, a shipwrecked lady. We took her off a rock in the South Pacific.”

“Off a rock! Lord love you all! What’s next to come?”

“Often have I heard Señor Fielding speak of you, Captain Round,” said Miss Aurora.

“Yes, I will believe that of Bill, ma’am.”

“I am shipwrecked, indeed,” she exclaimed with a fine arch smile and flashing look that carried me deep into the heart of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans ere Gerald Maxwell was, or when, if he had been aboard, he’d have seen us sitting very close side by side over a lesson in English; “judge by my gown.” She swept it at the knees. “I am not fit to be seen.”

“But ye are then, believe me,” said my uncle; and he sidled up to me and, rubbing my arm with his elbow, muttered, “handsomest woman I ever saw in my life, Bill; if she aint the Queen of Spain.”

“Señorita,” said I, addressing her in Spanish, “my uncle and I will talk at this table; let us not disturb you. You and I have no secrets—now.”

She smiled and looked grave all in a moment, slightly bowed and resumed her seat and her work. And, indeed, I mindednot her presence. Much that I should presently say, much that would presently be spoken by my uncle, must be as unintelligible to her as Welsh or Erse.

We seated ourselves, and I took my uncle by the hand and blessed God for the privilege of beholding him again. I inquired after my aunt; she was well; after my cousin; hale and hearty; married three months since, lived in a small house at Folkstone, whence her young husband traded in a ship of which he was part owner. I asked after Captain Spalding. TheRoyal Brunswickerhad passed through the Downs in the previous December; my uncle had heard nothing of her since; he had written to Spalding that I was drowned after having been pressed, and while being conveyed aboard a frigate off Deal. He had claimed my wages and clothes as next of kin, and Spalding had sent him what was due to me and what remained of my togs. I asked how many men of the frigate’s boat had perished; he replied only one man was picked up, one of the pressed men, an Irishman.

“That was the fellow,” said I, “whose behavior led to the disaster.”

I had many more questions to ask, the tediousness of which I will not bestow upon you. I then entered upon the story of my own adventures from the hour of my leaving his house on that black night of storm and thunder. He stopped me after I had related my gibbet experience to tell me that a tall woman, dressed as a widow, was found about forty yards distant from the gibbet, dead, with her arms round the ironed body of the felon. Miss Aurora looked up at this; she had heard me tell that story of the gibbet and the lightning stroke and the mother. She looked up, I say, muttered, and crossed herself, then went on with her work. I paused to think a little upon the dead mother, then proceeded steadily with my story; when I came to Greaves’ narrative of the discovery of the dollar-ship my uncle’s eyes grew small in his head with the intentness of his gaze.

He seldom winked; he breathed small and faint until I described the discovery of the dollars and their transhipment, on which he fetched a deep breath and hit the table a sounding blow with his fist. Manifold were the changes of his countenance as I progressed; he lived in every scene I drew; cursed Yan Bol and his crew in the language of Beach Street; started out of his chair to grasp the lady Aurora by the hand on my relating her share in the recovery of the brig. Andthen he became a strict man of business, his jolly face hardening to the rise and pressure of his old smuggling instincts when I spoke of the chests of dollars in the lazarette and asked him to advise me how, when, and where to secretly convey them ashore.

“Let’s have a look at ’em, Bill,” said he. The excitement was gone out of him; he was as cool as ever he had been in the most artful and desperate of his midnight jobs. I took him into the lazarette and between us we handled a chest of about three thousand dollars to test its weight. He then said—as quietly as though his talk was of empty casks and “dead marines”—“The money must be got ashore to-night. It mustn’t remain aboard after to-night.”

“How shall I go to work?”

“Leave that to me.”

“Who’ll receive the cases, uncle?”

“I will, Bill.”

“Sketch me your idea that I may see my way.”

“I’ll go ashore now,” said he, “and make all necessary arrangements. Keep aboard yourself and don’t let any of your people leave the brig. Tell them we’ll pay ’em off at my house to-morrow. Destroy all your papers—see to that, Bill. The moon’s old and nigh wore out—it’ll be a dark night, raining and squally, I hope. You’ll have a lugger alongside of you when it comes dark. She’ll hail you. Her name’ll be theSeamen’s Friend, the name of the man that hails you, Jarvie Files. Trust him up to the hilt, Bill, and leave him to discharge ye. He knows the ropes. Afore midnight them chests, to the bottom dollar, ’ll be in my cellars.”

“When do I come ashore?”

“To-morrow. Quite coolly, Bill. Come along with your men and bring ’em to my house, where the money in English gold for paying ’em off ’ll be ready.”

“And what’s to become of this brig?”

“How many anchors do ye hold by?”

“One, uncle.”

“Moor her, Bill. You’ve got a snug berth. She’ll want a caretaker till that there Mynheer Tulp arrives and settles up. She’s his property. And the sooner Tulp arrives the better for all parties.”

He was about to make his way out of the lazarette.

“There is the Spanish lady,” said I. “Will you take her ashore and find her a home in your house until she’s fetched?I’d sooner see her with you than at an inn. She has a tongue. Gratitude will keep her quiet, I hope, but shemighttalk.”

“If you’re afraid of her, aren’t ye afraid of the men?”

“No. The men haven’t any settled notions on the subject of the silver cargo. They want to get home, and up at Whitby they may talk if they please. The lad Jimmy will hold his jaw. I’ve promised to take him into my service. He’s a good lad.”

Without further speech my uncle got out of the lazarette, and after waiting to see me put the hatch on and secure it, he stepped up to the lady Aurora, and in his homely manner, that nevertheless borrowed a sort of grace from the warmth of his heart, he begged her to make use of his house until she heard from her friends. She thanked him, gazed at me with a short-lived look of confusion, and said:

“Until I hear from Mr. Maxwell, until I receive communications from Madrid, I am very poor. I wish not to part with these rings,” said she, looking down upon her hands; “I wish not to remove them; and my earrings,” continued she, with a shake of her head, “would not bring me nearly money enough to buy me what I want.”

“Leave that to me, ma’am,” said my uncle; “name your figure when we get ashore. There’s no luggage, I suppose?”

“Nothing that I care to take,” she answered. “Captain Round, I will ask you to land me in some secret place, as if I was contraband, and show me how to reach your house by the back ways. I do not love to be stared at, and many mocking eyes will rest upon me if I appear in this costume in your public streets.”

“You shan’t meet a soul,” answered my uncle, “if it isn’t a boatman too bleared with ale to observe more than that you’re a woman.”

She put on her hat and jacket, then stood a moment looking a slow farewell round her; her eyes met mine, and she turned a shade pale, as though to an emotion to which she could not or would not give expression.

“I’ll not say good-by, Señor Fielding,” said she, giving me her hand.

“No; we shall meet again to-morrow, I hope.”

The three of us went on deck. My uncle called his boat alongside; Miss Aurora and he entered her, and they shoved off. I leaned upon the rail, watching them as they rowed ashore. The boat made for the beach, a little to the northward of Sandown Castle. There was no play or surf to render the landing inconvenient. My uncle helped the girl out of the boat, and they walked off across the sand hills—those same sand hills which had provided me with my horrible experience of the gibbet.

But the gibbet was gone; the summer sun was shining upon the grassy billows of sand. Afar, on the confines of that hilly waste, were many trees, with a single church steeple among them—the shore sign of the old town of Sandwich. Over the bows ran the white, low terraces of the Ramsgate cliffs, soaring as they rounded out of the bay, and gathering a milkier softness as they rose. Abreast was the yellow line of the Goodwins, and yonder on the quarter stretched Deal Beach, rich with the various colors of many boats hauled high and dry. A row of seaward-facing houses flanked that beach; I could see the corner of the alley where I was gripped by the press-gang, and memories of after-days swarmed into my head.

But there was work to be done; I broke away from my idle musings, and ordered the men to moor ship in obedience to my uncle’s instructions. Cable was veered out, and a second anchor let go. I had found a bag of thirty-two guineas and some silver in Greaves’ cabin after my poor friend’s death. I used this money to settle with the two fishermen, and sent them ashore. I then hailed a galley, and dispatched her to Deal for such a supply of fresh meat and vegetables and ale as would give all hands of us a good dinner and supper, and when the punt was gone I called the crew aft, told them that I’d take them ashore next day, and pay them off in English money at my uncle’s house near Sandwich; I also thanked them for their good behavior during the long passage from the Southern Ocean, and shook each man by the hand as a friend who had served me very honestly at a time when my necessities were great.

The wind shifted during the day, and a number of ships brought up in the Downs. A few small craft dropped anchor near the brig.

I heeded them not, nor the bigger vessels beyond. I feared only the arrival of a man-of-war, and the being boarded by her for men. In the afternoon a fine ship-sloop passed through the Gulls heading west; I watched her with the steadfast eye of a cat, dreading to behold her tall breasts of topsails suddenly shiver to the wind, her loftier canvas vanish, and heranchor fall. She foamed onward, heeling a bright line of copper off the Foreland, and vanished round that giant elbow of chalk with her yards bracing up, and her bowlines tricing out for a “ratch” down Channel.

When the evening came along, the dusk was deep but clear. There was no wet; the breeze was about south—a steady, warm wind—a six-knot breeze. The scene of Downs was very dark; you would think it black by contrast with the picture it makes by night in these times. Ships then showed no riding lights. Here and there a lantern gleamed from the end of a spritsail yard, from the extremity of a mizzen-boom. The Goodwin Sands were lampless, save in the far north, where burnt the spark first kindled by that worthy Quaker of North Shields, Henry Taylor. The lights of the little town of Ramsgate glowed soft and faint upon the face of the dark heap of cliff afar; the lights along Deal Beach twinkled windily. It was a very proper night for our adventure—dark, and but little sea, and wind enough.

Shortly after six bells—eleven by the clock—I spied a shadow to windward, drawing out of the south. The dusky phantom came along slowly, as though she took a wary look at the several little craft she passed. She shaped herself out upon the darkness presently—a large Deal lugger. When she was under our stern she hailed. I, who had been impatiently awaiting the arrival of this vessel, sprang on to the taffrail and sang out:

“What lugger’s that?”

“TheSeamen’s Friend,” was the reply.

“Who is the man that answers?” I called.

“Jarvie Files.”

“Right y’are!” I cried.

The lugger’s helm was put down, and she came alongside. One of my Whitby men was on the forecastle, keeping what we term at sea an “anchor watch.” I told him to remain forward.

“There are men enough,” said I, “belonging to the lugger to answer my turn.”

The others and the Kanaka were in the forecastle asleep. Jimmy was awake in the cabin, where the lamp was alight. Several figures came over the side, and one of them, catching sight of me, said:

“Are you Mr. Fielding?”

“I am.”

“I’m from Capt’n Round, sir. The coast’ll be clear, I allow; but we’ll have to look sharp. Where’s the stuff?”

“Follow me,” said I.

This Jarvie Files, and, perhaps, five others—men heavily booted, with great shawls round their necks and fur caps drawn down to their eyebrows—tramped after me into the cabin. Lanterns were ready. I showed them the hatch of the lazarette; and, in about half an hour’s time, they had cleared out the last case, had stowed it in the lugger alongside, and were hoisting their sail. Their dispatch was wonderful; but they were of a race of men who had been disciplined into an exquisite agility in the art of dishing the revenue by the barbarous severity of the laws against smuggling in that age. I watched the big boat haul her sheet aft and stand away with her head to the eastward. She blended quickly with the obscurity and I lost her. I guessed she was feigning a “ratch” toward the Ostend coast, to dodge any shore-going eye that may have rested upon her, and that presently she would be shifting her helm for Pegwell Bay, where carts waited to convey the silver to my uncle’s house.

I went into the cabin when I lost sight of her, lay down, and slept very soundly and dreamt happily. I was too tired to rejoice; otherwise I should have mixed a tumbler of spirits and lighted a pipe, and enjoyed the luxury of a long contemplation of the successful issue of Tulp’s expedition.

I awoke in the gray of the dawn, and, going on deck, found promise of a fine day. I searched the shore and beach, down in the bay and about the river, with the brig’s telescope, but nothing showed that was to be likened to the lugger of last night. After breakfast, the Whitby men came aft and said they’d be glad to go ashore soon. They wanted to get to Ramsgate, where they might find a coalman bound to their port. I answered that I could not leave the brig until a caretaker arrived, and that there was no use in their going ashore unless I went with them to pay them off at my uncle’s. However, half an hour after this a punt, with a big lug, put off from Deal Beach, and blew alongside with five men in her, two of whom came on board and said that they had received instructions from Captain Round to take charge of the vessel while she lay at anchor.

“All right,” said I, “you are the men I have been waiting for,” and I told the Whitby fellows and the Kanaka to collect their traps and get into the boat. I then took Jimmy into mycabin and gave him several parcels of Greaves’ effects to convey to the punt. All that belonged to Greaves I took; I cleared the cabin of nautical instruments, books, chronometers, and the rest, and left nothing but dirt and dust for old Tulp. I then got into the boat with Jimmy, and we headed for the beach.

When Miss Aurora went ashore her gaze had been bent landward; she never once turned to take a farewell look at the old brig that had saved her life. I could not blame her. She had had enough of the little ship. For my part, I could look at nothing else as we rowed to the beach. I had not been out of the brig since I had landed on the island to get the dollars out of the cave. For many long months had theBlack Watchbeen my home, the theater of the most dramatic of all the passages of my life; she had earned me a fortune; she had rescued me from drowning; I could not take a farewell look without affection and regret. She sat very light, and in her faint rolls hove out a little show of grass; but her copper was cleaner than I had supposed it. Her sides were worn and rusty, her rigging slack, her masts grimy, her whole appearance that of a vessel which had encountered and victoriously survived some very fierce and frightful usage in distant seas. I kept my gaze fastened on her till the keel of the punt drove on to the beach.

The sailors and the Kanaka handed their chests over to the landlord of an ale-house for safe keeping; I then gave each man, and drank myself, a pint of beer, after which we trudged off toward my uncle’s house. We talked merrily as we went; our hearts were filled with the delights of the scenes and sights of the summer land; our salted nostrils swelled large to the sweetness of the haystacks and the aromas of the little farmyards and orchards we tramped past; no man would smoke, that he might breathe purely.

My uncle awaited us; my aunt gave me such a hug as the Prodigal Son would have got from his mother had his father been out of sight. I asked after Madam Aurora; she had driven to Deal that morning to shop, and, as she had borrowed twenty pounds, her shopping might probably run into some hours. It was one o’clock; a hearty meal had been prepared in the kitchen for the men, and while they ate I dined with my uncle and aunt off a roast leg of pork in the parlor adjacent, where we could hear the fellows’ gruff voices and Jimmy’s bleating laugh. The chests had been securely landed, UncleJoe told me, and safely housed in his cellar. The silver made five loads. They asked me to tell the whole story of the discovery of those dollars over again, and my aunt put many questions about the Señorita Aurora, who, she declared, was the finest, most elegant, and genteel lady she had ever seen in her life.

When we and the men had dined, my uncle called them into the parlor and took a receipt from each of them for three hundred and fifty dollars, which he paid down in English gold. They thanked him for his hospitality, begged their humble respects to the lady Aurora, wished me many blessings, and with some hair-pulling and scrapes and bows got out of the room and went their ways. I never saw or heard of those honest fellows again, though I learnt that on this same day, after leaving us, they and the Kanaka took a boat and sailed across to Ramsgate, where, no doubt, they found a north-country collier bound to their parts.

Jimmy had brought Captain Greaves’ belongings under his arm and on his back, the others carrying a few of the parcels among them. My uncle and I overhauled the poor fellow’s effects, and then sat down to talk over his will, to write a letter to Mynheer Tulp, and to consider how we were to convert what silver belonged to me and to Greaves into British currency.

“First of all, Bill,” said my uncle, “we’ll knock off a letter to Tulp and send it away. Let him fetch his brig and his money; there’ll be more daylight to see by when they’re out of the road.”

So I took a sheet of paper and addressed a letter to Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp at his house in Amsterdam, his residence being known to me through perusal of Greaves’ papers. I stated that the brigBlack Watchhad arrived in the Downs on the previous day, that her voyage had been successful, that the cargo was housed ashore, and that Greaves had died during the passage home; and I begged Mr. Tulp to lose not a moment in visiting me at my uncle’s house, that he might receive what belonged to him, for peril lurked in the protracted detention of the brig in the Downs. When this letter was written I dispatched it to Sandwich by Jimmy, that it might be transmitted without delay.

“Tulp will take his dollars at his own risk,” said my uncle, blowing out a cloud of smoke; “your own dollars and the silver belonging to Greaves’ll have to be negotiated cautiously;it’s a lot of money to deal with, and it mustn’t be handled in the lump. We’ll have to work by degrees through the money changers; find out several of them in London, and deal with ’em one arter the other at intervals. Then we may make it worth the while of the smugglers, some of my own particular friends, to relieve us of a chest or two. My son-in-law’ll take some; he’s often trading Mediterranean way; but I’m afeared it won’t do, Bill, to trouble the banks; we don’t want any questions to arise. How it might work out as a matter of law I don’t know; safest to look upon these here dollars as run goods and treat ’em accordingly.”

I fully agreed with him, and it was settled that the money should be exchanged in the manner he proposed. We then talked of Greaves’ will. Indeed, we talked of many more things than I can recollect. Nothing, however, could be done until Mynheer Tulp turned up. Every day I boarded the brig and saw that all was right with the dear little ship; and I remember once that while I stood with the lady Aurora and my uncle on Deal Beach, viewing the vessel and recounting our experiences in her yet again, it occurred to me to buy her, to re-equip her, put a good sailor in command of her, and send her away to make a rich voyage for me. I smiled when I had thus thought; it had been Miss Aurora’s notion, and had she consented to marry me I daresay I should have bought the brig. But I said to myself, “No”; the brig is not Tulp’s to sell; I must deal with her owner, whose curiosity might prove inconveniently penetrating; I have my money and I’ll keep it; and so I dismissed theBlack Watchas a venture out of my head.

One day—I think it was about a week after I had written to Amsterdam—I returned with my lady Aurora to my uncle’s house after a morning’s stroll about Deal. I heard voices in the parlor; Miss Aurora went upstairs.

“Who is here?” said I to the old chap who opened the door.

“Mr. Tulp, from Amsterdam, sir,” he answered.

On this I knocked upon the door and entered the parlor.

Had I lived with Mynheer Tulp a month I could not have carried in my head a more striking image of the man than my fancy had painted out of Greaves’ brief description of him.

He was a little, withered old fellow, a mere trifle of months, I daresay, on this side seventy; nose long and hooked, face hollow and yellow, eyes small, black, and down-looking, thoughoften a leary lift of the lids sent a piercer at the person he talked to; he wore a wig, and was dressed in the fashion of the close of last century. He was the man I had dreamt of—the substance of the phantom I had beheld when I looked at poor Greaves, and wondered whether his dollar-ship was a dream or not.

My uncle was red in the face and was talking loudly when I entered.

“So! Und dis vhas Mr. Fielding?” said Mynheer Tulp standing up and extending his hand. “Vell, I vhas glad to see you.”

He uttered even this commonplace slowly and cautiously as though he feared his tongue.

“Now, Bill,” cried my uncle, “I want you to show Greaves’ bond to Mr. Tulp; for he says you aren’t entitled to more than your wages—not even to them as a matter of law, seeing you wasn’t shipped by him.”

“I tink you vill find dot right,” said Mynheer Tulp.

I carried Greaves’ bond, as well as his will, in my pocket; I placed the bond or agreement upon the table, and Mynheer Tulp, picking it up, put on a large pair of spectacles and read it through.

“Dis vhas of no use,” said he.

“We’ll see,” said my uncle.

“Understand me, Mr. Fielding,” continued the little Dutchman. “I don’t mean to say dot you have not acted very vell, und dot you vhas not entitled to a handsome reward, vhich certainly you shall have; but vhen you talk to me of dirty odd tousand dollars—six tousand pounds of English money——” he grinned hideously and shrugged his shoulders.

“What would you consider a handsome reward?” said I.

“You vhas second mate. I learn from your uncle dot your life vhas safed by my brig. Should I sharge you mit safing your life? No. But if I vhas you I should consider der safing of my life as handsome a reward as I had der right to expect for any services afterward performed. But mit you, my good young man, I goes much further. You have navigated the brig safely home mit my money, und I say help yourself, my boy, to five hundred pounds of der dollars before I takes them.”

“Before you takes ’em!” cried my uncle. “You’ll need every line-of-battle ship that Holland possesses to enable youto catch even a glimpse of the dollars afore all things are settled to my nephew Bill’s satisfaction.”

“Vhat vhas your name again, sir?”

“Captain Joseph Round.”

“You hov der looks of an honest man, Captain Round. You vould not rob me?”

“Not a ha-penny leaves this house,” said my uncle, “until Bill here has taken his share according to your skipper’s bond, and until he’s deducted the money that the captain has left by will, lawfully signed and witnessed.”

“I likes to see dot vill,” said Mynheer Tulp, speaking always very composedly, and occasionally snapping a look under his eyelids at one or the other of us.

I put the will on the table. He picked it up and read it. When he had read it he again grinned hideously, and said:

“Your name vhas Villiam Fielding?”

“Yes.”

“Und you benefit under dis vill to der amount of von tousand pounds?”

“Yaw,” said I.

“Und you vitness der vill dot vhas to benefit you? Shentlemen, it vhas not vorth the paper it vhas wrote on;” and he threw the will upon the table.

“It matters not one jot,” said I, who, as I had never attached the least significance to the legality of this sailor-made will, was in no wise astonished, because I reckoned old Tulp perfectly right. “About forty-two thousand pounds’ worth of the thirteen tons of dollars I have brought home for you at the risk of my life I keep, Mynheer. D’ye understand me? Ikeep, I say,” and I repeated the sentence thrice, while I approached him by a couple of strides. “Seven thousand are mine; the rest will go to the erection of a church.”

“Der money,” said Mynheer Tulp without irritation, though his yellow complexion was a shade paler than it had been a little while before, “vhas left to der Church of Englandt?”

“You have read it,” said I.

“Now, shentlemen,” continued the little Dutchman, “dere vhas a Church of Englandt, certainly; but dere vhas no Church of Englandt dot a man can leaf money to.”

“You know a sight too much,” shouted my uncle. “The money’s in my cellar, and there it stops till you settle.”

“Der Church of Englandt,” said Mynheer Tulp, “vhas a single body dot has no property. You cannot leaf money toder Church of Englandt. Dot alone makes my poor stepson’s vill nooll und void.”

“The money remains where it is——” began my uncle.

“Do you allow,” I interrupted, “that Captain Greaves has a right to his share?”

“Do I allow it? Do I allow it?”

“You allow it. He could, therefore, do what he likes with his share?”

“Dot vhas right.”

“Do you know that he wished a church to be built as a memorial to his mother, who was your wife, I believe?”

“Dot vhas very beautiful. But he vhas dead, und dot vill vhas not vorth the ink it took to write out. I vhas next of kin, und I takes my poor stepson’s share.”

When he had said this, my uncle and I spoke together; and from this moment began an altercation which I should need a volume to embody. Tulp lost his temper; my uncle roared at him; I, too, being furious with the meanness of the wretched little beast, often found myself bawling as though I were in a gale of wind. Tulp’s threats flew fast and furious. Uncle Joe snapped his fingers under his long nose, and defied him in a voice hoarse and failing with exertion. I began to see the idleness and the absurdity of all this, and, throwing open the parlor door, I exclaimed:

“Mr. Tulp, get you back to Amsterdam, and there sit and reflect. When you come into our way of thinking, write; and then fetch your money. Go to law, if you please. The Spanish consignees of the dollars will thank you.”

The perspiration poured from the little man’s face, and he trembled violently. His yellow complexion under the pressure of his temper, which often forced his voice into a shriek, had changed into several dyes of green and sulphur, like that of one in a fit. He stared wildly about him in search of his strange little hat, which, however, he forgot he had already snatched up and was holding.

“You’ll have to bear a hand with your decision,” cried my uncle, whose face looked almost as queer as Tulp’s, with its purple skin and blue lips; “they’re beginning to ask questions about the brig, and if you don’t send for her soon she’ll begoing a-missing. You know what I mean. The Goodn’s are handy, and my nephew aint going to forfeit his rightful share of the dollars because ofher. The recovery of this silver is to be more than a salvage job to Bill. There’s nigh upon fortythousand pounds belonging to you a-lying in my cellars, but if ye aren’t quick in fetching it something may happen to oblige me to send all them chests out of my house, and then it’ll be no business of mine to larn what’s become of ’em.”

The little Dutchman, now perceiving that he held his hat, clapped it on his head and ran out of the room.

We heard no more of him that day; though next morning the old longshoreman who waited upon my uncle said that he had seen the little man pass the house, pause, walk up and down irresolutely, then hurry away in the direction of Sandwich. As I could not get to hear of him at Deal I guessed he lurked in Sandwich, and caused Jimmy to make inquiries, which resulted in the discovery that Mynheer Tulp was stopping at the Fleur de Lys Hotel. Three days after he had visited my uncle he wrote to offer me half a ton of the silver, worth something over three thousand pounds, on condition that my uncle peaceably surrendered the rest of the money to him, and assisted him to convey it to Amsterdam. I answered this by repeating my uncle’s threat, that if very shortly he did not agree to my terms the silver would be removed, my uncle would have no knowledge of its whereabouts, and I myself would go abroad.

On the morning following the dispatch of this missive, Miss Aurora received a letter; she read it and uttered a loud shriek, fell off her chair at the breakfast table round which we were seated, and lay upon the floor in a dead swoon. We thought she had died, and our fright was extreme. We picked her up and placed her upon a sofa, and went to work to recover her. Presently her sighs and moans satisfied us that she was not dead. I glanced at the letter she had received; it was in Spanish. I took the liberty of looking a little closely; it was signed by the Señora de la Cueva.

“She has heard from her mother!” I cried.

She rallied presently, and then followed a scene scarcely less exciting in its way than the shindy that had attended the visit of Mynheer Tulp. Miss Aurora read the letter aloud; and as she read she wept, then burst into fits of laughter, sprang about the room, sat again, continued to read, interrupting herself often by clasping her hands, lifting them to the ceiling, raising her streaming eyes, and thanking the Holy Mother of God for this act of mercy in utterance so impassioned that the like of it was never heard on the stage.

My homely uncle, my yet homelier aunt looked on, scarcelyknowing whether to shed tears or to laugh. I was very used to her ladyship’s performances, but there was something in this exhibition of ecstasy that went far beyond anything I had ever beheld in her.

“I rejoice indeed to learn that the señora is safe,” said I.

“Oh, it is a miracle! a miracle!” she cried; and then she wept and laughed and carried on as before, reading aloud in Spanish, and lifting up her eyes in gratitude to the Blessed Virgin.

At last she calmed down, and we conversed without the interruption of emotional outbreaks. Her mother gave no particulars of her deliverance. Mr. Maxwell had received Aurora’s letter; he was ill in his bed, therefore she, the señora, had made her way to London—choosing that port instead of Falmouth, because of the situation of Deal—intending to proceed to Sandwich. But her infirmities had overwhelmed her; the fatigue of the journey had been so great that she was unable to leave her room in London. Her daughter must come to her, and without an instant’s delay.

Within three hours of the receipt of this letter my uncle drove the lady Aurora and me over to Deal, where we saw her safely into the London coach. She had said many kind things to me as we drove to Deal, had taken my hand and pressed it while she thanked me for—but what does it matter how and for what this young lady thanked me? She tried to exact many promises; I made none. Before she stepped into the coach she seized my hand, looked at me hard, and her fine eyes swam. Nothing was said; she took her seat; I and my uncle stood apart waiting while the coachman gathered his reins and prepared for the start. The horses’ heads were then let go, I raised my hat, the coach drove off, and I saw no more of the Señorita Aurora de la Cueva. I say I saw no more of her; in truth, though I once again heard of her, I never received a single line from her. And possibly I should never have heard of her again but for her sending from Madrid a draft for the money she had borrowed from Uncle Joe. She warmly and gracefully thanked Captain and Mrs. Round for their hospitality, begged them to remember her most gratefully to her valued and valiant friend, their nephew, and then, so far as I was concerned, the curtain fell upon her forever.

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