Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/540

532 “Somehow or other Wailua got word of what was goin’ on, and one night she woke me out of sleep an’ told me I must run for’t, and she would hide me safe till things took a turn. So I scratched up the shell with Hetty’s ring in’t, and afore morning I was over t’other side of the island, in a kind of a cave overlookin’ the sea, near by to a grove of bananas and mammee apples, and not fur from the harbor where I’d landed; and safe enough, for nobody but Wailua knew the way to’t.

“Well, the sixth day I sot in the porthole of that cave I see a sail in the offing. I declare, I thought I should ’a’ choked! I catched off my tappa cloth and h’isted it on a pole, but the ship kep’ on stiddy out to sea. My heart boat up to my eyes, but I held on ag’inst hope, and I declare I prayed; words come to me that I hadn’t said since I was a boy to Simsbury, and the Lord he heerd; for, as true as the compass, that ship lay to, tacked, put in for the island, and afore night I was aboard of the Lysander, a Salem whaler, with my mouth full of grog and ship-biscuit, and my body in civilized toggery. I own I felt queer to go away so and leave Wailua; but I knew ’twas gettin’ her out of danger, for the old king was just a-goin’ to die, and if ever I’d have gone back, we should both have been murdered. Besides, we didn’t always agree; she had to walk straighter than her wild natur’ agreed with, because she was my wife; and we hadn’t no children to hold us together; and I couldn’t ’a’ taken her aboard of the whaler, if she’d wanted to go. I guess it was best; anyhow, so it was.

“But this wasn’t to be the end of my v’yagin’. The Lysander foundered just off Valparaiso; and though all hands was saved in the boats, when we got to port there wasn’t no craft there bound any nearer homeward than an English merchant-ship, for Liverpool, by way of Madeira. So I worked a passage to Funchal, and there I got aboard of a Southampton steamer, bound for Cuba, that put in for coal. But when I come to Havana I was nigh about tuckered out; for goin’ round the Horn in the Lemon, —that ’are English ship,—I’d ben on duty in all sorts o’ weather; and I’d lived lazy and warm so long I expect it was too tough for me, and I was pestered with a hard cough, and spit blood, so’t I was laid up a long spell in the hospital at Havana. And there I kep’ a-thinkin’ over Hetty’s Bible, and I b’lieve I studied that ’are chart till I found out the way to port, and made up my log all square for the owner; for I knowed well enough where I was bound; but I did hanker to get home to Simsbury afore shovin’ off.

“Well, finally, there come into the harbor a Mystic ship that was a-goin’ down the Gulf for a New York owner. I’d known Seth Crane, the cap’en of her, away back in old Simsbury times. He was an Avon boy; and when I sighted that vessel’s name, as I was crawlin’ along the quay one day, and, seein’ she was Connecticut-built, boarded her, and see Seth, I was old fool enough to cry right out,—I was so shaky. And Seth he was about as scart as ef he’d seen the dead, havin’ heerd up to Avon, fifteen year ago nearly, that the Lowisy Miles had been run down off the Sandwich Islands by a British man-of-war, and all hands lost, exceptin’ one o’ the boys. However, be come to his bearin’s after a while, and told me about our folks, and how’t Hetty Buel wasn’t married, but keepin’ deestrict school, and her old grandmother alive yet.

“Well, I kinder heartened up, and agreed to take passage with Seth.—Good Lord, Doctor! what’s that?”

A peculiar and oppressive stillness had settled down on everything in and out of the hospital while Jackson was going on with his story. I noticed it only as the hush of a tropic midnight; but as be spoke, I heard—apparently out on the prairie—a heavy jarring sound like repeated blows, drawing nearer and nearer the building.

Jackson sprung upright on his pillows, the hectic passed from either gaunt and sallow cheek, leaving the red and blue tattoo marks visible in most ghastly dis-