Captain Kyd Volume I Part 9

From this moment I am the architect of my own fortune, and I will erect a temple that men shall admire, or bury myself beneath its ruins! The sea, on which I have been cradled, is open before me like a mother's bosom, welcoming me to its embrace; and on it, with the aid of G.o.d and my own spirit, I will win a name that shall hide the humble one I wear, and under it yet lay at the feet of her, who would scorn me under my present one, laurels that shall have made me worthy of her love!"

As he concluded his cheek was flushed; his eye sparkling; his step rapid and firm; his countenance elevated and glowing; and he strode the little cabin as if he was for the moment all that he had resolved to be. He was so lost in his feelings, so wrapped in the n.o.ble vision of the future his ambitious and ardent mind had pictured, that the old fisherman, who had slowly followed him from the cliff, entered without attracting his notice. The aged man gazed on the animated and excited youth with astonishment, and for a few moments was silent from surprise. At length he called him by name. He started, and was for the first time sensible that he was not alone:

"Well!" was the short, stern response.

"Do you know who speaks to you, my boy?" asked the old man, with mild reproof.

"Yes I do, my good father," he said, instantly resuming his wonted kindness of manner, and taking his hand; "forgive me; I had forgotten myself!"

"Do not be angry, child, at this freak of my young lord," said the old fisherman, in a tone habitual to his cla.s.s in speaking of those above them; "it was but a little outbreak of spirit; and you know it is not for the like of us to be angry at the n.o.bility for such things. They are our lords, and we must do as they will."

"And let them take my life--ay, if they will, make me their slave, which is far worse! Never! 'Tis the language of a bondman you utter, and unworthy the lips of manhood!"

"You talk as if you was one of the quality, boy! You will find it different when you get to be as old as I am. I have put up with many wrongs in my day from gentle blood."

"And have not resented it?" demanded the youth, with spirit.

"What could a poor fisherman do? Is it not their right to act what they will to? We poor fishermen have only to pray to G.o.d to give them gentle wills towards us!"

"And is this the creed you would teach me? Debasing, grovelling, mean obedience to the tyranny of an order! Before I do it, may my hand wither at the shoulder, my tongue palsy in my mouth! I should indeed deserve to be a slave! You would forbid me to resent this wrong from this hotheaded young n.o.ble?"

"It will do thee no good; if thou shouldst take his life, thou wouldst hang for't."

"And, if he should take mine?"

"There would be none to avenge thee, boy. The judges, who are always on the side of the great, would say thy life was forfeited because thou hadst lifted thy hand against one of the privileged."

"G.o.d! I cannot believe that all men do spring from Adam and Eve,"

exclaimed the youth, impetuously. "Father," he said, after a moment's silence, speaking in a tone of mingled shame and sorrow, "thou hast, fortunately, a spirit fitted to thy station--I pity thee! For myself, I will be no man's serf, no lord's menial! If accident has made me almost on a level with the brute, nature has endowed me with the feelings of a man. Father, I leave you with to-morrow's sun."

"My child! my child! what evil hath taken possession of thee?" cried the old man, holding him by both hands.

"No evil, but good! To-morrow I go from you!" he replied, resolutely.

"And leave me dest.i.tute in my old age, my boy?"

The youth was touched more by the accent in which this was said than by the words. He buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud; then, with a sudden burst of filial affection, he cried, throwing himself upon his aged breast,

"No, no! I will bend my neck to every insult, rather than thou, my more than father, shouldst be left helpless."

"Thou wilt not go away?" reiterated the old man, pleadingly, as if doubting the sincerity of his words.

"Not while thou art spared to me, beloved grandsire. Thou hast protected my infancy and youth! been to me both father and mother. If I be not a faithful son to thee, and protect not thy old age, may I fail to attain the rank and honour among men to which I aspire, and which, if purchased at the expense of filial grat.i.tude, I should be unworthy to wear!"

"Bless thee, bless thee, Mark!" said he, fondly embracing him.

"Providence has made our lot a humble one; let us submit to it with obedience. Come, my boy, think no more of it, but launch the skiff, and bring home our evening meal from the vast storehouse that has ever fed us, and which never holds its life even from the undeserving. Go, my son: on the rocking wave, and in the silence of the lone deep, your heart will become calm, and peace will return to your soul. At such times it is that the good and devout Christian is the most happy! I sometimes think the holy apostles did owe much of the holy piety which they possessed to their lowly occupation of fishers."

"_They were Christians._ You are a Christian, father! I am not one save in name. Would to G.o.d I were! perhaps I then might bear my humble lot more calmly. Now farewell a while; I will be in again ere the moon rises."

He rushed from the cabin with his heart almost bursting in his breast, launched his little bark, hoisted the frail latteen sail, and committed himself to the deep.

Seated in the narrow stern of his fragile skiff, the thwarts and bottom of which were covered with fis.h.i.+ng-lines, a dip-net, and other signs of his lowly pursuit, holding the rude tiller in one hand and the sheet of his narrow white sail in the other, he shot swiftly out from the sh.o.r.e, wafted by a light and fitful wind. From habit he steered his course, and s.h.i.+fted the sail from side to side to woo the baffling airs, without giving his thoughts to his occupation. His lips were compressed with thought, his brow was set, and every feature of his silent face was eloquent with the feelings that occupied his bosom. His mind was struggling between filial affection and ambition--between love for the highborn maiden and duty to his grandsire. The sufferings of the latter, who looked to his labours for his daily bread, were, if he should desert him, present and positive. The hopes connected with the former were altogether future and uncertain. Should he inflict a present evil for a future good? Would his filial attachment compare with his love? Which should he sacrifice? He felt that he could not make his grandsire the victim, either of his love or of his ambition, without the forfeiture of that filial virtue, wanting which he would be unworthy the prize he should incur this penalty to obtain. His thoughts became insupportable; and, for a time, he was nearly wrought up to phrensy by the intensity of the mental conflict. At this crisis, while his eyes were fixed vacantly on the crisp waves as they went singing and rippling past him, his bosom far more disturbed than they, he was startled by a loud, quick hail.

"Boat ahoy! Helm-a-starboard, or you will be into us!"

He mechanically obeyed; and, as he looked up, saw the dark hull of the yacht, that had lain all day at anchor in the bay, within reach of his hand, while his boat was gliding safely along its side, directly against which he had been unconsciously steering.

"You must keep a look-out, lad, how you run aboard a king's yacht, or you will stand a chance of getting a shot in your locker!" said a gruff, yet good-humoured voice. "But you have a quick ear and ready hand to clear our counter as you did. What say you to serving his majesty, my lad? It's better than catching herring; and, then, many's the younker of your inches that's come in over the cat-head, and afterward walked the quarter-deck with a brace of gold bobs on his shoulders."

The young fisherman's ears greedily received every word; they struck a chord within his bosom that strongly vibrated again. Involuntarily he put his helm down, and brought his boat up into the wind. He looked longingly upon the vessel's deck; measured the beautiful and light proportions of her hull, and surveyed with delight the graceful spars, following them with his eye to their tapering tops, from which gay flags streamed in the breeze: he admired, apparently with all a seaman's gratification, the tracery and interlacing of the neatly-set rigging, and the snowy sails, some of which were hanging in festoons from the yards, while one or two lazily spread their broad white fields from yard to yard: he observed the neat appearance of the men; their happy faces; their frank, good-humoured manners: he thought over the blunt but kindly offer he had received, and his hopes whispered,

"Fortune has opened this way for me! my destiny must be linked with this vessel!"

He then thought of his father, and his head dropped despondingly on his bosom; he thought of Kate Bellamont, and his eyes sparkled, and he felt like bursting all filial ties and leaping at once on board.

"What say you, my lad, will you s.h.i.+p?" said the man, observing his hesitation; "I'll give you ten rix-dollars as bounty."

"Now?" he eagerly asked, starting up in his boat, and extending his hands with intense earnestness.

"The instant you enter your name on the yacht's books."

"I will go with you."

"Done! come alongside."

Mark hesitated ere he obeyed. Ten rix-dollars had, at first, seemed to him an inexhaustible sum: a moment's reflection convinced him that it would not support his grandfather six months without labour, for which he was nearly unfitted on account of his age. If, he thought, at the end of six months, therefore, he should not be able to return to him, or if his own life should be lost in the interim, would not the misery and want such an event would entail upon him fall heavy to his charge?

All this pa.s.sed through his mind as he drew aft the tack and pressed the tiller up to windward to run under the vessel's bows. Instantly he s.h.i.+fted his helm, let the sheet fly free to the wind, and shot suddenly away in the opposite direction.

"He's off with a flowing sheet!" said one of the seamen, laughing.

"He's gone to bid the old man good-by," cried another; "he'll be alongside before morning, kit and kid."

"He's gone to take leave of his la.s.s," added a third. "A wise lad to anchor his last night ash.o.r.e."

"I wouldn't lose him for six months' pay," said the captain of the forecastle, who had first hailed him; "but I am afraid we shall see no more of him than what he now shows us," he added, shaking his head, and turning to pace the deck.

Scarce hearing, and heedless of these characteristic remarks, the young fisherman kept on his course seaward till he had got a league from the land, when he hove to and lowered his sail; then baiting and casting his lines, he plied his humble task, his eyes the while often fixed on the distant towers of Castle Cor, and his thoughts now with its fair inmate, now brooding over his own lowly destiny. When at length the sun dipped the edge of his burnished s.h.i.+eld into the sea, he for the last time drew in his lines, each heavy with a fish, hoisted his sail, flung it broad to the evening wind that blew gently landward, and, taking the helm, steered towards home. But the wind grew lighter, and soon came only at intervals in "cat's-paws;" his progress was therefore slow, and he was yet a mile from the land when it left his sail altogether. Night came on, and the moon rose above the battlements of the castle, and flung its scarf of silver far out upon the scarcely dimpled bay. From time to time he held his open palm to windward, in vain trying to catch a pa.s.sing current. He threw back the dark curls that cl.u.s.tered about his forehead, and laid it bare to receive the faintest breath that might promise the return of the wind. But the air was motionless! His boat rose and fell on the gla.s.sy undulations, but moved not towards the sh.o.r.e, save by the slow landward heave of the sea. Springing upon the thwarts, he brailed up his sail and bound it to the mast, and then, bending to the slender oars, sent his light skiff over the water with a speed that mocked the idle winds. He soon got within the dark shadow flung by the cliff along the water far beyond the land, and run his boat on the beach beside his cot. The old fisherman welcomed him with a kindness that not only touched his heart, but rewarded him for the sacrifice he had made on his account. He also a.s.sisted him in conveying the fish into the hut, and set about himself to prepare their rude repast. Mark placed his oars in the beckets over the door, and walked out to indulge his thoughts; to brood over his deferred, if not blasted hopes; and to struggle again and again against the unfilial temptations that a.s.sailed him. He insensibly wandered along the beach, that sparkled in the moonlight like snow beneath his feet, until he came to the narrow strip of sand that stretched beneath the over-hanging cliff from which he had leaped, and connected his hut with the path up the rocks. He looked up to its dark and terrific roof, and then down into the black pool at his feet, and a half-formed wish that he had never risen again from its silent depths, escaped him.

"That I had perished, ere life had been preserved to be dragged out in this miserable servitude," he said aloud. "What is life to me? Its refined joys; its courtly pleasures; its fair forms; its wealth; its honours! This is _my_ world--these slimy rocks--this lonely bay; yonder hut my palace, and to fish for daily sustenance my pastime. This is _my_ life--this my universe! What have I to do with aught beyond it? The world was made for others, not for me--not for the peasant boy! No, no!

Madness! Must I endure this?" he cried, with fierce impatience. "Filial love, filial grat.i.tude, how bitter, bitter are ye!"

He struck his forehead violently, and turned on the belt of sand with a fevered step. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder, as light as if a fairy's foot had lit upon it. He started, and, turning quickly round, beheld a female, enveloped in a hood and cloak, standing immediately behind him. The grace of her att.i.tude, and the easy decision of her whole manner, a.s.sured him that she was not lowborn. His heart would have whispered the name that was enshrined in it, but the figure was not tall enough for _hers_. With an instinctive consciousness that he was in the presence of rank and beauty, to which, in this union, his independent spirit never refused to do homage, he doffed his cap, and addressed her with that native grace and dignity which characterized him:

"Lady, seek you aught in which I can aid you, that you have come to the seaside at this lonely hour?"

The moon shone full on his youthful features, which were shaded with locks of dark-flowing hair, parted across his high, pale forehead, and descending to his shoulder. She gazed for an instant, ere she replied, on his youthful face, on each lineament of which his bold character was written, while his ardent spirit spoke eloquently in every look. As he bent forward to catch her answer, with his bonnet in his hand, the cloud had vanished from his brow before the supposed presence of youth and beauty, and his deferential manner, so opposite to his former bearing, seemed to inspire her with confidence.

"My business is with you alone, Mark!" spoke, from beneath the shaded hood, the sweet, hesitating voice of Grace Fitzgerald, intuitively shrinking within the shadow of the cliff as she addressed him, just out of which, in the full light of the moon, the young fisherman himself stood.