The Lady Head with all sail set sped swiftly seaward, our three friends sitting on her little poop with no eyes for the beauty of the shores they were leaving. Every day brought Mary and her father to a clearer understanding of the thorny way C. B. must have travelled since leaving his home, for even Mr. Oliphant, honest, courteous and urbane as he had been, was obviously glad to see them go. They felt that for men and women truly filled with the love of God there was no room in the world that hated the Master. The thought that there was anything cowardly in thus fleeing from the scene of conflict did not occur to them as perhaps it should have done: I do not know. They only knew that they were going to a place of peace and that sufficed them.
They had no pleasant passage. The vessel was small, the crew were rough and brutal, and the language they heard around them hurt them very much, but nothing could disturb the serenity of their souls. So deeply had they become imbued with the spirit that C. B. had always manifested that they had no doubts, they felt that they were going home. And it was with something of a shock that they learned from C. B. that since his departure in the Eliza Adams, he had heard no word of his people. It was but slight though, one look at his face with its calm assurance of all being well gave them a mild rebuke. Of course all would be well.
Contrary winds and heavy weather delayed them a good deal, but the little vessel if uncomfortable was staunch, and they were proof against bodily discomfort. Yet when on the fourteenth day from Sydney Heads they sighted the well-known bay (to C. B.), Mary and her father were seized with a strange trembling, and the stern old man, so wonderfully softened, could not help a tear now and then stealing down his ruddy cheeks. They stood in, and when within easy distance of the shore hove to, C. B.’s keen glance detecting a boat putting off before any one else did. Swiftly it came towards them, while C. B., holding his wife with one hand and his father-in-law with the other, bade them observe how she was handled.
Suddenly he gave a joyful shout, “My father! Oh, thank God, thank God!” Yes, it was Philip, with all his old vigour handling the steer oar, and, as he skilfully swung the boat alongside, he looked up and recognized his firstborn. He snatched at a rope flung to him, sprang on board and folded his son to his breast in a silent ecstasy, while Mary and Mr. Stewart stood back trembling and waited till the sacred greeting was over.
Suddenly C. B. sprang away from his father’s arms and, seizing Mary, cried, “Here, father, here’s another daughter for you: this is my darling wife; and here is her father, a brother for you.”
Philip gravely embraced his daughter-in-law, his clear eyes appearing to search out her very soul. She, poor girl, now that she was where she had so longed to be, was for a moment just a little dismayed at the aspect of Philip. While her whole heart cried shame at the thought, it was there, that this noble-looking man’s rough sleeveless shirt, coarse short pants and bare gnarled feet were repugnant to her. Life-long prejudices are indeed hard to overcome.
Surely then it should be accounted unto her for righteousness that she bravely took those ignoble feelings by the throat and choked them, envying her father as she did so the ease and grace with which he greeted the roughly clad man before him. But then he had long ago known the true value of clothes, and being besides a rare judge of a man when he saw him he had mentally appraised Philip at once as being another C. B. only more so.
But neither C. B. nor his father thought of these things. C. B. indeed, shaken out of his usual calm, could hardly restrain himself sufficiently to explain about the goods they had brought with them; he was so impatient to bring Mary and his mother together. But it was certain that one boat could not possibly carry the boat load that was waiting, and so it was decided that Philip and Mr. Stewart should remain on board while C. B. took Mary ashore and sent the two boats back. Such a precaution was necessary, for the character of neither skipper nor crew of the Lady Head stood very high, and it was quite possible that in the absence of the owners of the freight they might take it into their heads to up helm and be off in a fit of absent-mindedness as it were. Such things have happened in those latitudes before now.
So Mary was carefully assisted into the boat, and crouching low in the stern sheets she gazed upwards with loving admiration of the noble form of her husband as erect at the great steer-oar he swung the boat’s head landward. Every stroke of the way she watched him, nor blenched for a breath, even when the enormous shoreward rushing billow poised the craft like a feather upon its foaming crest, a vast green slope before and behind, down one of which it seemed that they must roll and be swallowed up.
Presently the boat touched the beach, the crew sprang out, dug their feet into the shingle as the wave receded, and then with a great cry of delight as the next billow came in ran her up with it high and dry. And C. B. sprang out, turned, lifted his wife like a babe in his powerful arms, and running up the slope with her placed her in the arms of his mother. Grace took Mary to her bosom while her son said with tears streaming down, “Mother, I have brought you home a daughter, my dear wife.”