“Shiver my gaff, Bill,” he said, “if there ain’t the old Zingara or her ghost. I can’t be mistaken in the cut of her jib.”
“Let me have a squint.
“Ah! that is her for sure. I can raise her hull now, and why—why ’s I live, if she haint got juries stepped, and fore and aft sails on each.”
“Oh, this is a happy day,” cried Mr. Norton. “Run up and tell t’ould parson, and send a boy to convey the jiful tidins to Mrs. Stuart and Miss Phœbe. If I don’t run ’ome and tell my old woman that the Zingara’s headin’ straight for the bay, I’ll bust up, so off I goes.”
The news spread through the village like wildfire, and in half-an-hour’s time there wasn’t a boat that was not afloat and speeding off to meet the long-lost Zingara.
But Norton’s boat, in which went Phœbe, outstripped them all, for he carried a press of canvas that caused her to skim across the water like a sea-gull.
When near enough to see his own little daughter standing in the bows beside Barclay, he simply lost all control of himself. He waved his red fisherman cap in the air, and shouted aloud for very joy, and the shout was taken up from boat to boat, and re-echoed even from the crowd around the shore itself.
But can I really be expected to describe or dwell over the joysomeness of that home-coming? There are some things that authors cannot do. And were I to tell you how, after hugging Teenie in his arms, and kissing her hair and brow, the old man just managed to say—
“Bless the Lord for all His mercies,” then burst into tears—I should—why, I should make a baby of myself also, and—cry too.