CHAPTER XLVI.
PARTING.
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“The very stars are strangers, as I catch them Athwart the shadowy sails that swell above; I can not hope that other eyes will watch them At the same moment with a mutual love. They shine not there as here they now are shining; The very hours are changed. Ah! do ye sleep? O’er each home pillow midnight is declining–– May one kind dream at least my image keep!” |
There had been a small party on board the “Monongahela” the night before to bid the commodore good-by––all old friends of both parties––the Pirons, Burns, Stewart, Stingo, and Jacob Blunt. Clinker was not there, for he never went where it was damp, and if he got musty it must be from mildew on shore. The “Martha Blunt,” under the careful management of young Binks, the mate, with Banou and all the baggage on board, was being towed by two of the frigate’s boats down the harbor, with her yards mast-headed, all ready to sheet home the sails when the black pilot should say the land-wind would make and the passengers to come on board.
The lights were twinkling from lattice and veranda in the upper and lower town, the lanterns of the French and English admirals were shining from the tops of their flag-ships, and the revolving gleams from the beacon on the Pallissadoes Point flickered and dazzled over the gemmed starlit surface of the water. The awning was still spread on the after-deck of the “Monongahela;” and there, while the officer of the watch paced the forward part of the deck with the midshipmen to leeward, the sentries on the high platform outside and on the forecastle, the party of ladies and gentlemen stood silently watching and thinking.
There is no need explaining their looks or their thoughts; we know all about them. How Paddy Burns and Tom Stewart, with little Stingo, were going over the time, thirty years or more back, when with Piron there, boys together, they all swam on the beach of that fine harbor. The old school-house, too, with the tipsy old master, who whacked them soundly, drunk or sober; their frolics at the fandangoes in Spanish Town; their transient separations in after life on visits to France or the Old Country; the hearty joy to meet again and drink Jamaica forever. And now their companion in tropical 267 heat and mountain shade was going to part with them, and sail away over that restless ocean, never, perhaps, to meet again!
Even old Clinker, as he sat on his stem by the old worm-eaten desk, with his dried old lemon of a face lying in his leaves of hands––with no light in the dark, deserted old counting-house––looked out between his fibres of fingers and saw the cradle, with the sleeping twins within it, while the rafters pressed him as flat as the old portfolio before him. And now, as a drop or two of bitter juice exuded from his shriveled rind, he saw those lovely twins floating away, never more to be saved from an earthquake by old Clinker.
Mr. Mouse, likewise, was wide awake, and hopping about with a kangaroo step, a little in doubt why Miss Rosalie was so pale, why those blue eyes were so dim, and why she said to him “Go away, little one,” with a quivering, tremulous voice and hand. Mouse told Rat, and Rat told Martin and Beaver, that the poor girl was in love with him, Tiny, and that he would make it all right one of these days, when he got an epaulet on his little shoulder.
Softly, like the cool breath of a slumbering child, came a faint air from the land. The bell of the frigate, clanging in its brassy throat, struck for midnight. The sentinels on their posts cried “All’s well!” The old brig was letting fall her top-sails, and the sound of the oars in the cutter’s row-locks ceased.