Next day the body of this unfortunate young man was also consigned to the deep. And then the mystery, which we had noticed to exist between the captain and the doctor, leaked out, and became the property of all.
It became known that Willie Warner was not a man, but a woman, and that Roddy Prinn was her husband.
They had shipped on board the Queer Fish at the Boston docks, and it was only upon the occasion of the first sickness of the pseudo-cabin-boy that her sex was revealed to the physician, and, through him, to the captain.
The reasons which induced the lady to assume the disguise of a sailor may have been known to the captain or doctor, but they never transpired among the crew.
In consequence of this we had many preposterous rumors afloat—strange stories wherein cruel parents, inexorable step-mothers, crimes committed on land, and other wild theories as to the history of the lovers, whose lives were so mysterious, and whose deaths were so melancholy and strange.
But, however wild the stories may have been, and however far from the real history of the lovers, we held their memory dear and sacred. And while we remembered with gentle kindness the gentle disposition of Roddy Prinn, our recollections of our pretty little cabin-boy, Willie Warner, were mixed up with purity and sweetness.
CHAPTER XIII. THE VOLCANO.
We must have been still fifty miles from our destination, when the bright and continued light to the northward made it evident that the volcanic mountain of the Sandwich Islands was in active operation.
No one was especially apprehensive of this, for chances to witness volcanoes are not to be met with every day in the year.