And now once more our little party are together in the dear old rustic vine-clad arbor, and, as on the first day of meeting there, the old man takes his long clay pipe out of his mouth, and sticks it in a rafter overhead; then around little Alice he puts his great, big arm, and he draws the fair-haired, bright-eyed child close to his side, and thus “ballasted,” as he says, he “bears away for port.”
“Now, to bring our story to an end,” ran on the Captain, “I must say first that the Rob Roy was a good, stout ship; the master a bluff, good-hearted Scotchman; the mate a kindly man, and altogether different from the red-faced mate that was on the Blackbird; and the people were all just as good and kind to us as the savages had been. But they gave us right away so much coffee and ship’s biscuit and other things to eat and drink (none of which had we tasted for three years and more), that we got a dreadful colic, and had like to have died. But the next day we were quite well again, and then we related to the Captain and everybody on board the story of our adventures. The worst was, they would make us tell our story over and over again, as I have been telling it to you, until we almost wished we had never been rescued at all. It is, indeed, a fearful thing in anybody’s life ever to have met with any adventure that is at all peculiar; for to the end of his days people will never get done asking him about it; and most likely their questions are of the most ridiculous kind, like, ‘Hardy, wasn’t it cold there?’ just as if anybody could be cast away in the cold, and find it anything else; or, ‘How did you feel, Hardy?’ as if feeling has anything at all to do with you when you are trying to save your life.
“The captain of the Rob Roy took a great fancy to our odd-looking fur clothes, especially our underclothing, which was made of birds’ skins; and he gave us civilized garments out of the ship’s stores. You may be sure that we were glad enough to get these nasty fur clothes off, and be rid of them forever. The captain offered to keep them for us, but we said ‘No, no,’ for we had had quite enough of them.
“So we went after whales, and made a ‘good catch,’ as the whale-fishers call a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, only stopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.
“When we reached Aberdeen, which occurred on the 29th of October, there was a great talk made about us, and, when we walked through the streets, people stuck out their fingers, and said, ‘There they go! look!’ so we were great lions there, and had to tell our story so often that we found out what they liked most to hear, and this we repeated over and over again; and by this method we saved much time and talk.
“The very first thing the Dean did, after landing, was to write a letter to his mother, sending it off right away by post. It was just like the little fellow to do it, and what he wrote was like him too. It began thus: ‘Through the mercy of Providence I have been saved, and am coming back to you, mother dear.’
“Then we were shipped on board an American vessel, by the American Consul, for New York, where we arrived after a prosperous voyage, in good health, and without anything happening to us worth mentioning. This was on the 22d day of December, which made just three years, nine months, and nineteen days since we sailed from New Bedford.
“As soon as we had landed, we set out for the hospital to find the Dean’s mother. The Dean had directed his letter there, thinking that if she had got well and gone away, they would know where; and this they did, so we took down the address and hurried on. It was in a little by-street, and we had much trouble to find it; but by and by we came upon a tumble-down old house, and were shown into a little tumble-down old room, with a tumble-down old bed in it, and a tumble-down box for a chair, and a small tumble-down table, and right in the middle of the floor stood a little woman that was more tumble-down than all. It was the Dean’s poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had been washing clothes, and she held a scrap of paper in both her hands, which, bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, were trembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of the Dean’s letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deep wrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letter had arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just made out that it was from the Dean, and we could see that this had started great tears rolling down her cheeks.