The Captain paused and bent his eyes upon the golden light that lay far-off behind the trees, as if he would divine something of the future that was before himself and the little children by his side, and which he thought the golden sunlight held; but, while he looked, it seemed as if some tender chord within his gentle heart had snapped asunder and had been badly tied again, for he said quite hurriedly, “Well, well, my hearties, we must pass the word, and get it over. Good by,—there it is! God bless you, and good by!”
“Good by, dear Captain Hardy,” said William, putting out his hand,—a hand that promised to be a very manly one indeed some day,—“good by, and thank you for all your goodness to us,” and the little fellow could not keep a tear from coming out upon his plump and rosy cheek.
“Good by,” said Fred, and, as he said it, there were two tears at the very least on his.
“Good by,” dear little Alice would have said, though she didn’t; but instead she threw her arms about the old man’s neck and kissed his sunburnt cheek.
“Good by,” the Captain was about to say again, but (he was always good at getting out of scrapes) at that very moment he contracted a suspicion that something moist was getting up into his own big hazel eyes; and so he began to whistle briskly, and then to cry out, loud enough to call all hands to close reef the topsails in a gale of wind: “Port and Starboard! Port and Starboard! come here, old curs and landlubbers that you are,—come, bear a hand and be lively there, and say ‘good by.’”
And along Port and Starboard came, bounding at a tremendous rate, barking “good by” at every bound, and with their great bushy tails wagging “good by” besides.
The foreign ducks stopped shovelling and spattering mud, and quacked “good by.”
The chickens stopped stuffing themselves with grasshoppers, and, while the hens cackled “good by,” the roosters crowed it.
And, lastly, Main Brace came waddling along on his sausage legs, and from his plum-duff head let off “good by” at intervals, as a revolving gun lets off its balls, without appearing to have any more idea of what it was all about than the gun itself, until he reached the arbor, when he broke out into a loud “boo-hoo,” which was the only “good by” he was now equal to; and as the first “boo-hoo” let loose a second, and the second a third, and the third a deluge and an earthquake all in one, there is no knowing what might have happened, had not the children scampered off and stopped the outburst,—Fred running on ahead, and William following after, leading his sister Alice by the hand, while the gentle little girl turned every dozen steps to throw back through the tender evening air, from her dainty little fingertips, a loving kiss (there was no laughing now) to the Ancient Mariner, whose face beamed brightly on her from the arbor door, and whose lips were saying plainly, “Good by, and God bless you till you come again!”