“An so this was the occasion you wanted me for? Wal, railly. And here’s the Antelope—an here am I gazing upon her well-remembered form!”
Captain Corbet spoke these words meditatively, and then made an effort to climb on board. This he soon succeeded in doing. Thereupon he feasted his eyes upon the schooner, examining her in every part.
“Muddy,” said he, solemnly. “Muddy, yet lively, and fit for more vyges, so soon as you get rigged up and repaired.”
“Boys,” he continued, after a long silence, standing on the deck of the Antelope, and addressing his young friends,—“boys, you onman me, an the aged Corbet relapses intew a kine o’ second childhood, for I hed given her up for lost. I hed seen in her ruination a warnin to me that I was to desert forevermore the rolling ocean, and confind myself to hum. But this here day an hour shows me that I have vyges yet in store, an my feelins now are ony purest jy. For the Antelope bore me o’er the briny deep for over twenty year, in sickness and health, with taters, an I always counted on our livin an dyin together. Her loss, when I thought her lost, was terewly a sunderation of my heartstrings. I felt her dume was mine. But now I see her raised up out of her muddy bed of mortial illness, an brought up, and set right side up, to walk the waters like a creetur of life, with taters. Boys, emotion overcomes me. Boys, adoo! Boys, other feelins swell within my busum. Boys, thar is one at home that demands my return,—one known to most of ye,—about whom I feel dreadful anxious, bein as I’ve ben and left him in onexperienced hands, an me not knowin but he’s cryin his perecious eyes out this moment. Boys, adoo! You have a parient’s gratitood!”
With these words the venerable Corbet left the schooner, and after shaking hands with a few of them, hurried home as fast as he could, while the boys, feeling now that their work was at length complete, returned to the school.
Meanwhile Pat had been left alone with the baby.
Pat knew nothing whatever about the care of babies, and had volunteered the charge of this one out of the kindness of his heart, never supposing that he would be called on to display any of the qualities of a nurse. In this, as in many other cases, ignorance made him rash in his enterprise.
For about half an hour all went on well; and Pat, after jogging the cradle for a little while, grew tired, and amused himself with looking around the room.
But from these pursuits he was roused by a movement on the part of the baby. Back, then, he darted to the cradle, with a vague fear that the baby would wake, and began rocking it vigorously. But such very vigorous treatment as this, instead of lulling the wakeful infant back again to the land of sleep, only roused him the more.
Pat, therefore, cherishing in his memory all of Captain Corbet’s directions, did as he had been ordered, and rocked the cradle harder.