I had been absent from home more than a year, when I found myself in London—in mighty London, with its dark forests of masts and its darker cathedral dome, that meets the eye from every point of view:—a wondrous and bewildering change, after traversing so long the wide and lonely sea!
With a heart swollen by anxiety to learn tidings of my father, my mother, and sisters, I reached the counting-house of my uncle's firm, Rodney and Co., in the city, but there was something so peculiar in my aspect, which pertained neither to sea nor shore, and was unmistakably outlandish, that old John Thomas, the porter, seemed inclined to shut the door in my face.
A short explanation, however, soon overcame his scruples, and I was then admitted.
My uncle was at Erlesmere; but his head clerk assured me that my family were all well, though they had long since given me up for dead, as a handsome (he assured me it was very handsome) white marble tablet erected to my memory in the Rectory church remained to testify.
My letters from Cuba had never reached home!
As I had no desire to shock my parents by a sudden surprise, a telegram preceded me, and in less than an hour I was off by the express-train for Erlesmere. But with all its speed, the express seemed too slow for me. Marc Hislop accompanied me until he could get a ship; but before looking for that he meant to visit his old mother, who lived somewhere in Scotland.
After all that we had undergone, all that I had to show my family were the sword and old book found in the water-logged brig, the creese of a mutinous Lascar, the ring given me by the Governor of Surabaya, and though mentioned last not esteemed the least, our diamond, of which Marc Hislop and I have not yet ascertained the value, or I should rather say its proper claim to the designation of a diamond.
For Marc Hislop's sake, more than my own, I trust that our sanguine expectations may be realized, and that it may, at all events, furnish him, out of his share of the prize, with the means of providing comfortably for the mother who so admirably trained him up to a love of knowledge and to a sense of duty.
I have now realized the truth of Goethe's maxim: "He that looks forward sees one way to pursue; but he who looks backward sees many."
And so, tempered by a year of adversity, enlightened by its experience and suffering, I have returned, more than ever determined to make up for lost time, and to work my way manfully to King's College, Cambridge; after which, the reader who has accompanied me so far, may perhaps hear of me again.