"By the powers, I'm thinking I've caught a wild man. I wonder if there's any more of 'em. If I can only get this one aboard, he'll make my fortune. I'll try for it, any how, and offer the capting to go shares with my bargain;" and he proceeded to lift the slight form of the pauper boy in his brawny arms, and bear him to the boat, which, during the scene, had approached the shore. One who had had less experience of the iron nature of man, would have endeavored, in Edward Hallett's circumstances, to move his captor by entreaties to leave him to his dearly prized freedom; but he had long believed, with the poet,
"There is no pulse in man's obdurate heart—
It does not feel for man;"
and after the first wild struggle, which had only served to show that he was an infant in the hands of the strong seaman, he abandoned himself to his fate, in silent despair. With closed eyes and lips, he suffered himself, without a movement, to be borne to the boat, and deposited in it, amidst the many uncouth and characteristic exclamations of his captor and his companions, who would not be convinced that it was really a child of the human race, thus strangely found on this isolated spot. Hastily they bore him to the ship, which the providence of God had sent, under the guidance of a kind and noble spirit, for the salvation of this, his not forgotten, though long tried creature.
Captain Durbin, of the barque Good Intent, was one who combined, in no usual degree, the qualities of boldness and energy with the kindest, the tenderest, and most generous feelings. These were wrought into beautiful harmony, by the Christian principles which had long governed his life, and from which he had learned to be, at the same time, "diligent in business" and "kindly affectioned"—to have no fear of man, and to love his brother, whom he had seen, as the best manifestation of devotion to God, whom he had not seen. Perhaps he had escaped the usual effect of his rough trade, in hardening the manners, at least, by the influence on him of his only child, a little girl, now six years old, who was his constant companion, even in his voyages. Little Emily Durbin had lost her mother when she was only two years old. The circumstances of her own childhood had wrought into the mind of the dying Mrs. Durbin, the conviction that only a parent is a fitting guardian for a child. To all argument on this subject she would reply, "It seems to me that God has put so much love into a parent's heart, only that he may bear with all a child's waywardness, which other people can't be expected to bear with."
True to her principles, she had exacted a promise from her husband, in her dying hour, that he would never part from their Emily. The promise had been sacredly kept.
"I will retire from sea as soon as I have enough to buy a place on shore, for Emily's sake; but till then, her home must be in my cabin. She is under God's care there, as well as on shore, and perhaps it would be better for her, should I be lost at sea, to share my fate." Such were the remarks of Captain Durbin, in reply to the well-meant remonstrances of his friends.
Emily had a little hammock slung beside his own—the books in which he taught her made a large part of his library; and he who had seen her kneel beside her father to lisp her childish prayer, or who had heard the simple, beautiful faith with which she commended herself to the care of her Father in Heaven, when the waves roared and the winds howled around her floating home, would have felt, perhaps, that the most important end of life, the cultivation of those affections that connect us with God and with our fellow-creatures, might be attained as perfectly there as elsewhere.
The astonishment of Captain Durbin and the pity of his gentle child may be conceived, at the sight of the poor boy, who was brought up from the boat by his captor and owner, as he considered himself, and laid at their feet, while they sat together in their cabin—he writing in his log-book, and she conning her evening lesson. To the proposition that he should give the prize so strangely obtained a free passage, and share in the advantages to be gained by its exhibition in America, Captain Durbin replied by showing the disappointed seaman the impossibility of the object of these speculations being some product of Nature's freaks—some hitherto unknown animal, with the form, but without the faculties of man.
"Do you not see that he has clothes——"
"Clothes do ye call them!" interrupted the blunt sailor, touching the pieces of cloth that hung around, but no longer covered the thin limbs.