Story 2--Chapter XIII.
Gathered Ends.
Melting and mingling into one
Two kindred souls.
Anon.
And so his life was gently exhaled in peace.
Anon.
Hail, wedded love!
Paradise Lost.
That’s the very moral on’t.
Nym.
The gale continued blowing all that night, all the next day, and for two or three days following. The injured condition of the ship made it unsafe for her to contend against the force of so strong a wind; and she was, therefore, kept directly before it. While the Duchess was thus running before the wind, two of the wounded pirates and three of the wounded of the ship’s crew died, and were committed to the deep. The man whose arm had been broken by Ada’s pistol-shot, and the other two of the wounded men belonging to the ship’s company, recovered before the arrival of the vessel in port.
A consultation was held in Mr Durocher’s state-room, on the day after the fight, between Mr Durocher himself, Captain Johnson, and John Coe, to which Billy Bowsprit was also admitted, and in which it was determined that as soon as the gale should abate, the ship should be steered for the nearest port in the United States. This determination was formed, that the ship might receive the necessary repairs, and that the captured pirates might be surrendered to the Government whose citizens they were.
On the fourth day after the fight the wind from the west had so abated that the course of the ship was changed, and she was headed towards the west. On the fifth day a fresh wind from the north arose; and, impelled by it, the Duchess made good progress for the American coast.
Meanwhile, the gallant young Marylander had become intimately acquainted with Mr Durocher and his daughter. He told to them the singular history of his connection with the pirates, of which Ada had already given them some particulars. The warm-hearted old French gentleman became much attached to the brave fellow, upon whom he could not look, he said, without remembering the awful horror from which he had delivered his daughter and himself. Besides, he esteemed him as an impersonation of courage and genius, because, in circumstances in which, according to ordinary apprehension, it seemed impossible to avoid being forced to the commission of crime, he had not only overcome his enemies, saving the penitent, and destroying the hopelessly guilty, but had also escaped from all the difficulties which had surrounded him, with his own hands unstained by human blood.
The fair and gentle Louise, too, was not insensible to the merits of her deliverer; her fervid feelings recognised in him a personification of the knights of old; and, with the spirit of self-sacrifice which greatly influences the tender and amiable of her sex, she longed to devote the services of her life to him in requital for her salvation from a horrible doom.
It must be confessed that “the deliverer” was not unimpressible nor unimpressed. Fixed for ever in his memory was the image of that young and loving girl, as he first beheld her when she lay pale, senseless, and perfectly helpless in the power of the pirate. And when he saw her afterwards, fully awakened to life, and her intelligent and enthusiastic mind and kind and loving heart expressing themselves in every glance of her soft blue eyes, in every flush that tinged her fair cheeks, in every expression of her beautiful lips, and in every musical sentence that issued from between them, he could scarcely realise that the bright form, clad in white robes, expressive of purity, and the shining face, surrounded by a halo of golden hair, belonged not to an angelic presence.
Indeed, these two young hearts required but an uttered word to cause the fountain of mutual love, like the waters of Horeb brought forth by the touch of the prophet’s wand, to pour out for each other its treasures of tenderness. And that word was at length spoken, with the entire approbation of Mr Durocher, whose friendship and fatherly regard for the young man was almost as great as his daughter’s love.