He alighted, and, giving his horse to a servant, ran up the steps of the portico. A young lady, who was tending some flowers at a little distance, hearing his footsteps, sprang towards him with sparkling eyes and smiling countenance, exclaiming in a voice of most unequivocal tenderness, "George!" The seaman caught her offered hand, and covered it with kisses. The lady's cheek, brow, and throat were suffused with the deepest and most lovely crimson: she gently struggled to release her captive hand; but, finding that there was just one degree more force exerted to retain it than she exercised to withdraw it, she prudently gave up so hopeless a contest, and began very naturally to ask questions.
"Why, when did you arrive?—how long have you been gone? Oh! it seems an age since you left us—and how you are tanned!"
"I arrived this morning," at length answered the seaman; the mutual delight of their meeting rendering him, for a time, as inarticulate as it did her voluble; "and I have been gone six months. Time has stood still with me, dearest Julia, I assure you; and besides, I have had such a tedious passage home, that I began at last to think I was never to be blessed with another fair wind. I need not ask how you have been during that time," he continued, fixing his eyes upon her lovely countenance with unutterable affection.
No woman was ever insensible to a compliment, even an implied one, to her looks. Julia raised her liquid eyes to his with a blush and a smile so frank and unreserved, that his six months' absence and tedious homeward passage he would gladly endure twice ever again to meet.
There are moments in courtship—that part of it, I mean, where neither party has as yet whispered love to each other, or bothered the old folks about their consent; before, in short, it has become an "understood thing" all over town—there are such moments, when the lady throws off all reserve, and by a look, a smile, a blush, a half-articulate word, repays her lover for months, if he is fool enough to court so long, of prudish and affected shyness, past or future. These moments occur but seldom, even in the most patriarchal courtships, and it is well that it is so. Love is a fiery steed, and should always be ridden with a curb bridle, both before and after marriage. (I am sorry that I cannot think of a nautical metaphor, or I assure you, reader, that I would never have gone into the stable to look for one.) The ancients, and their opinion is decisive, ever held the "semi-reducta Venus" the most beautiful.
Leaving these turtles to bill and coo over a cup of tea, and to the enjoyment of a lover's walk along the lovely banks of the Severn, we will proceed to enlighten the reader as to who and what they are, and to discuss sundry other equally important topics.
As the good ship Bristol Trader was lazily rolling along in a southerly direction, with a light breeze and fine weather, and in the latitude of about thirty-nine or forty north, she fell in with the wreck of a schooner, of about eighty or ninety tons burthen, dismasted and apparently half full of water, in which most unpleasant situation she did not appear long to have been. The Bristol Trader hove to, and sent her boat alongside, in hopes of obtaining something valuable from the wreck, either cargo, or provisions, or rigging—if a wreck yields nothing else, there is always plenty of fish around it. As the boat approached, the attention of the crew was attracted by the appearance of some person on board, who made the most animated and intelligible signs to them to come alongside. The boat's crew redoubled their exertions, and, upon coming on board, found a boy of about fourteen years, the only living human being. The poor little fellow seemed almost exhausted with fatigue and hunger; but being carried on board the ship and refreshed, he informed his deliverers that his name was George Allerton—that the schooner belonged to a port in New England, and was homeward bound from Fayal with a quantity of wine and fruit—that she had been capsized, in a sudden and violent squall, three days previous, when all the crew but himself and one other were swept overboard—that she had righted after cutting away the masts, but with a great deal of water in the hold, and that the other man had accidentally fallen overboard, and was drowned.
It happened that the owner of the ship, Mr. Effingham, was on board. He was going to Rio de Janeiro, partly on account of his health, but chiefly to look after and secure a large amount of property belonging to the firm of which he was senior partner, and which was jeopardised by certain disturbances in Brazil. Like all passengers on board a ship, he could find but little or nothing to do to pass away the time, and being a married man and a father, his sympathies and good feelings were powerfully excited and strongly attracted towards this "waif of the sea," their new passenger. The boy, on the other hand, to a very handsome face added a mild and amiable disposition, and, like all New-England boys, an education vastly superior to boys of the same age and standing in Great Britain. George's parents were respectable in some sort—that is to say, their moral and religious characters were beyond reproach, but their social reputation was very bad indeed—they were poor. It has been said by an English traveller, that in all other countries pleasure, rank, literary renown, &c. are the objects upon which men place their affections; but, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth is an imperious duty; and, of course, if a man fails in this duty, his good name as a member of society soon becomes most deplorably out at elbows.
Before the end of the voyage, young Allerton had made himself master of Mr. Effingham's affections, and being of that happy age when all places are nearly alike, provided they are comfortable, he readily consented to remain with his protector, and was accordingly regularly inducted into the old gentleman's family as a member of it. He was the playmate of Mr. Effingham's daughter, six years younger than himself, and the companion of her rambles abroad. The old man wished to take him into his counting-room as a clerk, but the boy's predilection for the sea frustrated that scheme, and the senior, after some reflection and persuasion, yielded to it. Accordingly Master George, having served a noviciate as apprentice, stepped over the intermediate state of "able seaman," and became second mate, then first mate, and lastly captain, or more properly master. During the whole of this time, he was employed in the West India trade, in which most of the Bristol merchants are engaged more extensively than in any other. He never came home from a voyage without bringing some curiosity to little Julia,—as he continued to call her, even after she had attained her eighteenth year,—and never failed writing frequently to his parents, and sending them the whole or a greater part of his wages: a line of conduct that raised him incredibly in the old gentleman's favor, and made a deep impression upon the young mind of Julia.
While George was passing through the different grades of his profession, the young lady was advancing through the different grades of physical and intellectual beauty and improvement. The "pretty child" that played in her father's parlor, the "elegant girl of the boarding-school", had now become a most lovely and accomplished young lady. She had lost her mother when young, and the whole force of her filial affection had centred upon her father. Brought up in unreserved intimacy with her father's new protégé, she always regarded him as a brother, or rather as her equal. She always anxiously awaited his return from sea, though she did not, in her more youthful days, exactly understand why. When her beauty brought wealth and rank to her feet, she could not avoid comparing their possessors with the nautical absentee.