There was no longer any cause to stop De Lancaster’s return to England. All duties were discharged; all ceremonies had been observed towards the unburied body of his father, which man’s inventive fancy has devised to decorate the case, that holds our clay, and make the ostentatious living pay large contributions for those empty honours which they bestow on human dust and ashes. Mutes, who would keep no silence, and, mourners, who expressed no sorrow, in rooms, hung round with “customary suits of solemn black,” had regularly sate up all night long, with their full complement of wax-tapers, to watch a thing that could not run away, and which no one wished to steal. All these ceremonies, which, had poor Philip been alive, would have given him such intolerable annoyance, had now with religious punctuality been performed, and his corpse was committed to a ship, which, unlike to that wherein he came, was not bound to the coast of slavery, but to the land of liberty.
All things were now on board; the morning dawned; the dog-vane witnessed an auspicious breeze; the crew sung out at the cap-stan and the pacquet was under weigh. Devereux’s eight-oared galley was in waiting, and nothing now remained but to put off and part. Although the friends, who stayed on shore, as well as those, who put to sea, took the very course, to which their wishes pointed, and which their own immediate happiness prescribed, yet they could not separate without sorrow, and the last farewell drew tears from the brightest eyes in Portugal, and sighs from some of the best hearts in nature. Philip the whilst, in his narrow house of lead, slept undisturbed, and was as perfectly untouched by sensibility as if he had been alive.
The gallant vessel in the mean time, as if conscious of the charge she had on board, cut her passage through the waves, not deigning to rise to them, but throwing them aside, and dashing them from her bows, as her spreading canvass pressed her down in the water, and hurried her along before the steady breeze.
Our hero and his friend, having cast a parting look upon the towers of Lisbon, retired into the cabin, whilst the master kept the deck, regaling himself in the prospect of so fair an outset, for the weather was delicious, and the sky prognosticated a continuance of the breeze.
If any thing, said Wilson, could reconcile me to the imprisonment of a ship, it would be a day like this, with a breeze impregnated with odours of orange flowers to regale my senses, and the elements in good humour all around me. I am happy to discover that there are some consolatory moments in a seaman’s life. And now, my dear John, I am satisfied you have not let these singular events pass by without reflecting, with due gratitude to the Disposer of our fate, how graciously he has been pleased to terminate our enterprize; which, though not absolutely untinctured with disappointment and misfortune, might yet have led to miseries, that would have admitted of no consolation. Don’t let me wound your filial feelings, when I remind you, that the blow, which made you fatherless, might have fallen where it would have extinguished more lives than one, and blotted out the very name of De Lancaster for ever. If I went so far as to say, that probably there are few beings in existence, whose loss society has less cause to mourn than that of him, whose remains we are now bearing to the grave, I should not at least offend against truth, tho’ I might need your pardon for addressing the remark to you. How visible is the hand of divine justice in the apprehension of that guilty wretch, and in the prevention of those further crimes, which he meditated to commit! What can be more strikingly charactered, more impressively apportioned to our ideas of retribution, than that tragical catastrophe, which passed before your eyes, and put a period to his sinful life? How mercifully is it ordered, that those worldly blessings, which he so grossly abused, will now devolve upon one, who seems able and disposed to estimate them rightly, and employ them worthily! when we turn our thoughts to what has come to pass respecting my most fortunate and happy brother, what a dispensation do we contemplate! How unexpected, how beyond all hope! If in one respect we bring home with us fresh cause for mourning, do we not also bring full matter for rejoicing, if happily we return to our dear friends in safety, and find them, as Heaven grant we may! in prosperous health and undisturbed tranquillity of mind?
That, my dear Edward, that indeed, replied De Lancaster, will be a happiness never to be exceeded, a vouchsafement never to be forgotten. As from these windows I look out and see the foaming track, which our swift-sailing vessel leaves behind her, my heart exults to think, that we have cut off so much from the space of sea, that we must traverse before we reach the shores of that asylum, where I left all that my soul has treasured up to bless and crown with happiness my days to come. Ah, my best friend, if Heaven shall so vouchsafe that I may live to call Amelia mine, and, when possest of all my heart holds dear, if those principles, which you have taught me, shall be found still operative, still inviolate and pure, how vast will be my obligations to you, who took me when I was in a state of dereliction, taught me to perceive that I was endowed with reason, and enabled me to discern how to apply it to its proper uses. If I could have suffered the events, which you have instanced, to have passed by me without reflections, of which you remind me, I must have been insensible indeed: On the contrary, be assured they struck me with the double force of opposite examples, shewing me both the evil and the good; the punishment of villainy in the instance of Ap Owen, and the reward of virtue in the person of your brother.
The master of the pacquet now came into the cabin, and introduced a gentleman by the name of Anderton, in whose frame and complexion the effects of tropical disease were strongly marked. He might be somewhat past the middle stage of life, and there were traces in his sickly countenance of that mild character, that to hearts like those of our hero and his friend made an interesting appeal; and he soon perceived that his good fortune had thrown him into the company of fellow passengers, who felt for his situation, and were naturally disposed to shew him all attentions in their power, and tender him a share in all those comforts, which Devereux’s care had amply stored them with, and which his condition seemed so much to need.
The wind was fair, the sea was easy, and the motion of the vessel being regularly and rapidly progressive, was not of that sort, which produces sickness and disquietude. Anderton by their invitation reposed himself on the couch, where they took their seats on each side of him. His eyes now brightened as he turned them on his beneficent companions, the blood flushed faintly in his cheeks, and addressing them, he said—
Knowing in whose company I have the happiness to be, and highly grateful as I am for the kind reception you have given me, though as yet a perfect stranger, it is fit that I should briefly tell you who and what I am; briefly it needs must be, for one dull scene of industry, one uniform pursuit, comprize the whole history of my unimportant solitary life. If it were the sole purpose of man in this world to make his fortune, I have accomplished that purpose; for in colonial property I am superfluously rich. I was an orphan in my infancy, and have no recollection of my parents; after a scanty education upon charity, I was taken into a merchant’s service, where I performed the menial offices of his counting-house; there however I gained a knowledge of accounts and forms of business. I devoted myself, as I have told you, without avocation of any kind, to the task before me, and was consigned over to the manager of a considerable estate in Jamaica as an under agent, who was not likely to decline any labour, or betray any trust. I did neither one nor the other; they did not spare me, and I did not spare myself. Incessant industry, no taste for pleasure, no incitements to excess, an absolute sequestration from all society, and no diversion of ideas from those, which I employed upon the cane, the mill and the negro, raised me by degrees hardly gained to a capacity of adventuring for myself, and my laborious efforts have succeeded, as I told you, to the fullest extent; I am the sole fabricator of an ample property, for the attainment of which I have, as you see, sacrificed my health, and deprived myself of the ability to enjoy my earnings. One consolation however supports me on reflection, which is that of being conscious, that I am chiefly indebted for my prosperity to the humanity, with which I ever treated those, who were my slaves: I have been the founder of their happiness, and they the instruments, that have raised my fortune. I made their cabins comfortable, their wives and children happy; I contemplated their increase with satisfaction, and can boast of having never purchased or imported a single African, since I have been owner of a single acre. They grew up with me as their common father, they lived and worked for me, I lived to think and act for them. To the whole world of white men I am a stranger; except with one alone I never formed acquaintance: he, and he only, was my friend; from him I learnt the precepts and the policy of humanity to my enslaved fellow creatures: I loved him as my own life; he married and became a widower; I received him in his sorrow, and lodged him in my house; he was a soldier, and a gentleman; my purse would have been his for every use he could have put it to, but his high-born spirit would not stoop to obligations of that sort; he sickened, languished a few days, and expired in my arms. My spirit died with him; every comfort, every joy my nature was capable of feeling, were buried with him in the grave. He left a little orphan girl, in whom the remnant of my heart was wrapped; her grandfather took her from me; she was sent to England, and, if she yet survives, and is in the virtues of her mind, what she promised to be in the beauties of her person, she is an angel. Would I might see her once before I die!
Tell me her name, said De Lancaster, and instantly, as Anderton pronounced Amelia Jones, our astonished hero threw himself back on the couch, smote his hands together and with uplifted eyes exclaimed—Just Heaven, how wonderful are thy decrees!