“On this noon,” wrote the village minister in that rare old diary of his, “did Captain Hastings sail in command of the Amaryllis, taking with him, as hitherto, poor Christine Widmer.” Then, in the intimate privacy of the book, he adds—wise, rash, cautious old man: “I am almost of a mind, since things are as they are, that it is for the best,—even so.”
Charles Boardman Hawes.
THE CASK ASHORE
At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming, or Bloflemy, and in early summer, when the cherry orchards come into bloom, you will search far before finding a prettier.
The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming. As it is today, so, or nearly so, it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Rev. Edward Spettigew, curate in charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon. That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon. But the afternoon was warm; bumblebees hummed drowsily among his wallflowers and tulips. From his bench the eye followed the vale’s descent between overlapping billows of cherry blossom to a gap wherein shone the silver Tamar: not, be it understood, the part called Hamoaze, where lay the warships and the hulks containing the French prisoners, but an upper reach seldom troubled by shipping.
Parson Spettigew laid the book face downward on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: “A place of broad rivers and streams . . . wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . .” His pipe went out. The book slipped from his knee to the ground. He slumbered . . .
The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start. In the pathway below him stood a sailor, a middle-sized, middle-aged man, rigged out in best shore-going clothes: shiny tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, shirt open at the throat, and white duck trousers with broad-buckled waistbelt.
“Beggin’ your reverence’s pardon,” began the visitor, touching the brim of his hat, and then upon second thought uncovering, “but my name’s Jope, Ben Jope—”
“Eh? What can I do for you?” asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping.
“—of the Vesoovious bomb, bos’n,” pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance: so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful; “but paid off at eight this morning. Maybe your reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?”