"Poor Stanley was walking the deck, saying unto himself—'Refused permission to go ashore! Yes, Rigby! petty tyrant as thou art, thou shalt rue it! Refused a privilege that would have caused a slave to rebel, had he been denied it. But the time will come, when we shall meet upon terms of equality; and were his cowardice equal to his brutality—yea, were he shielded by a breast-plate hard as his own heart—my revenge shall find a passage through both; and his blood shall wash out the impression and the shame of the blow with which to-day he dared to smite me as a dog. The remembrance of that blow sticks as a dagger in my throat—its remembrance chokes me!' And, hurried on by the agitation of his feelings, he spoke aloud as he continued. 'Not only denied to set my foot upon the place of my nativity, but struck!—yes, struck like a hound, by a creature I despise! O memory!' he added, 'torture me not! Here, every remembered object strikes painfully on my eyeballs! The church and the church-yard, where my mother's body now mingles with the dust, are now before me, and I am prohibited from shedding a tear upon her grave. The banks of the Tyne, where I wandered with my Mary, while it sighed affection by our side, and the blue sea, which lay behind us, raising a song of love, are now visible—but though they are still beautiful, they are as beautiful things that lived and were loved, but that are now dead!'
"In the intensity of his feelings he perceived not a boat which drew alongside; and, while he yet stood in a reverie, his old crony, Jack Jenkins, sprang on board, and, assisted by a waterman, raised Mary Danvers to the deck.
"'Yonder he is,' exclaimed Jack, 'leaning over the gunwale, as melancholy as a merman making his last will and testament in the presence of his father Neptune.'
"Stanley started round at the voice of his friend; he beheld his betrothed wife; for you know they were the same as betrothed—they had vowed to be true to each other, and, I believe, broken a ring betwixt them.
"'My own Mary!' he cried, and sprang forward to meet her. The poor things fell upon each other's neck, and wept like children.
"'Shove me your fist, my hearty,' cried Jenkins, 'as soon as you have done there. I thought I would give you a bit of an agreeable surprise.'
"'There, Jack!—there, my honest old friend!' cried Bill, stretching out his one hand, and with the other supporting his sweetheart. 'My head and heart are scudding beneath a sudden tempest of joy! Speak, Mary, love! let me again hear your voice thrilling like music through my breast! O Jack! I am now like one who has been run down in a squall at midnight, and ere he is aware that the waters have covered over him, finds himself aloft, listening to the harps of the happy.'
"'I don't know what this is like, Bill,' said the other; 'but it an't like those meetings we used to have.'
"'Why so silent, love,' said William, addressing Mary; 'in another hour I shall be off duty, and in one day of happiness let us forget the past.'
"'Dear William,' she replied, 'I know not what I should say, nor what I should conceal. I have so little of joy to communicate, that I would not embitter the pleasure of the present short hour, by a recital of the events that have occurred during your absence.'