“This cannot be Captain Fayerweather,” she said, turning to her husband.
“Captain Fayerweather? No, madam, my name is Brown,” said the stranger, gravely. He seated himself, as invited, and there was a pause which neither Captain nor Mrs. Stimpson felt able immediately to break. At length the stranger said, “I am mate of the Dolphin, Captain Richard Seaward, master; and he desired me to tell you, he would himself have brought the intelligence I am to give you, but he is sick, and was obliged to take to his bed as soon as he came ashore.” Mr. Brown stopped and cleared his voice.
He resumed. “You took me for Captain Fayerweather; what I have to say is concerning him. Captain Fayerweather took passage from London in the Dolphin; and he told Captain Seaward that he had just arrived from the Cape of Good Hope, where he had found letters from home, which rendered it necessary that he should return with all possible dispatch; and that finding a vessel at the Cape ready to sail for London, he had left his own, which had a consort, to the charge of the second officer and an experienced crew, to proceed into the Pacific, and had taken passage in the one to London, hoping there to find some opportunity of going to America. We set sail from London on the third of November—”
Captain Stimpson interrupted him. “On the third of November, did you say—and with Captain Fayerweather on board? That can’t be true, sir—he was here on the fifth.”
The stranger answered gravely, “Sir, the business Captain Seaward sent me upon, is any thing but trifling. The Dolphin certainly sailed from London the third of November, and with Captain Fayerweather on board; all the crew will testify to this. But did I understand you rightly to say, he was here on the fifth? How—at what time? Who saw him—did you? There must have been some mistake.”
Captain Stimpson, much surprised, replied, “I did not see him myself, but his cousin, Squire Wendell, did. He met him in the street between three and four in the afternoon. There could have been no mistake, for he told the squire something of great importance to his family, that nobody but himself could have known. The vessel we supposed he came in, put in at Beverly; she staid only long enough to deliver some dispatches for government, and sailed directly for Quebec, intending to return here in a month. We supposed fully that your vessel was the one, and we were expecting Captain Fayerweather when you came.”
While the captain spoke, Mr. Brown showed marks of astonishment and agitation. He was silent a few moments, though his lips moved, and he appeared to be making some calculations. At length he spoke, in a voice apparently from the depths of his chest, slowly and distinctly, but turning pale as he proceeded. “On the fifth of November, two days sail from London, about eight o’clock in the evening, which, allowing for difference of longitude, corresponds to between three and four here, in a raging storm, Captain Fayerweather fell from the mast-head into the sea, and was lost!”
Judith’s shriek was heard from the inner-room, but before her parents could reach it, she had fallen senseless on the floor. Her father took her in his arms, while her mother bathed her temples. On reviving, she held up her clasped hands imploringly to her mother, and asked if she had heard aright, and if her ears had not deceived her. Poor Mrs. Stimpson was incapable of answering her, excepting by tears; and her father could only clasp her more closely. “Oh! he’s gone then;—let me go, too;” and she struggled to free herself. “But where! where shall I go?—what shall I do? Why did you bring me to?—it would have been better for me to have died. I do not wish to live! Why did you not let me die? I will die!—I will not live!”
Her father now blubbered outright. “And would you leave your poor old sir, and your ma’am, that have their lives bound up in you, and that would die, too, without you? Have you no love left for them?”
“I do love you both,” she cried; “but now—oh, George! I wish I was in the depths of the sea with you.”