“Doctor, I am dying, ain’t I?” said the little fellow, “for my sight grows dim. God bless you, Mr. Parker, for this. I see you now,” and he faintly pressed my hand.
“Can I do nothing for you, Dick?” said I, “you saved my life. God knows I would coin my own blood to buy yours.”
“I have nothing to ask, only, if it be possible, let me be buried by my mother,—you will find the name of the place, and all about it, in my trunk.”
“Anything—everything, my poor lad,” I answered chokingly.
The little fellow smiled faintly—it was like an angel’s smile—but he did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the stars flickering in that patch of blue sky, far overhead. His mind wandered.
“It is a long—long way up there,—but there are bright angels among them. Mother used to say that I would meet her there. How near they come, and I see bright faces smiling on me from them. Hark! is that music?” and, lifting his finger, he seemed listening intently for a moment. He fell back; and the old veteran burst into tears. The child was dead. Did he indeed hear angels’ voices? God grant it.
I opened his trunk, and then discovered his real name. Out of mercy to the unfeeling wretches, who were his relatives, and who had forced him to sea, I suppress it. Suffice it to say, his family had once been rich, but that reverses had come upon them. His father died of a broken heart, nor did his mother long survive. Poor boy! I could not fulfil the whole of his injunction, for we were far out at sea, but I caused a cenotaph to be erected for him beside his mother’s grave. It tells the simple tale of The Ship’s Boy.
Philadelphia, May, 1841.