“If Jack will go to a praste and just confess, when he can find a father, it will do his sowl good,” said Biddy, who was touched by the mental suffering of the strange little being at her side.
But the necessity of managing the boat soon compelled its cockswain to raise his head, and to attend to his duty. The wind sometimes came in puffs, and at such moments Jack saw that the large sail of the light-house boat required watching, a circumstance that induced him to shake off his melancholy, and give his mind more exclusively to the business before him. As for Rose, she sympathized deeply with Jack Tier, for she knew his history, his origin, the story of his youth, and the well-grounded causes of his contrition and regrets. From her, Jack had concealed nothing, the gentle commisseration of one like Rose being a balm to wounds that had bled for long and bitter years. The great poet of our language, and the greatest that ever lived, perhaps, short of the inspired writers of the Old Testament, and old Homer and Dante, has well reminded us that the “little beetle,” in yielding its breath, can “feel a pang as great as when a giant dies.” Thus is it, too, in morals. Abasement, and misery, and poverty, and sin, may, and all do, contribute to lower the tone of our moral existence; but the principle that has been planted by nature, can be eradicated by nature only. It exists as long as we exist; and if dormant for a time, under the pressure of circumstances, it merely lies, in the moral system, like the acorn, or the chestnut, in the ground, waiting its time and season to sprout, and bud, and blossom. Should that time never arrive, it is not because the seed is not there, but because it is neglected. Thus was it with the singular being of whose feelings we have just spoken. The germ of goodness had been implanted early in him, and was nursed with tenderness and care, until self-willed, and governed by passion, he had thrown off the connections of youth and childhood, to connect himself with Spike—a connection that had left him what he was. Before closing our legend, we shall have occasion to explain it.
“We have run our hour, Miss Rose,” resumed Jack, breaking a continued silence, during which the boat had passed through a long line of water; “we have run our hour, and ought to be near the rock we are in search of. But the morning is so dark that I fear we shall have difficulty in finding it. It will never do to run past it, and we must haul closer in to the reef, and shorten sail, that we may be sartain to make no such mistake.”
Rose begged her companion to omit no precaution, as it would be dreadful to fail in their search, after incurring so much risk in their own persons.
“Harry may be sleeping on the sea-weed of which you spoke,” she added, “and the danger of passing him will be much increased in such a case. What a gloomy and frightful spot is this in which to abandon a human being. I fear, Jack, that we have come faster than we have supposed, and may already have passed the rock.”
“I hope not, Miss Rose—it seemed to me a good two leagues to the place where I saw him, and the boat is fast that will run two leagues in an hour.”
“We do not know the time, Jack, and are obliged to guess at that as well as at the distance. How very dark it is!”
Dark, in one sense, it was not, though Rose’s apprehensions, doubtless, induced her to magnify every evil. The clouds certainly lessened the light of the moon; but there was still enough of the last to enable one to see surrounding objects; and most especially to render distinct the character of the solitude that reigned over the place.
The proximity of the reef which formed a weather shore to the boat, prevented any thing like a swell on the water, notwithstanding the steadiness and strength of the breeze, which had now blown for near twenty-four hours. The same wind, in open water, would have raised sea enough to cause a ship to pitch, or roll, whereas, the light-house boat, placed where she was, scarce rose and fell under the undulations of the channel through which she was glancing.
“This is a good boat, and a fast boat too,” observed Jack Tier, after he had luffed up several minutes, in order to make sure of his proximity to the reef; “and it might carry us all safe enough to Key West, or certainly back to the Dry Tortugas, was we inclined to try our hands at either.”