"Yes, but as the Bible says, 'What will not a man give in exchange for his soul?' or his life—for my soul troubled me mighty little just then. I hardly knew I had one till I lost my money; so you see it was a good riddance perhaps."
We stared. Uncle Dick talked so very oddly sometimes! And then we begged him to continue his story.
"Well, I was standing waiting my turn to jump into the boat—the last boat, for two had been filled and swamped. Being young, it seemed but right to let the older fellows go first; and, besides, I wanted to stick by the Captain as long as I could. He, I told you, determined to stick by his ship, and went down with her. He had just given me his watch, and his last message to his wife, and I was trying, as I said, to keep quiet, with all my wits about me. For all that, I seemed to be half dreaming, or as if I saw myself like another person, and felt rather sorry for myself to be drowned on my twenty-fifth birthday—drowned just when I had made my fortune, and was going home to spend it.
"Home! the word even had not crossed my lips or my mind for years. As I said it, or thought it—I can't remember which—all of a sudden I seemed to hear my mother's voice, clear and distinct through all the noise of the storm. And, boys, what do you think she said? Nothing wonderful, nothing strange. Only, 'Richard, how could you take your sister's grapes?'
"It flashed upon me like lightning: something that happened when I was only ten years old, and yet I remembered it as if it happened yesterday. I saw myself—young wretch!—with the bunch of grapes in my hand, and my mother, with her grave, sad eyes, as, passing through the dressing-room into my sister's bedroom, she caught me in the act of stealing them. I could hear almost through the open door poor Lily's short feeble cough: she died two days after. The grapes had been sent her by some friend. She had so many friends! I knew where they were kept; I had climbed up to the shelf and eaten them all.
"Many a selfish thing had I done, both before I left home and afterward: why should this little thing, long forgotten, come back now? Perhaps because I was never punished for it. My mother, who at any other time might have boxed my ears, or taken me to father to be whipped, did nothing, said nothing except those few words of sad reproach, 'How could you take your sister's grapes?'
"I heard them through the horrible tumult of the winds and waves, and poor souls struggling for life. My life—what had I made of it? If I went to the bottom of the sea, I and all my money, who would miss me? who would care? Hardly even my mother. If she ever heard of my death to-night, she might drop a tear or two, but nothing like the tears she shed over my sister, who in her short life had been everybody's comfort and joy, while I—
"'Mother!' I cried out, as if she could hear me these many thousand miles off—'mother, forgive me, and I'll never do it any more!'
"I had not said this when I was ten years old, and took the grapes, but I said it, sobbed it, at twenty-five, when the 'it' implied many a selfishness, many a sin, that my mother never knew. Yet the mere saying of it seemed to relieve me, and when directly afterward some one called out from the boat, 'Jump in, Dick; now's your turn,' I jumped in to take my chance of life with the rest.
"It was given me. I was among the eighteen that held on till we were picked up—almost skin and bone, and one of us raving mad from thirst—by a homeward-bound ship, and landed safely in England. No, boys, don't question me. I won't tell you about that time; I can't."