If the reader is now curious to know why a man like old Bill was not a patrician and captain in the campaign of life, rather than the mere private and plebeian he was, I can answer that there were several things which impeded that consummation. His character, though of wonderful height and force in some respects, was, after all, without true discipline, and presented many glaring incongruities. Thus, whatever he had of what could really be named ambition was satisfied when he had surprised us 'soundsers;' and our praise—and we lavished it upon him in full measure, as we knew he liked it—was all the praise he seemed to desire. Then, he was altogether one of us in his notions of pleasure and recreation. Like the rest of us, he cordially appreciated the sparkling product of the New England distilleries, and far more than any of us—to such a pitch did his animal spirits rule—he relished our broad sea-side jokes and songs, and as well our rattling jigs and hornpipes. As for others attempting to elevate him to a more exalted station, the thing was simply impossible. When led of his own accord to seek other society than ours, he could by no means content himself with the companionship of staid practical persons, who on account of his latent worth would have readily countenanced, and with the least opportunity even served him, but he invariably paid his court to adventurers; such creatures, for instance, as seedy 'professors' of one kind or another, who, in the inevitable shawl and threadbare suit of black, were constantly dismounting at the village tavern, with proposals either to 'lecture' on something, or 'teach' somewhat, as the case might happen to be, and who, having no affinity whatever with the brawny, awkward Viking who fondly hung on their shabby-genteel skirts, amused themselves at his greenness, or pooh-pooh'd him altogether, as they saw fit. And when, as it not unfrequently happened, official and influential individuals at a distance were moved by the story of his renown to pay him their respects in person, and listen courteously and gravely to his opinions, his discrimination stood him in no better stead, for as soon as he possibly could he bent the conference towards a sailor's revel, and astonished his stately visitants by singing the spiciest songs, and sometimes even by a Terpsichorean display in full costume; for he was excessively proud of his accomplishments in this line, and implicitly believed that the shaking of his elephantine limbs, and the whirling of his broad, coatless flanks, formed a spectacle so tasteful and entertaining, that no one could fail to enjoy it to the utmost. Assuredly I have now said enough as to old Bill's incapacities for a grander role in life. In reality that part of a lofty manhood to which he at first sight seemed fitted, was not his; for, properly speaking, he was not an actual man, but a boy—a grand and glorious boy, if you will, but yet a very boy; and at length he met the fate of a boy, as we shall learn.
Once more we were engaged upon a wreck. But this time it was in no hyperborean tempest that we were called forth, but when the very sweetest airs of June were blowing. The case demanding our aid was that of a wrecking schooner which had gaily left her moorings in New York harbor to pick up a summer's living along the coast, but had inadvertently cut up some of her capers rather too near our beach, and so with one fine ebb tide found herself stranded. As it was an instance of sickness in the regularly graduated and scientific college itself, our whole shore was intensely 'tickled' at the accident. And again, as this doctress, like many another ailing leech, was quite incapable of curing her own suffering, her toddy-blossom-faced bully of a New York captain was pleased to salute old Bill with cup high in air, and beg that he would take a sufficient force and heave the distressed craft into deep water. Thus a crew of us were called together and set to work at the vessel. As the weather was so warm and beautiful, and as bed and board were at this time to be had on the beach, we agreed among us that our convenience would be the better served by taking up our temporary quarters near the scene of our labors. Now, the place where we were offered the necessary accommodation consisted of an ancient plank-built tenement, which stood behind a sand-ridge that a far younger Atlantic than ours had piled up, and then, retreating, abandoned. In winter this rude domicile was bare and tenantless; but in the summer months it was usually occupied by some thriftless gammer or gaffer from the main-land, who, having stocked it with a few of the coarsest household goods, and whatever provisions came to hand, offered entertainment to such wreckers and 'soundsers' as happened to be in its vicinity. The present incumbent of the hostel was a woman, claiming to be a widow, of the name of Rose; bearing in most respects no resemblance whatever to any of her predecessors. Where she was born, or had hitherto resided, none of us knew: all that gossip could, gather was that she had unexpectedly descended from a passing vessel with her effects and entered directly the abandoned house. When questioned as to the scene of her earlier life, she vaguely gave answer that she had disported herself largely in 'Philadelphy;' but as no 'Philadelphy' woman that ever walked through a doorway was or is able to compound a chowder or bake a clam pie worthy of the name, and as Madame Rose understood how to prepare both these luxuries to a charm, her statement must have been false; she was, undoubtedly, a 'coast-wise' lady, and one who knew who Jack was as well as he himself did. Her appearance was, on the whole, agreeable. She was tall, slender, of regular features, and, though indisputably on the shady side of forty, was still free from any signs that would proclaim her charms to be on the wane. I remember in particular that she had long, white and regular teeth, thereby strongly contrasting with our native women, who as a rule lose their teeth early. Her manners were very novel to us. She was invariably of a simpering, ducking turn, and interlarded her curt speech with curiously hard words. In dress she carried matters with an incomparably high hand. She wore hoops 'all day long,'—a freak then never even so much as thought of in our village,—adorned her fingers with many rings, and her throat with large florid brooches, and in the evening, after having brought her household duties to a close, sat here or there with her sewing, in silks (though perhaps not of the newest), or other highly-civilized stuffs.
Most of our crew regarded their hostess with greatly mingled feelings; but old Bill entertained but one sentiment for her,—that of unqualified admiration. As we only 'wrought' at the stranded schooner on the high water,—some five hours out of the twenty-four,—he had plenty of opportunity to dangle after his dearie, and did so unremittingly. While the rest of us were either napping, dancing the lively 'straight four,' hunting herns' eggs among the sand-hills, and so on, according to our inclination, he, in far more romantic mood, seized all possible opportunities to quickly gather fire-wood for his charmer, fill her tea-kettle, open whatever clams and oysters she was about to cook, and, above all, to recount for her delight one of those inimitable yarns of his, at whose points he himself was sure to laugh till the rafters of the house shook and the plates in the dresser rattled again. But this was merely the first stage of his passion. Before long, as is not unusual in such cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of matters was now obvious to all Old Bill was another fatally-stricken victim of that spooney archer-boy who next to death holds dominion over men; and with his case, thus momentous, we could but feel a renewed interest in his behalf, and busy our tongues about him. I, for my part, thought that as he was a widower, and needful of a wife to comfort him in his advancing age, and that as the present object of his affections, if not a highly 'forcible' woman, seemed at all events to be one of whom no great harm was to be feared, there could be no valid objection to his being joined to her; particularly if nothing was divulged proving her to be other than what she seemed. But this view I found to be on the whole unacceptable to my auditory. Almost to a man they condemned the propriety of the match. It could not actually be said that they disliked Mrs. Hose, but they were jealous of her, as, in her manner and style of array, she considerably dimmed the lustre of their own women; and they distrusted her as she was a stranger; it being a marked habit with most of our folks to distrust all strangers save those from whom they expect pecuniary awards. But meanwhile, notwithstanding this criticism, the little idyl in our midst was developing itself apace. On the afternoon of one beautiful Sunday, a day in which we of course ordinarily did no work, when the dinner-table had been well cleared away, what should we see but old Bill swinging forth with his sailor gait from the house, and arrayed as jauntily as his check shirt and pea-jacket (his only suit of apparel at hand) would permit, to be speedily followed by Mrs. Rose, who with one set of finger-tips held up the light folds of a sweetly blue lawn skirt, and with the other bore aslant before her a bewitching pink parasol. Undoubtedly there was a great indulgence in sly winks and suppressed titterings on the part of such of us as chanced to be witnesses of this at once festal and sentimental sally; but the twain heeded naught whatsoever of these manifestations, but struck off along the snow-white strand where the sea was droning its hymn so lazily that it would have inevitably put itself to sleep, if the fish-hawks had not so continually disturbed it by mischievously diving headlong into its bosom. At last they returned again; and we soon became aware that the stroll had not been without great results to both; since Mrs. Rose affected to be laboring under a high degree of emotion, and retired to the privacy of her apartment, while old Bill was by no means the dolorous swain of a few hours before, but, making his way among us, with his wide mouth stretching its best, proceeded formally to shake hands with one and all as though he had finally got back from a long and arduous voyage; and then, merrily calling for a certain brown jug which was among our stores, removed the corn-cob which served as a cork, and having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on with a mirth that knew no bounds.
Yes, old Bill was now 'a happy man,' Mrs. Rose could but accept such a suitor as he, if but from the fact that; his ardor and his pain were of the freshest complexion, and of an amplitude fully proportioned to that of his extraordinary physical bulk. As we tendered him our congratulations upon his happy state, he received the courtesy with extreme complacency. But, to tell the truth, those who did thus congratulate him were but few. Most of the men remained of their old mind as to the proposed match; indeed, I ere long found that they looked upon it with less favor than ever. It appeared that they had been inflamed with a rumor that Mrs. Rose intended to beguile her adorer to a foreign shore, where a scion or two of her brilliant house found happy sustenance; and that nothing but evil could accrue from such an act, was of course as clear as noonday. Now, when I came to trace this rumor to its source, I became apprised that it owed its publicity to an old man of our number known by the nickname of 'Mister,' who was remarkable for a rare amount of credulity, self-conceit, and obstinacy, and at the same time for being the invariable butt of his company. This wiseacre averred that he had succeeded in wringing from Mrs. Rose the confession that directly she and old Bill were made man and wife, they were to depart for Hatteras Inlet, on the coast of North Carolina, where the lady gay possessed 'relations;' and this narrative, wofully muttered about among our crew, and accompanied with a due amount of sighs and head-shakings, had depressed them most fearfully, not withstanding the character of the narrator.
The fact of the matter was, that most of the men were actually desirous that a betrothal, contracted directly in the face of public opinion, and without the smallest deference to anybody, as that of old Bill and Mrs. Rose had been, should come to some kind of grief or other, and they were fain to believe that it would do so. As for me, I was without true concern on the subject, as I had ever been. If it should indeed fall out that old Bill was to take a trip to Hatteras with his bride, I was convinced that he would enjoy himself famously among the great abundance of fish and game said to abound in that place, and that in the end he would return to us again, to rule over us in greater splendor than ever; as for his sweetheart or any of her like doing him any actual injury, the idea seemed so preposterous to me, that whenever an opportunity presented itself I did not fail to ridicule it to the utmost. Still, in order to do my whole duty in the matter, I hastened to impress old Bill with the importance of his becoming acquainted with the antecedents of his lady-love, and thus saving himself from the possibility of a misstep. But this counsel did no farther good than to bring a clouded brow to my dear old friend, and so I did not persist in it. Indeed, we communed together but little more in any way; for very shortly after he resigned his place as our 'boss,' and left post-haste for the main-land. Here, as was revealed to me in due season, he amazed the neighborhood by incontinently renting his farmstead to a son with whom he had been on indifferent terms for years; dispatching his daughter, who had heretofore acted as his housekeeper, off to a distant town to become an apprentice to a milliner's trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor's chest, with which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried off for the asylum of his beloved. Arrived once more in the witching presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered about him once more, the wedding took place.
The occasion was one of such interest, that the preacher could but make the most of it. After the nuptial benediction had been pronounced, he straightway launched forth into a homily of such graciousness and force, that but few of us missed being forcibly wrought upon, while Mrs. Rose was stirred apparently to the depths of her being. On the day succeeding the marriage, our light-hearted Benedict abandoned himself to another jollification. But the next morning, a schooner headed in towards the beach, and, slackening the peaks of her sails, sent ashore a yawl, whose crew saluted Mrs. Rose as an old and familiar friend, and with whose apparition, without the least regard as to what shift we wreckers were to make, a great packing was begun in the house. Bedsteads were taken down, beds were bundled up in sheets, crockery was thrust away in barrels, and all borne one after the other to the yawl, where the bride, with her potent parasol full spread, and pretending to shudder at the sight of the gently heaving breakers through which she was soon to pass, mincingly threw herself in the thick of the luggage, and old Bill mounted the stern, with his huge palm extended for a good-by shake. 'Good-by, old chap,' said I, as I took his hand the last of all, 'good-by! You're not half mean enough to stay away from us forever; so in the meantime do your best to show the Hatteras boys what a nice thing it is to be somebody in the world!' And thus the boat put off, and, reaching the schooner in a few moments, was hoisted to her decks. In a few moments more the vessel had reset her sails, and, with a free wind, bore straight to the southward out of sight.
Now comes the singular part of my story. In a few weeks from the time of their sailing, we heard that old Bill and his wife had safely landed at Hatteras Inlet, and rented a small house on one of the beaches there, with the intention of opening a kind of tavern; but no sooner were they fairly settled in their new abode than old Bill was found one morning dead in his bed, with evident signs of having met with foul play; though what kind of death these indications pointed at was very uncertain.
The closest and shrewdest investigation failed to attach a well-grounded suspicion to any one. Poor Bill was dead—and nothing more was ever known. Singular enough, the conduct of his widow was such as to entirely avert even from her enemies hints of complicity in the crime,—if crime there was,—though none doubted that there had been a murder, and that murder in a few attendant circumstances seemed to indicate female aid. Shortly after this catastrophe, Madame Rose made 'a vendue' of her deceased husband's gun and apparel, packed up her own worldly goods, and vanished, to be heard of no more.
And so our shore lost its best 'soundser'—a man of mark in his way, great of frame and heart, and one long to be recalled in our humble annals of wrecking and of sport. He was one of those vigorous out-croppings of sturdy Northern physique recalling in minute detail the stories told of those giant children, the Vikings and Goths of the fighting ages, and which the blood, though as healthy as ever,—witness the glorious exploits of our soldiers even as I write,—produces less frequently in these days of culture. Such as I have described was the character of Bill the Soundser, and such was literally and truly his mysterious death.