The Yarn of Old Harbour Town

by William Clark Russell

He unclasped his hands and buried his purple face, and stood rocking and reeling as though he were about to fall in a fit, and sobbed twice or thrice with that dreadful note of grief in his dry-eyed agony, which makes the fearlessness of manhood in suffering one of the most pitiful, painful and pathetic of spectacles. Captain Acton laid his hand on the Admiral's shoulder.

"Bear up!" he said gently. "Presently we will discuss the matter calmly. God is good, and this blow may not prove nearly so heavy as we now think it."

With kindly pressure he obliged the old seaman to resume his seat, and then turned with something of fierceness upon old Greyquill.

"May I ask," said he, flourishing the letter, "how it is that you, sir, being fully admitted by the perusal of this document into the base plot Mr Lawrence was hatching, should have chosen to keep the intention to yourself, when by the revelation of this letter you could have put it out of Mr Lawrence's power to carry off my child."

Mr Greyquill stood up. His eyes had a peculiar light in them, a faint flush was painted on each cheek, and seemed to make whiter yet the whiteness of his brows and his hair.

"Sir," he answered, "I am much sneered at in this town and district. I am very well aware that few have a kind word for me. If you, sir, or Admiral Lawrence condescend to bestow a nod upon me as I respectfully pass you in the street, it has the character of the recognition with which you would honour something you disdain, which you are compelled to see, and by that nod acknowledge the existence of. Your beautiful daughter, Miss Lucy, on the other hand, has always been gracious and kind to me. In the light and sweetness of her presence I am sensible of the warmth and glow which make me feel that I am human and a man. There is no office I would not discharge to oblige her. I make money by lending it, but I would give her money—much if she needed it, for the delight I take in her sympathetic, tender and generous nature. When I read the letter you hold, sir, I did not believe that Mr Lawrence would have the power or the art to carry out his scheme of kidnapping your daughter, and I was only assured that his base plot, as you term it, had proved triumphant by the calling of the bell-man, and by the letterpress on the placards which they are pasting about the place. Then I was determined that you should be instantly apprised through the medium of Mr Lawrence's own letter of what had become of your daughter. Otherwise, sir, the loss of your ship by an act of piracy must be nothing to me. Mr Lawrence promises in his letter that he will repay all his creditors, of which I am one to the extent of three hundred pounds. And as I am of opinion that this is his honest intention in order to enable him to dwell in England at liberty, I resolved to keep my own counsel and to await the receipt of my money."

Thus speaking he picked up his hat from the floor, bowed to Captain Acton and to Miss Acton, and left the room without noticing the Admiral.

"What a wicked, dreadful old man!" exclaimed Miss Acton, "to preserve such a hideous secret, and to be willing to wait for payment of his three hundred pounds out of another man's robbery. What is to be done? What will you do, brother? Our Lucy must be rescued. Is it too late? She was here in this house this morning at seven o'clock. The ship cannot be far off. Cannot she be reached?"

Captain Acton, holding the Greyquill letter in his hand, stepped to a bell rope and pulled it. The hue of his face was ashen, the expression cold and severe: such a face as he would carry had he to confront a crowd of armed mutineers.