The Missing Ship: The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Mrs Massey saw that the time had come; she threw her amis round the young captain’s neck, and asked God again and again to protect him. Then she let Norah take her place, while Captain Tracy helped her down into the boat alongside, in which Owen soon afterwards placed Norah. They had said their last words of farewell; Norah’s had been whispered, for her heart was too full to allow her to utter them aloud. Captain Tracy took his seat in the stern-sheets. “Cast off!” he cried to the bowman. The boat dropped astern; Owen was seen standing aft and looking over the taffrail; the pilot, who had still the command, ordered the courses to be let fall, and the Ouzel Galley glided onward. As long as the boat was in sight, there stood Owen gazing at Norah and his mother, as again and again they waved. More than once the old captain turned round to take another look at the ship whose keel he had seen laid, each timber and plank of which he had carefully watched as the shipwrights had fixed them in their destined positions—that ship on the deck of which he had stood when she glided into the water for the first time, and which he had since navigated with watchful care on every voyage she had made, amid rocks and shoals, and over many a league of ocean.

Mrs Massey had consented to spend a few days with Norah. Though her own heart was heavy, she knew that she could console that of the young girl, so unused to the trials of life; while the old captain himself, she saw, required cheering, and thus in benefiting others she forgot her own anxieties. The captain had out his chart: he had marked the way the wind blew, and knew to a nicety the rate at which the ship was sailing, and could thus calculate from hour to hour the exact spot on which she floated—always provided, as he observed, if the wind holds as it did when she quitted port.

At length Mrs Massey returned home, and Norah settled down to her daily occupations. Norah was not free from some anxiety on her own account, for she could not forget the attempt which had been made to carry her off, or divest herself altogether of the fear that she might be subjected to a similar outrage. She therefore never ventured abroad without her father’s escort, while he at home ever kept his firearms ready for her defence. Still, as week after week went by, her hope that O’Harrall had quitted the country, and that he would not again venture to molest her, increased. She heard occasionally from Ellen, though letters were long in coming, and more than once the mail had been stopped on the road and plundered—a too frequent occurrence to be thought much of in those days.

Norah, notwithstanding her fears, was unmolested. The captain had given out that if any one should venture to run off with his daughter he would not obtain a farthing of his property—a wise precaution, for it probably prevented any of the squireens in the neighbourhood from making the attempt—added to the fact, which was pretty generally known, that she was engaged to marry Owen Massey.

Month after month went by. Ellen at first wrote her word that she was going much into society—more, indeed, than she liked—while she had an abundance of occupation at home in attending to her father’s household. Latterly, from her letters, she appeared to be living a more quiet life than at first. She mentioned her father, who seemed to be much out of spirits, though she could not divine the cause. She again invited Norah to come up to Dublin and help to cheer him up.

“You are a great favourite of his, you know,” she wrote. “He delights in hearing you sing, and your merry laugh and conversation will do him good.”

But Norah could not be induced to leave her father; besides which, she confessed to Ellen, she was looking forward in a short time to the return of the Ouzel Galley, and she would be sorry if Owen should not find her at home on his arrival. Ellen, in reply, told her that the Ouzel Galley, after calling at Waterford, would probably have to come on to Dublin, and she continued—“And my father, finding it necessary to go out to Jamaica, intends taking a passage in her; and I have determined to obtain leave to accompany him. I fear that he will object to my doing so, on account of the danger to which I may be exposed; but, you know, as I generally manage to have my own way, I hope to overcome his objections. The ship also will form one of a large fleet of merchantmen under convoy of two or three men-of-war, and as the Ouzel Galley sails well, even should the convoy be attacked by the enemy, we shall have every chance of getting off. You must not be jealous of me, my dear Norah; indeed, I heartily wish that your father could spare you to bear me company; and I dare say that the young captain would wish the same, did he know of the proposed plan. Pray tell him of it when he comes into Waterford, and I have an idea that he will join his persuasions with mine.”

This letter made Norah’s heart beat quickly. She was much surprised, too, at hearing of the intention of Mr Ferris to go out to the West Indies; but, much as she would have liked to accompany her friend, she felt that it would be impossible to leave her father.

“I was afraid that things were not going on straight,” observed Captain Tracy, when she told him of the news she had received. “However, Mr Ferris is the man to set them to rights, and he’ll do it; but I wish that Miss Ellen, instead of going out with him, would come and stay here. She expects to meet the lieutenant, but he’ll be here, there, and everywhere, and she mayn’t see him all the time she is there.”

Norah, in reply, told Ellen what Captain Tracy had said; but Miss Ferris had made up her mind to go if she could, and was not to be deterred from her purpose. One evening Norah was seated at the open window with her work before her, while her father occupied his usual armchair, smoking his pipe, when a rapid step was heard approaching the house. Norah uttered a cry of delight, and, hurrying to the door, the next moment was in Owen Massey’s arms.