The Pilot
Page 47
About a year before this melancholy event, a quarter-cask of wine had been duly ordered from the south side of the island of Madeira, which was, at the death of Manual, toiling its weary way up the rapids of the Mississippi and the Ohio; having been made to enter by the port of New Orleans, with the intention of keeping it as long as possible under a genial sun! The untimely fate of his friend imposed on Borroughcliffe the necessity of attending to this precious relic of their mutual tastes; and he procured a leave of absence from his superior, with the laudable desire to proceed down the streams and superintend its farther advance in person. The result of his zeal was a high fever, that set in the day after he reached his treasure: and as the doctor and the major espoused different theories, in treating a disorder so dangerous in that climate—the one advising abstemiousness, and the other administering repeated draughts of the cordial that had drawn him so far from home— the disease was left to act its pleasure. Borroughcliffe died in three days; and was carried back and interred by the side of his friend, in the very hut which had so often resounded with their humors and festivities. We have been thus particular in relating the sequel of the lives of these rival chieftains, because, from their want of connection with any kind heart of the other sex, no widows and orphans were left to lament their several ends; and furthermore, as they were both mortal, and might be expected to die at a suitable period, and yet did not terminate their career until each had attained the mature age of threescore, the reader can find no just grounds of dissatisfaction at being allowed this deep glance into the womb of fate.
The chaplain abandoned the seas in time to retrieve his character, a circumstance which gave no little satisfaction to Katherine, who occasionally annoyed her worthy husband on the subject of the informality of their marriage.
Griffith and his mourning bride conveyed the body of Colonel Howard in safety to one of the principal towns in Holland, where it was respectfully and sorrowfully interred; after which the young man removed to Paris, with a view of erasing the sad images which the hurried and melancholy events of the few preceding days had left on the mind of his lovely companion. From this place Cecilia held communion, by letter, with her friend Alice Dunscombe; and such suitable provision was made in the affairs of her late uncle as the times would permit. Afterwards, when Griffith obtained the command which had been offered him before sailing on the cruise in the North Sea, they returned together to America. The young man continued a sailor until the close of the war, when he entirely withdrew from the ocean, and devoted the remainder of his life to the conjoint duties of a husband and a good citizen.
As it was easy to reclaim the estates of Colonel Howard, which, in fact, had been abandoned more from pride than necessity, and which had never been confiscated, their joint inheritances made the young couple extremely affluent; and we shall here take occasion to say that Griffith remembered his promise to the dying master, and saw such a provision made for the childless mother as her situation and his character required.
It might have been some twelve years after the short cruise, which it has been our task to record in these volumes, that Griffith, who was running his eyes carelessly over a file of newspapers, was observed by his wife to drop the bundle from before his face, and pass his hand slowly across his brow, like a man who had been suddenly struck with renewed impressions of some former event, or who was endeavoring to recall to his mind images that had long since faded.
"See you anything in that paper to disturb you, Griffith?" said the still lovely Cecilia. "I hope that now we have our confederate government the States will soon recover from their losses—but it is one of those plans to create a new navy that has met your eye! Ah! truant! you sigh to become a wanderer again, and pine after your beloved ocean!"
"I have ceased sighing and pining since you have begun to smile," he returned with a vacant manner, and without removing his hand from his brow.
"Is not the new order of things, then, likely to succeed? Does the Congress enter into contention with the President?"
"The wisdom and name of Washington will smooth the way for the experiment, until time shall mature the system. Cecilia, do you remember the man who accompanied Manual and myself to St. Ruth, the night we became your uncle's prisoners, and who afterwards led the party which liberated us, and rescued Barnstable?"
"Surely I do; he was the pilot of your ship, it was then said; and I remember the shrewd soldier we entertained even suspected that he was one greater than he seemed."
"The soldier surmised the truth; but you saw him not on that fearful night, when he carried us through the shoals! and you could not witness the calm courage with which he guided the ship into those very channels again, while the confusion of battle was among us!"
"I heard the dreadful din! And I can easily imagine the horrid scene," returned his wife, her recollections chasing the color from her cheeks even at that distance of time; "but what of him? is his name mentioned in those papers? Ah! they are English prints! you called his name Gray, If I remember?"
"That is the name he bore with us! He was a man who had formed romantic notions of glory, and wished everything concealed in which he acted a part that he thought would not contribute to his renown."
"Can there have been any connection between him and Alice Dunscombe?" said Cecilia, dropping her work in her lap, in a thoughtful manner. "She met him alone, at her own urgent request, the night Katherine and myself saw you in your confinement, and even then my cousin whispered that they were acquainted! The letter I received yesterday from Alice was sealed with black, and I was pained with the melancholy, though gentle manner, in which she wrote of passing from this world into another!"
Griffith glanced his eye at his wife with a look of sudden Intelligence, and then answered, like one who began to see with the advantages of a clearer atmosphere:
"Cecilia, your conjecture is surely true! Fifty things rushed to my mind at that one surmise—his acquaintance with that particular spot—his early life—his expedition—his knowledge of the abbey, all confirm it! He, altogether, was indeed a man of marked character!"
"Why has he not been among us," asked Cecilia; "he appeared devoted to our cause?"
"His devotion to America proceeded from desire of distinction, his ruling passion, and perhaps a little also from resentment at some injustice which he claimed to have suffered from his own countrymen. He was a man, and not therefore without foibles—among which may have been reckoned the estimation of his own acts but they were most daring, and deserving of praise! neither did he at all merit the obloquy that he received from his enemies. His love of liberty may be more questionable; for if he commenced his deeds in the cause of these free States, they terminated in the service of a despot! He is now dead—but had he lived in times and under circumstances when his consummate knowledge of his profession, his cool, deliberate, and even desperate courage, could have been exercised in a regular and well-supported navy, and had the habits of his youth better qualified him to have borne, meekly, the honors he acquired in his age, he would have left behind him no name in its lists that would have descended to the latest posterity of his adopted countrymen with greater renown!"
"Why, Griffith," exclaimed Cecilia, in a little surprise, "you are zealous in his cause! Who was he?"
"A man who held a promise of secrecy while living, which is not at all released by his death. It is enough to know that he was greatly instrumental in procuring our sudden union, and that our happiness might have been wrecked in the voyage of life had we not met the unknown Pilot of the German Ocean."
Perceiving her husband to rise, and carefully collect the papers in a bundle, before he left the room, Cecilia made no further remark at the time, nor was the subject ever revived between them.
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