Chapter III.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 238, 4 November 1876, Page 1

Chapter 111.

At Portland, I found a letter, one solitary letter, awaiting me. Men talk often and glibly, sometimes upon slight occasion, of loneliness. The lot of an Alexander (Selkirk must be hard, if I may judge from the comparative solitude of our small community upon the ice. The condition of a friendless w.andcrer in a crowded city is only less desolate because there is much around him to distract his attention from himself. But at least one of the saddest revelations possible to a human being is that which breaks upon him when, after months or years of absence, after toil and peril, he returns to the place whence he iirst set out, and linds that, of all the millions upon earth, only one fellow-creature has thought of him, that one but once, and that " once" long ago. It was with some such thought as this that I opened my letter. It was in Jack's handwriting ; and it was dated just a week later than the day on which I had set sail in the " Old Potomac." The first momentary inclination to vent my disappointment on my brother's negligence or want of care for me, gave place before I had read a word of' the contents, to a pang of self-reproach. Was it possible, I asked myself, that Jack — truest of men and most faithful of : friends — could ever have forgotten me ? My heart answered for him. Only if Jack i had been beyond the power to seek or send to me would he have failed. Might not he i also have cause to think himself neglected, abandoned, and by me ? For how could he have known that I had been locked up and helpless in the region of eternal winteV i all these months? The last thought brought back the memory of my fearful vision, which the sight of Jack's welcome - scrawl had for the moment banished from my mind, and I hastened to read the contents of liis letter. The greater part was ; a record of what had interested him in his last voyage, written (for Jack could never be persuaded that any form of composi- ] tion was equal in beauty and completeness i to that of which the model is the ship's ■ log) at intervals during his travels. One ' day he had fished up a young sea-horse, ' measurement seven inches by three quar- 1 ters of an inch, and a full pen-and-ink portrait of the interesting little beast was set < down in his letter to " old Joe;" another - day there was Jack's testimony, as an eye- I witness, to the fact, that when Vesuvius vomits, a shower of blackened ashes falls 1 thick and silent on the waves of. the Nea- 1 politan bay]and the decks of the ships that '.

ride there ; and anon, his sage opinion that the man who described St. Paul's shipwreck, on the Island of Malta, must have been on the spot. Poor Jack ! lie was always surprised when his own experience coniirmed what he had read in books, and always anxious to convince a world which had never been half so sceptical as himself. At length I came to the postscript, and as it will best explain the influence of Jack's letter on my mind, I will transcribe it here : — " P.S. — Dear old boy — I've been a longtime sick of this Mediterranean business. Going always back and forward between Liverpool and Smyrna, between Lisbon and Alexandria, seems like being everlastingly in a ship that's tacking first to port and then to starboard, and never making way. So I've left the old boat, and 1 start to-morrow as first mate of the the finest little clipper I've seen for many a. day, for the Spanish Main, round to Lima, and perhaps a longer cruise, and back to Liverpool. So maybe yon won't' sec me soon ; but be sure I shan't forget to write, either to Portland or to the old shop, which 1 shall consider headquarters for both of us till we meet once more." My fears — such fears as I could not have confessed to any mortal being — had gradually dwindled away and disappeared in the pleasure with which I read the letter, down to the post-scrijrt. " Confound the fellow !" ljmid to myself; " why don't he give the name of the craft he's sailing in ? How am I to trace him when I get one of my ftts.of nervousness ? No use in getting hold of a shipping list, when I don't know the ship I'm looking for." It was high noon on an autumn day, and I had settled down on a barrel of salt iish on the key at Portland, sheltered from the sun by a small mountain of oil-casks, piled there t ready for shipment. 1 fell into a reverie, with Jack's letter in my hand. A whole history of things that had been, or might be, or never could be, passed through my mind, as if I had been in a dream. Perhaps I was in a dream ; to this day I don't know whether I was or not, but I do know that, slowly and surely and vividly, 1 seemed to be once more in the ice-cave of Coekburn Land, chilled to the very heart with the polar cold ; that, steadily and painfully," these grew into my eyeballs the furnace-glare of the tropic sun, the hot silver sheen of the southern sea, and the black speck-boat lying idly on the wave, with the two words boldly painted on her whitened side—" Barkey, Shields." I started trembling to my feet, but laughed at my folly, as I realized that I was alone, in a familiar place, with common place surroundings, and Jack's letter still in my hand. Well, 1 must get on, or you will think me a prosy, egotistical bore. Two things were clear. There was no later letter from Jack than the letter I had read ; and he had given me no clue to the vessel he had sailed in. Two things were probable. If lie had been alive and well, I should have found a later letter from him, after so long an interval ; and, although I hesitated much and long, before granting so much to my superstitious heart, the time when I saw that horrible vision was just about the period when Jack would have been most likely to be crossing the tropics on his return from South America. One thing was most certain of all, that my best chance of obtaining news of my brother would be by getting back to Liverpool. The owners of the " Old Potomac" were generous. They paid me all I had a right to demand for my services during the voyage, and upon the skipper's report that the skill and care I had been able to exercise, had waved some lives during our awful imprisonment after the wreck, presented me with an acknowledgment which made my circumstances more than easy. I went to Boston, and finding no chance of working my passage as a doctor, took a berth as passenger in a Canard liner to Liverpool. It was afternoon on the day after my landing, when I plucked up courage to enter on my search. Most of my fetters and memoranda had gone with my chest and the good old whaler to oblivion under the icebergs, and though I knew the name of the vessel in which Jack had formerly sailed, I could not remember the names oil the owners. So, by way of trying to find a clue, I set oft" to the S;ulors''lloine, and, making my way through a croud of seamen, touts, crimps, shoeblacks, and hawkers, who thronged about the doors, contrived at last to get speech with the superintendent. He was a stout man, of middle age, middle height, a speckled face, a dreamy manner, but most obliging- disposition. When he had heard the particulars of my search, he went into an office and left me alone. Presently he returned and said the vessel in question belonged to Gcech and Rowloski, of the Goree Piazzas. Upon my asking the way, he volunteered to be my guide, casually remarking that he had ten minutes to spare. Less than that time sufficed to bring us to the dingy chambers in which the firm did business, and to see us out again, under the. shadow of the dirty piazzas, with no further gain than the knowledge that Messrs. Green and Rowlowski, having been incensed at Jack's leaving them, knew nothing of his subsequent proceedings. This was so little to my taste that I should most certainly have made myself disagreeable, had not the superintendent, Mr. Durfy, prudently cajoledme out of the office and beguiled me into a back parlor in James Street, where my passion cooled and his sympathy expanded. " What did you say your name was V" said Mr. Durfy. " Waterton," said 1. " Ah ! and your brother's name was " Jack — that is, John, or" course." " He didn't go first mate under Geech's linn V" ,", No " The superintendent relapsed. During his silence he nervously pulled every button of his waistcoat, dronk bis rum and water spasmodically, and seemed to be working out a problem. )Then he said, " Come along ! we'll iind him ! and led the way into the street. What foolish hope I had begun to build on this assurance was extinguished by the words he spoke as, taking my arm, he hastened back to the Sailor's Home. "I remember him well enough, Mr. Waterton," he began. '' He and I spent halt'-an-liour in that very room the day he sailed. He was sitting in the very same place

you sat just now. He was one of the jolliest young fellows I ever saw. Poor chap !" As I live there was a shake in Durfy's voice, and a tear in his eye, when he said this, and with some impatience I asked him what he meant. To which his reply was — " Oh, nothing yet." " Can't you recollect what ship he was to sail in for the main and the West Coast?" said I. " Wait a bit," he answered tetchily, as I thought. We returned to the Home, and a few minutes later he brought a book from the office and said — " I've found him. He sailed in the month of April last year — just seventeen months and nineteen days ago — as first mate, and half the crew were taken from this home. The captain's name was " " Never mind the captain, Mr. Durfy," said I. " What was the ship ?'' " Oh, the ship ! It was a tight little clipper — the 'Barkey/belongingto Shields." What more he might have said I don't know, for I staggered backward as if he had struck me with a marlin' spike, and knew nothing of what passed for a space that might have been measured by hours. When 1 came to myself, the kind-hearted superintendent was bathing my head. I had fallen on the stones and got a scalp wound. My lirst conscious words were — " Barkey,' Shields." "Ah, poor lad!' said Durfy. "Then you knew all about it ?" , "About what?" I asked him. " About her going down in the hurricane ' with all hands." "No, not with all hands," I said, my old vision rising hazily before my mind. Then he told me how the clipper had been spoken in the Trades, on her voyage home in December ; how a gale had come on in that latitude a few hours afterwards, how she and a dozen other gallant ships known to have been in the same quarter must have foundered, for no word of them had ever again been heard. " And it's nine months since, now, my boy — a great deal too long for hope," he added, by way of clinching my despair.