Chapter IV.

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

Chapter IV.

If all hope of over seeing my brother again in this world had not been totally extinguished by this apparently miraclous confirmation of my tragic vision, it must have died out slowly and surely under the perpetual failure of all nry efforts to find further trace of Jack's illfated ship, or any more natural proof of his murder. That he had been foully slain, by a negro, in an open boat, out on the desert ocean, I had no longer any doubt. Not that I had any further disposition or temptation to think of my horrible vision either as the dream of an uneasy sleeper or the hallucination of a distraught brain. So perfectly convinced ■was I that I had myself, by some superhuman agency, been the invisible witness of the ghastly deed, that, could I have been confronted with the murderer, I should have sworn to his identity and the circumstantial details of the crime ; even though I knew my oath would have consigned me instantly to a madhouse,and could never for a moment have been taken as evidence against the wretch whose hands I had seen steeped in my brother's blood. Nevertheless, from that day forward I lived only for the prosecution of a quest that was to me as sacred as was the search for the Holy Grail in the eyes of Arthur and his knights. Knowing that I never should look upon poor Jack again on earth, my one remaining business was to discover the villain who had done him to death. Owners, agents, underwriters, relatives, had all relinquished the search before I took it up. Inquiries at home and abroad had failed to bring the poorest waif of news of the " Barkey." Fragments of wreck were washed ashore on many a near and distant coast ; messages that were from the dead — messages sealed in bottles and cast afloat in the last hours of drowning mariners, and treated tenderly by the ruthless -\\aves that had engulfed the brave hearts that sent them ; starved skeletonmen were picked up here and there upon the ocean, and saved from lingering death; but neither battered wreck, nor faithful flask, nor castaway survivor brought any tidings of the ship in which poor Jack had made his final voyage. Others, who had lost fathers, sons, and brothers by the same catastrophe, sympathized awhile in my passionate feverish quest ; then shook their heads and whispered among themselves, with some pity and perhaps more scorn, that my loss had turned my brain. Thus passed, in ceaseless motion and tormenting thought, four long, exhausting years. But not entirely without fruit. Before the third of those year* expired, a circumstance occurred from which 1 ayfaith in my mission would have gathered confirmation stronger than miracles can give, and my passion for vengeance undying ardour, had either for an instant nagged. Walking one day through a narrow and busy street near the Battery Garden, in New York, some passing fancy led me to pause in front of a jeweller's store. There were trinkets of all varieties, old and new, quaint, rare, and commonplace, poor and valuable, timepieces, optical instruments, coins and notes of mail}' nations, extant and byegone ; for the owner was one of those fishermen who reject but little that enters the net. Suddenly, my eye alighted on an object so strange, yet so familiar, that I started, as one who sees a spectre. It was an old-fashioned watch, with a curiously wrought silver case, and an ingeniously contrived dial, displaying through one section the mechanism within, and upon the other aw illuminated picture af some Dutch market place, with a church tower in which a tiny clock-face marked the hours, the longer hand of the watch sweeping overall to tell the minutes. Too well I remembered how my father had told us that his father had received it as a gift from some rich Hollander, in acknowledgement of good service rendered more thau forty years before ; and, how, before my father was lost, he had given it to Jack, bidding him bear in mind each time he looked upon it, that it became him to folin his grandsire's honest ways. Scarcely had this recognition flashed through my mind, before I entered the store. Fortunately; the jeweller was engaged with another customer, so that I had time to collect my thoughts. In spite of my effort to assume a composure I could not feel, it was evident that tho tradesman, as soon as he turned to serve

me, regarded me with some suspicion. However, at my request, he produced the watch and named its price. " You price it highly," I observed. " Well," said he, with that nasal drawl which never fails to be emphatic, " that's so ; but the man that gets that time-piece will value it more as a curiosity, I guess, than for the number of dollars he pays for it." I held the watch in one hand, as I might have done a wild bird, fearing it would escape me, while he counted out the greenbacks with the other. " Will you give me a memorandum, to certify that I bought this watch of you, stating the date, and signing your name?" He paused a moment, and then said — " Guess, you've taken a start out of me this trip, sir !" " How so ?" " Price warn't no special object to you, seems ; and I reckon I'd better ha' said rive dollars more, l'ity I didn't know you was cumin' "long." He wrote the certificate ; and, as he passed it over the counter, said— " Kind o' likely you've a sight of interest in that machine ?" " Yes," said I, " more interest than yon could make out, with all your guessing. And I'll tell you what ; if you'll tell me where you got it, I'll tell you why I've bought it. " We — ell, now," he replied, " when you wanted to buy, I handed over the goods before 3-011 produced the cash ; so, if you're goin' to get a price out o' me for your fam'ly story, guess you'd best show the article first." At another time I could have laughed at his excessive caution ; but my mood was not merry just then, and I said— " This watcli was my grandfather's ; j then my father's ; then my brother's—" " Cur'us that ; and now 'tis yours." " My brother was supposed to have been lost at sea, when his ship foundered with all hands; and he had this watch with him." '_' Phew— ew !" he whistled. " That narrative leaks, somewhere. 'Taint possible that watch swam ashore by itself, I don't s'pose." " That's just why I want to know how it came into your possession." _ " We— ell there ! Strike me stupid if I didn't always calc'late there was some hist'ry 'bout that time-engine," said the storekeeper. "• Now, I'm gettin' curious, an' I'll jes' go round with you to the man I had it of." This was more than I expected ; but he called an assistant, and then accompanied me out of the shop. As we went along, calling at a bar for the inevitable v moist- I ener" on the way, he told me that he had | bought the watch about two years before from the owner of a sailor's boardinghouse, about whose character he was not prepared to say anything, of one sort or another. " Annyhow," he added, " I guess he'll find it best to speak straight, when I get within hearmV In this, the jeweller's confidence did not mislead him. The boarding-house keeper was a Scotchman, who proved worthy of his countrymen's character for prudence. He remembered the watch, as, indeed, any one who had ever seen it must ; and assured us that such a trinket could not have passed through his hands without leaving traces in his books. Referring to these, he speedily found an entry, showing that he had received it from a " »uin of color," who was understood to be a ship's cook or steward ; and that the man had boarded in the house at a date which, by my reckoning, was about fifteen or eighteen months after the loss of the " Barkey." The Scotchman had written a form of receipt for the money he gave for the watch, and this tiie seller had signed with a cross, giving the name of Paul Gourlay. If any doubt could still have lingered in my mind, it must have been set at rest when the Scotchman said, in reply to my final question — . " I'll no be sairten aboot the precise , features o' the man, for yell remember it's ] a while agone noo ; but 0' this I'm pair- ] fectly assured — that the nigger was as tall , as Anak, ae' as black as the del himscl 1 ."