PART III.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 79, 6 December 1884, Page 4

PART 111.

THE WRECK OF THE OSFRKY. It may have been that the boys of the Sophomore class in the old College began it, or it may have been something in the grave, quiet dignity and power of the man— a something more befitting maturity than youth— or it may have been one of society's little revenges ; but, however it came about, or however it began, Professor Albert Daunton was, wherever he was known, spoken of as " old." It is quite true that he was a silent, reticent man— but almost all scholars are that ; it is true that there were deep lines of care in the broad, white forehead — but so are there in aL thoughtful men's brows ; it is true that he had little of the charm and careless grace which come and go with oarly manhood, that his clothes ot sober brown were somewhat baggy, and mostly sat awry upon hia lean, nervous body — but then, what has a grave professor to do with youth's vanities or graces ?_ Life was solemn and earnest to the staid professor, and man's chief aim, he said and believed, was self-development. But he was not an old man ; he was rather a quiet, bookish one, reticent, fastidious ; a little stiff and awkward, undoubtedly, but those who knew him best said that if the right fingers touched the keys, his discourse was like excellent music, and they hinted at great depths of feeling lying serenely beneath the undemonstrative surface. He had been a thoughtful, retiring boy, and the ripened fruit was only '■ of the kind the blossom promised. He was not very fond of society, and possibly society called him "Old Daunton " to revenge itself for the slight. The college was his first thought, and held a good deal of hia life and love ; to his books at home \ he gave another generous slice of his affections, and to homo itself anothor ; so, | naturally, ho had little left for the idloi crowd outside. He was only a Freshman himself so few years ago that it seemed very absurd I to call this man "Old Daunton." It was while he was still a Freshman that I his mother brought home her little! baby nicco one night after the funeral of its j father, and became at once so tender and | motherly to the girl that she grew up un- ! conscious of any loss out of her life. That \ was only fifteen years ago, and though Dauntan had been made professor a long j I time, the little girl was only twenty now. So, of course, Daunton could not bo so very old. But he was odd and queer, and priggish ; there was no donying that, for evory body said it was truo, and ho certainly did cling with a most stupid tenacity to the old-Fogy college, and tli© old homo and its inmates. "To his old home and his mother,'" ho would have maintained ; but society said, with its wickedost smile, "to the little girl, turned twenty.."

Some stupid person one day repeated' society's remark, go that it came to hia ears ; maybe it was intended that it should. "No," he said to himself,"! am not more fond of my adopted sister than a brother should be. I have, though, that much fondness for her, 1 hope." j Just then the girl chanced to pass, and i the man iooked down into her sweet, fair ! face, about which the golden-rod hair of Berenic hung in wavy clouds. And then,as he looked down into the depths of the tender eyes, and saw how fair she was and good and pure ; and remembering her sunny temper and grave simplicity, he felt ] it was pleasant to have this beautiful] women near him ; that her grace and youth and wisdom made all stories of knight-errantry possible and true ; that her ] purity and simple truth helped his faith in mankind, and threw about all women he knew a certain glamour of saintliness and a profound loveliness. But he did not love her as lovers do their mistresses ; and, as for marrying any one, he had not thought of that yet. That would come in its own good time, as Providence or Fate appointed. His loves, he thought, were only to be found among the old Hellenic heroines. And with this conclusion reached so easily, he shook the gossip off, and was glad that he had so readily settled everything between himself and the girl whom he called his sister. As for Margaret Daunton, she looked up to the quiet professor with feelings of awful reverence and admiration, which the least lover-like attentions on his part would have quickly developed into love. But while the awkward old fellow of thirty was courtly as aSpaniavd, he was equally as cold. He Avas the only hero that she had ever met face to face — not exactly a Bayard or a Sir Philip Sidney, but a Bacon. lie was the highest type of man she had ever known ; and maybe the highest she would ever know ; but he was not gallant and debonair^ as other heroes shortly coming into her life wouM be. It was a pity. If he had only been a little less like my lord of Verulam, a little more like Sir Philip.

I The long vacation had come to the old ' Collogo at Cambridge, as it comes everywhere, with the tropical heats of summer ; and coming to the professor as to | other men, lie took his mother and [ Margaret Daunton down to the Jersey i coast, selecting for thoir holiday retreat an old farmhouse in Ocean County, lying back half a mile from the sea, on the south bank of the Squan River, shut out from all the world by surrounding oaks and long, melancholy ranges of cedars. For raoro than thirty years, people from far and near have been going to that same old farm-hou&e by the sea, in parties of twos and threes, until sometimes the guests have numbered thirty j or forty, and then the bluff, honest old wrecking-master, Captain Brown, to whom the property has descended, has counted it a prosperous season indeed. The Squan River, lying directly back of the house, is, for nearly twelve miles above the inlet, simply an arm of the ocean, having its tidal flow and ebb, and formerly, in stormy weather, the less venturesome craft that sailed the sea ran into it for shelter. But they must be very wise pilots indeed who do this now, for the inlet has nearly closed up and is but a few feet wide ; though once inside the howling waters of ! the bar, there is a harbour tor a hundred ! ships. ! The season was backward ; the rains, heavy and cold, continued on this bit of | coast until late in the summer, keeping visitors away from it for a time. The Dauntons, having arrived early, were for weeks the only occupants of the farm, and the only passengers in the beach waggon, going down for their bath in ihe sea. The professor, who donned the old wreck-ing-master's pea-jacket and his own heavy boots, rather enjoyed the continually recurring rains and storms, and the loneliness of the place. It was a rule of life with him to hate strangers, and he dreaded the sunshine and clear skies that would crowd the old farm-house with them. He and Margaret, in the roughest weather, — he rnuflled up in Captain Brown's peajacket and she in her waterproof— took long walks through the woods, across Reids, and along the river and ocean shores. It was not so pleasant to Mrs Daunton, whom feeble health and rough weather obliged to keep in doors ; but it was delightful enough to these two people, whose hardier strength gave to their life on the sandy cliffs, or under the sombre cedars, a new zest and meaning. It was curious, but here the professor did not greatly miss his old books, or his college associations, and, indeed, they became at length only dim and far-off j | memories of toil. There is a weight of j languor and laziness in the air of Squan j Beach, that makes mental or physical' [ labour altogether impossible in sunny ! i weather. The dweller on that eleep-en- ! chanted shore is content, on golden summer days, to lie in the sun, to watch the flying clouds, to tasto the saltiness of the I air, to note the flight of tho seagull and I osproy, to bathe in the swelling surf, to rest soul and body in the shade of the oaks and i cedars, to be content to live drowsy, un- ! eventful days, to forget the busy, fretting world beyond, and to give time to living and loving. Early in July the rainy season closed ; and at stage-time every day Captain Brown stood on the corner of the porch, welcoming new guests. Directly the house was full, and the over crowded beach waggon was now obliged to make a second trip to accommodate the numerous bathers. They were all gathered about the low wooden houses one day, after the bath, watching the mists driving in over the still, unruffled waters ; they seemed to be swept in before a great wind, the rapid flight of which they heralded and fled from. To the northeast a speck of black cloud was set in the sky, and as the people stood there it suddenly grew wider, denser, until in a little while it seemed to cover the ocean from shore to shore. Out of that cloud the northeast winds came, driving the mists before it, causing consternation among a hundred ships, which, at the first gathering of the mists, clewed down their sails, tacked about while yet there was time, and mado.for the broad open soa, where they hoped to outride tho galo in safoty. The gue«ts of tho old farm stood thore quiet and awed ; thoy hoard tho howling of the coming wind, saw the sea boil up under it as it whistled inland, saw the fearstricken fleet furling every inch of unnecessary canvas, running affrighted from tho grim and dangerous beach, which, change as it may with every tempest, lies for ever dotted here and there with wrecks of noble ships ; and which, farther back, in the little cemetery on Ihe cliffs, shows tho sunken graves of unknown mariners who died among its hungry foam, and sent home no tidings. If tho hundred ships and more could find safety in the open sea, they had already found it, for they had outsailed the dangers of the coast— all but one. Not a mile from shore a schooner-viggod yacht, rolling heavily and lying deep in the water, washed momentarily by gigantic seas, floundered and struggled in the waves of the coming storm. The rush of tho wind had roached tho land j aad, as if man insane defiance of

it, the men on the yacht threw out their sails on either side, wing-and-wing, ran up their flying-jib and set the topsail, when the vessel bowed deeply forward, rose again as free and graceful as a gull, seeming only to touch the crest of tho waves for an instant, then to plunge beneath them, but staggering, plunging onward with awful speed, she drovo ahead into the seething whirl of the breakers. The yacht was making for the inlet, and was close enough to the shore now to enable those who breathlessly watched her course to distinguish the man at the helm, ;a young fellow of gigantic figure, whom they had seen make fast the main-sheet to the deck with his own hands ; and although his vessel plunged deep into every sea, threatening to go down head-foremost each moment, the young sailor held her on her course, and fixing his eyes upon one point in the rapidly nearing shore, he let his vessel drive on to its apparent destruction j as if it was pursued by the fabled Furies of j the wind. ' j Now staggering beneath and mounting triumphantly again to the surface of the waves, rearing and plunging like a horse unused to goading and feeling whip and spur for the first time, the yacht sailed on, when, from the wrecking station below, about which wreckers and fishermen had gathered in haste to watch the adventurous craft, a signal was run up. '• Make half a point south," it said. Instantly the yacht was squared away as indicated, when, coming full before the wind, her jib-sheets were torn away one by one, the topsail shivered for a moment in the gale and then was ripped out, and fluttered away like a cloud ; yet, all unmindful of the wreck above and below, the man at the helm kept her bow that half a point south, for there lay the narrow inlet, dangerous and uncertain in fairest weather, as its breakers roared and broke, but now a desperate, almost a hopeless chance. Margaret Daunton held the Professor's arm with a fierce grip. " Will the man make the inlet?" she asked. "Is he sure to do it?" "I do not know; it is a poor chance," the Professor said. "But why more anxiety for that handsome, daring devil at the helm than for Die two or three other men there, Margaret ?" " Can you look at the different men, and ask that? lie stands erect, head and shoulders abovo them all. From here you can see the coward look in their shrinking figures, but there is none in his. He is not careless of his life ; he is bonding every nerve and muscle to save himself and them, and yet, when he will be within a single moment of his death, he will not more certainly look it; in the face than he is doing now. Why should I not give my sympathy to the brave man instead of to the cowards there ?" 11 Because, Margaret, the cowards there may have wives and children at home ; and that fellow has none, or he would give this lee-shore a wide berth." Then a cloud of suspicion or doubt fell between these two that had never been there before, and they walked on down the beach to the inlet in silence which neither cared to disturb. The Professor was annoyed and vexed by the girl's interest in this stranger, who guided his boat among the breakers with such free and skilful daring ; and she, too, was annoyed that the Professor, always before just and generous, .should withhold any credit from the b^ave fellow out there struggling so grandly for life. Yet what could it matter to the old Profe«.sor for whom she interested ■ herself ? Were not his ioves and romances away back there among the dead Hellenic fables? Ho had said so, and yet the man's heart beat uneasily when he saw this girl, whom he had grown to consider his very own by every tie of gratitude and affection, bestowing her sympathy and showing deep feeling for another, and that other a stranger, dimly seen as yet far out at sea. lie had forgotten, in his annoyance at Margaret, to watch the course of the yacht, when a .sharp cry from her suddenly drew his attention to the struggling boat. An ugly squall hadstiuck her at an imminent moment, tearing out the dock fastenings which held the mainsail square away, and in an instant it was flung aloft, caught by the gale, and wound about and around the pliant mast, which bent like steel. Topsail and jibs and main sail were gone, and nothing left but the foresail now, which, in the flawy gale, threatened momentarily to jibe, in which case all previous efforts would be rendered futile. But the blue-coated sailor at the helm held the vessel on her course as undaunted as if he knew every drop of water under him. The roar and thunder of the surf were too deep for those on shore to hear his voice, but from his gestures they knew that he wag giving orders which were not obeyed by the demoralised crew. The yacht was of twelve feet beam, while the entrance to the inlet was barely twenty feet in all. So that even in caso the sailor's quick eye detected the very centre of the channel, he would have scarcely four feet of water on either nun wale. . Captain Brown stood among his men, who, resting on the sides of the life-boats, J keenly watched the daring sailor, | " She never ken make it,, Cap'en Brown ; < ef he luffs she jibe, and ef he don't luff that bit of canvas 'ill go by the wind," said a smoky skinned, wheezy-voiced old fellow at the Captain's side. ' "Well, now, I don't know about that, William. It's uncertain. You see, that young fellow's peart, he is, and he'^ got true grit, an' he's plucky, an' he's got a clear eye an' a steady, jjcool hand, an' he wouldn't surprise me it he won, after oil," the Captain drawled out, sententiously. The yacht had approached the mouth of the seething hell of the breakers that alalready sprang at her bows and leaped upon her deck, when she lurched to leeward, and her foresail, which hitherto had stood the fury of the gale unscathed, parted from boom to gall', and directly was only a flaunting mass of ribbons in the wind.