CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ARK THAT JACK BUILT.
"Good heaven, befriend that little boat, And guide her on her way! A boat, they say, has canvas wings, But can not fly away; Though, like a merry singing-bird, She sits upon the spray."
The land wind sighed and murmured; the sea-breeze wafted its rustling influence over the waves; the long swells broke over the ledge; the inlet flowed pure and limpid; and the gulls and sea-mews floated gracefully over the reef, as if a hurricane had never poured its baneful wrath upon it or the lonely island.
Day by day and week by week, the man and boy, getting each hour stronger and better, worked and worked. He with his great arms hewing and sawing, and the child attending upon him like a shadow. By great toil and exertion the doctor had succeeded in placing some of the timbers of the jetty together as launching-ways, and on the cradle he had laid the wreck of the old boat. Then, with an old saw and some tools he found near the site of the mat sheds by the cove, he began to build the frail ark which was to carry him and the child from the hated island. From the storehouse, too, he obtained plenty of provisions to supply their wants, and old sails and rope he found in abundance. Babette's collection of worldly wealth provided them with linen and clothing, together with utensils for eating and drinking; and he had made their dwelling in the little chapel clean and habitable. Here they slept by night on an old sail, and soundly too, the sleep of repentance and innocence. With the early morning the man and the boy arose, and took their way to the cove. The little fellow was clean and tidy now, dressed in a little loose calico frock, and a queer contrivance of an old bonnet fashioned out of Babette's gear, and on his feet were a pair of little canvas slippers, stitched for him by his protector. After a bath in the basin of the inlet the fire was kindled, and the simple breakfast prepared. Then, while the strong man hewed, and sawed, and hammered beneath a temporary awning which covered the open workshop, the boy would pick up shells along the cove, or with a little rod and line, seated on a flat rock near by, jerk out fish from the basin to serve for dinner. Sometimes he would wander about in search of nails and spikes for the boat, or gather sticks for the fire, but never out of hail, and never beyond the watchful eyes of his friend. Yes, those watchful, kind eyes followed his slightest movements; and while the hammer was going in vigorous blows on the planks, or the axe chipping away a timber, his pleasant voice sang Creole songs to the child, or encouraged his innocent prattle. A loaded musket, which, with some ammunition, he had dug out from the wreck of his old quarters, stood leaning against an upright post under the shade, and woe to the man or beast that might have dared to approach the boy! In the burning heat of the tropical day the labor ceased, and the child either lay on his back on the soft sand beneath the awning, kicking up his little legs, watching the small gulls as they skimmed across the basin, or, with his brown curly head resting on the doctor's knees, slept sweetly. Happy and contented he was, too, with the return of health and strength; and if his budding memory looked back to her he had lost, and the recollection of his faithful Banou, it was only for a moment, and, like a childish dream, it passed away.
Every evening at sunset, when the work was done for the day, the doctor, with Henri in his arms and the musket on his shoulder, would climb the crag, and peer all around the island; but never a sail did he see from the hour the "Centipede" spread her canvas, while he lay helplessly bound on the trestle with the green noose around his neck. As the twilight faded, the sole human occupants of the island returned to the chapel, and when they had said a simple prayer, kneeling before the Virgin, they laid themselves down on their canvas bed to rest till the dawn. Many a silent hour in the watches of the tedious night did the doctor lie awake, while the cool sweet breath of the child fanned his cheek as he lay nestling beside him, pondering and wondering on the fate of his charge. He knew absolutely nothing about his history save that he had been pitched overboard from the brig the pirates were robbing; but what was the name or nation of the vessel, where from, or whither bound, he was in utter ignorance. He had questioned the leader Gibbs on that occasion after the chase by the corvette, when he had lopped off the brute's leg; but, what with suffering and drink, the ruffian had either forgotten the brig's name, or feigned to, and all he could impart was the belief that she was an English trader. Even from the boy, too, the doctor could elicit nothing of importance, though day by day he tried every means of leading the child's mind back to the past, but always with the same result.
"_Oui, ma chère mama! Bon Banou!_" and "_Ma petite cousine, Rosalie!_" These were the only words the little fellow had to link his fate with the future, and even they became fainter and fainter on his mind and tongue as the time passed on. With this delicate web around the destiny of the child, and that he spoke French, and had evidently been tenderly nurtured, the doctor was forced to be content.
Well, so the days and nights went by, and so the work went on, and the little ark began to assume a wholesome look, and to be capable of plowing the distant main. Then, when she was planked up, with a gunwale on, and half-decked over forward, she was calked, and the seams payed with pitch. When all ready for launching, early one morning the doctor and the boy went gayly down to the cove. There, as the first golden rays of the rising sun shot athwart the inlet, Henri stood up in the bows, and with a large pearl-shell of pure spring water, he waved his tattered bonnet round his curly locks, and with childish delight, as the vessel began to move, he emptied the shell of its sparkling treasure, shouting, as she slid off the ways into the basin, "_Ma petite cousine Rosalie!_" The builder, too, took off his hat and shouted, in his deep bass, till the rocks gave back the echo of "_Rosalie! Rosalie!_"
Thus was the ark launched and christened by her captain and crew, and there she rode on the basin, a little pinnace of about ten tons, which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast, stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck forward--where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an oakum pillow, for the boy! Yes, there lay the good ship "Rosalie," outward bound, with sails bent and gear rove, cargo on board, and waiting for a wind.
Meanwhile the doctor had tried her under sail, and satisfied himself that every thing worked well, and that she was in proper trim. Then he moored her within a fathom from the shore, and waited for a moon to light him on his voyage. Whither?
Carefully, too--like one who had passed a lifetime on the ocean, from the China Seas to the broad Atlantic, under the suns of the tropics as well as in the dim gloom of high latitudes--the doctor studied the clouds and watched their course, noting the flight of the birds in the air and the track of fish in the sea. At last the trade breezes began to blow regularly and steadily; the land winds, too, in the gray of the morning, fluttered timidly away out to sea, and the round pearly moon shone bright and mellow over rock and water.
"To-morrow, my brave boy, we shall sail away from the island. Ah! you clap your hands, eh? Yes, we shall go to find mamma!" This was said as man and child stood for the last time on the lofty crag, while the former ranged his dark eyes scrutinizingly around the horizon. Nothing in sight!
Once more to their chapel of refuge, where, for the first time in all their association, putting the child to sleep by himself, the doctor sat down on the trestle by the entrance, and, lighted by the brilliant moon, he caught up the tangled mazes of the hide net which had bound him, and sedulously applied himself to a task before him.
Any one who has seen the effect produced by a violent gale upon the tattered shreds of a shivered main-top-sail, bound up into the most tortuous knots that it is possible to conceive of, and so hard and solid that you might saw the canvas balls in slices like boards, may form some idea of the task the doctor had imposed upon himself to loosen the hide strands tied together by the furious fingers of the hurricane. Patiently and quietly, with no sign of temper, he applied himself to the work, and with nothing but a sharp-pointed spike to aid his hands, he began to unravel, bit by bit, the laced knots and bunches of raw-hide, without ever cutting a strand, until, as the moon sank glimmering down, the tangled mass lay in clear coils beside him--though in several pieces, where it had been severed by the teeth of that little mouse purring behind the altar--and the task was done. Then raising the trestle, he bore it within the altar, and with the now unraveled coil of hide, and the softer silk rope for a pillow, he again stretched himself upon what once had been his bed of torture.
For what possible object all this labor had been undertaken, or for what future purpose--vague they must have been--no one but the persevering man who did it can tell; and there he lay, no sound coming from his compressed lips till the day dawned. Then he arose, and, kneeling over the sleeping child, he again solemnly repeated the oath he had before taken in his hut--
"Sleeping or waking, on land or sea, I devote the remainder of my wretched life to returning this lost child to his mother. So help me God!"
The little boy stirred, as if the angels and the sweet Virgin were whispering their protecting power over him, and, with a smile dawning upon his rosy, dimpled cheeks, he raised the lids from his bright hazel eyes, and put his fat round arms around the doctor's neck. If two great drops fell upon that upturned innocent little face from the dark full eyes bending over him, they were not tears of sorrow! Oh, no! It was the dew of hope and trustfulness falling from the soul of a repentant sinner relying upon an all-wise Providence.
"Come, my Henri, say your little prayer of the morning, and we will go." The man had taught the child that little prayer which he himself had learned at his mother's knee.
Up again to the crag, and down to the shelly margin of the shore; and a long look the man gave at the ruin of shed and den, as he gently placed the child on a sand-bag in the stern-sheets of the ark. Then he cast off the rope which held the vessel to the hated strand, hoisted the sail, and, as she bubbled along the inlet with the first sigh of the land wind, he stood at the helm with his bare head lighted up by the beams of the rising sun, and his lips moved in prayer.
On, noiselessly through the Tiger's Trap sailed the little pinnace till she bowed her rugged cutwater in the yielding waves, and with her square lug-sail swelling gently to the freshening breeze, she held her course to sea. I question much if the stanch brigantine, named the "Centipede," which had preceded her through this tiger's gorge, with all the ruffianly crew that manned her, and their villainous captain on her quarter-deck, stood half the chance of a prosperous voyage as the tiny ark, called the "Rosalie," which followed, with her noble, brave commander, and his weak and boyish mate. Who can tell?
END OF PART I.