CHAPTER LIV.

CONCLUSION.

I have but little more to add, for with this last episode the course of wild adventures upon which I had been so strangely hurried, nearly closes.

A few hours after the death of Antonio, when Hislop and I, with Lambourne, Carlton, and other survivors of the _Eugenie_ were waiting in the office of the British Consul to make some arrangements for rewarding José Estremera for his great kindness to us all, we met Captain the Hon. Egerton B----, of H.M. ship _Active_, who was so struck with our story that he offered us all a passage to England, an offer which we accepted with gratitude.

His ship was leaving the African squadron, and returning home to be repaired.

"Rodney--Rodney," said he, ponderingly, when the Consul introduced me; "you ought to have been a sailor, for your name is well known in the service;" and his words brought the memory of my poor mother's ambition back to me, and I thought of the old picture which hung in the dining-room at home.

After a brief conference with his shipmates Tattooed Tom now came forward, and twirling his fragment of a hat, said that "if the noble captain had no objection, as he, Ned Carlton, Probart, and the other poor fellows of the _Eugenie_ were out of a berth, and at uncommon low water, they would gladly ship aboard the _Active_, and enter her Majesty's service."

Captain B----, who saw at a glance that they were all first-class seamen, readily accepted the offer, and promised them the usual bounty; on which they gave three loud cheers for the Queen, and it came from their throats not the less heartily that they were far away from her and in a foreign land, all tattered as they were, with scarcely a shirt to their backs.

"Heaven bless you, my lads," said Hislop; "this is the best thing you can do; and believe me, Captain B----, you will find my old shipmates neither waisters nor green-hands, but thorough A.B.'s."

As they all loved him, another cheer for Hislop followed, and while the captain went off to the _Active_ in his gig, we all adjourned to a posada to have a last friendly glass together.

Soon after, as the war steamer was to sail that evening, a boat under a midshipman came off for us, and then we bade farewell to José Estremera, to his mate, Manuel Gautier, to Fra Anselmo, and the old Governor of Surabaya.

"Come, Dick--we have no time to lose," said Hislop; "let us be off to the ship while daylight lasts; these fellows in Teneriffe haven't missed their diamond yet!"

I shall never forget my emotions of joy when the boat with Hislop and the rest of us came sheering alongside the _Active_.

She was so clean, so trig, so square aloft; with the bright copper gleaming in the water below; her black bulwarks and red portholes, through which her sixty-eights and thirty-twos peered above the brine; the snow-white hammock cloths, with the gold epaulets of the lieutenant of the watch glittering above them; the red-coated marines on her poop and forecastle; the great scarlet ensign of "Old England" floating at the gaff-peak:--and that no part of the illusion might be wanting, a little marine fifer, playing shrilly but sweetly "Home, sweet home," in one of the boats that lay alongside by the guess-warp boom.

She was so thoroughly British in her aspect, so unlike any thing we had seen in the seas we had traversed, that we felt _at home_ the moment our feet were on her deck of good old English oak--ay, as much at home as if we stood upon the chalky South Foreland, and saw the green hop-fields of fertile Kent at our feet, with the gray towers of Dover and the white spires of Deal in the distance. Old Lambourne uttered a shout, and pointed to the Union Jack.

One must be abroad and far away to feel to the full the emotions that are excited, and the confidence which is inspired on seeing the old flag, that has swept every sea and shore, waving in its pride from the gaff-peak of a British man-of-war!

It is then that we feel "what a sway _one little island_ has exercised over this mighty earth."

Hislop and I dined with Captain B----, who was anxious to hear our story in detail.

Our shipmates were told off to their several divisions, and we were placed in the ward-room mess for the remainder of the voyage.

We sailed that night, and under steam and canvas, as we bore away to the north, we soon saw the Peak of Adam sinking into the dark blue sea.

"Adieu to the Canaries," said Hislop, waving his hat; "the next shore we see will be Europe,--the white cliffs of Old England, perhaps."

But next day we sighted the great pitons of the Salvage Islands, a group of uninhabited rocks which are claimed by the Portuguese (perhaps because no one else cares about them), and which are surrounded by dangerous shoals. One of these isles closely resembles the fantastic rocks of the Needles, at the west end of the Isle of Wight.

On the Salvages the canary birds are so numerous, that an old voyager says, "it is impossible to walk without crushing their eggs."

We touched at Madeira, and after a delightful voyage of about sixteen days, ran up the Channel, and came to anchor in the Downs on the 20th of October.

* * * * *

I had been absent from home more than a year, when I found myself in London--in mighty London, with its dark forests of masts and its darker cathedral dome, that meets the eye from every point of view:--a wondrous and bewildering change, after traversing so long the wide and lonely sea!

With a heart swollen by anxiety to learn tidings of my father, my mother, and sisters, I reached the counting-house of my uncle's firm, Rodney and Co., in the city, but there was something so peculiar in my aspect, which pertained neither to sea nor shore, and was unmistakably outlandish, that old John Thomas, the porter, seemed inclined to shut the door in my face.

A short explanation, however, soon overcame his scruples, and I was then admitted.

My uncle was at Erlesmere; but his head clerk assured me that my family were all well, though they had long since given me up for dead, as a handsome (he assured me it was very handsome) white marble tablet erected to my memory in the Rectory church remained to testify.

My letters from Cuba had never reached home!

As I had no desire to shock my parents by a sudden surprise, a telegram preceded me, and in less than an hour I was off by the express-train for Erlesmere. But with all its speed, the express seemed too slow for me. Marc Hislop accompanied me until he could get a ship; but before looking for that he meant to visit his old mother, who lived somewhere in Scotland.

After all that we had undergone, all that I had to show my family were the sword and old book found in the water-logged brig, the creese of a mutinous Lascar, the ring given me by the Governor of Surabaya, and though mentioned last not esteemed the least, our diamond, of which Marc Hislop and I have not yet ascertained the value, or I should rather say its proper claim to the designation of a diamond.

For Marc Hislop's sake, more than my own, I trust that our sanguine expectations may be realized, and that it may, at all events, furnish him, out of his share of the prize, with the means of providing comfortably for the mother who so admirably trained him up to a love of knowledge and to a sense of duty.

I have now realized the truth of Goethe's maxim: "He that looks forward sees one way to pursue; but _he who looks backward sees many_."

And so, tempered by a year of adversity, enlightened by its experience and suffering, I have returned, more than ever determined to make up for lost time, and to work my way manfully to King's College, Cambridge; after which, the reader who has accompanied me so far, may perhaps hear of me again.

THE END.