CHAPTER XXXII.

MYNHEER TULP.

I brought the brig to an anchor in the Small Downs off Sandown Castle toward the close of the month of August, 1815. The weather in the Channel had been thick; I had shipped a couple of fishermen off Plymouth to assist in the navigation of the brig, and from abreast of that port I had groped the whole distance to the Downs with the hand-lead.

It was thick weather when I arrived off Deal; the breeze was a “soldier’s wind” for the Channel; I counted five vessels only, and no man-of-war was in sight when I brought up. The Dutch flag flew at our trysail gaff-end, and our decks were bare of artillery from stem to stern; for on entering the Channel I had caused all the guns to be struck into the hold that the little ship, should we be boarded, might present the appearance of a peaceful trader.

On letting go the anchor I sent two letters ashore by a Deal boat; one was for my uncle Captain Round, who I had learnt from the boatmen was well and hearty; the other was in the handwriting of the Señorita Aurora, and addressed to Mr. Gerald Maxwell at Madrid. It was soon after nine in the morning when we brought up; and while the church clocks of Deal were striking eleven my uncle came alongside. He was alone; I had asked him in a mysteriously phrased passage of my letter to come alone; the fellow that rowed him alongside was the decayed waterman who had opened the door to me that night when I visited my uncle after leaving the _Royal Brunswicker_.

My uncle held me by both hands for at least five minutes. The whole expression of his face was a very gape of astonishment. He looked me all over, he looked the brig all over; he panted for words; when he was able to articulate he said, “Bill, I thought you was drowned?”

“You got my letter?”

“Yes, and came off at once.”

“I sent you a letter written at sea weeks and weeks ago.”

“This is the only letter I have received from you,” said he; and, trembling with agitation and excitement, he pulled out the letter that I had sent ashore that morning.

The sailors were watching us, and my uncle, now that he had his voice, shouted; so, taking the dear old fellow by the arm, I carried him into the cabin, where sat the lady Aurora occupied in furbishing up her hat to fit her for going ashore. My uncle started and stared at her. He looked plump and and well kept, with his bottle-green coat, broad brimmed, low crowned hat, and boots like a postillion’s of that time. His face was jolly and rosy, despite the blueness of his lips; he seemed, indeed, more weather-stained and sea-going than I, as though it was the uncle and not the nephew who was just returned from three years of the ocean. He stared at the lady Aurora, and whipped his hat off and bent his back in a bow quick with nerve. The lady rose and courtesyed.

“Your wife, Bill?” said he.

“No, a shipwrecked lady. We took her off a rock in the South Pacific.”

“Off a rock! Lord love you all! What’s next to come?”

“Often have I heard Señor Fielding speak of you, Captain Round,” said Miss Aurora.

“Yes, I will believe that of Bill, ma’am.”

“I am shipwrecked, indeed,” she exclaimed with a fine arch smile and flashing look that carried me deep into the heart of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans ere Gerald Maxwell was, or when, if he had been aboard, he’d have seen us sitting very close side by side over a lesson in English; “judge by my gown.” She swept it at the knees. “I am not fit to be seen.”

“But ye are then, believe me,” said my uncle; and he sidled up to me and, rubbing my arm with his elbow, muttered, “handsomest woman I ever saw in my life, Bill; if she aint the Queen of Spain.”

“Señorita,” said I, addressing her in Spanish, “my uncle and I will talk at this table; let us not disturb you. You and I have no secrets--now.”

She smiled and looked grave all in a moment, slightly bowed and resumed her seat and her work. And, indeed, I minded not her presence. Much that I should presently say, much that would presently be spoken by my uncle, must be as unintelligible to her as Welsh or Erse.

We seated ourselves, and I took my uncle by the hand and blessed God for the privilege of beholding him again. I inquired after my aunt; she was well; after my cousin; hale and hearty; married three months since, lived in a small house at Folkstone, whence her young husband traded in a ship of which he was part owner. I asked after Captain Spalding. The _Royal Brunswicker_ had passed through the Downs in the previous December; my uncle had heard nothing of her since; he had written to Spalding that I was drowned after having been pressed, and while being conveyed aboard a frigate off Deal. He had claimed my wages and clothes as next of kin, and Spalding had sent him what was due to me and what remained of my togs. I asked how many men of the frigate’s boat had perished; he replied only one man was picked up, one of the pressed men, an Irishman.

“That was the fellow,” said I, “whose behavior led to the disaster.”

I had many more questions to ask, the tediousness of which I will not bestow upon you. I then entered upon the story of my own adventures from the hour of my leaving his house on that black night of storm and thunder. He stopped me after I had related my gibbet experience to tell me that a tall woman, dressed as a widow, was found about forty yards distant from the gibbet, dead, with her arms round the ironed body of the felon. Miss Aurora looked up at this; she had heard me tell that story of the gibbet and the lightning stroke and the mother. She looked up, I say, muttered, and crossed herself, then went on with her work. I paused to think a little upon the dead mother, then proceeded steadily with my story; when I came to Greaves’ narrative of the discovery of the dollar-ship my uncle’s eyes grew small in his head with the intentness of his gaze.

He seldom winked; he breathed small and faint until I described the discovery of the dollars and their transhipment, on which he fetched a deep breath and hit the table a sounding blow with his fist. Manifold were the changes of his countenance as I progressed; he lived in every