Chapter 18

"To-day I ride out with Sir Ralph to the Meer, and as thou hast often wished--because it was forbidden, I guess--thou shalt ride with us a short distance; I will toss thee on before me, and away we'll gallop--like the Prince of Trebizond on the fairy horse."

"And shall we see the mermaid?" said the little maiden quickly, as though her mind had been running on the subject.

"I wish the old nurse would not put such foolery in the girl's head," said Mrs Harrington impatiently. "There be no mermaids now, my love."

"What! not the mermaid of Martin Meer?" inquired the child, seemingly disappointed.

Harrington left the room, promising to return shortly.

The morning was dull, but the afternoon broke out calm and bright. Grace was all impatience for the ride; and Rosalind, the favourite mare, looked more beautiful than ever in her eyes. She bounded down the terrace at the first sound of the horses' feet, leaving Mrs Harrington to follow.

The cavaliers were already mounted, but the child suddenly drew back.

"Come, my love," said Harrington, stretching out his hand; "look how your pretty Rosalind bends her neck to receive you."

Seeing her terror, Mrs Harrington soothed these apprehensions, and fear was soon forgotten amid the pleasures she anticipated.

"You are back by sunset, Harrington?"

"Fear not, _I_ shall return," replied he; and away sprang the pawing beasts down the avenue. The lady lingered until they were out of sight. Some unaccountable oppression weighed down her spirits; she sought her chamber, and a heavy sob threw open the channel which hitherto had restrained her tears.

They took the nearest path towards the Meer, losing sight of it as they advanced into the low flat sands, scarcely above its level. When again it opened into view its wide waveless surface lay before them, reposing in all the sublimity of loneliness and silence. The rapture of the child was excessive. She surveyed with delight its broad unruffled bosom, giving back the brightness and glory of that heaven to which it looked; to her it seemed another sky and another world, pure and spotless as the imagination that created it.

They entered the fisherman's hut; but it was deserted. Years had probably elapsed since the last occupation. Half-burnt turf and bog-wood lay on the hearth; but the walls were crumbling down with damp and decay.

The two friends were evidently disappointed. At times they looked out anxiously, but in vain, as it might seem; for they again sat down, silent and depressed, upon a turf-heap by the window, while the child ran playing and gambolling towards the beach.

Harrington sat with his back to the window, when suddenly the low murmuring noise he had heard on his former visit was repeated. He turned pale.

"Thou art not alone; and where is the child?" or words to this purport were uttered in a whisper. He started aside; the sound, as he thought, was close to his ear. Molyneux heard it too.

"Shall I depart?" said he, cautiously; "I will take care to keep within call."

"Nay," said his friend, whispering in his ear, "thou must ride out of sight and sound too, I am afraid, or we shall not accomplish our plans for the child's safety. Depart with the attendants; I fear not the woman. Say to my lady I will return anon."

With some reluctance Sir Ralph went his way homewards, and Harrington was left to accomplish these designs without assistance.

Immediately he walked out towards the shore; but he saw nothing of the child, and his heart misgave him. He called her; but the sound died with its own echo upon the waters. The timid rabbit fled to its burrow, and the sea-gull rose from her gorge, screaming away heavily to her mate; but the voice of his child returned no more!

Almost driven to frenzy, he ran along the margin of the lake to a considerable distance, returning after a fruitless search to the hut, where he threw himself on the ground. In the agony of his spirit he lay with his face to the earth, as if to hide his anguish as he wept.

How long he remained was a matter of uncertainty. On a sudden, instantaneously with the rush that aroused him, he felt his arms pinioned, and that by no timid or feeble hand. At the same moment a bandage was thrown over his eyes, and he found himself borne away swiftly into a boat. He listened for some time to the rapid stroke of the oars. Not a word was spoken from which he could ascertain the meaning of this outrage. To his questions no reply was vouchsafed, and in the end he forbore inquiry--the mind wearied into apathy by excitement and its consequent exhaustion.

The boat again touched the shore, and he was carried out. The roar of the sea had for some time been rapidly growing louder as they neared the land. He was now borne along over hillocks of loose sand to the sea-beach, when he felt himself fairly launched upon the high seas. He heard the whistling of the cordage, the wide sail flap to the wind, with the groan of the blast as it rushed into the swelling canvas; then he felt the billows prancing under him, and the foam and spray from their huge necks as they swept by. It was not long ere he heard the sails lowered; and presently they were brought up alongside a vessel of no ordinary bulk. Harrington was conducted with little ceremony into the cabin; the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he found himself in the presence of a weather-beaten tar, who was sitting by a table, on which lay a cutlass and a pair of richly-embossed pistols.

"We have had a long tug to bring thee to," said the captain; "but we always grapple with the enemy in the long run. If thou hast aught to say why sentence of death should not pass on thee, ay, and be executed straightway too--say on. What! not a shot in thy locker? Then may all such land-sharks perish, say I, as thus I signify thy doom." He examined his pistols with great nicety as he spoke. Harrington was dumb with amazement, whilst his enemy surveyed him with a desperate and determined glance. At length he stammered forth--

"I am ignorant of thy meaning; much less can I shape my defence. Who art thou?"

The other replied, in a daring and reckless tone--

"I am the Free Rover, of whom thou hast doubtless heard. My good vessel and her gallant crew ne'er slackened a sky-raker in the chase, nor backed a mainsail astern of the enemy. But pirate as I am--hunted and driven forth like the prowling wolf, without the common rights and usages of my fellow men--I have yet their feelings. I _had_ a child! Thy fell, unpitying purpose, remorseless monster, hath made me childless! But thou hast robbed the lioness of her whelp, and thou art in her gripe!"

"As my hope is to escape thy fangs, I am innocent of the crime."

"Maybe thou knowest not the mischief thou hast inflicted; but thy guilt and my bereavement are not the less. My child was ailing; we were off this coast, when we sent her ashore secretly until our return. A fisherman and his wife, to whom our messenger entrusted the babe, were driven forth by thee one bitter night without a shelter. The child perished; and its mother chides my tardy revenge."

"'Tis a falsehood!" cried Harrington, "told to cover some mischievous design. The child, if it be thine, was given to my care--by whom I know not. I have nurtured her kindly; not three hours ago, as I take it, she was in yonder hut; but she has been decoyed from me; and I am here thy prisoner, and without the means of clearing myself from this false and malicious charge."

The captain smiled incredulously.

"Thou art lord of yonder soil, I own; but thou shouldest have listened to the cry of the helpless. I have here a witness who will prove thy story false--the messenger herself. Call hither Oneida," said he, speaking to the attendants. But this personage could not be found.

"She has gone ashore in her canoe," said the pirate; "and the men never question her. She will return ere mid-watch. Prepare: thou showedst no mercy, and I have sworn!"

Harrington was hurried to a little square apartment, which an iron grating sufficiently indicated to be the state prison. The vessel lay at anchor; the intricate soundings on that dangerous coast rendered her perfectly safe from attack, even if she had been discovered. He watched the stars rising out, calm and silently, from the deep: "Ere yon glorious orb is on the zenith," thought he, "I may be--what?" He shrank from the conclusion. "Surely the wretch will not dare to execute his audacious threat?" He again caught that red and angry star gleaming portentously on him. It seemed to be his evil genius; its malignant eye appeared to follow out his track, to haunt him, and to beset his path continually with suffering and danger. He stood by the narrow grating, feverish and apprehensive; again he heard that low murmuring voice which he too painfully recognised. The mysterious being of the lake stood before him.

"White man"--she spoke in a strange and uncouth accent;--"the tree bows to the wing of the tempest--the roots look upward--the wind sighs past its withered trunk--the song of the warbler is heard no more from its branches, and the place of its habitation is desolate. Thine enemies have prevailed. I did it not to compass thine hurt: I knew not till now thou wert in their power; and I cannot prevent the sacrifice."

"Restore the child, and I am safe," said Harrington, trembling in his soul's agony at every point; "or withdraw thy false, thine accursed accusations."

"Thou knowest not my wrongs and my revenge! Thou seest the arrow, but not the poison that is upon it. The maiden, whose race numbers a thousand warriors, returns not to her father's tribe ere she wring out the heart's life-blood from her destroyer. Death were happiness to the torments I inflict on him and the woman who hath supplanted me. And yet they think Oneida loves them--bends like the bulrush when the wind blows upon her, and rises only when he departs. What! give back the child? She hath but taken my husband and my bed; as soon might ye tear the prey from the starved hunter. This night will I remove their child from them--to depart, when a few moons are gone--it may be to dwell again with my tribe in the wigwam and the forest."

"But I have not wronged thee!"

"Thou art of their detested race. Yet would I not kill thee."

"Help me to escape."

"Escape!" said this untamed savage, with a laugh which went with a shudder to his heart. "As soon might the deer dart from the hunter's rifle as thou from the cruel pirate who has pronounced thy death! I could tell thee such deeds of him and these bloody men as would freeze thy bosom, though it were wide and deep as the lakes of my country. Yet I loved him once! He came a prisoner to my father's hut. I have spilled my best blood for his escape. I have borne him where the white man's feet never trod--through forests, where aught but the Indian or the wild beast would have perished. I left my country and my kin--the graves of my fathers--and how hath he requited me? He gave the ring of peace to the red woman; but when he saw another and a fairer one of thy race, she became his wife; and from that hour Oneida's love was hate!--and I have waited and not complained, for my revenge was sure! And shall I now bind the healing leaf upon the wound?--draw the arrow from the flesh of mine enemies? Thou must die! for my revenge is sweet."

"I will denounce thee to him, fiend! I will reveal"----

"He will not believe thee. His eye and ear are sealed. He would stake his life on my fidelity. He knows not of the change."

"But he will discover it, monster, when thou art gone. He will track thee to the verge of this green earth and the salt sea, and thou shall not escape."

With a yell of unutterable scorn she cried--

"He may track the wild bee to its nest, and the eagle to his eyrie, but he discerns not one footprint of Oneida's path!"

The pangs of death seemed to be upon him. He read his doom in the kindling eye and almost demoniac looks of the being who addressed him. She seemed like some attendant demon waiting to receive his spirit. His brain grew dizzy. Death would have been welcome in comparison with the horrors of its anticipation. He would have caught her; but she glided from his grasp, and he was again left in that den of loneliness and misery. How long he knew not; his first returning recollection was the sound of bolts and the rude voices of his jailers.

In this extremity the remembrance of that Being in whom, and from whom, are all power and mercy, flashed on his brain like a burst of hope--like a sunbeam on the dark ocean of despair.

"God of my fathers, hear!" escaped from his lips in that appalling moment. His soul was calmed by the appeal. Vain was the help of man, but he felt as if supported and surrounded by the arm of Omnipotence, while silently, and with a firm step, he followed his conductors.

One dim light only was burning above. Some half-dozen of the crew stood armed on the quarter-deck behind their chief; their hard, forbidding faces looked without emotion upon this scene of unpitying, deliberate murder.

To some question from the pirate Harrington replied by accusing the Indian woman of treachery.

"As soon yonder star, which at midnight marks our meridian, would prove untrue in its course."

Harrington shuddered at this ominous reference.

"I cannot prove mine innocence," said he; "but I take yon orb to witness that I never wronged you or yours. The child is in her keeping."

"Call her hither, if she be returned," said the captain, "and see if he dare repeat this in her presence. He thinks to haul in our canvas until the enemy are under weigh, and then, Yoh ho, boys, for the rescue. But we shall be dancing over the bright Solway ere the morning watch, and thy carcase in the de'il's locker."

"If not for mine, for your own safety!"

"My safety! and what care I, though ten thousand teeth were grinning at me, through as many port-holes. My will alone bounds my power. Who shall question my sentence, which is death?"

He gnashed his teeth as he went on. "And your halls shall be too hot to hold your well-fed drones. Thy hearth, proud man, shall be desolate. I'll lay waste thy domain. Thy race, root and branch, will I extinguish; for thou hast made me childless!"

The messenger returned with the intelligence that Oneida was not in the ship.

"On shore again, the ----! If I were to bind her with the main-chains, and an anchor at each leg, she would escape me to go ashore. No heed; we will just settle the affair without her, and he shall drop quietly into a grave ready made, and older than Adam. I would we had some more of his kin; they should swing from the bowsprit, like sharks and porpoises, who devour even when they have had enough, and waste what they can't devour."

"Thou wilt not murder me thus, defenceless, and in cold blood."

"My child was more helpless, and had not injured _thee_! Ye give no quarter to the prowling beast, and yet, like me, he only robs and murders to preserve his life. How far is it from midnight?"

"Five minutes, and yon star comes to his southing," said the person he addressed.

"Then prepare; that moment marks thy death!"

The men looked significantly towards their rifles.

"Nay," cried this bloodthirsty freebooter, "my arm alone shall avenge my child."

He drew a pistol from his belt.

"Yonder is Oneida," sang out the man at the main-top; "she is within a cable's length."

"Heed her not. When the bell strikes, I have sworn thou shalt die!"

A pause ensued--a few brief moments in the lapse of time, but an age in the records of thought. Not a breath relieved the horror and intensity of that silence. The plash of a light oar was heard;--a boat touched the vessel. The bell struck.

"Once!" shouted the fierce mariner, and he raised his pistol with the sharp click of preparation.

"Twice!"

The bell boomed again.

"Thrice!"

"Hold!" cried a female, rushing between the executioner and the condemned: But the warning was too late;--the ball had sped, though not to its mark. Oneida was the victim. She fell, with a faint scream, bleeding on the deck. But Harrington was close locked in the arms of his little Grace. She had flown to him for protection, sobbing with joy.

The pirate seemed horror-struck at the deed. He raised Oneida, unloosing his neckcloth to staunch the wound.

"The Great Spirit calls me:" she spoke with great exertion: "the green woods, the streams, land of my forefathers. Oh! I come!" She raised herself suddenly with great energy, looking towards Harrington, who yet knelt, guarded and pinioned--the child still clinging to him.

"White man, I have wronged thee, and I am the sacrifice. Murderer, behold thy child!" She raised her eyes suddenly towards the pirate, who shook his head, supposing that her senses grew confused.

"It was for thy rescue!" again she addressed Harrington. "The Great Spirit appeared to me: he bade me restore what I had taken away, and I should be with the warriors and the chiefs who have died in battle. They hunt in forests from which the red-deer flies not, and fish in rivers that are never dry. But my bones shall not rest with my fathers!--I come. Lake of the woods, farewell!"

She threw one look of reproach on her destroyer, and the spirit of Oneida had departed.

The pirate stood speechless and bewildered. He looked on the child--a ray of recollection seemed to pass over his visage. Its expression was softened; and this man of outlawry and blood became gentle. The savage grew tame. The common sympathies of his nature, so long dried up, burst forth, and the wide deep flood of feeling and affection rolled on with it like a torrent, gathering strength by its own accumulation.

Years after, in a secluded cottage by the mansion of the Harringtons, dwelt an old man and his daughter. She soothed the declining hours of his sojourn. His errors and his crimes--and they were many and aggravated--were not unrepented of. She watched his last breath; and the richest lady of that land was "THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER."

GEORGE FOX.

"O Thou who every thought pervades, My darkened soul inform: With equal hand Thy goodness guides A planet or a worm."

On the eastern side of Swart Moor, about a mile from Ulverstone, stands Swartmoor Hall. This bleak elevation took its name from Colonel Martin Swart, or Swartz, an experienced and valiant soldier, of a noble German family, to whom the Duchess of Burgundy, in 1486, entrusted the command of the troops which were sent to support Lambert Simnel in his claim to the English crown. A more detailed account of this transaction will be found in the first volume of our present series, in the tradition relating to "The Pile of Fouldrey." Suffice it to say that the rebel army was defeated here with great slaughter; and Swartz, along with several of the English nobility, was slain--an event which entailed the name of this chieftain on the place of his overthrow.

The hall, about 180 years ago, was the residence of Thomas Fell, commonly called Judge Fell, vice-chancellor of the Duchy Court at Westminster, and one of the judges that went the Welsh circuit; a man greatly esteemed both in his public and private capacity. His wife was a lady of exemplary piety: she was born at Marsh Grange, in the parish of Dalton, in the year 1614, and was married before she had attained to the age of eighteen. The Judge and his lady being greatly respected, and much hospitality being displayed in their house to ministers and religious people, George Fox, in the year 1652, on his first coming into Furness, called at Swartmoor Hall, and preaching there, and also at Ulverstone, Mrs Fell, her daughters, and many of the family adopted his principles. The Judge was then upon the circuit. On his return he seemed much afflicted and surprised at this revolution in his family; and in consequence of some malicious insinuations from those who met him with the intelligence, he was greatly exasperated against George Fox and his principles. By the prudent intervention of two friends, however, his displeasure was greatly mitigated; and Fox, returning hither in the evening, answered all his objections in so satisfactory a manner, that the Judge "assented to the truth and reasonableness thereof;" the tranquillity of the family was restored; and from that time, notwithstanding numerous attempts to detach him from the cause, he continued a steady friend to the members of the society and its founder on all occasions where he had the power. A weekly meeting was established in his house the following Sunday. But his patronage did not last many years; he departed this life in September 1658, his health having been for some time before considerably on the decline.

Mrs Fell, after his death, suffered much inconvenience and oppression because of the religious principles she had embraced; yet, notwithstanding, the weekly meetings continued to be held at her house until the year 1690, when a new meetinghouse was opened about a quarter of a mile distant.

In 1669, eleven years after the death of Judge Fell, she married George Fox, whom she survived eleven years, dying at Swartmoor Hall in February 1702, nearly eighty-eight years old.[15]

The house is still inhabited, though in a very dilapidated condition. The barns and stables by which it is surrounded, and the litter of the farmyard, give it a very mean and undignified appearance.

The tenant is a substantial farmer, who is very assiduous in showing the premises. The hall is spacious, with an oaken wainscoting. The bedrooms, which are large and airy, were formerly ornamented with carved work, now greatly damaged. In one of them is a substantial bedstead, with carved posts, on which it is said this reformer used to repose, and any of his followers have permission to occupy it for one night. This privilege is either not known, or perhaps not very highly appreciated, for the tenant states that not a single "Friend" has availed himself of it during the whole time he has resided there. Here is shown the study of George Fox in all its pristine plainness and simplicity. On one side of the hall is an orchard, looking almost coeval with the building. The house stands high, and the upper windows command an extensive and beautiful prospect. The meetinghouse is a neat plain building, in perfect repair, still used by the Friends at Ulverstone and the neighbourhood for religious worship. Over the door is the following inscription, "_Ex dono G.F. 1688_." There is a burial-place surrounded with trees attached to the chapel.

George Fox did not reside constantly at Swartmoor after his marriage. The greater part of his time was spent in itinerancy. He travelled nearly over the whole of Great Britain, and several parts of America in the exercise of his ministry. After encountering innumerable sufferings, oppositions, and afflictions, this indefatigable missionary departed this life on the 13th of November 1690, in the 67th year of his age, at a house in White Hart Court, London. He was interred in the "Friends Burying-Ground," near Bunhill Fields.