with it, her jibboom and bowsprit, and even part of her bows, hang clear over that awful precipice of water, and if the ship moves faster than the breaker beneath her then her time is come.
It is a moment of awful suspense, but it is only a moment, for in shorter time than pen takes to describe it, the billow seems to sink and melt beneath her; again she bumps on the sand, but next minute amidst a chaos of snowy foam she is hurled into the deep water beyond.
An hour afterwards the Niobe is lying snugly at anchor in a little wooded bay, with all her sails furled, and nothing to tell of the dangers she has just come through, save the splintered mast, the ragged rigging, and sadly-torn bulwarks.
But the wind goes moaning through the mangrove forest, where birds and beasts are crouching low for shelter among the gnarled boughs and roots, and although the water around the Niobe is calm enough, the storm roars through her upper rigging, and she rocks and rolls as if out at sea.
The youthful sergeant is sitting beside the cot within the screen, but his head is bowed down with grief, and a sorrow such as men feel but once in a life-time is rending his heart. The little white hand of his wife still lies on the coverlet, but it is cold now as well as white. The heart that loved him had ceased to beat —
“And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on him sae fondly.”
All his bright visions of yesterday have fled away, all his hopes are crushed, his very soul seems dead within him.
At the very time the gale was raging its fiercest, and the sea threatening every minute to engulph the ship, the lady’s life had passed away, and he who sits here pen in hand was left without a mother’s care. Born on the stormy ocean, rocked in infancy on the cradle of the deep, no wonder he loves the sea, and can look back with pleasure even to the dangers he has encountered and gone through.
As the sea on which he was born, so stormy has been the life of him who tells this tale.
Chapter Two
“Majestic woods of every vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high waving o’er the hills;
Or to the far horizon wide diffused,
A boundless deep immensity of shade.”
“Hearts of oak!” our captain cried, “when each gun
From its adamantine lips,
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse of the sun.”
There are two events in the history of a man, of which he himself in writing his autobiography can hardly be expected to give any very clear account, namely, his birth and his death. To describe the former, he would require to be born with his eyes very wide open indeed, and instead of a silver spoon in his mouth, which they tell me some children are born with, a silver pencil-case behind his ear; to describe the latter, a man would need to be a prophet in reality. How is it then, it may be asked, that I, Niobe Radnor, am able with truthfulness and accuracy to give an account of the occurrences that were taking place around me when I first made my appearance on “the stage of life.” For the ability to do so, I am indebted to the only father I ever knew, my true and trusty old friend Captain (formerly boatswain) Ben Roberts, who supplies me with the facts.
Yonder he is, sitting out on the rose lawn there, as I write, book in hand, his white beard glittering in the spring sunshine, and his jolly old round red face surmounted by an immensity of straw hat – just as if his complexion could be spoiled, just as if a complexion that has borne the brunt of a thousand storms, been scathed and scarred in battle, blistered by many a fierce and scorching summer sun, and reddened by the snows of many a hard and stormy winter, could be spoiled.
Ah! dear old Ben! he is getting old, wearing up towards the threescore years and ten —
” – That form
That short allotted span.
That binds the few and weary years
Of pilgrimage to man.”
Yes, Ben is getting old. As oaks get old, so is my faithful friend getting old. As oaks in age are hard and tough, and defiant of the gales that rage through the forest, uprooting mighty trees, so is Ben my friend; and for all the storms he has weathered, I trust I shall have him by me yet for years and years to come. Ben is so buoyant and fresh, it always instils new blood into my veins merely to talk to him. “Ben, my boy,” I often say, “you are, by your own confession, some twenty years my senior, and yet I believe you feel as young and even younger than I do.”
“Well, Nie,” he replies, “I believe it’s the heart that does it, you know.
“For old as I am, and old as I seem,
My heart is full of youth.
“Eye hath not seen, tongue hath not told,
And ear hath not heard it sung,
How buoyant and bold, though it seem to grow old,
Is the heart for ever young.
“For ever young – though life’s old age
Hath every nerve unstrung;
The heart, the heart, is a heritage
That keeps the old man young.”
He always calls me “Nie” for short, “because,” he added once, by way of explanation, “your name is a heathenish kind of one at best, but a person is bound to make the most of it.”
I cannot deny that Ben is right; my name is a heathenish one. How did I come by it? I will tell you. I was born, as you know, at sea, in the Indian Ocean, in the Niobe, whilst she was cruising in that region in the search of slavers – born not long before the appearance of that terrible gale of wind described in the first chapter of this story, when the tempest was at its fiercest, and the stormy waves were doing their worst; born on board a vessel which seemed doomed to certain destruction. And it is the custom of the service to call a child by the name of the ship in which he first sees the light of day.
I never knew a father’s love or a mother’s tender care, for the gentle lady who gave me birth lived but a little after that event; but she bequeathed me all she had – her blessing – and died. In a glade in the gloomy depths of an African forest my mother is sleeping, in the shade of a banian tree. I stood by that lonely grave one morning not many years ago. The ground, I remember, was all chequered with sunshine and with shade from the tree above; little star-like primulas grew here and there. Among these and the fallen leaves sea-green lizards were creeping; high overhead bright-winged birds sang soft lullabies, and every time the wind moved the boughs a whole shower of sparkling drops fell down, like tears.
And my father? He never seemed to rally after my mother’s death until one hour before his own, just a fortnight and a day from that on which he had followed her to her grave in the forest like one dazed. He did not appear in his mess-place after this. He took no food, he spoke to no one, he spent his time mostly within the screen by the empty cot where my mother had been – in grief.
About the tenth day he suffered my friend Roberts (the boatswain) to lead him like a child to the spare cabin where his baby boy was sleeping; and in a daze he had seen her loved remains laid to rest beneath the tree. He bent over the grave for a moment, and then for the first time he burst into tears.
The Niobe remained for ten days where she had cast anchor, in order to make good repairs.
It
