The Lifeboat - Robert Michael Ballantyne (best short books to read TXT) 📗

up to the cottage to-morrow, and let me know your plans."

"I shall be busy to-morrow, but I'll write," said Bax, as his friend left him. "Ay," he added, "there goes a real Christian, and a true-hearted friend. Ah's me! I'll never see him more!"

Bax wandered slowly and without aim over the dark waste for some time. Almost unintentionally he followed the path that led past the Checkers of the Hope. A solitary light burned in one of the lower windows of the old inn, but no sound of revelry issued from its doors. Leaving it behind him, Bax soon found himself standing within a few yards of the tombstone of the ill-fated Mary whose name he bore.

"Poor thing, 'twas a sad fate!" he murmured, as he contemplated the grave of the murdered girl, who had been a cousin of his own grandfather. "Poor Mary, you're at rest now, which is more than I am."

For some minutes Bax stood gazing dreamily at the grave which was barely visible in the faint light afforded by a few stars that shone through the cloudy sky. Suddenly he started, and every fibre of his strong frame was shaken with horror as he beheld the surface of the grave move, and saw, or fancied he saw, a dim figure raise itself partially from the earth.

Bax was no coward in any sense of that word. Many brave men there are who, although quite fearless in regard to danger and death, are the most arrant cowards in the matter of superstition, and could be made to flee before a mere fancy. But our hero was not one of these. His mind was strong, like his body, and well balanced. He stood his ground and prepared to face the matter out. He would indeed have been more than human if such an unexpected sight, in such circumstances, had failed to horrify him, but the effect of the shock soon passed away.

"Who comes here to disturb me?" said a weak voice that evidently belonged to this ghost.

"Hallo! Jeph, is that you?" exclaimed Bax, springing forward and gazing into the old man's face.

"Ay, it's me, and I'm sorry you've found me out, for I like to be let alone in my grief."

"Why, Jeph, you don't need to be testy with your friend. I'll quit ye this moment if you bid me; but I think you might find a warmer and more fitting bed for your old bones than poor Mary Bax's grave. Come, let me help you up."

Bax said this so kindly, that old Jeph's temporary anger at having been discovered passed away.

"Well, well," said he, "the only two people who have found me out are the two I like best, so it don't much matter."

"Indeed," exclaimed the young man in surprise, "who is number two, Jeph?"

"Tommy Bogey. He found me here on the night when Long Orrick was chased by Supple Jim."

"Strange, he never told me about it," said Bax.

"'Cause I told him to hold his tongue," replied Jeph, "and Tommy's a good fellow and knows how to shut his mouth w'en a friend asks him to-- as I now ask you, Bax, for I don't want people know that I come here every night."

"What! do you come here _every_ night?" cried Bax in surprise.

"Ay, every night, fair weather and foul; I've been used to both for a long time now, and I'm too tough to be easily damaged."

"But why do you this, Jeph? You are not mad! If you were, I could understand it."

"No matter, no matter," said the old man, turning to gaze at the tombstone before quitting the place. "Some people are fond of having secrets. I've got one, and I like to keep it."

"Well, I won't try to pump it out of you, my old friend. Moreover, I haven't got too much time to spare. I meant to go straight to your house to-night, Jeph, to tell you that I'm off to Australia to-morrow by peep o' day."

"Australia!" exclaimed Jeph, with a perplexed look in his old face.

"Ay, the blue peter's at the mast-head and the anchor tripped."

Here Bax related to his old comrade what he had previously told to Guy. At first Jeph shook his head, but when the young sailor spoke of love being the cause of his sudden departure, he made him sit down on the grave, and listened earnestly.

"So, so, Bax," he said, when the latter had concluded, "you're quite sure she's fond o' the other feller, are ye?"

"Quite. I had it from his own lips. At least he told me he's fond of _her_, and I could see with my own eyes she's fond of _him_."

"Poor lad," said Jeph, patting his friend's shoulder as if he had been a child, "you're quite right to go. I know what love is. You'll never get cured in _this_ country; mayhap foreign air'll do it. I refused to tell you what made me come out here lad; but now that I knows how the wind blows with _you_, I don't mind if I let ye into my secret. Love! ay, it's the old story; love has brought me here night after night since ever I was a boy."

"Love!" exclaimed his companion; "love of whom?"

"Why, who should it be but the love o' the dear girl as lies under this sod?" said the old man, putting his hand affectionately on the grave. "Ay, you may well look at me in wonderment, but I wasn't always the wrinkled old man I am now. I was a good-lookin' lad once, though I don't look like it now. When poor Mary was murdered I was nineteen. I won't tell ye how I loved that dear girl. Ye couldn't understand me. When she was murdered by that"--(he paused abruptly for a moment, and then resumed)--"when she was murdered, I thought I should have gone mad. I _was_ mad, I believe, for a time; but when I came back here to stay, after wanderin' in foreign parts for many years, I took to comin' to the grave at nights. At first I got no good. I thought my heart would burst altogether, but at last the Lord sent peace into my soul. I began to think of her as an angel in heaven, and now the sweetest hours of my life are spent on this grave. Poor Mary! She was gentle and kind, especially to the poor and the afflicted. She took a great interest in the ways and means we had for savin' people from wrecks, and used often to say it was a pity they couldn't get a boat made that would neither upset nor sink in a storm. She had read o' some such contrivance somewhere, for she was a great reader. Ever since that time I've bin trying, in my poor way, to make something o' the sort, but I've not managed it yet. I like to think she would have been pleased to see me at it."

Old Jeph stopped at this point, and shook his head slowly. Then he continued--

"I find that as long as I keep near this grave my love for Mary can't die, and I don't want it to. But that's why I think you're right to go abroad. It won't do for a man like you to go moping through life as I have done. Mayhap there's some truth in the sayin', Out o' sight out o' mind."

"Ah's me!" said Bax; "isn't it likely that there may be some truth too in the words o' the old song, `Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' But you're right, Jeph, it wouldn't do for _me_ to go moping through life as long as there's work to do. Besides, old boy, there's plenty of _this_ sort o' thing to be done; and I'll do it better now that I don't have anybody in particular to live for."

Bax said this with reckless gaiety, and touched the medal awarded to him by the Lifeboat Institution, which still hung on his breast where it had been fastened that evening by Lucy Burton.

The two friends rose and returned together to Jeph's cottage, where Bax meant to remain but a few minutes, to leave sundry messages to various friends. He was shaking hands with the old man and bidding him farewell, when the door was burst open and Tommy Bogey rushed into the room. Bax seized the boy in his arms, and pressed him to his breast.

"Hallo! I say, is it murder ye're after, or d'ye mistake me for a polar bear?" cried Tommy, on being put down; "wot a hug, to be sure! Lucky for me that my timbers ain't easy stove in. Wot d'ye mean by it?"

Bax laughed, and patted Tommy's head. "Nothin', lad, only I feel as if I should ha' bin your mother."

"Well, I won't say ye're far out," rejoined the boy, waggishly, "for I do think ye're becomin' an old wife. But, I say, what can be wrong with Guy Foster? He came back to the cottage a short while ago lookin' quite glum, and shut himself up in his room, and he won't say what's wrong, so I come down here to look for you, for I knew I'd find ye with old Jeph or Bluenose."

"Ye're too inquisitive," said Bax, drawing Tommy towards him, and sitting down on a chair, so that the boy's face might be on a level with his. "No doubt Guy will explain it to you in the morning. I say, Tommy, I have sometimes wondered whether I could depend on the friendship which you so often profess for me."

The boy's face flushed, and he looked for a moment really hurt.

"Tutts, Tommy, you're gettin' thin-skinned. I do but jest."

"Well, jest or no jest," said the boy, not half pleased, "you know very well that nothing could ever make me turn my back on _you_."

"Are you sure?" said Bax, smiling. "Suppose, now, that I was to do something very bad to you, something unkind, or that _looked_ unkind-- what then?"

"In the first place you couldn't do that, and, in the second place, if you did I'd like you just as well."

"Ay, but suppose," continued Bax, in a jocular strain, "that what I did was _very_ bad."

"Well, let's hear what you call very bad."

Bax paused as if to consider, then he said: "Suppose, now, that I were to go off suddenly to some far part of the world for many years without so much as saying good-bye to ye, what would you think?"

"I'd find out where you had gone to, and follow you, and pitch into you when I found you," said Tommy stoutly.

"Ay, but I did not ask what you'd do; I asked what you'd think?"

"Why, I would think something had happened to prevent you lettin' me know, but I'd never think ill of you," replied Tommy.

"I believe you, boy," said Bax, earnestly. "But come, enough o' this idle talk. I want you to go up to the cottage with a message to Guy. Tell him not to speak to any