Part 2 (2/2)

”You used to sing 'life on the ocean wave' Mother, and I remember your saying once that you had no sympathy with Headley who declared that 'to sing that song by a good warm fire and being in it were two very different experiences,' for _you_ rather enjoyed the one you pa.s.sed through during your first voyage.”

”Yes, child, I remember! I was not as old then as now”; and she might have added ”and not as _guilty_ then as now”; but they pa.s.sed on.

It was nearly noon before a coasting vessel came in sight, and spying the little boat that was floating amid the waves the kind-hearted captain ordered three st.u.r.dy tars to go and capture it.

”Not so great a job as we've had sometimes,” remarked one playfully.

”Pull away boys, see--there is something in the bottom! Steady,--” and as they came alongside the speaker sprang into the boat.

”Och--but she's dead!” exclaimed Mike, as he raised the insensible child in his arms. ”She is! Look at her, s.h.i.+pmates,” he continued bringing her forward as he would a coil of rope.

”There isn't a bit of color in her face under the dirt; poor wee thing!”

and he pa.s.sed her over to a man with a very brown, weather-beaten face, who laid her tenderly on some blankets and began chafing her hands.

”She is _alive_, boys,” he said a few minutes after; ”here Mike--pa.s.s me that little bottle I saw you put in your pocket this morning, it looked to me like very good brandy,” he continued with a laugh, at the same time reaching out for it.

”Sorra a bit of _brandy_!”

”Never mind, pa.s.s it over, whatever it is. For once I'll not expose you for the good it may do now.” The small bottle was pa.s.sed and the kind man placed it to the lips of the insensible girl.

”Drink it, child,” he said in tones as low and soft as a woman's; ”it will make you well.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”LOOK AT HER, s.h.i.+PMATES!”]

She did not hear him; yet she did swallow the few drops that were turned into her mouth, and the good man's predictions proved correct, for in a few moments she opened her eyes, but turned her head, hid her face in the blankets on which she was lying.

”She is afraid of our hard old faces,” remarked the sailor who was bending over her; ”but we will soon be where there will be more agreeable ones. Give way, boys, they are waiting for us,” and rising, he left the ”wee” stranger to herself.

”I should think she would have got used to ugly faces if she has been where there's a gla.s.s,” remarked the third of the party, rather cruelly, but laughing and good-natured. They reached the schooner, and the wearied child was handed on board, amid many exclamations and intermingling remarks of sympathy and astonishment.

There were two women down in the small cabin; one the wife of Mike, who, in accordance with the kindness natural to her people, took the little outcast mariner under her especial care, and, with feminine instincts, provided for her wants.

The next few days the diminutive figure of Phebe Blunt sat upon the dark, dingy chest beneath the small narrow window in the cabin, looking out upon the blue, blue sea her beating heart so much loved, as it gathered up the jewels of emerald, and gold, and crystal pearls which the sunbeams scattered upon the wavelets' snowy crests, and with them her fancy built a palace of its own, to which in after years memory would often return and bear away some precious stones to adorn her sober real life.

”Ye're a strange child,” said Cathreen, one day, after watching her for a long time, as she sat coiled up on the heavy chest, her large eyes peering from the window at the dark waters over which they were sailing. ”What makes ye look so much at the sea? I'd rather see the land any time; and I wouldn't care a farthing if I never put my eyes on a bit of water again as long as I live.” The child turned her beaming face towards the speaker with an expression of wonder and incredulity playing over it.

”How _can_ it?” she asked at last, as her little brown hands brushed back the ma.s.s of dark hair from her broad forehead.

”Can what?” and the two women laughed heartily.

”Walk on the water. I couldn't, and I don't believe _He_ could,” and the bewildered gaze was turned again out of the narrow window.

”_Who_, child? Are you beside yourself?”

”_He!_ Lutie Grant's mother said He walked on the great sea, but _I_ don't believe it. How could He? _I_ can't.”

<script>