Part 54 (1/2)
”One dear to both,” rejoined the free-trader ”His father was my nearest friend, and his mother long watched the youth of Eudora. Until this moment, he has, been our mutual care,--he must now choose between us.”
”He will not quit me!” hastily interrupted the alarmed Eudora--”Thou art my adopted son, and none can guide thy young mind like me. Thou hast need of woman's tenderness, Zephyr, and wilt not quit me?”
”Let the child be the arbiter of his own fate. I am credulous on the point of fortune, which is, at least, a happy belief for the contraband.”
”Then let him speak. Wilt remain here, amid these smiling fields, to ramble among yonder gay and sweetly-scented flowers?--or wilt thou back to the water, where all is vacant and without change?”
The boy looked wistfully into her anxious eye, and then he bent his own hesitating glance on the calm features of the free-trader.
”We can put to sea,” he said; ”and when we make the homeward pa.s.sage again, there will be many curious things for thee, Eudora!”
”But this may be the last opportunity to know the land of thy ancestors.
Remember how terrible is the ocean in its anger, and how often the brigantine has been in danger of s.h.i.+pwreck!”
”Nay, that is womanis.h.!.+--I have been on the royal-yard in the squalls, and it never seemed to me that there was danger.”
”Thou hast the unconsciousness and reliance of a s.h.i.+p-boy! But those who are older, know that the life of a sailor is one of constant and imminent hazard.--Thou hast been among the islands in the hurricane, and hast seen the power of the elements!”
”I was in the hurricane, and so was the brigantine; and there you see how taut and neat she is aloft, as if nothing had happened!”
”And you saw us yesterday floating on the open sea, while a few ill-fastened spars kept us from going into its depths!”
”The spars floated, and you were not drowned; else, I should have wept bitterly, Eudora.”
”But thou wilt go deeper into the country, and see more of its beauties--its rivers, and its mountains--its caverns, and its woods. Here all is change, while the water is ever the same.”
”Surely, Eudora, you forget strangely!--Here it is all America. This mountain is America; yonder land across the bay is America, and the anchorage of yesterday was America. When we shall run off the coast, the next land-fall will be England, or Holland, or Africa; and with a good wind, we may run down the sh.o.r.es of two or three countries in a day.”
”And on them, too, thoughtless boy! If you lose this occasion, thy life will be wedded to hazard!”
”Farewell, Eudora!” said the urchin, raising his mouth to give and receive the parting kiss.
”Eudora, adieu!” added a deep and melancholy voice, at her elbow. ”I can delay no longer, for my people show symptoms of impatience. Should this be the last of my voyages to the coast, thou wilt not forget those with whom thou hast so long shared good and evil!”
”Not yet--not yet--you will not quit us yet! Leave me the boy--leave me some other memorial of the past, besides this pain!”
”My hour has come. The wind is freshening, and I trifle with its favor.
'Twill be better for thy happiness that none know the history of the brigantine; and a few hours will draw a hundred curious eyes, from the town, upon us.”
”What care I for their opinions?--thou wilt not--cannot--leave me, yet!”