Part 12

When James came to his senses, he found himself crowded with a dozen prisoners in a small dark hole between decks. They were lying on an old sail, and outside the door a sentry was pacing. The boy’s head ached wofully from the cutlass wound, but fortunately the blow had been a glancing one. The great flow of blood had saved the boy’s life; for in the mad rush of the British, he would have certainly been despatched had not his wound been so severe that he passed for dead. He was, though he did not then know it, the only survivor of the gallant little band who, driven to bay, had held the _Shannon’s_ boarding party.

His companions in this dismal captivity were perfectly quiet, depressed by defeat, and some of them seemed to be asleep.

[Illustration: “ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST.”]

“The ship is taken?” asked James, to whom the brief quarter of an hour of carnage seemed like a nightmare.

“Ay, it is,” replied the midshipman next him, “and we are bound on her to Halifax, prisoners of war.”

“Is Lawrence dead?”

“No; but fatally wounded; and so is Lieutenant Ludlow, and poor Bullard and White. The decks are like shambles.”

“And my uncle?”

“I don’t know your uncle, my lad.”

“He was in the mizzen-top’s crew. We made the last stand.”

“Then he has passed in the number of his mess. You are the only one left of those brave men. I saw them pull you out from under the bodies, and they chucked you in here when we were put in. I did not know that you were alive till you spoke just then. I thought that you might be so lucky as to be dead. Oh, if our fore-rigging had not been shot away, we should have given a better account of ourselves. Poor Lawrence!”

Then there was silence again in the strait, dark hole; but the creaking of the ship and the hurrying feet on deck told that the proud frigate was on her way to the enemy’s strong-hold at Halifax.

And James lay, with confused thoughts of the strange man, his uncle, dying like a hero for his country’s honor,--the weak, perverse man who had so ill guarded his own.

XV

The summer had run along into August. Captain Woodbury’s illness had been so severe that his sister had allowed him to believe that his son was still at Cambridge. But now Commencement Day had come, and his son was due at home for his brief summer vacation, and Miss Elizabeth could not longer put off telling her brother the story.

The Boston coach was due at noon, and before that hour she must break the news which would crush his heart; for he had in his slow convalescence been counting the hours which would bring his boy back to him.

The Captain was sitting in his bedroom in his big chair, while down-stairs his sister was mustering up her courage to tell her story. As there was nobody watching him, what was to prevent him from slipping down to State Street? It was a fine warm day; and Captain Woodbury, looking out at the blue sky and the great leafy elms, felt a longing to walk down to meet at the post-office the Boston coach upon which his son was expected. Certainly it was absurd that he should be kept in the house any longer. He had not spoken to any one save the doctor and his sister for weeks, and all the war news had been kept from him. There must have been more glorious victories over the proud ruler of the ocean. And James,--he had really heard nothing from the boy, and he was coming home to-day.

“Once you have fallen ill,” he said to himself, “these women will never admit that you are strong enough to escape from their clutches. She will never let me go if I tell her. I must steal away without her knowing it.”

And while Miss Woodbury sat trying to shape into words the story to her brother, he was tottering with the weak knees of a convalescent down the path to the street. His wits were for the nonce almost as weak as his knees, yet he was filled with delight at escaping from the stifled atmosphere of his sick chamber into the fresh open air.

“And James is coming in the coach,” he said to himself, “and maybe there has been a victory. I shall see all the neighbors. I must keep out of Dr. Parsons’ sight,” he thought; “a terrible martinet is Parsons. He wished me not to go out for a week, but these doctors do not know everything. Bless my heart, no!”

It took the feeble man a long while to get to the post-office, where the accustomed group of merchants, clerks, and other busy men were awaiting the arrival of the mail, and exchanging news and making trades while they waited.

Captain Woodbury slowly approached them, the unwonted exertion making him lean heavily on his cane. He was soon recognized by a group of the older merchants, his old associates. Among them were Deacon Fairbanks and Mr. Devereux, the shipbuilder. As the erring young Woodbury had been the subject of their conversation, the approach of his father caused a painful silence, and to relieve it, Mr. Devereux politely said:

“Ah, Neighbor Woodbury, I am glad to see you out again; though, to tell you the truth, you look very pale and weak, and little fit for such exertion.”

“She doesn’t know of it,--Elizabeth, I mean--” slyly replied Captain Woodbury; “I have slipped off all unbeknown to her. I expect James on the coach, you see, and couldn’t wait. I have been confined in the house so long that I grew impatient.”

Deacon Fairbanks had been the most silent of the group; for he had just been narrating, for the hundredth time, the story of the burglarious entry of his house, and had been declaring that he had no doubt whatever but that the thief had been James; but when the Captain had finished, he inquired:

“From where do you expect your son, Captain Woodbury?”

“From Cambridge, sir; ’tis the end of the year. You are waiting for your son, Mr. Devereux, are you not?”

“Yes, Captain Woodbury, but--why, sir, have you not heard?”

“Heard what, Mr. Devereux? I have heard nothing from James for some weeks, excepting the messages which he has sent to me in his letters to my sister.”

He grasped heavily at Mr. Devereux’s shoulder. He would have fallen to the ground had he not done so. “My boy is ill; my boy is dead, and they have not told me. My son, my son!”

Mr. Devereux passed his arm about his friend.

“Your son is not dead, Captain Woodbury; bear up.”

“Where is he, then? Has any ill befallen him?”

“Captain Woodbury,” replied Mr. Devereux, “you are too weak now; later.”

“Heaven! man, speak out;” said the Captain; “tell me your worst. I am weak, but I am over my illness. I can bear anything better than suspense.”

“Well, Captain Woodbury,” interrupted the Deacon, feeling that the moment had come to deal the shrewd blow to the man whom he had so long secretly hated. “If you must know the truth, your son James disappeared some weeks ago. He has not been at Cambridge and he has not been seen in Oldbury since the night my house was robbed.”

Captain Woodbury drew himself up.

“Fairbanks, what do you, mean? My boy not been seen since the night your house was robbed? Your house has not been robbed for years.”

“Oh,” interrupted the Deacon, “that was the first robbery by the uncle,--the nephew--”

“You lie, you miserable scoundrel!” cried Captain Woodbury, lifting his cane as if to strike the accuser of his son.

“I know whereof I speak, John Woodbury. On the night of May 28th I was waked up by a noise in my dining-room. I went down with a candle, and kneeling before my sideboard, a midnight robber, was your son. I recognized him clearly and had reason to remember him.”

He pointed as he spoke at the scar on his forehead left by the heavy tankard.

“He threw the old Pepperell tankard at me and nearly brained me.”

“The old Pepperell tankard!” exclaimed Mr. Devereux. “Tom Cheever stole that from you years ago. I have heard you tell the story hundreds of times. How could the boy throw that at you? How do you explain that?”

“Ay, sir, how do you explain that?” sneered Captain Woodbury. “You called my boy a robber just now. How could he have thrown that old tankard at you, which hasn’t been in your possession since the last century?”

The Deacon hesitated and looked confused, and the men about him, who had believed thoroughly in James’ guilt, began to doubt the word of his accuser.

At this juncture the Boston coach came rattling down over the cobble-stones of State Street and drew up at the post-office door. From the seat beside the driver a young man jumped to the sidewalk and rushed to embrace Captain Woodbury. It was James, thin and pale.

“Father! father!” he cried, as the old man hugged him.

“My son James, gentlemen, just returned from college,” said the old man. “Deacon Fairbanks, what have you to say now? Did that young man enter your house?”

The Deacon was silent.

“Father,” said James, “I am not returned from college, but from Halifax. I have just been exchanged as a prisoner of war. I was one of the crew of the _Chesapeake_.”

There was a crowd around the boy by this time.

“Yes; I shipped the day before the fight. I did enter the Deacon’s house, but to return property--not to rob.”

“Yes, and I owe this to you,” shouted the Deacon, pointing at his forehead.

“I threw the tankard to save my life,” replied James. “You were shooting at me. I don’t blame you for that. It’s no wonder that you took me for a burglar, but I was returning, as you know, your lost silver.”

“What did you mean, Fairbanks,” asked Mr. Devereux, “by telling us all these weeks that the boy was a thief?”

“I call him a midnight marauder and assassin,” sneered the Deacon, angry and confused. “Like uncle, like nephew,” and he turned to go.

“My uncle died on the _Chesapeake_ on the 1st of June, fighting for his country’s honor. His injury to you has been repaired. If you have any complaint to make against me to the authorities, I shall be found, if wanted, at my father’s house.”

And James, passing his arm around his father’s waist, walked up the street with him. What reception Aunt Elizabeth gave the two on their return, you may imagine.

* * * * *

That evening at sunset James and Alice were seated side by side on the low stone-wall of the burying-yard.

“The life of a prisoner is a wearisome thing, Alice; and one day is so like another that I shall not tire you with a long story. We reached Halifax five days after the fight, and a dreary voyage it was to us youngsters crowded in that black pen, and my wound, though not dangerous, was painful.”

“Ah, you poor lad,” said Alice, touching his bandages lightly with one of her fingers.

“Yet the wound made my imprisonment the easier to bear; for I was light-headed or drowsy most of the time. At Halifax I was sent to the hospital, and sent back to Boston to be exchanged with the first cartel of prisoners. There are nearly fifteen hundred poor fellows left at Halifax now. I am very fortunate to get back so soon; and no one knew where I was, for I did not write my father. I went on board the _Chesapeake_ almost as soon as I reached Boston, and went into action the next day. I was wretched enough through it all, and felt that I had disgraced myself forever, and had lost father, and you, and all happiness, my dearest girl.”

“I should have been true to you had you really come to steal,” she replied. “Grandfather never said to me that he thought that you were the one who came that night; but when I knew that the old silver had been returned and that you were not in town, I guessed the whole story. I did not know that any one else suspected you, and I kept silent. I heard that you had come back; and I knew that you would be here this evening. Grandfather will never let you come to our house.”

“My dearest girl, you and your mother shall leave him alone in his glory. I can get along without the old man’s forgiveness or his countenance. My poor uncle gave up his life to shield me when it came to that last rally on the _Chesapeake_, and he left me his heir. We shall not let our happiness be spoiled by any old man’s spite. I shall not go back to college. I am no scholar; the broad world is the only book from which I can learn. I have made up my mind to ask Mr. Devereux to take me into his ship-yard.”

“And your clippers shall carry the Stars and Stripes to every ocean, James,” she said.

“And the first shall be named after my own true love.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

On page 115, the sentence "It was known that his father intended him for the ministry, and it seemed to the straight-laced almost a blasphemy to connect James Cheever with the Congregational Church." The transcriber believes that the name should be James Woodbury, but has retained the text as printed.