Part 16

Both the captain and Tönnes had lashed themselves aft; for now the bark was but little better than a wreck, over which the billows broke incessantly, as the vessel, reeling like a drunken man, exposed herself to the violent attacks of the sea instead of parrying them.

"A sail to windward, captain!" cried Tönnes.

Captain Spang only nodded.

"She holds her course!" cried one of the crew excitedly. "No," said Tönnes, quietly. "She has seen us, and is bearing down upon us!"

The captain again nodded.

"Tis a brig!" cried one of the crew.

"A schooner-brig!" Tönnes corrected. "She carries her sails finely. I am sure she is a fruit-trader."

At last the strange vessel was so near that they could see her deck each time she was thrown upon her side in the violent seething sea.

"Yes, 'tis the schooner-brig!" exclaimed Tönnes. "Do you remember, captain, the time when--"

Again Captain Spang nodded. He acted strangely. Tönnes looked sharply at him, and shook his head.

Now Tönnes hailed the vessel:--

"Help us!--We are sinking!"

At this moment two or three of the bark's crew rushed toward the yawl, although Tönnes warned them back.

Captain Spang seemed changed. Evidently some opposing feelings contended within him. Seeing the insubordination of the men, he only shrugged his shoulders, and let Tönnes take full charge.

The men were in the yawl, still hanging under the iron davits. Now they cut the ropes; the yawl touched the water. The crew of the other vessel gestured warningly; but it was too late. A sea seized the yawl with its small crew, and the next moment crushed it against the main chains of the bark. Their shipmates raised a cry, and rushed to help them; but help was impossible. Boat and crew had disappeared.

"Didn't I say so?" cried Tönnes, with flaming eyes.

Over there in the schooner-brig all was activity. From the Anna Dorothea they could plainly see how the captain gave his orders. He manoeuvred his vessel like a true sailor. To board the wreck in such a sea would be madness. Therefore they unreeved two long lines and attached them to the long-boat, one on each side. Then they laid breeching under the boat, and hauled it up amidships by means of tackle. Taking advantage of a moment when their vessel was athwart the seas, they unloosed the tackle, and the boat swung out over the side; then they cut the breeching, the boat fell on the water aft, and now both lines were eased off quickly; while the brig caught the wind, the boat drifted toward the stern-sheets of the bark.

Tönnes was ready with a boat-hook, and connections were quickly made between the boat and the wreck.

"Quick now!" cried Tönnes. "Every man in the boat. No one takes his clothes with him! We may be thankful if we save our lives."

The men were quickly over the stern-sheets and down in the boat. Prussian whined, and kept close to Captain Spang, who had not moved one step on the deck.

"Come, captain!" cried Tönnes, taking the skipper by the arm.

"What's the matter?" asked the old man angrily.

Tönnes looked at him. Prussian barked.

"We must get into the boat, captain. The vessel may sink at any moment. Come!"

The captain pressed his sou'wester down over his forehead, and glanced around his deck.

The men in the boat cried out to them to come.

"Well!" said Captain Spang, but with an air so absent-minded and a bearing so irresolute that Tönnes at last took a firm hold on him.

Prussian showed his teeth at his former master.

"You go first!" exclaimed Tönnes, snatching the dog and throwing him down to the men, who were having hard work to keep the boat from wrecking.

When the dog was no longer on the deck, it seemed as if Captain Spang's resistance was broken. Tönnes did not let go his hold on him; but the young mate had to use almost superhuman strength to get the heavy old man down over the vessel's side and placed on a seat in the boat.

As soon as they had observed from the brig that this had been done, they hauled in both lines. The boat moved back again; but it was a dangerous voyage, and all were obliged to lash themselves fast to the thwarts with ropes placed there for that purpose.

Captain Spang was like a child. Tönnes had to lash him to the seat. The old man sat with his face hidden in his hands, his back turned toward his ship, inactive, and seemingly unconscious of what took place around him.

At last, when after a hard struggle all were on the deck of the schooner-brig, her captain came forward, placed his hand on his old friend's shoulder, and said:--

"It is the second time, you see! Well, we all cling to life, and the vessel over there is pretty old."

Captain Spang started. He scarcely returned his friend's hand-shaking.

"My vessel, I say! My papers! All that I have is in the vessel. I must go aboard, do you hear? I must go aboard. How could I forget?"

The other skipper and Tönnes looked at each other.

Captain Spang wrung his hands and stamped on the deck, his eyes fixed on his sinking vessel. She was still afloat; what did he care for the gale and the heavy sea? He belonged to the old school of skippers; he was bound to his vessel by ties longer than any life-line, heavier than any hawser: he had left his ship in a bewildered state, and had taken nothing with him that might serve to prove what he possessed and how long he had possessed it. His good old vessel was still floating on the water. He must, he would go there; if nobody would go with him, he would go alone.

All remonstrances were in vain.

Tönnes pressed the other skipper's hand.

"There is nothing else to be done. I know him," said he.

"So do I," was the answer.

Captain Spang and his mate were again in the boat. As they were on the point of starting, a loud whine and violent barking sounded from the deck, and Prussian showed his one eye over the railing.

"Stay where you are!" cried Tönnes. "We shall be back soon."

But the dog did not understand him. Perhaps he had his doubts; no one can say. He sprang overboard; Tönnes seized him by the ear, and hauled him into the boat.

And then the two men and the dog ventured back to the abandoned vessel.

This time the old man climbed on board without assistance.

Prussian whined in the boat.

"Throw that dog up to me!" cried the master.

Tönnes did so.

"Shall I come up and help you?" he called out.

"No, I can find my own way."

"But hurry, captain! do you understand?" said Tönnes, who anxiously noticed that the motions of the vessel were becoming more and more dangerous, while he needed all his strength to keep the boat clear of the wreck.

An answer came from the bark, but he could not catch it. In this moment Tönnes recalled the day when he rowed the captain out on the bay to the brig. His next thought was of Nanna. Oh, if she knew where they were!

And at this thought the mate's breast was filled with conflicting emotions. The dear blessed girl! Oh, if her father would only come!

"Captain!" cried Tönnes; "Captain Spang! for God's sake, come! Leave those papers alone. The vessel is sinking. We may at any moment--"

He paused.

The captain stood at the stern-sheets. At his side was Prussian, squinting down into the boat. There was an entirely strange expression in Andreas Spang's face; a double expression--one moment hard and defiant, the next almost solemn.

The sou'wester had fallen from his old head. His scanty hairs fluttered in the wind. He held in his hand a parcel of papers and a coil of rope. He pointed toward the brig.

"There!" he cried, throwing the package and the rope down to Tonnes. "Give the skipper this new line for his trouble. He has used plenty of rope for us. You go back. I stay here. Give--my--love--to the girl at home.--You and she--You two--God bless you!"

"Captain!" cried Tönnes in affright; "you are sick; come, let me--"

He prepared to climb on board.

Captain Spang lifted his hand threateningly, and Prussian barked furiously.

"Stay down there, boy, I say! The vessel and I, we belong together. You shall take care of the girl. Good-by!"

The Anna Dorothea rolled heavily over on one side, righted again, and then began to plunge her head downwards, like a whale that, tired of the surface, seeks rest at the bottom. The crew of the brig hauled in the lines of the boat. Tossed on the turbid sea, Tönnes saw his old skipper leaning against the helm, the dog at his side. His gray hairs fluttered in the wind as if they wafted a last farewell; and down with vessel and dog went the old skipper--down into the wild sea that so long had borne him on its waves.

THE PRINCE'S SONG

From 'Once Upon a Time'

Princess, I come from out a land that lieth-- I know not in what arctic latitude: Though high in the bleak north, it never sigheth For sunny smiles; they wait not to be wooed. Our privilege we know: the bright half-year Illumines sea and shore with sunlit glory; In twilight then our fertile fields we ear, And round our brows we twine a wreath of story.

When winter decks with frost the bearded oak, In songs and sagas we our youth recover; Around the hearthstone crowd the listening folk, While on the wall mysterious shadows hover. The summer night, suffused with loving glow, The future, dawning in a golden chalice, Enkindles hope in hearts of high and low, From peasant's cottage to the royal palace.

The snow of winter spreads o'er hill and valley Its soft and silken blue-white veil of sleep; The springtime bids the green-clad earth to rally, When through the budding leaves the sunbeams peep, The autumn brings fresh breezes from the ocean And paints the lad's fair cheeks a rosy red; The maiden's heart is stirred with new emotion, When summer's fragrance o'er the world is spread.

To roam in our fair land is like a dream, Through these still woods, renowned in ancient story, Along the shores, deep-mirrored in the gleam Of fjords that shine beneath the sky's blue glory. Upon the meadows where the flowers bloom The elfin maidens hide themselves in slumbers, But soon along the lakes where shadows gloom In every bosky nook they'll dance their numbers.

There are no frowning crags on our green mountains, No dark, forbidding cliffs where gorges yawn; The streams flow gently seaward from their fountains, As through the silent valley steals the dawn. Here nature smoothes the rugged, tames the savage. And men born here in victory are kind, Forbearing still the foeman's land to ravage, And in defeat they bear a steadfast mind.

I'm proud of land, of kindred, and of nation, I'm proud my home is where the waters flow; Afar I see in golden radiation My native land like sun through amber glow. Its warmth revives my heart, however lonely: Forgive me, Princess, if my soul's aflame,-- But rather be at home, a beggar only, Than, exiled thence, have universal fame.

Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

(1795-1820)

[Illustration: JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE]

Conspicuous among the young poets, essayists, and journalists, who made up literary New York in the early part of the century, was Joseph Rodman Drake, the friend of Halleck, and the best beloved perhaps of all that brilliant group. Hardly known to this generation save by 'The Culprit Fay' and 'The American Flag,' Drake was essentially a true poet and a man of letters. His work was characteristic of his day. He had a certain amount of classical knowledge, a certain eighteenth-century grace and style, yet withal, an instinctive Americanism which flowered out into our first true national literature. The group of writers among whom were found Irving, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Hoffman, Verplanck, Brockden Brown, and a score of others, reflected that age in which they sought their literary models. With the exception of Poe, who belonged to a somewhat later time and whose genius was purely subjective, much of the production of these Americans followed the lines of their English predecessors,--Johnson, Goldsmith, Addison, and Steele. It is only in their deeper moments of thought and feeling that there sounds that note of love of country, of genuine Americanism, which gives their work individuality, and which will keep their memory green.

Drake was born in New York, in August 1795. He was descended from the same family as the great admiral of Elizabethan days, the American branch of which had served their country honorably both in colonial and Revolutionary times. The scenes of his boyhood were the same as those that formed the environment of Irving, memories of which are scattered thick through the literature of the day. New York was still a picturesque, hospitable, rural capital, the centre of the present town being miles distant in the country. The best families were all intimately associated in a social life that was cultivated and refined at the same time that it was gay and unconventional; and in this society Drake occupied a place which his lovable qualities and fine talents must have won, even had it been denied him by birth. He was a precocious boy, for whom a career was anticipated by his friends while he was yet a mere child; and when he met Halleck, in his eighteenth year, he had already won some reputation.

The friendship of Drake and Halleck was destined to prove infinitely valuable to both. A discussion between Cooper, Halleck, and Drake, upon the poetic inspiration of American scenery, prompted Drake to write 'The Culprit Fay'--a poem without any human character. This he completed in three days, and offered it as the argument on his side. The scene of the poem is laid in the Highlands of the Hudson, but Drake added many pictures suggested by memories of Long Island Sound, whose waters he haunted with boat and rod. He apologized for this by saying that the purposes of poetry alone could explain the presence so far up the Hudson of so many salt-water emigrants. 'The Culprit Fay' is a creation of pure fancy, full of delicate imagery, and handled with an ethereal lightness of touch. Its exquisite grace, its delicate coloring, its prodigality of charm, explain its immediate popularity and its lasting fame. But the Rip Van Winkle legend is a far more genuine product of fancy.

Drake's few shorter lyrics throb with genuine poetic feeling, and show the loss sustained by literature in the author's early death. Best known of these is 'The American Flag,' which appeared in the Evening Post as one of a series of _jeux d'esprit_, the joint productions of Halleck and Drake, who either alternated in the composition of the numbers or wrote them together. The last four lines only of 'The American Flag' are Halleck's. The entire series appeared between March and July, 1819, under the signature of "The Croakers." Literary New York was mystified as to the authorship of these skits, which hit off the popular fads, follies, and enthusiasms of the day with so easy and graceful a touch. Politics, music, the drama, and domestic life alike furnished inspiration for the numbers; some of whose titles, as 'A Sketch of a Debate in Tammany' and 'The Battery War,' suggest the local political issues of the present day. There is now in existence a handsome edition of these verses, with the names of the authors of the several pieces appended, and in the case of the joint ownership with the initials D. and H. subscribed.

Drake's complete poems were not published during his lifetime. Sixteen years after his death by consumption in his twenty-sixth year, his daughter issued a volume dedicated to Halleck, in which were included the best specimens of her father's work. Many of the lesser known verses indicate his true place as a poet. In the touching poem 'Abelard to Eloise,' in the third stanza of 'The American Flag,' and in innumerable beautiful lines scattered throughout his work, appears a genuine inspiration.

In his own day, Drake filled a place which his death left forever vacant. His rare and winning personality, his generous friendships, his joy in life, and his courage in the contemplation of his inevitable fate, still appeal to a generation to whom they are but traditions. The exquisite monody in which Halleck celebrated his loss, links their names and decorates their friendship with imperishable garlands.

A WINTER'S TALE

From 'The Croakers'

"_A merry heart goes all the way, A sad one tires in a mile-a._" --WINTER'S TALE.

The man who frets at worldly strife Grows sallow, sour, and thin; Give us the lad whose happy life Is one perpetual grin: He, Midas-like, turns all to gold; He smiles when others sigh; Enjoys alike the hot and cold, And laughs through wet and dry.

There's fun in everything we meet; The greatest, worst, and best Existence is a merry treat, And every speech a jest: Be 't ours to watch the crowds that pass Where mirth's gay banner waves; To show fools through a quizzing glass, And bastinade the knaves.

The serious world will scold and ban, In clamor loud and hard, To hear Meigs[A] called a Congressman, And Paulding called a bard: But come what may, the man's in luck Who turns it all to glee, And laughing, cries with honest Puck, "Good Lord! what fools ye be!"

[A] Henry Meigs of New York, a Congressman from 1819 to 1821 in the Sixteenth Congress.

THE CULPRIT FAY

My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales, I see old Fairyland's miraculous show! Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, And fairies, swarming.... --TENNANT'S 'ANSTER FAIR'

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-- The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest; She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the firefly's spark-- Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still; The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings. Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow.

'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-- ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell) "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy day."

They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest-- They had driven him out by elfin power, And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above, below, on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!

They come not now to print the lea, In freak and dance around the tree, Or at the mushroom board to sup, And drink the dew from the buttercup;-- A scene of sorrow waits them now, For an ouphe has broken his vestal vow; He has loved an earthly maid, And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fanned her cheek with his wing of air, Played in the ringlets of her hair, And nestling on her snowy breast, Forgot the lily-king's behest. For this the shadowy tribes of air To the elfin court must haste away: And now they stand expectant there, To hear the doom of the culprit fay.

The throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy-- And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment seat; On his brow the crown imperial shone; The prisoner fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke:--

"Fairy! Fairy! list and mark: Thou hast broke thine elfin chain; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain-- Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye; Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high. But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment: Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider, huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug, and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list, and mark our mild decree-- Fairy, this your doom must be:--

"Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms; They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight.