The Pilot (63 page)

About a year before this melancholy event, a quarter-cask of wine had
been duly ordered from the south side of the island of Madeira, which
was, at the death of Manual, toiling its weary way up the rapids of the
Mississippi and the Ohio; having been made to enter by the port of New
Orleans, with the intention of keeping it as long as possible under a
genial sun! The untimely fate of his friend imposed on Borroughcliffe
the necessity of attending to this precious relic of their mutual
tastes; and he procured a leave of absence from his superior, with the
laudable desire to proceed down the streams and superintend its farther
advance in person. The result of his zeal was a high fever, that set in
the day after he reached his treasure: and as the doctor and the major
espoused different theories, in treating a disorder so dangerous in that
climate—the one advising abstemiousness, and the other administering
repeated draughts of the cordial that had drawn him so far from home—
the disease was left to act its pleasure. Borroughcliffe died in three
days; and was carried back and interred by the side of his friend, in
the very hut which had so often resounded with their humors and
festivities. We have been thus particular in relating the sequel of the
lives of these rival chieftains, because, from their want of connection
with any kind heart of the other sex, no widows and orphans were left to
lament their several ends; and furthermore, as they were both mortal,
and might be expected to die at a suitable period, and yet did not
terminate their career until each had attained the mature age of
threescore, the reader can find no just grounds of dissatisfaction at
being allowed this deep glance into the womb of fate.

The chaplain abandoned the seas in time to retrieve his character, a
circumstance which gave no little satisfaction to Katherine, who
occasionally annoyed her worthy husband on the subject of the
informality of their marriage.

Griffith and his mourning bride conveyed the body of Colonel Howard in
safety to one of the principal towns in Holland, where it was
respectfully and sorrowfully interred; after which the young man removed
to Paris, with a view of erasing the sad images which the hurried and
melancholy events of the few preceding days had left on the mind of his
lovely companion. From this place Cecilia held communion, by letter,
with her friend Alice Dunscombe; and such suitable provision was made in
the affairs of her late uncle as the times would permit. Afterwards,
when Griffith obtained the command which had been offered him before
sailing on the cruise in the North Sea, they returned together to
America. The young man continued a sailor until the close of the war,
when he entirely withdrew from the ocean, and devoted the remainder of
his life to the conjoint duties of a husband and a good citizen.

As it was easy to reclaim the estates of Colonel Howard, which, in fact,
had been abandoned more from pride than necessity, and which had never
been confiscated, their joint inheritances made the young couple
extremely affluent; and we shall here take occasion to say that Griffith
remembered his promise to the dying master, and saw such a provision
made for the childless mother as her situation and his character
required.

It might have been some twelve years after the short cruise, which it
has been our task to record in these volumes, that Griffith, who was
running his eyes carelessly over a file of newspapers, was observed by
his wife to drop the bundle from before his face, and pass his hand
slowly across his brow, like a man who had been suddenly struck with
renewed impressions of some former event, or who was endeavoring to
recall to his mind images that had long since faded.

"See you anything in that paper to disturb you, Griffith?" said the
still lovely Cecilia. "I hope that now we have our confederate
government the States will soon recover from their losses—but it is one
of those plans to create a new navy that has met your eye! Ah! truant!
you sigh to become a wanderer again, and pine after your beloved ocean!"

"I have ceased sighing and pining since you have begun to smile," he
returned with a vacant manner, and without removing his hand from his
brow.

"Is not the new order of things, then, likely to succeed? Does the
Congress enter into contention with the President?"

"The wisdom and name of Washington will smooth the way for the
experiment, until time shall mature the system. Cecilia, do you remember
the man who accompanied Manual and myself to St. Ruth, the night we
became your uncle's prisoners, and who afterwards led the party which
liberated us, and rescued Barnstable?"

"Surely I do; he was the pilot of your ship, it was then said; and I
remember the shrewd soldier we entertained even suspected that he was
one greater than he seemed."

"The soldier surmised the truth; but you saw him not on that fearful
night, when he carried us through the shoals! and you could not witness
the calm courage with which he guided the ship into those very channels
again, while the confusion of battle was among us!"

"I heard the dreadful din! And I can easily imagine the horrid scene,"
returned his wife, her recollections chasing the color from her cheeks
even at that distance of time; "but what of him? is his name mentioned
in those papers? Ah! they are English prints! you called his name Gray,
If I remember?"

"That is the name he bore with us! He was a man who had formed romantic
notions of glory, and wished everything concealed in which he acted a
part that he thought would not contribute to his renown."

"Can there have been any connection between him and Alice Dunscombe?"
said Cecilia, dropping her work in her lap, in a thoughtful manner. "She
met him alone, at her own urgent request, the night Katherine and myself
saw you in your confinement, and even then my cousin whispered that they
were acquainted! The letter I received yesterday from Alice was sealed
with black, and I was pained with the melancholy, though gentle manner,
in which she wrote of passing from this world into another!"

Griffith glanced his eye at his wife with a look of sudden Intelligence,
and then answered, like one who began to see with the advantages of a
clearer atmosphere:

"Cecilia, your conjecture is surely true! Fifty things rushed to my mind
at that one surmise—his acquaintance with that particular spot—his
early life—his expedition—his knowledge of the abbey, all confirm it!
He, altogether, was indeed a man of marked character!"

"Why has he not been among us," asked Cecilia; "he appeared devoted to
our cause?"

"His devotion to America proceeded from desire of distinction, his
ruling passion, and perhaps a little also from resentment at some
injustice which he claimed to have suffered from his own countrymen. He
was a man, and not therefore without foibles—among which may have been
reckoned the estimation of his own acts but they were most daring, and
deserving of praise! neither did he at all merit the obloquy that he
received from his enemies. His love of liberty may be more questionable;
for if he commenced his deeds in the cause of these free States, they
terminated in the service of a despot! He is now dead—but had he lived
in times and under circumstances when his consummate knowledge of his
profession, his cool, deliberate, and even desperate courage, could have
been exercised in a regular and well-supported navy, and had the habits
of his youth better qualified him to have borne, meekly, the honors he
acquired in his age, he would have left behind him no name in its lists
that would have descended to the latest posterity of his adopted
countrymen with greater renown!"

"Why, Griffith," exclaimed Cecilia, in a little surprise, "you are
zealous in his cause! Who was he?"

"A man who held a promise of secrecy while living, which is not at all
released by his death. It is enough to know that he was greatly
instrumental in procuring our sudden union, and that our happiness might
have been wrecked in the voyage of life had we not met the unknown Pilot
of the German Ocean."

Perceiving her husband to rise, and carefully collect the papers in a
bundle, before he left the room, Cecilia made no further remark at the
time, nor was the subject ever revived between them.