Book 7 — THE CAPTAIN'S SELF-DEVOTION.[9]

THE CAPTAIN'S SELF-DEVOTION.[9]

Some twenty years ago my father had a new ship launched from the stocks. A large company had assembled at our house to witness the ceremony of christening the vessel, and afterward to celebrate the marriage of the captain who was to take command of her. He had been for a long time in my father's service, had been uniformly successful in his voyages, and was just the man to take charge of a new enterprise on the western coast of Africa.

Captain Jan Evers, from the time when he first went to sea as cabin-boy, had lived but little at home, with the exception of the time which he subsequently passed with his parents, while he was attending his course at the Navigation School of Hamburg, in order to prepare for his examination as pilot. His parents owned a bit of ground in the village of Neumühlen, the long rows of houses of which stretch along the mouth of the Elbe, beyond Altona. After the death of the old people, the house stood for a long while uninhabited; until, in the year of which I now speak, the captain, who had returned from a voyage, concluded, at the desire of my father, not to go to sea again, until his new ship should be ready. This induced him to have the long-closed shutters of his house opened, in order to take up his own residence there; for he had never rented it.

You must be aware of the extraordinary cleanliness of the northern sea-ports, and must have seen how the sailors love to have their houses as neat as their ships; and how in Neumühlen, where many captains and pilots have their little estates, the houses seem to shine with the incessant care bestowed upon them, in order to comprehend how vexed Jan Evers was when he found his long-deserted house to have suffered sadly from neglect. The little garden-plot before the door, which is never wanting, was full of weeds; the boughs of the fine linden had run wild all about, and shaded the chambers, which had thereby grown mouldy, so that the green paint on the walls had contracted ugly yellow stains. The whole aspect of the house made a melancholy impression, and even the Chinese mandarin which was still standing upon the walnut buffet, where Jan used to see it when a child, seemed to nod its head gloomily when Jan once more took possession of his paternal abode.

The captain, who was a fresh jolly fellow of some forty years old, was no longer the same man after he had passed a couple of weeks there. He grew moody, peevish, and barely civil; and my father often lamented the impatience with which he awaited the completion of the ship, in order to be off again.

One day Evers came to our house at an unusual hour, and desired to see my father, who at that time of day was not usually in his counting-room, but with his family. The captain was shown in, and after we children had been sent away, at his desire, he said:

"I have something to say to you which it is best your good lady should hear, too. I have just come from the dock-yard, where I have been looking at the ship. It will be two months before she will be off the stocks. Then it will be too late to go to sea, even if you should have her rigged upon the stocks. I can't get off till spring; and I can't hold out so long as that. If I only had my fellows of the Fortune here"—(this was the name of the vessel he had last commanded)—"if I only had them with me in Neumühlen, it would be all right: but I grow down in the mouth there, it is so quiet. I'd rather be on a sand-island, alone with the seals and the sea-mews, under the open heavens, than among all those nicknacks of my little house, which must be used, and which I can't use. And so, I thought I'd ask you—"

"If you couldn't be off!" interrupted my father. "Surely, Evers, you are not thinking of that in earnest, are you?"

"No, I am not thinking of that. I have agreed to take command of the new ship; and I am in the habit of keeping my word. But I thought I would ask—" here he stopped, twirled his hat about in his hand, turned to my mother, and continued—"what you think about it—whether I hadn't better get married?"

It seemed as though a great load was taken from his mind, when he had got out these words. He had his house, a pretty little property, and was a good-looking, noble fellow, and bid fair to make an excellent husband; and so my mother advised him earnestly to carry his design into execution; asking him whether he had yet found a girl whom he could wish to marry.

"Will you give me Marie?" asked he.

Marie was the daughter of a woman who had attended me and my sisters, and who had long been dead. My parents had brought Marie up, and she served my mother as chambermaid; but was looked upon as one of the family, and was very dear to us all. She was about four-and-twenty years old, and might be considered a very pretty girl. My mother said, that she thought a marriage between Marie and the captain would be altogether proper, notwithstanding he was considerably the older; and Evers begged her to be his spokeswoman with Marie.

"Tell her," said he, "that I have liked her for many years; that always when I have returned from a voyage, I have been glad to look upon her again; that when I have been in foreign ports, and have seen other captains buying presents for their wives and children, I have often thought: Could you but do so, and make others happy—but for whom? I have grieved that I was unmarried; and at sea in stormy weather, I have fallen asleep imagining myself, some time or other, reposing with my wife and children. But as soon as I came into port, I have always been obliged to set sail again forthwith, and have forgotten all about getting married, as I had to be off so soon again, and must see to getting the cargo on board. But now I have time to think about it, and I like Marie very much? I will try to make her happy. You can assure her of that."

Marie was asked, and very gladly said Yes. The captain had his house set in order; the rooms were newly painted, the garden attended to, the linden pruned; while Marie arranged the stores of linen and plate left by her deceased parents-in-law, with the pleasurable feeling of ownership. And so came the day when the ship was to be launched, and the pair were to be united.

We all went to the dock; my parents conveyed the young pair in a carriage, and the guests followed. We went on board the ship, the young couple preceding, then my parents, and the guests. The vessel was christened by the name of "Young Couple." We all burst out into loud huzzas, swung our glasses and our hats, and hurried from the stern, where the ceremony took place, to the bows, to remain there during the launch. The steps were removed; the ways in which the keel was to run were slushed with soap and tallow; the sound of the ax was heard, knocking away the last blocks; the line was cast off; one blow of an ax, and amid the huzzas of the carpenters, sailors, and spectators, the noble vessel shot into the water. Suddenly a shriek was heard; the bow-line had parted, and the ship, freed from its check, shot across the river, with such momentum that it struck against the opposite shore, and stuck fast.

In itself this was no great matter; for it cost little trouble or expense to tow the vessel back again. But the merriment of the occasion was interrupted by the shriek, and disturbed by the superstitious belief that any accident happening at a launch is a bad sign for the vessel. A silence fell upon the guests; Marie wept, and the captain looked anxious, for all sailors are more or less superstitious. However, after the wedding, we grew cheerful again; the young pair went on to Neumühlen, and the autumn and winter passed away quickly and happily. Sorrowfully they watched the approach of spring, for the ship was afloat, her cargo ready, and the anchor was to be weighed as soon as the Elbe was free from ice.

This took place toward the end of March. For the first time in his life, the captain left Hamburg with tears in his eyes, after having heartily commended to my mother the care of his wife, who was expecting her first child to be born during the course of the summer. If all went well, tidings of his arrival on the coast of Africa might be looked for about the time of her confinement; and he had promised to write as soon as possible, as not only his wife, but our establishment were anxious to receive letters from him.

But long after Marie had given birth to a boy, no tidings had come from her husband. Autumn came and was gone; winter came and went, and yet no intelligence reached us of the ship.

No other vessel had spoken her; she had put in at no other port; not a trace of her could be discovered; and after a year and a day we were forced to conclude that she had gone down with all on board. The grief of the young wife was very deep, though the hope still remained that the crew might have been saved, and that her husband would return. Thus passed years, until finally when all imaginable inquiries had been made in vain, Marie began to grow accustomed to the idea of his loss, and to look upon herself as a widow.

About this time she became acquainted with man who carried on a small business in Neumühlen, and who wished to make her his wife. As Evers had been absent eight years, my parents advised her to consent, especially as they perceived that such was her own inclination. But before a new marriage could be contracted, Evers must be judicially pronounced to be dead. In the present case, after the usual preliminaries, there was no difficulty; and in the year 1828, Marie was married a second time; her son by the first marriage being then in his ninth year.

This marriage also proved to be a very happy one; and she had two children born in the first two years; both of whom survived.

One evening in the autumn of 1830, Marie was holding her youngest child in her arms, while her husband sat by her upon the sofa, enjoying his pipe. The elder boy, the son of Evers, was busy at another table, near which his little sister was playing. A fierce storm was howling without; the rain and hail rattled against the windows; the night was unusually dark; and as some draught was felt, even in the well-secured apartment, Marie told her eldest son to close the shutters. The lad went to the window, but quickly returned, saying that a man was standing there.

"Let him stand," replied the father, and the boy went back to the window to close the shutters, when he found that the man had gone. All was quiet in the room. The boy went back to his occupation; the mother laid her infant in the cradle, put the girl to bed, and had taken up her work-basket, when an old woman burst into the room half out of her wits with excitement, crying, "Madame! Madame! Jan Evers was out there!"

Marie, her husband, and the boy sprang up, and ran to the door. No one was to be seen. Marie trembled in every limb; the boy stood near her in utter bewilderment; the husband at last so far recovered himself as to be able to inquire into the facts of the case.

The old woman who had lived for some years in Neumühlen, and was well acquainted with all the inhabitants, was almost as much excited and confounded as her neighbors. Gazing hastily about her all the time, as though she expected every moment to see the apparition again, she said that she "was going by for to buy some stuff, and then she saw a man in a blue jacket, with a nor'wester on his head, a-staring in at your window, and then it came into my head to come and look in too; and when the stranger saw me he asked, 'Who lives in this house?' and then I told him Christian Veltlin did. Then the man went up to the window again and looked in again, and then he turned about and went away. And then I knew him by his size, and ran after him, and called out as loud as ever I could, 'Jan Evers! Jan Evers!' But he wouldn't turn his head round, but ran on as fast as he could, but I caught him at last at the stairs that lead from Neumühlen up to the chaussée. And then I took hold of him by the sleeve, and asked him, 'Jan Evers, Jan Evers, where have you come from?' And then he pushed me away, and growled, 'I don't know nothin' about your Jan Everses. I'm the bo's'n of the Greenlander over there!' and then he ran off and left me standing there. But 'twas him, and I ran over here to tell you all about it."

You may imagine the terror, the agony, and the despair in that little house. Veltlin, however, in order to soothe his wife, argued with her how improbable was the return of Evers, and how easily the old woman might have been deceived. Yet he was himself greatly troubled, and on the following morning, as early as possible, he and his wife came to my father to lay the matter before him, and to ask his advice.

My father advised them, first and foremost, to keep silent about the whole affair; but it was too late for that, for the old woman had told all Neumühlen what had happened. New inquiries were at once set on foot after the reputedly dead Jan Evers. But they were just as fruitless as the former ones had been; and after a while Marie and Veltlin began to grow composed, convinced that the old woman must have been deceived by some strange resemblance. Peace and joy returned to the little household, and the marriage was never disturbed up to the time of Marie's death, which took place last summer.

After that event a document was transmitted to me by the magistracy of the capital, where, it seems, Jan had passed his last years, under an assumed name. By this document, executed upon his death-bed, he constituted all the children of Marie Veltlin heirs to his little property; but with the express provision that the will should not be made public till after the death of Marie. Then it was known, for the first time, that the old woman was right. Jan Evers had most magnanimously sacrificed himself for his wife, and had lived and died alone and among strangers, although he was fully aware that a son had been born to him, who had lived to grow up.