Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

There were no means of pursuit; and after indulging in sundry energetic vocables hardly worth repeating, we retreated in savage discomfiture toward Weston, plentifully sprinkling the grass and gravel as we slowly passed along; knocked up the landlord of a public house, and turning in as soon as possible, happily exchanged our dripping attire for warm blankets and clean sheets, beneath the soothing influence of which I, for one, was soon sound asleep.

Day had hardly dawned when we were all three up, and overhauling the mud and weeds – the tide was quite gone out – for the captured boat and tubs. They had vanished utterly: the fairies about Weston had spirited them away while we slept, leaving no vestige whatever of the spoil to which we had naturally looked as some trifling compensation for the night's mishap, and the loss of the watermen's boat, to say nothing of the sousing we had got. It was a bad business certainly, and my promise to provide my helpmates with another boat, should their own not be recovered, soothed but very slightly their sadly-ruffled tempers. But lamentations were useless, and, after the lugubrious expression of a dismal hope for better luck next time, we separated.

This pleasant incident did not in the least abate my anxiety to get once more within hailing distance of the Barnabys; but for a long time my efforts were entirely fruitless, and I had begun to think that the Blue-eyed Maid had been permanently transferred to another and less vigilantly watched station, when a slight inkling of intelligence dispelled that fear. My plan was soon formed. I caused it to be carelessly given out on shore that the Rose had sprung her bowsprit in the gale a day or two before, and was going the next afternoon into Portsmouth to get another. In pursuance of this intention, the Rose soon after noon slipped her moorings, and sailed for that port; remained quietly there till about nine o'clock in the evening, and then came out under close-reefed storm canvas, for it was blowing great guns from the northward, and steered for the Southampton river. The night was as black as pitch; and but for the continuous and vivid flashes of lightning, no object more than a hundred yards distant from the vessel could have been discerned. We ran up abeam of Hythe without perceiving the object of our search, then tacked, stood across to the other side, and then retraced our course. We were within a short distance of Hamble River, when a prolonged flash threw a ghastly light upon the raging waters, and plainly revealed the Blue-eyed Maid, lying-to under the lee of the north shore, and it may be about half a mile ahead of us. Unfortunately she saw us at the same moment, and as soon as way could be got upon her she luffed sharply up, and a minute afterward was flying through the water in the hope of yet escaping her unexpected enemy. By edging away to leeward I contrived to cut her off effectually from running into the channel by the Needles passage; but nothing daunted, she held boldly on without attempting to reduce an inch of canvas, although, from the press she carried, fairly buried in the sea. Right in the course she was steering, the Donegal, a huge eighty-gun ship, was riding at anchor off Spithead. Old Barnaby, who, I could discern by his streaming white hairs, was at the helm, in his anxiety to keep as well to windward of us as possible, determined, I suppose, to pass as closely as he prudently could under the stern of the line-of-battle ship. Unfortunately, just as the little cutter was in the act of doing so, a furious blast of wind tore away her jib as if it had been cobweb; and, pressed by her large mainsail, the slight vessel flew up into the wind, meeting the Donegal as the huge ship drove back from a strain which had brought her half way to her anchors. The crash was decisive, and caused the instant disappearance of the unfortunate smuggler. The cry of the drowning men, if they had time to utter one, was lost amid the raging of the tempest; and although we threw overboard every loose spar we could lay hands on, it was with scarcely the slightest hope that such aid could avail them in that wild sea. I tacked as speedily as possible, and repassed the spot; but the white foam of the waves, as they leaped and dashed about the leviathan bulk of the Donegal, was all that could be perceived, eagerly as we peered over the surface of the angry waters. The Rose then stood on, and a little more than an hour afterward was safely anchored off Hythe.

The boy Barnaby, I was glad to hear a day or two afterward, had not accompanied his father and grandfather in the last trip made by the Blue-eyed Maid, and had consequently escaped the fate which had so suddenly overtaken them, and for which it appeared that the smuggling community held me morally accountable. This was to be expected; but I had too often and too lately been familiar with death at sea in every shape, by the rage of man as well as that of the elements, to be more than slightly and temporarily affected by such an incident; so that all remembrance of it would probably have soon passed away but for an occurrence which took place about a month subsequently. One of the officers of the shore-force received information that two large luggers, laden with brandy and tobacco from Guernsey, were expected the following night on some point of the coast between Hamble and Weston; and that as the cargoes were very valuable, a desperate resistance to the coast-guard, in the event of detection, had been organized. Our plan was soon arranged. The Rose was sent away with barely enough men to handle her, and with the remainder of the crew, I, as soon as night fell, took up a position a little above Netley Abbey. Two other detachments of the coast-guard were posted along the shore at intervals of about a mile, all of course connected by signal-men not more than a hundred yards apart. There was a faint starlight, but the moon would not rise till near midnight; and from this circumstance, as well as from the state of the tides, we could pretty well calculate when to expect our friends, should they come at all. It was not long before we were quite satisfied, from the stealthy movements of a number of persons about the spot, that the information we had received was correct. Just after eleven o'clock a low, peculiar whistle, taken up from distance to distance, was heard; and by placing our ears to the ground, the quick jerk of oars in the rullocks was quite apparent. After about five minutes of eager restlessness, I gave the impatiently-expected order; we all emerged from our places of concealment, and with cautious but rapid steps advanced upon the by this time busy smugglers. The two luggers were beached upon the soft sand or mud, and between forty and fifty men were each receiving two three-gallon kegs, with which they speeded off to the carts in waiting at a little distance. There were also about twenty fellows ranged as a guard, all armed as efficiently as ourselves. I gave the word; but before we could close with the astonished desperadoes, they fired a pistol volley, by which one seaman, John Batley, a fine, athletic young man, was killed, and two others seriously wounded. This done, the scoundrels fled in all directions, hotly pursued, of course. I was getting near one of them, when a lad, who was running by his side, suddenly turned, and raising a pistol, discharged it at my head. He fortunately missed his mark, though the whistle of the bullet was unpleasantly close. I closed with and caught the young rascal, who struggled desperately, and to my extreme surprise, I had almost written dismay, discovered that he was young Barnaby! It was not a time for words, and hastily consigning the boy to the custody of the nearest seaman, with a brief order to take care of him, I resumed the pursuit. A bootless one it proved. Favored by their numbers, their perfect acquaintance with the hedge-and-ditch neighborhood, the contrabandists all contrived to escape. The carts also got off, and our only captures were the boy, the luggers, which there had been no time to get off, and their cargoes, with the exception of the few kegs that had reached the carts.

The hunt after the dispersed smugglers was continued by the different parties who came in subsequently to our brush with them, so that after the two wounded seamen had been carried off on litters, and a sufficient guard left in the captured boats, only two men remained with me. The body of John Batley was deposited for the present in one of the luggers, and then the two sailors and myself moved forward to Itchen with the prisoner, where I intended to place him in custody for the night.

The face of the lad was deadly pale, and I noticed that he had been painfully affected by the sight of the corpse; but when I addressed him, his expressive features assumed a scornful, defying expression. First ordering the two men to drop astern out of hearing, I said: "You will be hanged for your share in this night's work, young man, depend upon it."

"Hanged!" he exclaimed in a quick, nervous tone; "hanged! You say that to frighten me! It was not I who shot the man! You know that; or perhaps," he added with a kind of hysterical cry, "perhaps you want to kill me as you did father."

"I have no more inclination, my poor boy," I answered, "to injure you than I had to harm your father. Why, indeed, should I have borne him any ill-will?"

"Why should you? Oh, I know very well!"

"You know more than I do then; but enough of this folly. I wish, I hardly know why, to save you. It was not you, I am quite aware, that fired the fatal shot, but that makes no difference as to your legal guilt. But I think if you could put us on the track of your associates, you might yourself escape."

The lad's fine eyes perfectly lightened with scorn and indignation: "Turn informer!" he exclaimed. "Betray them that loved and trusted me! Never – if they could hang me a thousand times over!"

I made no answer, and nothing more was said till we had reached and were passing the Abbey ruins. The boy then abruptly stopped, and with quivering voice, while his eyes filled with tears, said: "I should like to see my mother."

"See your mother! There can be no particular objection to that; but she lives further on at Weston, does she not?"

"No, we have sold off, and moved to Aunt Diaper's, at Netley, up yonder. In a day or two we should have started for Hull, where mother's father's brother lives, and I was to have been 'prenticed to the captain of a Greenlander; but now," he continued with an irrepressible outburst of grief and terror, "Jack Ketch will, you say, be my master, and I shall be only 'prenticed to the gallows."

"Why, if this be so, did your mother permit you to join the lawless desperadoes to whom you owe your present unhappy and degraded position?"

"Mother did not know of it; she thinks I am gone to Southampton to inquire about the day the vessel sails for Hull. Mother will die if I am hanged!" exclaimed the lad with a renewed burst of passionate grief; "and surely you would not kill her?"

"It is not very likely I should wish to do so, considering that I have never seen her."

"Oh yes – yes, you have!" he sharply rejoined. "Then perhaps you do not know! Untie or cut these cords," he added, approaching close to me and speaking in a low, quick whisper; "give me a chance: mother's girl's name was Ellen Dible!"

Had the lad's fettered arm been free, and he had suddenly dealt me a blow with a knife or dagger, the stroke could not have been more sharp or terrible than these words conveyed.

"God of mercy!" I exclaimed, as the momently-arrested blood again shot through my heart with reactive violence, "can this be true?"

"Yes, yes – true, quite true!" continued the boy, with the same earnest look and low, hurried speech. "I saw, when your waistcoat flew open in the struggle just now, what was at the end of the black ribbon. You will give me a chance for mother's sake, won't you?"

A storm of grief, regret, remorse, was sweeping through my brain, and I could not for a while make any answer, though the lad's burning eyes continued fixed with fevered anxiety upon my face.

At last I said – gasped rather: "I can not release you – it is impossible; but all that can be done – all that can – can legally be done, shall be – " The boy's countenance fell, and he was again deadly pale. "You shall see your mother," I added. "Tell Johnson where to seek her; he is acquainted with Netley." This was done, and the man walked briskly off upon his errand.

"Come this way," I said, after a few minutes' reflection, and directing my steps toward the old ruined fort by the shore, built, I suppose, as a defense to the abbey against pirates. There was but one flight of steps to the summit, and no mode of egress save by the entrance from whence they led. "I will relieve you of these cords while your mother is with you. Go up to the top of the fort. You will be unobserved, and we can watch here against any foolish attempt at escape."

Ten minutes had not elapsed when the mother, accompanied by Johnson, and sobbing convulsively, appeared. Roberts hailed her, and after a brief explanation, she ascended the steps with tottering but hasty feet, to embrace her son. A quarter of an hour, she had been told, would be allowed for the interview.

The allotted time had passed, and I was getting impatient, when a cry from the summit of the fort or tower, as if for help to some one at a distance, roused and startled us. As we stepped out of the gateway, and looked upward to ascertain the meaning of the sudden cry, the lad darted out and sped off with surprising speed. One of the men instantly snatched a pistol from his waist-belt, but at a gesture from me put it back. "He can not escape," I said. "Follow me, but use no unnecessary violence." Finding that we gained rapidly upon him, the lad darted through a low, narrow gateway, into the interior of the abbey ruins, trusting, I imagined, to baffle us in the darkness and intricacy of the place. I just caught sight of him as he disappeared up a long flight of crumbling, winding steps, from which he issued through a narrow aperture upon a lofty wall, some five or six feet wide, and overgrown with grass and weeds. I followed in terrible anxiety, for I feared that in his desperation he would spring off and destroy himself. I shouted loudly to him for God's sake to stop. He did so within a few feet of the end of the wall. I ran quickly toward him, and as I neared him he fell on his knees, threw away his hat, and revealed the face of – Ellen Dible!

I stopped, bewildered, dizzy, paralyzed. Doubtless the mellowing radiance of the night softened or concealed the ravages which time must have imprinted on her features; for as I gazed upon the spirit-beauty of her upturned, beseeching countenance, the old time came back upon me with a power and intensity which an hour before I could not have believed possible. The men hailed repeatedly from below, but I was too bewildered, too excited, to answer: their shouts, and the young mother's supplicating sobs – she seemed scarcely older than when I parted from her – sounded in my ears like the far-off cries and murmurs of a bewildering, chaotic dream. She must have gathered hope and confidence from the emotion I doubtless exhibited, for as soon as the confusion and ringing in my brain had partially subsided, I could hear her say: "You will save my boy – my only son: for my sake, you will save him?"

Another shout from the men below demanded if I had got the prisoner. "Ay, ay," I mechanically replied, and they immediately hastened to join us.

"Which way – which way is he gone?" I asked as the seamen approached.

She instinctively caught my meaning: "By the shore to Weston," she hurriedly answered; "he will find a boat there."

The men now came up: "The chase has led us astray," I said: "look there."

"His mother, by jingo!" cried Johnson. "They must have changed clothes!"

"Yes: the boy is off – to – to Hamble, I have no doubt. You both follow in that direction: I'll pursue by the Weston and Itchen road."

The men started off to obey this order, and as they did so, I heard her broken murmur of "Bless you, Robert – bless you!" I turned away, faint, reeling with excitement, muttered a hasty farewell, and with disordered steps and flaming pulse hurried homeward. The mother I never saw again: the son at whose escape from justice I thus weakly, it may be criminally, connived, I met a few years ago in London. He is the captain of a first-class ship in the Australian trade, and a smarter sailor I think I never beheld. His mother is still alive, and lives with her daughter-in-law at Chelsea.

AMERICAN NOTABILITIES.[11 - From Travels in the United States, etc. By Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley. Just published by Harper and Brothers.]

PROFESSOR AGASSIZ

This very distinguished man – one of the great contributors to the world's stores of science and knowledge – is an extremely agreeable member of society, and a very popular one. His manners are particularly frank, pleasing, cordial, and simple; and though deeply absorbed, and intensely interested in his laborious scientific researches, and a most thorough enthusiast in his study of natural philosophy, yet he rattled merrily away on many of the various light topics of the day with the utmost gayety, good-humor, and spirit.

He has succeeded, after great trouble and persevering indefatigable care, in preserving alive some coral insects, the first that have ever been so preserved, and he kindly promised me an introduction to these distinguished architects. We accordingly went, accompanied by Mr. Everett, the following day. M. Agassiz was up-stairs very much occupied by some scientific investigation of importance, and he could not come down, but he allowed us to enter the all but hallowed precincts devoted to the much-cherished coral insects.

M. Agassiz had been away a little while previously, and left these treasures of his heart under the charge and superintendence of his assistant. This poor care-worn attendant, we were told, almost lost his own life in preserving the valuable existence of these little moving threads, so much did he feel the weighty responsibility that devolved upon him, and with such intense anxiety did he watch the complexions, the contortions, all the twistings and twirlings, and twitchings, and flingings and writhings of the wondrous little creatures, most assiduously marking any indications of petite santé among them. They were kept in water carefully and frequently changed, and various precautions were indispensably necessary to be taken in order to guard their exquisitely delicate demi-semi existences.

Glad enough was the temporary gentleman-in-waiting, and squire-of-the-body to these interesting zoophytes to see M. Agassiz return, and to resign his charge into his hands. With him this exceeding care and watchfulness was indeed nothing but a labor of love, and probably no nurse or mother ever fondled a weakly infant with more devoted tenderness and anxious attention than M. Agassiz displayed toward his dearly-beloved coral insects.

As to me, I hardly dared breathe while looking at them for fear I should blow their precious lives away, or some catastrophe should happen while we were there, and we should be suspected of coralicide! However, the sight was most interesting. We watched them as they flung about what seemed their fire-like white arms, like microscopic opera dancers or windmills; but these apparent arms are, I believe, all they possess of bodies. How wonderful to think of the mighty works that have been performed by the fellow-insects of these little restless laborers. What are the builders of the Pyramids to them? What did the writers of the "Arabian Nights" imagine equal to their more magical achievements?

Will men ever keep coral insects by them to lay the foundations of a few islands and continents when the population grows too large for the earthy portion of earth? People keep silkworms to spin that beautiful fabric for them; and M. Agassiz has shown there is no impracticability. I looked at the large bowl containing the weird workers with unflagging interest, till I could almost fancy minute reefs of rocks were rising up in the basin.

What a world of marvels we live in, and alas that the splendid wonders of science should be shut out from so many myriads of mankind; for that the marvelous is inalienably dear to human nature, witness all the fairy tales, ghost stories, and superstitions of all kinds that have abounded and been popular from age to age. Penny Magazines and such works have done much, but much there remains to be done to bring the subjects not only within reach, but to make them more universally popular and attractive, and less technical.

At last we took leave of those marine curiosities, and wended our way back, sorry not to have seen M. Agassiz (who was still absorbed in dissecting or pickling for immortality some extraordinary fish that he had discovered), but delighted to have had the opportunity of seeing his protégés.

"M. Agassiz ought indeed to have an extensive museum," said – , "for I believe every body in the States makes a point of sending off to him, post haste, every imaginable reptile, and monster, and nondescript that they happen to find." I should assuredly not like to have the opening of his letters and parcels if that is the case.

MR. AND MRS. PRESCOTT AT NAHANT

To-day we went and dined early with Mr. and Mrs. Prescott at Nahant, where they are staying for the summer. They have a charming country villa on the beautiful peninsula of Nahant. The town of Nahant is a very pleasant watering-place, about twelve miles from Boston by water, and sixteen by land. Near Mr. Prescott's house is a magnificent-looking hotel with numerous piazzas; the sea-coast view from his villa is boundless, and the perpetually high and dashing waves fling their fantastic foam, without ceasing, against the wild jagged rocks, which abound in every direction.

We started by railroad to go there, and very near us in the car was a respectable looking negro. Mr. C. S – , who was in the same car with us (also going to dine at Mr. Prescott's), pointed this man out to me, at the same time saying, that this could not by possibility have happened two years ago in this State, so strong then were the prejudices against any approach to, or appearance of amalgamation with the black race. No one could certainly appear more humble and quiet, less presuming or forward in his new position, than did this colored individual.

On our way to Mr. Prescott's, we stopped to pay a visit to Mrs. Page, the sister of Mrs. F. Webster. She has a very pretty little country house at Nahant: she made many inquiries, with much kind feeling, after those friends whom she remembers at Belvoir Castle, where she was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Webster.

I have already mentioned that Mr. Prescott is one of the most agreeable people I ever met with – as delightful as his own most delightful books: he talks of going to Europe next year. He tells me he has never visited either Mexico or Peru. I am surprised that the interest he must have felt in his own matchless works did not impel him to go to both. Mrs. Prescott is very delicate, with most gentle and pleasing manners. One of the guests was a niece of Lord Lyndhurst, her mother being Lord Lyndhurst's sister.