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Page 19
A white cloth covered the rude wooden table that stood in the centre of
the room, and the mistress of the dwelling was hurrying to and fro,
evidently intent on preparing the evening repast, while from the
bake-kettle, that had just been taken from the fire, the fragrance of
newly-baked bread ascended, filling the place with its odor; an odor by
no means ungrateful to appetites, sharpened by manly labor and healthy
sea-breezes.
While the busy matron was thus happily employed in her labors of
love,--for such they emphatically were to her,--the daughter, a girl of
eighteen years of age, and two younger sons, were with their father on
the beach, assisting him in sorting, and putting in barrels, a quantity
of fish, designed for the family's use during the winter.
"It will be a fearful night, father," said the girl, pausing from her
labors, and looking out on the black, swollen waves, while the wind, as
it swept furiously by, more than once obliged her to cling to the rock
for support.
"It will be a fearful night, father," she repeated,--and, hesitating for
a moment, she added, "and brother William is at sea."
"Ay," responded the brawny, stalwart, and good-humored looking man, "it
will be, as you say, lass, a stormy night, and a terrible one, I reckon,
to poor seamen,--for there is more than William on the ocean."
A faint flush tinged with a deeper hue the girl's countenance, already
bronzed by exposure to sun and wind, while her dark grey eye grew moist
with unshed tears. It was evident that there was something deeper in the
old man's speech, than the mere words would seem to imply,--some covert
allusion which thus called forth her emotion.
"The vessel was to have left more than a week ago; it ought to be near
the coast by this time," said the fisherman, in a tone of uneasiness.
He turned to address his daughter, but she was no longer at his side;
and, looking in the distance, he perceived her climbing a high and
jutting rock, from which the ocean, for miles around, was distinctly
visible. Ellen, for that was her name, having at length ascended, stood
with agile yet firm feet on the eminence, shading, with one hand, the
sun, which now, peering from behind a mass of dark purple clouds, lit up
for a moment the turbid waves, and gleamed on rock and beach and
fishermen's huts,--and with the other holding on to the sharp edge of a
projecting rock, that still towered above her. Nor as she thus stood,
was she, by any means, an unpicturesque object; the sunshine glancing on
her neatly arranged brown hair, her tall figure, slight for that of a
hardy fisherman's child, clad in a black skirt and crimson jacket, and
every feature of her speaking countenance wearing a commingled
expression of anxiety, hope, and tenderness.
How her eager vision seemed to catch, in a moment, each feature of the
scene; the sandy beach--the rugged hill--her father's shallop--and he,
standing in the position she had left him, gazing out into the sea; and
with what a lingering, straining glance, did her eyes wander over that
pathless ocean, while her heart sank within her, as she contemplated its
angry and menacing appearance.
"Not a sail in sight," she murmured, "and the night coming on so
fearfully black. Oh, Edward, shall I ever see you again!" was her
exclamation, uttered in a tone full of wild pathos, while the hand, that
had been upraised to shade the sun's rays, fell listless at her side.
"Oh, if you only come back safe again, I shall quarrel with you and
tease you no more,--and you so patient and so good,"--and her quivering
lip, and the expression of anguish that passed over her features, told
how deep and true her emotion.
"It is no use lingering here," she mentally ejaculated, as a fresh blast
of wind nearly swept her from the summit. "I may as well go down at
once." Turning to descend, she paused to take a parting glance at the
distant ocean, whose mercy she would fain have invoked for the loved
ones it bore on its bosom, when something at a distance caught her eager
eye. As one transfixed, she stood there, fearing almost to breathe, lest
a breath might dissolve the vision.
"Yes, a sail is in sight; but, ah, is it the one I look for? Oh, this
cruel suspense, how much longer must I bear it! Father, father," she
cried, and the breeze bore the clear tones of her voice distinctly to
his ear; "father, do come here, for I see a sail yonder, and I think it
is the 'Darling,'" for so, by the lover captain,--doubtless to remind
him of another =darling=, tarrying at home,--the little trim schooner
was designated.
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