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Page 24
Leaning on Captain Carton's shoulder, between him and Miss Maryon,
was Mrs. Fisher, her head drooping on her arm. She asked him,
without raising it, when he had told so much, whether he had found
her mother?
"Be comforted! She lies," said the Captain gently, "under the
cocoa-nut trees on the beach."
"And my child, Captain Carton, did you find my child, too? Does my
darling rest with my mother?"
"No. Your pretty child sleeps," said the Captain, "under a shade of
flowers."
His voice shook; but there was something in it that struck all the
hearers. At that moment there sprung from the arbour in his boat a
little creature, clapping her hands and stretching out her arms, and
crying, "Dear papa! Dear mamma! I am not killed. I am saved. I
am coming to kiss you. Take me to them, take me to them, good, kind
sailors!"
Nobody who saw that scene has ever forgotten it, I am sure, or ever
will forget it. The child had kept quite still, where her brave
grandmamma had put her (first whispering in her ear, "Whatever
happens to me, do not stir, my dear!"), and had remained quiet until
the fort was deserted; she had then crept out of the trench, and
gone into her mother's house; and there, alone on the solitary
Island, in her mother's room, and asleep on her mother's bed, the
Captain had found her. Nothing could induce her to be parted from
him after he took her up in his arms, and he had brought her away
with him, and the men had made the bower for her. To see those men
now, was a sight. The joy of the women was beautiful; the joy of
those women who had lost their own children, was quite sacred and
divine; but, the ecstasies of Captain Carton's boat's crew, when
their pet was restored to her parents, were wonderful for the
tenderness they showed in the midst of roughness. As the Captain
stood with the child in his arms, and the child's own little arms
now clinging round his neck, now round her father's, now round her
mother's, now round some one who pressed up to kiss her, the boat's
crew shook hands with one another, waved their hats over their
heads, laughed, sang, cried, danced--and all among themselves,
without wanting to interfere with anybody--in a manner never to be
represented. At last, I saw the coxswain and another, two very
hard-faced men, with grizzled heads, who had been the heartiest of
the hearty all along, close with one another, get each of them the
other's head under his arm, and pommel away at it with his fist as
hard as he could, in his excess of joy.
When we had well rested and refreshed ourselves--and very glad we
were to have some of the heartening things to eat and drink that had
come up in the boats--we recommenced our voyage down the river:
rafts, and boats, and all. I said to myself, it was a very
different kind of voyage now, from what it had been; and I fell into
my proper place and station among my fellow-soldiers.
But, when we halted for the night, I found that Miss Maryon had
spoken to Captain Carton concerning me. For, the Captain came
straight up to me, and says he, "My brave fellow, you have been Miss
Maryon's body-guard all along, and you shall remain so. Nobody
shall supersede you in the distinction and pleasure of protecting
that young lady." I thanked his honour in the fittest words I could
find, and that night I was placed on my old post of watching the
place where she slept. More than once in the night, I saw Captain
Carton come out into the air, and stroll about there, to see that
all was well. I have now this other singular confession to make,
that I saw him with a heavy heart. Yes; I saw him with a heavy,
heavy heart.
In the day-time, I had the like post in Captain Carton's boat. I
had a special station of my own, behind Miss Maryon, and no hands
but hers ever touched my wound. (It has been healed these many long
years; but, no other hands have ever touched it.) Mr. Pordage was
kept tolerably quiet now, with pen and ink, and began to pick up his
senses a little. Seated in the second boat, he made documents with
Mr. Kitten, pretty well all day; and he generally handed in a
Protest about something whenever we stopped. The Captain, however,
made so very light of these papers, that it grew into a saying among
the men, when one of them wanted a match for his pipe, "Hand us over
a Protest, Jack!" As to Mrs. Pordage, she still wore the nightcap,
and she now had cut all the ladies on account of her not having been
formally and separately rescued by Captain Carton before anybody
else. The end of Mr. Pordage, to bring to an end all I know about
him, was, that he got great compliments at home for his conduct on
these trying occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, a
Governor and a K.C.B.
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