ocean. A solitary boat was lying on the surface of the deep tide off the North Beach, and a solitary figure was reclining in it, now giving an eye to the nets cast around him, and now relapsing into a dreamy mood in which he watched the clouds wreath and unwreath themselves, forming fiery forests, palaces, mountains, giants, angels, and children. “Begorra," said Murt to himself, "but there's the beautifullest band of fairies that iver I seen-all holdin' other's hands, and with wings as long as a mainsail. Wirra! wirra! where are they makin' for at all, at all, with their goold hair streamin', and them growin' bigger every minute? Musha, but they're gettin' red in the face like the very coal o' fire, an' it's furies they are now instead o' fairies! Och, then, it's the way o' the world-changin' while ye look at them, like that witch of etarnity, Delsie, that I took for as thrue an angel as ever fanned a wing; and now its courting wid a soapyfaced Dutchman! Ora, Delsie, then my misery on you this day for a At this moment a faint cry fell on Murt's ear like the shriek of a distant gull. The vast glowing space of sea and sky was so utterly still that even this little sound made an event; and Murt raised his eyes in the direction whence it came. A vessel was passing at some distance-all sails spread; but it made slow way as there was little breeze stirring. A figure was leaning over the ship's side with arms outstretched towards the island, and it was from this figure the cry must have come. Again it rang out-louder and clearer, as if the distressed person had gained courage from having descried the solitary man in the boat. Murt started up and gazed; the figure seemed familiar; it was a woman-a girl-it looked like Delsie. Only that the idea seemed so absurd, Murt could have sworn that it was Delsie. The whole thing was unaccountable. A vessel so near the island with a shrieking girl leaning over the side was a sight that a Bofin man would not expect to see. Another figure, tall and dark, now appeared as if remonstrating with the woman, and trying to take the girl's hand to draw her away, while she struggled towards the ship's side, and seemed about to throw herself into the water. Murt glanced away a moment, and then looked back to see if this extraordinary vision were reality or only a phantom, for the glamour of the cloudpictures was still in his eyes. Then the truth burst upon him in a flash. The strange schooner was carrying Delsie away from the island. Murt cast away his nets with a shout that was heard at the vessel, and seizing his oars, pulled towards it with all his might. With a long cry of delight Delsie recognised him, tore the handkerchief from her neck and waved it wildly. The Dutchman snatched this flag of distress from her hand and tried again to draw her from the ship's side; then turned and gave orders to his men, gazing about, and stamping his feet at the limpness of the sails and the breathlessness of the air. The vessel was almost motionless now, and the fishing boat, pulled by Murt's strong arms, was gaining on it fast; the Dutchman held up his head, and long and loud whistled for the wind, cursed it for not coming, and then a grim look settled on his face as he walked up and down the deck. He would take good care that this island-man should be punished for his interference. He would shoot him rather than let him board the ship! Another loud, long whistle pierced the air. "Wind! wind!" shouted the Dutchman. "Storm! tempest! anything to clear us of this coast!" And meantime Murt was plying through the red lights that were already fading on the ocean, and nearing, nearing the ship, turning his head now and again to measure with his eyes the space that yet parted him from Delsie. He was within a few yards of the vessel, and Jan Dow, having disappeared for a few moments, returned and stood by the girl with a pistol in his hand, which he laid by her side, saying: "If he attempts to climb up here I will shoot him to the heart." The girl looked steadily in Jan's face as if to see whether he were in earnest, and then remained very quiet, watching Murt draw near, seeming to ponder on her lover's situation rather than on her own. This change in her demeanour pleased Jan, who turned for a moment, making signs to the sailors as a sudden breeze quivered rapidly through the sails. The wind! the wind!" he cried, hearing a splash that sounded like the breaking of a newly-wakened wave against the side of the vessel. He turned his head again, and Delsie was gone. Jan Dow grasped his pistol but did not fire. Yon pale, blackbrowed man in the boat was now the only one who could save the desperate girl from drowning, and the Dutchman was probably not so great a monster as he might have been. He dropped the pistol, and watched with intense interest the life and death struggle that now began, while Murt strove to seize Delsie by her floating dress as she rose to the surface of the tide, to draw her towards him, and at the same time to keep his boat from overturning in the water. She was not insensible, and though she could not swim she made a desperate effort to keep herself afloat. She had not taken the leap to destroy her own life, but to save that of her lover, and she knew enough of the sea to be aware how much her own safety depended on her presence of mind. It was done at last; she was drawn to the side of the boat and finally dragged in; and even then she did not swoon. being a vigorously-framed and strong-hearted young woman, who had been used from her birth to plenty of wind and weather, if not exactly to drowning. As soon as Murt and Delsie had time to gaze around them they looked for the schooner; but nothing was left of her save a small wraith of a vessel standing out in the distance, pale and frightenedlooking in a cloud of rainy gloom. The wind had come down in earnest; no sooner had that life-and-death struggle begun than, heigh, presto! the sails of the schooner filled, and like a startled bird she flew out to sea, leaving Bofin and Delsie (but not the mug) behind her. "The storm is comin' fast," said Murt; "take the tiller in your han's, Delsie, and make for the nearest point!" And the storm came down, booming along the darkened ocean, and scourging the sea till the island was wrapped in a shroud of foam. Long were Murt and Delsie beaten about the coast in their boat; often did it seem that the stranger's curse and invocation of the wind would yet accomplish their destruction, even after the tempest which had come at his call had borne him far out of their reach; but at last, after many terrible hours, they crawled up the slippery rocks, and felt themselves restored to the world of the living, and sure at least of each other's affection, since a word or two had been whispered between them while Death was at the helm, striving to baffle Delsie as she steered the little boat. It was midnight when Murt brought her, trembling, humbled, thankful, to the nearest cabin; and still the storm grew more and more terrible, till such a hurricane raged round Bofin as made the whole island shudder, accustomed as it is to such sudden visitations. Next morning Delsie was as lively and active as if she had not been nearly drowned the night before; she set out with Murt and cthers to see the spoils of wrecks which had been driven in as usual on the strands of the island. They met people from all parts of Bofin bent on the same errand, talking excitedly over the events of the night before, and all greeting Delsie as a heroine; Aunt Graunia among the rest, who fell on her niece's neck with outcrying thanks to Providence. Arrived at the beach, they found various articles strewn about; barrels of butter, kegs of spirits, boxes of fruit, great planks of timber. "Glory be to God!" said Johnny Maillie, "but there's been a terrible night's work upon the say!" And many stood shaking their heads with him over these pledges of ruin; dumb witnesses that had lately seen the despair of human souls. Others, more matter-of-fact, fell to collecting the spoils, and carrying out the arrangements customary at such crisis as this, when a sudden cry from Delsie startled everyone, as she rushed forward towards a familiar object which had caught her eye across the sand. There was the wooden mug! of which she had been so proud, and which Jan Dow had stolen ;sitting meekly on the shingle as if nothing had happened;-full of shells and sea-water, as the tide had left it, but otherwise no way changed since the moment when Graunia had taken it from its nail in the cabin, and trusted it into the dishonest stranger's hands! Delsie gazed at it, touched it with her foot, lifted and emptied it, and finally swung it round her head with a cheer. "The mether! the mether!" she shouted, and all pressed round. her with cries of wonder and congratulation. "Show us it!" said Johnny Maillie, and he examined it carefully. "Its very sel" was his verdict. "The 'dentical nicks on it that nobody could deny, without iver countin' all the legs and arms goin' round it, as many's the time I did, an' we smokin' wid ould Billy. Take it, Delsie, an' make much o't, for it's plain that the luck of it's bound to go wid you !" "Luck!" cried Delsie, with a spiteful glance at the innocent drinking vessel. "The quare luck it has! Only for it would I have dhrowned the life out o' mysel' an' Murt, as I did last night? The weary go for it for a mug! Nothin' but sorra has been supped out of it since ever it set foot on the island." So speaking, she flung it out of her hand with a passionate movement, and it fell upon a rock, whereupon a cry arose, for in its fall the sacred beaker split right in two, while Delsie hung her head in shame; as she had not meant to destroy it after all. Something new and strange which now happened, however, diverted popular feeling into an unexpected channel. As the mug broke and fell asunder something was perceived to pour out of it, which no one had ever seen in it before; and not one thing alone, but two, three—a dozen little round yellow things which came tripping down the rocks -gold-as if scattered from a bountiful hand. Shouts of wonder rang through the air, and the people crowded round to pick up the coins. Johnny Maillie took the two pieces of the mug and, examining them, found that the vessel was made with a false bottom; and in the hidden space had been deposited fifty guineas, some of which had been already let loose from their prison, the rest lying still wedged in the wood. "My blessin' to him!" said Johnny, "but the Dutchman knew what he was about when he fell in love wid the mug!" "To think of Billy's fortune lyin' buried there these years!" cried a neighbour. "An' us dhrinkin cowld wather out o't, an' it lined all the time wid the price o' tay an' whisky !" cried Graunia. "Aisy!" said Johnny, giving one of the sides a shake to get the gold out; and as he spoke a slip of paper fluttered over the heads of the people, and sailed off to sea on the out-going wave. "Stop it! save it!" cried Maillie; and half a dozen pairs of legs were soon wading wildly after the floating paper; but it went too fast and far for their following. 'Bad manners to 't!" said Maillie; "the Lord knows what it was!" and he made his further researches with greater caution. When all was done it was found that Delsie Prendergast had got fifty golden guineas for her fortune, they having been found in the mug which was bequeathed to her by her father. Last of all, when the mug was fairly taken to pieces, an inscription was found written in plain English on the lowest bottom of the vessel. "One thousand pounds for Billy Prendergast, who did not grudge to risk his life for a stranger, nor spare his hospitality to the wretch he saved." Then followed the date of that wreck so many years ago, and a strange foreign name which even the Bofin schoolmaster could not venture to pronounce. "One thousand pounds!" cried all the people, aghast and they made up their minds that the other nine hundred and fifty pounds must have been mysteriously contained in the paper which had fluttered out to sea. ! "Never mind, Aunt Graunia,” said Delsie, as the old woman bewailed the loss of such fabulous riches. "Sure Bofin wouldn't hold a thousand pounds, do what you could wid it; an' if it hadn't took itsel' off sure it's out to the mainland I'd have had to carry itan' I niver could bear the mainland, as everybody knows! An' what I'm to do wid fifty pounds itsel' the Lord only knows that sent it to me !" Delsie with her fortune in her apron was cheered and congratulated all round a hundred times, and when the excitement was beginning to wane she set out with the old woman for her cabin. "Will you be up in the evenin' to see us ?" she said, looking back over her shoulder at Murt. "I don't know, Delsie; ye're not the wan young woman ye were wid the goold in yer skirts." "But it's the goold that wants ye. If it had been only Delsie she wouldn't have had to make so little o' herself as to ax ye, I hope." Some time after that Murt and his wife had a cabin and fishing boats and nets of the best; and Delsie had three fine cows of her own which banished for ever the recollection of those other unfriendly animals which had used to annoy her from the mainland. It was some time before the islanders remembered that the return of the mug was testimony to the fact that the Strange Schooner and its crew had been lost. Readers of newspapers learned about that time some account of the picking up of the forlorn crew of a foreign trading vessel which had been wrecked off the western coast of Ireland; but newspapers rarely come to Bofin. However it may have fared with him, Delsie says the rosary every night for the repose of the soul of Jan Dow the Dutchman, who was cut off in his sins; her six children, and the breakers outside the cabin door, crying "Amen" to the prayer. SONNET. TO MISS ALICE THOMPSON, AUTHOR OF "PRELUDES." HOU art not like to others; in thine eyes TH There shines a light and sweetness all thine own; A melody unique is in thy tone, And in thy touch a mystic magic lies. With more than woman's wisdom thou art wise; And all the hidden mysteries made known Of birds and flowers, green earth and azure skies; |