The narrative broke off here, but had been subsequently resumed.
"For all Mr. Ernescliffe talked as I told you, he was so quiet and happy, that I made sure he was getting well, but Jennings did not; and there came an old heathen native once to see us, who asked why we did not bury him alive, because he got no better, and gave trouble. At last, one night--it was the third of August--he was very restless, and could not breathe, nor lie easily; I lifted him up in my arms, for he was very light and thin, and tried to make him more comfortable. But presently he said, 'Is it you, Harry? God bless you;' and, in a minute, I knew he was dead. You will tell Margaret all about it. I don't think she can love him more than I did; and she did not half know him, for she never saw him on board, nor in all that dreadful time, nor in his illness. She will never know what she has lost."
There was another break here, and the story was continued.
"We buried him the next day, where one could see the sea, close under the great palm, where David hopes to have a church one of these days. David helped us, and said the Lord's Prayer and the Glory with us there. I little thought, when I used to grumble at my two verses of the psalms every day, when I should want the ninetieth, or how glad I should be to know so many by heart, for they were such a comfort to Mr. Ernescliffe.
"David got us a nice bit of wood, and Jennings carved the cross, and his name, and all about him. I should have liked to have done it, but I knocked up after that. Jennings thinks I had a sun-stroke. I don't know, but my head was so bad, whenever I moved, that I thought only Jennings would ever have come to tell you about it. Jennings looked after me as if I had been his own son; and there was David too, as kind as if he had been Richard himself--always sitting by, to bathe my forehead, or, when I was a little better, to talk to me, and ask me questions about his Christian teaching. You must not think of him like a savage, for he is my friend, and a far more perfect gentleman than I ever saw any one, but you, papa, holding the command over his people so easily and courteously, and then coming to me with little easy first questions about the Belief, and such things, like what we used to ask mamma. He liked nothing so well as for me to tell him about King David; and we had learned a good deal of each other's languages by that time. The notion of his heart--like Cocksmoor to Ethel--is to get a real English mission, and have all his people Christians. Ethel talked of good kings being Davids to their line; I think that is what he will be, if he lives; but those islanders have been dying off since Europeans came among them."
But Harry's letter could not tell what he confessed, one night, to his father, the next time he was out with him by starlight, how desolate he had been, and how he had yearned after his home, and, one evening, he had been utterly overcome by illness and loneliness, and had cried most bitterly and uncontrollably; and, though Jennings thought it was for his friend's death, it really was homesickness, and the thought of his father and Mary. Jennings had helped him out to the entrance of the hut, that the cool night air might refresh his burning brow. Orion shone clear and bright, and brought back the night when they had chosen the starry hunter as his friend. "It seemed," he said, "as if you all were looking at me, and smiling to me in the stars. And there was the Southern Cross upright, which was like the minster to me; and I recollected it was Sunday morning at home, and knew you would be thinking about me. I was so glad you had let me be confirmed, and be with you that last Sunday, papa, for it seemed to join me on so much the more; and when I thought of the words in church, they seemed, somehow, to float on me so much more than ever before, and it was like the minster, and your voice. I should not have minded dying so much after that."
At last, Harry's Black Prince had hurried into the hut with the tidings that his English father's ship was in the bay, and soon English voices again sounded in his ears, bringing the forlorn boy such warmth of kindness that he could hardly believe himself a mere stranger. If Alan could but have shared the joy with him!
He was carried down to the boat in the cool of the evening, and paused on the way, for a last farewell to the lonely grave under the palm tree-one of the many sailors' graves scattered from the tropics to the poles, and which might be the first seed in a "God's acre" to that island, becoming what the graves of holy men of old are to us.
A short space more of kind care from his new friends and his Christian chief, and Harry awoke from a feverish doze at sounds that seemed so like a dream of home, that he was unwilling to break them by rousing himself; but they approved themselves as real, and he found himself in the embrace of his mother's sister.
And here Mrs. Arnott's story began, of the note that reached her in the early morning with tidings that her nephew had been picked up by the mission-ship, and how she and her husband had hastened at once on board.
"They sent me below to see a hero," she wrote. "What I saw was a scarecrow sort of likeness of you, dear Richard; but, when he opened his eyes, there was our Maggie smiling at me. I suppose he would not forgive me for telling how he sobbed and cried, when he had his arms round my neck, and his poor aching head on my shoulder. Poor fellow, he was very weak, and I believe he felt, for the moment, as if he had found his mother.
"We brought him home with us, but when the next mail went, the fever was still so high, that I thought it would be only alarm to you to write, and I had not half a story either, though you may guess how proud I was of my nephew."
Harry's troubles were all over from that time. He had thenceforth to recover under his aunt's motherly care, while talking endlessly over the home that she loved almost as well as he did. He was well more quickly than she had ventured to hope, and nothing could check his impatience to reach his home, not even the hopes of having his aunt for a companion. The very happiness he enjoyed with her only made him long the more ardently to be with his own family; and he had taken his leave of her, and of his dear David, and sailed by the first packet leaving Auckland.
"I never knew what the old Great Bear was to me till I saw him again!" said Harry.
It was late when the elders had finished all that was to be heard at present, and the clock reminded them that they must part.
"And you go to-morrow?" sighed Margaret.
"I must. Jennings has to go on to Portsmouth, and see after his son."
"Oh, let me see Jennings!" exclaimed Margaret. "May I not, papa?"
Richard, who had been making friends with Jennings, whenever he had not been needed by his sisters that afternoon, went to fetch him from the kitchen, where all the servants, and all their particular friends, were listening to the yarn that made them hold their heads higher, as belonging to Master Harry.
Harry stepped forward, met Jennings, and said, aside, "My sister, Jennings; my sister that you have heard of."
Dr. May had already seen the sailor, but he could not help addressing him again. "Come in; come in, and see my boy among us all. Without you, we never should have had him."
"Make him come to me," said Margaret breathlessly, as the embarrassed sailor stood, sleeking down his hair; and, when he had advanced to her couch, she looked up in his face, and put her hand into his great brown one.
"I could not help saying thank you," she said.
"Mr. May, sir!" cried Jennings, almost crying, and looking round for Harry, as a sort of protector--"tell them, sir, please, it was only my duty--I could not do no less, and you knows it, sir," as if Harry had been making an accusation against him.
"We know you could not," said Margaret, "and that is what we would thank you for, if we could. I know he--Mr. Ernescliffe--must have been much more at rest for leaving my brother with so kind a friend, and--"