PART III
Time moved on and spring came.
Still the girl baffled the poet.
"I thought to pass away before," she would say with a
mocking grin, "but yet alive I am, Alfred, alive I am."
Tennyson was fast losing hope.
Worn out with early rising, they engaged a retired
Pullman-car porter to take up his quarters, and being a
negro his presence added a touch of colour to their life.
The poet also engaged a neighbouring divine at fifty
cents an evening to read to the child the best hundred
books, with explanations. The May Queen tolerated him,
and used to like to play with his silver hair, but
protested that he was prosy.
At the end of his resources the poet resolved upon
desperate measures.
He chose an evening when the cottager and his wife were
out at a dinner-party.
At nightfall Tennyson and his accomplices entered the
girl's room.
She defended herself savagely with her brick, but was
overpowered.
The negro seated himself upon her chest, while the
clergyman hastily read a few verses about the comfort of
early rising at the last day.
As he concluded, the poet drove his pen into her eye.
"Last call!" cried the negro porter triumphantly.
III.--OLD MR. LONGFELLOW ON BOARD THE HESPERUS.
"It was the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintry
sea, And the skipper had taken his little daughter to
bear him company."--LONGFELLOW.
There were but three people in the cabin party of the
Hesperus: old Mr. Longfellow, the skipper, and the
skipper's daughter.
The skipper was much attached to the child, owing to the
singular whiteness of her skin and the exceptionally
limpid blue of her eyes; she had hitherto remained on
shore to fill lucrative engagements as albino lady in a
circus.
This time, however, her father had taken her with him
for company. The girl was an endless source of amusement
to the skipper and the crew. She constantly got up games
of puss-in-the-corner, forfeits, and Dumb Crambo with
her father and Mr. Longfellow, and made Scripture puzzles
and geographical acrostics for the men.
Old Mr. Longfellow was taking the voyage to restore his
shattered nerves. From the first the captain disliked
Henry. He was utterly unused to the sea and was nervous
and fidgety in the extreme. He complained that at sea
his genius had not a sufficient degree of latitude. Which
was unparalleled presumption.
On the evening of the storm there had been a little jar
between Longfellow and the captain at dinner. The captain
had emptied it several times, and was consequently in a
reckless, quarrelsome humour.
"I confess I feel somewhat apprehensive," said old Henry
nervously, "of the state of the weather. I have had some
conversation about it with an old gentleman on deck who
professed to have sailed the Spanish main. He says you
ought to put into yonder port."
"I have," hiccoughed the skipper, eyeing the bottle, and
added with a brutal laugh that "he could weather the
roughest gale that ever wind did blow." A whole Gaelic
society, he said, wouldn't fizz on him.
Draining a final glass of grog, he rose from his chair,
said grace, and staggered on deck.
All the time the wind blew colder and louder.
The billows frothed like yeast. It was a yeast wind.
The evening wore on.
Old Henry shuffled about the cabin in nervous misery.
The skipper's daughter sat quietly at the table selecting
verses from a Biblical clock to amuse the ship's bosun,
who was suffering from toothache.
At about ten Longfellow went to his bunk, requesting the
girl to remain up in his cabin.
For half an hour all was quiet, save the roaring of the
winter wind.
Then the girl heard the old gentleman start up in bed.
"What's that bell, what's that bell?" he gasped.
A minute later he emerged from his cabin wearing a cork
jacket and trousers over his pyjamas.
"Sissy," he said, "go up and ask your pop who rang that
bell."
The obedient child returned.
"Please, Mr. Longfellow," she said, "pa says there weren't
no bell."
The old man sank into a chair and remained with his head
buried in his hands.
"Say," he exclaimed presently, "someone's firing guns
and there's a glimmering light somewhere. You'd better
go upstairs again."
Again the child returned.
"The crew are guessing at an acrostic, and occasionally
they get a glimmering of it."
Meantime the fury of the storm increased.
The skipper had the hatches battered down.
Presently Longfellow put his head out of a porthole and
called out, "Look here, you may not care, but the cruel
rocks are goring the sides of this boat like the horns
of an angry bull."
The brutal skipper heaved the log at him. A knot in it
struck a plank and it glanced off.
Too frightened to remain below, the poet raised one of
the hatches by picking out the cotton batting and made
his way on deck. He crawled to the wheel-house.
The skipper stood lashed to the helm all stiff and stark.
He bowed stiffly to the poet. The lantern gleamed through
the gleaming snow on his fixed and glassy eyes. The man
was hopelessly intoxicated.
All the crew had disappeared. When the missile thrown by
the captain had glanced off into the sea, they glanced
after it and were lost.
At this moment the final crash came.
Something hit something. There was an awful click followed
by a peculiar grating sound, and in less time than it
takes to write it (unfortunately), the whole wreck was
over.
As the vessel sank, Longfellow's senses left him. When
he reopened his eyes he was in his own bed at home, and
the editor of his local paper was bending over him.
"You have made a first-rate poem of it, Mr. Longfellow,"
he was saying, unbending somewhat as he spoke, "and I am
very happy to give you our cheque for a dollar and a
quarter for it."
"Your kindness checks my utterance," murmured Henry
feebly, very feebly.
