Chapter LXVI.
The end of Clare Skymer's boyhood.
His father had a hammock slung for him in the state-room; he could not
be parted from him even when they slept.
One night sir Harry, lying awake, heard a movement in the state-room,
and got up. It was a still, star-lit night. The frigate was dreaming
away northward with all sail set. Through the windows shone the level
stars. From a beam above hung a dim lamp. He could see no one. He went
to the hammock. There was no boy in it. Then he spied him, kneeling
under the stern-windows, with his head down.
"Anything the matter, Clare?" he asked.
"No, father."
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to say _Thank you for my father!_"
"Oh, thank him, thank him, my boy!" returned sir Harry. "Thank him
with all your heart. He will give us _her_ some day!"
"Yes, father, he will!" responded Clare.
His father knelt beside him, but neither said word that the other
heard.
The next night, Clare was on the quarter-deck with his father, and
heard him give certain orders to the officers of the watch. He had
never heard orders given in such a way: he spoke so quietly, so
directly, so simply! The night was gusty and dark, threatening foul
weather. The captain measured the quarter-deck as when first Clare saw
him, but with a mien how different! He walked as slow and stately as
before, but with a look almost of triumph in his eyes, glancing often
at the clouds. The thought of having such a father made Clare tremble
with delight from head to foot. His father was the power of the
sea-planet that bore them! Him the great vessel, and all aboard of
her, obeyed! He was the life of her motions, the soul of her! At his
pleasure she bowed her obedient head, and swept over the seas! Clare's
heart swelled within him.
But this father had, the night before, knelt with him in the presence
of one unseen, worshipping and thanking a higher than himself! As the
captain of the Panther sailed his frigate through the seas, so the
great father, the father of his father, the father of all fathers, to
whom the captain kneeled as a little child, sailed through the heaven
of heavens the huge ship of the world, guided fleet upon fleet
innumerable through trackless space! And over an infinitely grander
sea than the measureless ocean of worlds, the Father was carrying
navies of human souls, every soul a world whose affairs none but the
Father could understand, through many a storm, and waterspout, and
battle with the powers of evil, safe to the haven of the children, the
Father's house! And Clare began to understand that so it was.
One day his father said to him--
"Clare, whatever you forget, whatever you remember, mind this--that
you and I and your mother are the children of one father, and that we
have all three to be good children to that father. If we do as he
tells us, he will bring us all at length to the same port. Our admiral
is Jesus Christ. We take our orders from him. But each has to sail his
own ship."
The boatswain shook in his wide shoes, but Clare never showed him the
least disfavour. He recognized at once the two officers he had seen at
the menagerie, but beyond giving each a look he could hardly mistake,
he showed no sign of having any knowledge of them.
He set himself to be a sailor, and learned fast. I need scarcely say
he was as precise in obeying any superior officer as the best sailor
on board. In a few weeks he felt and looked to the manner born--as
indeed he was, for not only his father, but his grandfather, and his
great-grandfather, and more yet of his ancestors,--how many I do not
know, were sailors.
He had had a rough shaking. The earthquake had come and gone, and come
again and gone a many times. But the shaking earth was his nurse, and
she taught him to dwell in a world that cannot be shaken.
