ever he chose to exert it, no man so savage or colossal but must, more or less, bow. Snatching a trumpet which hung from the bulwarks, with a free step Captain Delano advanced to the forward edge of the poop, issuing his orders in his best Spanish. The few sailors and many negroes, all equally pleased, obediently set about heading the ship towards the harbor. While giving some directions about setting a lower stu'n'-sail, suddenly Captain Delano heard a voice faithfully repeating his orders. Turning, he saw Babo, now for the time acting, under the pilot, his original part of captain of the slaves. This assistance proved valuable. Tattered sails and warped yards were soon brought into some trim. And no brace or halyard was pulled but to the blithe songs of the inspirited negroes. Good fellows, thought Captain Delano, a little training would make fine sailors of them. Why see, the very women pull and sing too. These must be some of those Ashantee negresses that make such capital soldiers, I've heard. But who's at the helm. I must have a good hand there. He went to see. The San Dominick steered with a cumbrous tiller, with large horizontal pullies attached. At each pully-end stood a subordinate black, and between them, at the tiller-head, the responsible post, a Spanish seaman, whose countenance evinced his due share in the general hopefulness and confidence at the coming of the breeze. He proved the same man who had behaved with so shame-faced an air on the windlass. "Ah,-it is you, my man," exclaimed Captain Delano-"well, no more sheep's-eyes now;-look straightforward and keep the ship so. Good hand, I trust? And want to get into the harbor, don't you?" "Sí, Señor," assented the man with an inward chuckle, grasping the tillerhead firmly. Upon this, unperceived by the American, the two blacks eyed the sailor askance. Finding all right at the helm, the pilot went forward to the forecastle, to see how matters stood there. The ship now had way enough to breast the current. With the approach of evening, the breeze would be sure to freshen. Having done all that was needed for the present, Captain Delano, giving his last orders to the sailors, turned aft to report affairs to Don Benito in the cabin; perhaps additionally incited to rejoin him by the hope of snatching a moment's private chat while his servant was engaged upon deck. From opposite sides, there were, beneath the poop, two approaches to the cabin; one further forward than the other, and consequently communicating with a longer passage. Marking the servant still above, Captain Delano, taking the nighest entrance-the one last named, and at whose porch Atufal still stood-hurried on his way, till, arrived at the cabin threshold, he paused an instant, a little to recover from his eagerness. Then, with the words of his intended business upon his lips, he entered. As he advanced toward the Spaniard, on the transom, he heard another footstep, keeping time with his. From the opposite door, a salver in hand, the servant was likewise advancing. "Confound the faithful fellow," thought Captain Delano; "what a vexatious coincidence." Possibly, the vexation might have been something different, were it not for the buoyant confidence inspired by the breeze. But even as it was, he felt a slight twinge, from a sudden involuntary association in his mind of Babo with Atufal. "Don Benito," said he, "I give you joy; the breeze will hold, and will increase. By the way, your tall man and time-piece, Atufal, stands without. By your order, of course?" Don Benito recoiled, as if at some bland satirical touch, delivered with such adroit garnish of apparent goodbreeding as to present no handle for retort. He is like one flayed alive, thought Captain Delano; where may one touch him without causing a shrink? The servant moved before his master, adjusting a cushion; recalled to civility, the Spaniard stiffly replied: "you are right. The slave appears where you saw him, according to my command; which is, that if at the given hour I am below, he must take his stand and abide my coming." "Ah now, pardon me, but that is treating the poor fellow like an ex-king denied. Ah, Don Benito," smiling, "for all the license you permit in some things, I fear lest, at bottom, you are a bitter hard master." Again Don Benito shrank; and this time, as the good sailor thought, from a genuine twinge of his conscience. Conversation now became constrained. In vain Captain Delano called attention to the now perceptible motion of the keel gently cleaving the sea; with lack-lustre eye, Don Benito returned words few and reserved. By-and-by, the wind having steadily risen, and still blowing right into the harbor, bore the San Dominick swiftly on. Rounding a point of land, the sealer at distance came into open view. Meantime Captain Delano had again repaired to the deck, remaining there some time. Having at last altered the ship's course, so as to give the reef a wide berth, he returned for a few moments below. I will cheer up my poor friend, this time, thought he. "Better and better," Don Benito, he cried as he blithely reëntered; "there will soon be an end to your cares, at least for awhile. For when, after a long, sad voyage, you know, the anchor. drops into the haven, all its vast weight seems lifted from the captain's heart. We are getting on famously, Don Benito. My ship is in sight. Look through this side-light here; there she is; all a-taunt-o! The Bachelor's Delight, my good friend. Ah, how this wind braces one up. Come, you must take a cup of coffee with me this evening. My old steward will give you as fine a cup as ever any sultan tasted. What say you, Don Benito, will you?" At first, the Spaniard glanced feverishly up, casting a longing look towards the sealer, while with mute concern his servant gazed into his face. Suddenly the old ague of coldness returned, and dropping back to his cushions he was silent. you have been my host; would you have hospitality all on one side?" "I cannot go," was the response. "What? it will not fatigue you. The ships will lie together as near as they can, without swinging foul. It will be little more than stepping from deck to deck; which is but as from room to room. Come, come, you must not refuse me." "I cannot go," decisively and repulsively repeated Don Benito. Renouncing all but the last appearance of courtesy, with a sort of cadaverous sullenness, and biting his thin nails to the quick, he glanced, almost glared, at his guest; as if impatient that a stranger's presence should interfere with the full indulgence of his morbid hour. Meantime the sound of the parted waters came more and more gurglingly and merrily in at the windows; as reproaching him for his dark spleen; as telling him that, sulk as he might, and go mad with it, nature cared not a jot; since, whose fault was it, pray? But the foul mood was now at its depth, as the fair wind at its hight. There was something in the man so far beyond any mere unsociality or sourness previously evinced, that even the forbearing good-nature of his guest could no longer endure it. Wholly at a loss to account for such demeanor, and deeming sickness with eccentricity, however extreme, no adequate excuse, well satisfied, too, that nothing in his own conduct could justify it, Captain Delano's pride began to be roused. Himself became reserved. But all seemed one to the Spaniard. Quitting him, therefore, Captain Delano once more went to the deck. The ship was now within less than two miles of the sealer. The whaleboat was seen darting over the interval. To be brief, the two vessels, thanks to the pilot's skill, ere long in neighborly style lay anchored together. [To be Concluded.] "You do not answer. Come, all day THEY THE MARINERS. HEY were born by the shore, by the shore, When the surf was loud and the sea-gull cried; They were rocked to the rhythm of its roar, They were cradled in the arms of the tide. Sporting on the fenceless sand, How should they follow where the plow Furrows round the field at the oxen's heels? How should they stand with a sickly brow, Thrust behind a counter, to reckon up their deals? They turned to the Earth, but she frowns on her child; They turned to the Sea, and he smiled as of old: Sweeter was the peril of the breakers white and wild, Sweeter than the land, with its bondage and gold! Now they walk on the rolling deck, And they hang to the rocking shrouds, When the lee-shore looms with a vision of wreck, Shifting the changeless horizon-ring, They traverse the zones with a veering wing, They know the South and the North; They do not act with a studied grace, They do not speak in delicate phrase, They cannot fathom the subtle cheats, The lying arts which the landsmen learn: Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets, And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn. Say that they curse, if you will, That the tavern and harlot possess their gains: When they slide from the gangway-plank below, But whether they die on the sea or shore, Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store, And anchor their souls in the harbors of God! A LETTER то HENRY HEINE. A FRIEND IN PARK PLACE. OBERWESEL ON THE RHINE. THIS HIS day is too fair, my friend, and this place too pleasant, for me not to think of you; and, when I think of you, I remember my promise to write to you from Germany, and about the Germans. It is a virtuous deed for me to fulfill that promise now, when the winemonth is in its purple prime; and here, where the river flows so swift, so silent, so serene, beneath my windows, and the deep blue sky throbs with light above the stately, shadowy hills. "Oberwesel on the Rhine!" Do you know how much these few words mean, of poetry and of picture, of legend and of landscape, of song, and sunlight, and wine? Yes, I believe that you do, though with your mortal ears you have never listened to the sixpenny echoes of the little cannon that a lonely fellow fires against the Lürlei-felsen, nor with mortal eyes have looked upon the foamy uproar of the Gewirr, where heedless raftsmen slip off and are drowned. But it is not the fireside travelers who see and know the least of this fair world. It is not sailing in a ship that makes a seaman; and I know many a man who has carried a pair of staring optics all over Europe, and yet hath no more right to speak of Rhine and Danube, of Switzerland and Naples, than has the forty-third wife of a Mormon elder to discourse of marriage. Yes! you know Oberwesel in your heart and in your mind. You have lost yourself in summer thoughts before Turner's wondrous picture, where all the outward shape of Oberwesel lies bathed in soft, poetic light. You have mused and longed over the dreamy wanderings of "Hyperion," where the spirit of the quaint old Rhenish city broods on many a page, though its name be never mentioned. And so you will feel how fit it is, that sitting here by the open window of the still and spacious inn of the "Golden Corkscrew," I should find it hard to gather up the little cloudy thoughts that float through the blue, lazy heaven of my mood, and make them fall in a busy rain of words. Yet, for your sake, I will do it; for a promise, though it were but to buy a paper of pins, should be sacred. And to-morrow I glide away again, down the enchanted stream, to sunny St. Goar, there to meet with a lazier than myself; and we shall burn our pens and paper, and a brown-eyed maiden shall ferry us over the river, and then through the pretty SchweizerThal, and on beneath the ruined castle of the Cat, and by the shrine of Bacchus we shall vanish into the Rheingau, where musty old November, unbinding the last vine-fillets from his brow, shall find us stretched still beneath the chestnut trees. This day, then, I will write. Nay, call me not, thou Belgian artist, from the yellow Ochsen-thurm! Sit in the sheltered embrasure, most picturesque of red-capped men! and, veiled by the broad leaves of the tangled vines, watch "fine effects" of light, and depths of shadow! Sketch in "nice bits" of bare black mountain, and of shining, lake-like water! But leave me to my task, for the sun is high, and the amber Engenhöller waxes low in this long-necked bottle, mellow-tinted as October sunsets after rain! Of what or whom shall I write? Not of the Rhine. I dare not tread that region with unsandaled feet. I leave it to romantic Cæsar Julian, imperial Puseyite of the Pagan past, and to British Bulwer's musky muse. I will write of Heine; of the poet whose genius has torn up the treaties of Vienna, and carried the boundaries of France to the Rhine; of that tearful trifler, that sardonic sentimentalist, that strange, sad, significant fellow, who laughs at old legends over his wine, and shudders beneath the black Lürlei-rocks in the twilight. I will write of him, not because he is strange, sad, and significant, nor because he tears up treaties, and quizzes Kaiser and Vaterland, and parodies the songs of Israel by the waters of the Seine-but because the music of his melodies "beats time to nothing in my brain" to-day; because. in this sweet Rhenish weather, I have first learned how exquisite is his singing, how subtle and how true is the rhythm of his genius. Last evening I wandered upwards from the beautiful old Gothic church of our Lady, to the broad hights of Schömberg. Vast and glorious showed, in the light of the setting sun, the broken walls, the crumbling towers that cradled a heroic race. I looked on the river, gleaming and winding for many a mile, a thread of silver, far below, and thought how the last great Schömberg fell, his gray hairs dabbled in blood, far away by the foreign waters of the Boyne. And the lords that were the terror of the Rhine-that swore, and drank, and fought, and stormed, on every side, with sword and fire? In all quiet Oberwesel, now, there is nothing more quiet than the rude effigies that lie, "with folded arms across," in the dim side-chapel of our Lady's church! Of the daughters of Schömberg a livelier memory remains. In the channel beneath us, when the tide is low, you may see seven little jagged rocks, without form or comeliness." These were once seven lovely ladies of Schömberg, cruel coquettes, for whom hearts and lances were broken in vain. Their shapes are changed, their instincts survive, and now they vex the waves of the Rhine, as once they vexed the souls of men. As I stood looking up into the archway of the ancient donjon-keep, and vaguely wishing to ascend, I heard a sound of merry voices, and presently there emerged, from the copse-wood hard by, a handsome young German, squiring two hearty German girls. He left his damsels, and, drawing near, saluted me. That I was a stranger was plain from my dress; still more plain from my accent; and the friendly youth asked if he could serve me. It was not possible to mistake him for an officious guide, so I thanked him, and explained my wish to mount the tower. "So!" and I must go with him to a farm near at hand, and we would get a ladder. "But your ladies?" I remonstrated. They stood a little way off, plucking flowers. "Oh, they are my cousins, and live just below, on the hill, and always der Fremde geht vor, the stranger must take precedence!" Nor could I stop him, but, whisking off, he whispered with his companions, who turned, waved me a smiling farewell, and disappeared into the wood. We found the farm-house, looking like a leaf from Retzsch's "Song of the Bell," and the farmer's wife, who made us drink new milk, and the hale old farmer, who gave us his ladder, and called a boy, with crab-apple cheeks, to help us to carry it. And we mounted the tower and drank in a glorious vision-the winding Rhine from Goarshausen to Bacharach-the vine-clad hills-the leafy valleys; and over all, the skyey splendors of sapphire and beryl, and fine gold and amethyst. We talked of many things, there on the old battlement. He was a Bergwerks beflissner, from Austria, my companion, which, being interpreted, is a "Student of Mining;" and when I could not catch the meaning of his South-German, he eked out his phrases with "Priscian most unscratched." Of America and republics he spoke much, and warmly, after the helpless, honest, impracticable manner of the Germans. And slowly, at last, the dusk descended, and here and there a point of silver glimmered from the purple deeps. And our talk took the tone of the hour, and as the hues faded from the sky, subsided into silence, and we came down from the donjon-keep. The crescent of the moon appeared, as we emerged from the great archway, and, without a word, my Bergwerks befiissner began to sing, in a rich, low, manly voice. And this was the song he sung: "I know not what it presages, That I should be saddened so; 'Tis cool, and the dusk is growing, Far up in the golden beaming With a golden comb and glancing, She is combing her tresses there; And she singeth a song entrancing, A weird and wonderful air! The heart of the boatman that hears it Grows wild with a passionate love; He sees not the rock as he nears it, He sees but the syren above! The waves to their fatal embraces Take the boat and the boatman too; I need not tell you that the song is Heine's; nor will I make you an apology for my lame attempt to do it into |