"Father," said Arthur, "I am very young, and have a life before me that I am now convinced may be more usefully employed than in a state of inactive ease. I will serve my country with alacrity; and I pray God I may be able to do something for her service."
I will not stay to describe their arrival at Alston Moor, nor the joyful meeting between Arthur and his aunt and cousin. Many years have rolled on since Arthur went through his service as midshipman, and passed as lieutenant with the greatest credit: he is now a gallant and distinguished officer,--the pride of his father, the delight of his old friend Travers, an honour to his country, and the husband of his pretty cousin Phoebe.
The picture I have drawn is not exaggerated. Arthur is no creature of my imagination; it was drawn from life, and may be realized by any youth who takes for his rule of life the maxim of our Church: "Do thy duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call thee."
This tale is founded on facts: and the recapture of the ship, extraordinary as it may seem, is a simple relation of occurrences that really happened, in the beginning of the American war, when the Lark merchant-ship was taken by a French privateer, and retaken by her captain, having no English on board, but a boy, and an English merchant, one of the Society of Friends. This gentleman refused to stain his hands with blood: but assisted in this peaceable recapture with great firmness and resolution. The underwriters presented the captain with £100, as a small reward for his intrepidity.
Nearly a century and a half ago, there lived, in a little cottage on the eastern coast, an aged widow and her two grandsons. Although neither carpenter nor bricklayer was employed in the construction of this cottage, it was as neat a fisherman's cabin as any in that part of England. James Mayhew, the widow's son, had ingeniously built it on the sea-beach, under the cliffs. It was formed of pebbles and sea-stones; and he had, with great toil and labour, carried down earth from the cliffs, and made a nice little kitchen-garden, which formed a pleasing contrast with the barren sands that surrounded the cottage; and this, with a shed for a cow, (which got her living on the common belonging to the adjacent town,) made a very comfortable little dwelling place. It was poor James's summer work; and at Michaelmas he brought to live in it his widowed mother, old Amy Mayhew, and his wife, who had formerly been a tidy dairy-maid, and to whom he had been married just a twelvemonth. Now James was very clever and industrious; he could turn his hand to any sort of work; he would labour for the farmers at harvest and seed-time, and pursued the trade of a fisherman the rest of the year. He made one harvest on the land, and two more from the sea; for he used to go out in a boat and catch herrings and mackerel at those seasons when they abound so plentifully on our coasts. James was an excellent son and husband, and would, no doubt, have been as good a father. His wife had just presented him with two twin little boys, when James was forced to leave her, to go to sea for the herring-fishery; and, sad it is to tell what followed! though such events are too common on these coasts. From the cottage window, his boat was seen to founder; and the wife never beheld her husband, nor the mother her son, until the tide threw up his corpse within a few yards of his own door. His poor wife, in her weak state, was unable to bear so severe a shock, and sank into a state of stupefaction, which was soon succeeded by death. The neighbouring townsmen contributed a sum to bury the poor young people: and many, who were standing by at the funeral, and saw the sorrow of the aged Amy, and thought of the hard trial which had befallen her, said it would have been a mercy if the orphan little twins had been buried in the same grave with their unfortunate parents! But Amy did not think so. "God bless the poor babes!" she said; "they are all that is left me of my good dutiful James: I will do my best to bring them up; and, if my life be spared so long, I may see them prove a blessing and a comfort to me; and, perhaps, they may lay my head in the same grave with my poor son!"