The Crater, James Fenimore Cooper [good book club books TXT] 📗

the greatest requisites in married happiness. To this great quality must be added affection, for she was devoted to Mark, and nothing he wished would she hesitate about striving to obtain, even at painful sacrifices to herself. One as generous-minded and manly as her husband, could not fail to discover and appreciate such a disposition, which entered very largely into the composition of their future happiness.

Our young couple did not visit the crater and the Summit until the sun had lost most of its power. Then Mark introduced his wife into his garden, and to his lawn. Exclamations of delight escaped the last, at nearly every step; for, in addition to the accidental peculiarities of such a place, the vegetation had advanced, as vegetation only can advance within the tropics, favoured by frequent rains and a rich soil. The radishes were half as large as Bridget's wrists, and as tender as her heart. The lettuce was already heading; the beans were fit to pull; the onions large enough to boil, and the peas even too old. On the Summit Mark cut a couple of melons, which were of a flavour surpassing any he had ever before tasted. With that spot Bridget was especially delighted. It was, just then, as green as grass could be, and Kitty had found its plants so very sweet, that she had scarce descended once to trespass on the garden. Here and there the imprint of her little hoof was to be traced on a bed, it is true, but she appeared to have gone there more to look after the condition of the garden than to gratify her appetite.

While on the Summit, Mark pointed out to his wife the fowls, now increased to something like fifty. Two or three broods of chickens had come within the last month, making their living on the reef that was separated from that of the crater by means of the bridge of planks. As two or three flew across the narrow pass, however, he was aware that the state of his garden must be owing to the fact that they still found a plenty on those rocks for their support. In returning to the ship, he visited a half-barrel prepared for that purpose, and, as he expected, found a nest containing a dozen eggs. These he took the liberty of appropriating to his own use, telling Bridget that they could eat some of them for their breakfast.

But food never had been an interest to give our solitary man much uneasiness. From the hour when he found muck, and sea-weed, and guano, he felt assured of the means of subsistence; being in truth, though he may not have known it himself, more in danger of falling behind hand, in consequence of the indisposition to activity that almost ever accompanies the abundance of a warm climate, than from the absolute want of the means of advancing. That night Mark and Bridget knelt, side by side, and returned thanks to God for all his mercies. How sweet the former found it to see the light form of his beautiful companion moving about the spacious cabin, giving it an air of home and happiness, no one can fully appreciate who has not been cut off from these accustomed joys, and then been suddenly restored to them.


Chapter XV.


"I beg, good Heaven, with just desires,
What need, not luxury, requires;
Give me, with sparing hands, but moderate wealth,
A little honour, and enough of health;
Free from the busy city life,
Near shady groves and purling streams confined,
A faithful friend, a pleasing wife;
And give me all in one, give a contented mind."

Anonymous.


Mark and Bridget remained at the Reef a week, entirely alone. To them the time seemed but a single day; and so completely were they engrossed with each other, and their present happiness, that they almost dreaded the hour of return. Everything was visited, however, even to the abandoned anchor, and Mark made a trip to the eastward, carrying his wife out into the open water, in that direction. But the ship and the crater gave Bridget the greatest happiness. Of these she never tired, though the first gave her the most pleasure. A ship was associated with all her earliest impressions of Mark; on board that very ship she had been married; and now it formed her home, temporarily, if not permanently. Bridget had been living so long beneath a tent, and in savage huts, that the accommodations of the Rancocus appeared like those of a palace. They were not inelegant even, though it was not usual, in that period of the republic, to fit up vessels with a magnificence little short of royal yachts, as is done at present. In the way of convenience, however, our ship could boast of a great deal. Her cabins were on deck, or under a poop, and consequently enjoyed every advantage of light and air. Beneath were store-rooms, still well supplied with many articles of luxury, though time was beginning to make its usual inroads on their qualities. The bread was not quite as sound as it was once, nor did the teas retain all their strength and flavour. But the sugar was just as sweet as the day it was shipped, and in the coffee there was no apparent change. Of the butter, we do not choose to say anything. Bridget, in the prettiest manner imaginable, declared that as soon as she could set Dido at work the store-rooms should be closely examined, and thoroughly cleaned. Then the galley made such a convenient and airy kitchen! Mark had removed the house, the awning answering every purpose, and his wife declared that it was a pleasure to cook a meal for him, in so pleasant a place.

The first dish Bridget ever literally cooked for Mark, with her own hands, or indeed for any one else, was a mess of 'grass,' as it was the custom of even the most polished people of America then to call asparagus. They had gone together to the asparagus bed on Loam Island, and had found the plant absolutely luxuriating in its favourite soil. The want of butter was the greatest defect in this mess, for, to say the truth, Bridget refused the ship's butter on this occasion, but luckily, enough oil remained to furnish a tolerable substitute. Mark declared he had never tasted anything in his life half so good!

At the end of the week, the governor, as Heaton had styled Mark, and as Bridget had begun playfully to term him, gave the opinion that it was necessary for them to tear themselves away from their paradise. Never before, most certainly, had the Reef appeared to the young husband a spot as delightful as he now found it, and it did seem to him very possible for one to pass a whole life on it without murmuring. His wife again and again assured him she had never before been half as happy, and that, much as she loved Anne and the baby, she could remain a month longer, without being in the least wearied. But it was prudent to return to the Peak, for Mark had never felt his former security against foreign invasion, since he was acquainted with the proximity of peopled islands.

The passage was prosperous, and it gave the scene an air of civilization and life, to fall in with the Neshamony off the cove. She was coming in from Rancocus, on her last trip for the stores, having brought everything away but two of the goats. These had been driven up into the mountains, and there left. Bigelow had come away, and the whole party of colonists were now assembled at Vulcan's Peak. But Betts had a communication to make that gave the governor a good deal of concern. He reported that after they had got the pinnace loaded, and were only waiting for the proper time of day to quit Rancocus, they discovered a fleet of canoes and catamarans, approaching the island from the direction of the Group, as they familiarly termed the cluster of islands that was known to be nearest to them, to the northward and westward. By means of a glass, Betts had ascertained that a certain Waally was on board the leading canoe, and he regarded this as an evil omen. Waally was Ooroony's most formidable rival and most bitter foe; and the circumstance that he was leading such a flotilla, of itself, Bob thought, was an indication that he had prevailed over honest Betto, in some recent encounter, and was now abroad, bent on further mischief. Indeed, it seemed scarcely possible that men like the natives should hear of the existence of such a mountain as that of Rancocus Island, in their vicinity, and not wish to explore, if not to possess it.

Betts had pushed off, and made sail, as soon as assured of this fact. He knew the pinnace could outsail anything the islanders possessed, more especially on a wind, and he manoeuvred about the flotilla for an hour, making his observations, before he left it. This was clearly a war party, and Bob thought there were white men in it. At least, he saw two individuals who appeared to him to be white sailors, attired in a semi-savage way, and who were in the same canoe with the terrible Waally. It was nothing out of the way for seamen to get adrift on the islands scattered about in the Pacific, there being scarcely a group in which more or less of them are not to be found. The presence of these men, too, Bob regarded as another evil omen, and he felt the necessity of throwing all the dust he could into their eyes. When the pinnace left the flotilla, therefore, instead of passing out to windward of the island, as was her true course, she steered in an almost contrary direction, keeping off well to leeward of the land, in order not to get becalmed under the heights, for Bob well knew the canoes, with paddles, would soon overhaul him, should he lose the wind.

It was the practice of our colonists to quit Rancocus just before the sun set, and to stand all night on a south-east course. This invariably brought them in sight of the smoke of the volcano by morning, and shortly after they made the Peak. All of the day that succeeded, was commonly passed in beating up to the volcano, or as near to it as it was thought prudent to go; and tacking to the northward and eastward, about sunset of the second day, it was found on the following morning, that the Neshamony was drawing near to the cliffs of Vulcan's Peak, if she were not already beneath them. As a matter of course, then, Bob had not far to go, before night shut in, and left him at liberty to steer in whatever direction he pleased. Fortunately, that night had no moon, though there was not much danger of so small a craft as the Neshamony being seen at any great distance on the water, even by moonlight. Bob consequently determined to beat up off the north end of the island, or Low Cape, as it was named by the colonists, from the circumstance of its having a mile or two of low land around it, before the mountains commenced. Once off the cape again, and reasonably well in, he might possibly make discoveries that would be of use.

It took two or three hours to regain the lost ground, by beating to windward. By