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Full Title
The Weekly novelette, v. VI, no. 11, Saturday, November 26, 1859.
Contributor
Cobb, Sylvanus, 1823-1887.
Date Added
23 February 2022
Format
Newspaper
Language
English
Publish Date
1859-11-26
Publisher
Boston : [M. M. Ballou]
Alternate Title
The child of the bay; or, The sailor's protege : a story of England, India and the ocean / by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. Sailor's protege
Topic
American literature > Periodicals. American literature > 19th century > Periodicals. Popular literature > United States > 19th century > Periodicals. Story papers > Specimens.
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OCR
velette,
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VOLUME VI.—NUMBER 11.
a
AN
{Drawn and engraved expressly for The Weekly Novelette.]
[Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerk's Office ot the
District Court of Massachusetts.)
THE CHILD OF THE BAY:
THE SAILOR’S PROTEGE.
A STORY OF ENGLAND, INDIA AND THE OCEAN.
BY SYLVANUS COBB, Jr.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD SAILOR AND HIS PROTEGE.
Ir was a bright, beautiful morning in early summer.
From out the gently undulating bosom of the English
Channel the golden day-king arose in all his splendor,
and away danced the sparkling beams, gilding the
wave tops with a rich, moulten vermilion, as they leaped
and frolicked on their westward course. At the entrance
of the Channel, between Brest and Land’s End, a clus-
ter of the happy sunbeams were suddenly stopped in
their wayward course by the towering canvass of a
British frigate, whose wake was scarce obliterated from
the bosom of the broad Atlantic. These sunbeams
were welcome messengers to the ship’s crew, seeming
to beckon them on to their old homes in “ Merrie Eng-
land,” but the wind that came down with them would
have been more welcome from another quarter, for it
came upon the ship from the exact point towards which
she would have sailed, and in a moment after the
morning beams tipped her spars with their light, her
head was turned upon the French coast.
For half an hour the frigate stood on upon the lar-
board tack, and then she put about and stood a “long
leg”? towards her native coast. As soon as the star-
hoard tacks were aboard, the sheets hauled snugly aft,
the yards braced sharp to the wind, and the backstays
set up, the crew disposed themselves in small knots
about the deck, or huddled together about the low
BOSTON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26,
OSMOND. MAXWELL AND OLD PAUL ON BOARD
ports, watching with eager gaze the dim outlines of the
bold headland of Devonshire. When, a short time
before sunrise, the magic ery of :
“Oho! oho! Old England's coast, oho !” had sound-
ed from the foretopgallant crosstrees, and went echoing
through the old ship, hundreds of hearts had leaped
joyously beneath the reverberations of the shout, and
souls that had been long pent up within the narrow
confines of shipboard began to swell with the bright
hope that already painted to the imagination the forms
and features of kindred and friends. ’Twere an easy
matter now to see who were those whose hearts were
bound to England by the ties of kith and kin. Upon
the coast of France they had hardly bestowed a single
thought, and if they looked at it at all, it was merely
with that sort of a glance which the anxious traveller
gives the last milestone that marks the way towards his
journey’s end, while upon the dim, hazy blue ahead,
half distinguishable from the sky and water, they gazed
with that look of fond endearment which tells that the
heart has already flown in advance. At every port-
hole that opened upon the rising coast they gathered
with earnest, thoughtful looks, and.even when called
for the moment to perform some trifling duty, their
heads would remain turned towards the endeared spot,
even as the magnet retains its affinity for the point of
its polar home. o
Some there were upon the frigate’s deck who took
little note of the opening land ahead. It was not yet
clearly enough defined to minister to their curiosity,
and beyond that single feeling no thought of it dwelt
within their bosoms. Like all other lands, it offered
them a source of recreation and amusement, but their
hearts turned not to it with a warmer feeling.
Upon the topgallant-forecastle, with his arms folded
upon his breast, and his eyes bent towards the land that
was looming through the hazy mist along on the lee
bow, stood a young man in a past-midshipman’s uni-
form. He was twenty years of age, and though yet so
young, it would not have puzzled an expert seaman to
have seen at a glance that he was an older sailor than
officer—that he came not into the king’s service
“through the cabin windows,” and that he wore the
sheath knife and marline-spike long before he mounted
the belt and sword of an officer. Ie was tall—as tall
1859, PRICE FOUR CENTS.
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THE DUNKIRK. [See page 162 ]
as any of the seamen around him—and what he may
have lacked in beauty of person was more than made
up in the harmony that marked his contour... If his
hands were large, his arms and chest gave them easy
support. If bis features were not handsome in their
mouldings, there was a boldness of outline that gave to
them a decided stamp of. nobleness, while from the
large, dark eyes, flashing and burning with a soul lit
flame, beamed a light that softened the sunburned skin
to a beauty that no true man would be ashamed to own.
A cluster of nutbrown curls rolled down upon either
temple, and sweeping away over the ears they almost
hid beneath their glossy coils the laced collar of the
coat, while the brow, above which they parted in their
wavy course, betrayed the stern yet kindly impulses
that had birth in the brain beneath.
By the young man’s side, with his huge hands stuck
within the waistbands of his trowsers, with half a glance
upon the distant shore, while half a glance scemed to
be playing askance upon the bold features of his com-
panion, stood an old weather-beaten sailor, over whose
silvered head full threescore years had poured their
quota of sunshine and storm. He was not so tall by
half a head as the young officer by his side, though,
perhaps, he might once have ‘ stood him inch for inch,”
for the peculiar bowing of his short legs, and the im-
mense thickness from breast to back and from shoulder
to shoulder, might seem to indicate that his whole cor-
poreal frame‘ had for years been settling more firmly
together... His face was a true index to the whole man.
There were some lines there that betrayed feelings deep
and powerful—lines in which a friend might have seen
the sunshine of a kind and noble heart, self sacrificing
in its general impulses, and in which’ an enemy would
have seen the lightning of a soul that brooked no insult
—that seldom forgave a wrong. - Yet, the general tone
of that old sailor’s face was tuned to friendship, and he
was never more happy than when in the society of
something that he loved. or fifty years he had stood
at his post before the roaring broadsides and iron hail
of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, end beneath the
fire and smoke of India he had fought for the English
crown. Age may have taken somewhat from the elas-
ticity of the old man’s limbs, but it had detracted noth-
ing from the iron strength of the sinew and muscle.
