My main business in Newburyport was to seek Sparrow's sister Bessie and his aunt, Calesta Peck, and, if I found them, to give them an important message. I could not find Calesta, she having gone to lie in the churchyard eight years before. But I found Bessie, a small, tidy woman with quick movements and a lively countenance, and the ghost of Sparrow rose before my eyes.
I told her what Sparrow had said—that he had never done any great wrong, such as murder or treason, and he loved her to the last. Without explaining my dealings with him, I assured her that he had lived and died true to his flag, his ship, and his mates. Then it came to pass that my first raising of a cairn over the bones of my shipmate could be an especially notable one. Bessie and her husband and little ones had lately come upon hard times. The brig Molly Stark, of which they owned half, had been lost off Hatteras; just before then they had rashly gone into debt for a share in another vessel building in Putnam's Yard. I arranged for them to pay this debt, buy a controlling interest, and name her the Enoch Sutler. Thus his name would be remembered on the seven seas. Bessie wept in grief-torn joy as I made my lonely way by the budding elm trees.
At an inn in my native town of Bath I heard the name of a living man that caused my face to burn as though I had come into a warm fo'c'sle from a winter gale. It was none other than Joshua Tyler, the second officer of the Vindictive until he left us to take command of a Salem sloop. Having married Mary Greenough, sister of George and Will Greenough, he had been persuaded to quit the sea and take the position of harbor master. Here was another besides Jim and me who knew our every yard and spar. Appointed to his berth, I had bought some of his clothes and worn them when I sat at meat with Sir Godwine Tarlton.
In the morning I waited on Captain Tyler at his office, finding him somewhat stouter than I had seen him last, and not as graceful of movement or keen of face. That was natural enough—he had not been whittled down by the knives of the wind for many a winter-but no one could doubt his high intelligence and character, and he looked much younger than his forty-five years. At sight of me his eyes became slightly narrowed and sharply alert—often the first response of those whom I came on suddenly—then filled with thought. But it got him nowhere, and soon he let it go.
"My name is Holgar Blackburn, and I've an account to settle with some sailors' families living in these parts," I told Captain Tyler. The men were lost nearly twenty years ago on a vessel you had served on, as second officer, and I hoped you might know them. She was the Vindictive."
He sat so still that it gave the effect of a start. I thought there were little pluckings by his spirit inside his brain. But my face did not change under his searching gaze, and his visions faded away.
"Pardon me, Mr. Blackburn. I had divined somehow you were going to speak of the Vindictive—one of those promptings no one can explain. As for the families, I've kept track of them as far as I could. I did so out of natural feeling. We were under a great captain. We had a friendship crew."
"In Gibraltar there occurred an incident I'll mention briefly. The ship's crew, roaming the waterfront at midnight, saved the life of a traveler who'd been set upon by footpads, and took him aboard to mend his hurts. He swore that if the chance ever came, he would reward them generously. Since then, fortune has been kind to him, and he would like to give half a tithing, in equal shares, to their surviving kinfolk."
"Do tell!" remarked Captain Tyler. He spoke softly and without emphasis, yet adequately expressed his profound astonishment.
Perhaps the end of the story I had told was not very likely. Perhaps most men, however rich, would never forget such a rescue, but the glow of gratitude would have dimmed in these long years, the list of names misplaced, the good resolve undermined by the habit of self-partiality, the effort enfeebled by time. But I remembered Suli-man and a horsehair band; whereby I looked straight into Captain Tyler's face, and my voice had the ring of truth.
"The sum is ten thousand dollars," I announced, essaying a businesslike tone.
"To be divided among the men?"
"No, sir, that sum is apportioned to each of the fifteen souls aboard the ship when she touched Gibraltar. In the case of those who've left no needy kindred, the money is to be used for an appropriate memorial. I have dealt directly with the heirs of Enoch Sutler, and will do the same as to James Porter and Farmer Blood."
"Farmer Blood." Captain Tyler's eyes became very bright.
"I think his shipmates called him that."
So I read off the list, my voice holding steady. The money would be well spent in every case. The Greenough boys would be remembered by a school for orphans of men 'fore the mast. Only when I came to Ezra Owens's name was Captain Tyler at a loss. He had never been able to find one kinsman or friend of this fourth from the last to die. Yet perhaps his soul, the soul of a windy man of common birth, a former jailbird, might have been the haughtiest soul of us all.
"If I'm not mistaken, he wanted to be a doctor," I said.
"He did. You speak truth. Good God, he did."
"Will you take the trouble to have a tenth of the sum spent on some monument to him—say a public drinking fountain, suitably inscribed, in the city of Philadelphia—and divide the rest among nine poor boys of promise who wish to study medicine?"
"None of the cases will be any trouble to me—only very great pleasure. I'd like to make one comment. You know that the man given my berth—Homer Whitman—was not on the ship at the time you mention, but was lost with the rest."
"I've heard as much.''
"Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word 'know.' Sometimes those whom we mourn as lost, return. Mr. Blackburn, may I dare speak what comes into my heart?"
"Aye, sir, you may."
"My heart is faint, and I fear I'm white in the face. It seems to me there's a little change in your face, too. Sir, I believe you're Homer Whitman, returned from the grave."
1 drew a long, aching breath. "Do I favor him in any way?" I asked.
"No way that I can see with my eyes."
"Is my form like his?"
"Not in the slightest. He weighed one hundred and sixty, all bone and muscle."
"What of my voice?"
"I don't—know."
"Could his face have ever come to be like mine?"
"Not by any course of event I can imagine. If it bore the stamp of great guilt, I could believe it—for who knows what awful guilt may come to lie on a human soul? Instead, it is like the face of Lazarus."
"Lazarus lay four days in the grave."
"I think you lay there four years or more. But that's my last word on the subject. I'll follow your directions, Mr. Blackburn, as well as I'm able."
I had one more pilgrimage of great joy. It was to go by riverboat and a good plug to Poultney, Vermont. I had never seen a lovelier spot than the valley of the Battenkill River, flowing to the Hudson. Near by gleamed Lake Catherine, a deep-blue jewel in the green hills; and with the rich valley land producing grain, potatoes, honey, and apples, the upland pasture cropped by cattle and sheep, maple groves for sugar, and birch and beech and hickory and butternut woods to range and hunt, it was no wonder that Farmer Blood grew to a mighty man.
Sitting at the farmhouse dinner table with his still-vigorous parents and numerous brothers, sisters, and kinsmen, I heard how his motlier, the one to say, wished his money disposed.
"My son Ethan—Farmer, you call him, and I reckon it fitted him well—would be mighty proud if you'd send it to the Quakers to use in fighting slavery."