A Woman of Thirty

“She is making way too!” returned the General.

The Othello was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception, however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy of language:

“By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!”

At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread through the brig. The Spanish captain’s orders put energy into the crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The Othello meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow; but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of efforts, the Saint-Ferdinand sprang forward, Gomez himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand. The captain’s face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself, and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes, for it is harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot, which struck the water ten fathoms away from the Saint-Ferdinand.

“Thunder of heaven!” cried the General, “that was a close shave! They must have guns made on purpose.”

“Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your tongue,” said a sailor. “The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an English man-of-war.”

“It is all over with us,” the captain cried in desperation; he had pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. “We are further from the coast than I thought.”

“Why do you despair?” asked the General. “All your passengers are Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian, you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and – ”

“And he would run us down,” retorted the captain. “He can be anything he likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!”

“Oh! if he is a pirate – ”

“Pirate!” said the ferocious looking sailor. “Oh! he always has the law on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law.”

“Very well,” said the General, raising his eyes, “let us make up our minds to it,” and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep back the tears.

The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot, better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the Saint-Ferdinand.

“Heave to!” cried the captain gloomily.

The sailor who had commended the Parisian’s law-abiding proclivities showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of suspense and the deepest dismay. The Saint-Ferdinand had four millions of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the General’s eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the Othello lay not ten gunshots away, so that those on the Saint-Ferdinand could look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne along by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert would have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master.

“We have guns on board!” cried the General, clutching the Spanish captain’s hand. But the courage in Gomez’s eyes was the courage of despair.

“Have we men?” he said.

The Marquis looked round at the crew of the Saint-Ferdinand, and a cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They watched the Othello with greed and curiosity in their faces. The captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only three who had a thought for any but themselves.

“Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?”

The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in his eyes – and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.

“This time it will be good-bye for good,” said the captain by way of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman’s eyes startled the Spaniard.

By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first sight of the enemy’s crew the General saw that Gomez’s gloomy prophecy was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.

The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned, those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.

The captain of the Othello stood with folded arms at the foot of the main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside him. His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship’s crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant vessel.

The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the lieutenant who stood beside him.

“Grappling-irons!” shouted the latter, and the Othello grappled the Saint-Ferdinand with miraculous quickness. The captain of the privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper deck of the Saint-Ferdinand, like seminarists going to mass. They bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were transferred to the Othello; the General thought that he must be dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of goods as if he had been part of the cargo.

A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board the Saint-Ferdinand, and completely dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes.

“It is all over with us,” said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.

“Why so?” asked the General.

“What would you have them do with us?” returned the Spaniard. “They have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the Saint-Ferdinand in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don’t know what port they are to put into?”

The words were scarcely out of the captain’s mouth before a hideous outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.

“What did I tell you?” the Spanish captain asked coolly.

The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish had not devoured them already.

Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had boasted of the Parisian’s power were fraternizing with the crew of the Othello, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which the drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last agony, with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly they were quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, set smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast.

The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the sole survivors of the Saint-Ferdinand, for the seven men pointed out by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.

“What atrocious villains!” the General cried. Loyal and generous indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.

“They do it because they must,” Gomez answered coolly. “If you came across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would you not?”

The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.

“Captain,” said he, “the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the Brazilian coast. Will you – ”

The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.

“I shall die like a sailor,” he said, “and a loyal Spaniard and a Christian. Do you hear?”

“Heave him overboard!” shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners seized on Gomez.

“You cowards!” roared the General, seizing hold of the men.

“Don’t get too excited, old boy,” said the lieutenant. “If your red ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care a rap for it. – You and I will have our little bit of talk together directly.”

A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the gallant captain had died “like a sailor,” as he had said.

“My money or death!” cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to see.

“Ah! now you talk sensibly!” sneered the lieutenant. “That is the way to get something out of us – ”

Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen’s feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant’s cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his business.

“Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon’s troopers over a ship’s side like an oyster!”

At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman, “the Parisian” looked round from his occupation of superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint-Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.

The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.

“This is Helene’s father,” said the captain in a clear, firm voice. “Woe to any one who meddles with him!”

A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the Te Deum. The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps, the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General’s misgivings deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some horrible mystery in such wild transports.

“My daughter!” he cried, as soon as he could speak. “Where is my daughter?”

For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with whom he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase and flung open the door of a cabin.

“There she is,” he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.

Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that none but a father’s eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out from every movement, every line of Helene’s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might reign.

Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by great painters – a Sunset by Hippolyte Schinner beside a Terburg, one of Raphael’s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together all earth’s treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David’s Brutus, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.

“What! is it possible?” cried Helene, catching her father’s arm as if to assure herself that this was no vision.

“Helene!”

“Father!”

They fell into each other’s arms, and the old man’s embrace was not so close and warm as Helene’s.

“Were you on board that vessel?”

“Yes,” he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered about him and gazed with wide open eyes.

“I was about to perish, but – ”

“But for my husband,” she broke in. “I see how it was.”

“Ah!” cried the General, “why must I find you again like this, Helene? After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your fate?”

“And why?” she asked, smiling. “Why should you be sorry to learn that I am the happiest woman under the sun?”

“Happy?” he cried with a start of surprise.

“Yes, happy, my kind father,” and she caught his hands in hers and covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.

“And how is this?” he asked, wondering at his daughter’s life, forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.

“Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini’s music – for he has Rossini’s music sent for me. I have everything that woman’s caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may be obeyed. – Ah!” she cried, interrupting herself, “happy did I say? Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing one’s own great love and self-devotion, to find in his heart an infinite love in which a woman’s soul is lost, and lost for ever – tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant from me, – he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow,” she added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. “Seven years! A love that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by all the moments that make up seven years – is this love? Oh, no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life… human language fails to express the bliss of heaven.”

A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.

“Abel, darling,” said Helene, “I am crying for joy.”

Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms about her queenly neck, as a lion’s whelp might play with the lioness.

“Do you never weary of your life?” asked the General, bewildered by his daughter’s enthusiastic language.

“Yes,” she said, “sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have never parted from my husband.”

“But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.”

“His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying, ‘Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to you.’ But for that I would fling them all overboard.”

“But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions – ”

“I understand, father,” she said smiling. “Do not fear for me. Never was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of the vessel. But he is their god; they worship him. Once, and once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,” she added, laughing; “but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are giants, but they are children at the same time.”

“And when there is fighting overhead?”

“I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement, but never since. – I am used to such peril, and – I am your daughter,” she said; “I love it.”

“But how if he should fall?”

“I should die with him.”

“And your children?”

“They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.”

“Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?”

“All beside?” echoed she. “Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay! there is this dear little one – well, this too is he,” and straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and hair.

“But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!” exclaimed the General.

“There was no help for it, doubtless,” she said, “for he is generous and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he will convince you, you will see.”

“There was that crime of his,” muttered the General to himself.

“But how if that crime was a virtue?” she asked, with cold dignity. “How if man’s justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?”

“But a private revenge!” exclaimed her father.

“But what is hell,” she cried, “but a revenge through all eternity for the wrong done in a little day?”

“Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking wildly.”

“Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and see him, you will love him.”

“Helene, France lies only a few leagues away,” he said gravely.

Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the savannas of green water spreading far and wide.

“There lies my country,” she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.

“But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and brothers?”

“Oh! yes,” she cried, with tears in her voice, “if he is willing, if he will come with me.”

“So,” the General said sternly, “you have neither country nor kin now, Helene?”

“I am his wife,” she answered proudly, and there was something very noble in her tone. “This is the first happiness in seven years that has not come to me through him,” she said – then, as she caught her father’s hand and kissed it – “and this is the first word of reproach that I have heard.”

“And your conscience?”

“My conscience; he is my conscience!” she cried, trembling from head to foot. “Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep among all the others on deck,” she cried.

A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General.

It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment’s silence, for the General’s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene – a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.

The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?

It was the captain who broke the silence at last.

“Am I in the way?” he asked, looking at his wife.

“No,” said the General, answering for her. “Helene has told me all. I see that she is lost to us – ”

“No,” the captain put in quickly; “in a few years’ time the statute of limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to – ” he stopped short, as if scorning to justify himself.

“How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes, without remorse?”

“We had no provisions,” the privateer captain retorted calmly.

“But if you had set the men ashore – ”

“They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we should never have seen Chili again.”

“Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty – ” began the General.

“But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?”

The General shrank under the other’s eyes. He said no more, and his daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.

“General,” the privateer continued, in a deep voice, “I have made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you in another form – ”

He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.

“You can understand,” he said, “that I cannot spend my time in watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our third meeting will be completely happy.”

“Victor,” said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, “I should like to see a little more of my father.”

“Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.”

“Oh, father, go!” cried Helene, “and take these keepsakes from me to my sister and brothers and – mother,” she added. She caught up a handful of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly held it out.

“But what shall I say to them from you?” asked he. Her hesitation on the word “mother” seemed to have struck him.

“Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.”

“Helene,” he began, as he watched her closely, “how if we should not meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?”

“That secret is not mine,” she answered gravely. “Even if I had the right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more miserable than words can say – ”

She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of a soldier’s career, so he took Helene’s gifts and comforted himself with the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene’s pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier’s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. “The Parisian,” deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with something of tender regret on either side.

A strange sight to seaward met the General’s eyes. The Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the Saint-Ferdinand, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by her husband’s side on the stern of the Othello. He saw Helene’s white dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier’s recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave Gomez.