So the seasons passed, and we waited, till in the late summer of 1849 (my father having been away nineteen months) there came another letter to say that he was about to start for home.  He had found what he sought, so he said, but could not rightly understand its value, or, indeed, make head or tail of it by himself, and dared not ask strangers to help him.  Perhaps, however, when he came home, Jasper (who was such a scholar) would help him; and maybe the key would be some aid.  For the rest, he had been stricken with a fever—­a malady common enough in those parts—­but was better, and would start in something over a week, in the Belle Fortune, a barque of some 650 tons register, homeward bound with a cargo of sugar, spices, and coffee, and having a crew of about eighteen hands, with, he thought, one or two passengers.  The letter was full of strong hope and love, so that my mother, who trembled a little when she read about the fever, plucked up courage to smile again towards the close.  The ship would be due about October, or perhaps November.  So once more we had to resume our weary waiting, but this time with glad hearts, for we knew that before Christmas the days of anxiety and yearning would be over.

The long summer drew to a glorious and golden September, and so faded away in a veil of grey sky; and the time of watching was nearly done.  Through September the skies had been without cloud, and the sea almost breathless, but with the coming of October came dirty weather and a strong sou’-westerly wind, that gathered day by day, until at last, upon the evening of October 11th, it broke into a gale.  My mother for days had been growing more restless and anxious with the growing wind, and this evening had much ado to sit quietly and endure.  I remembered that as the storm raged without and tore at the door-hinges, while the rain lashed and smote the tamarisk branches against the panes, I sat by her knee before the kitchen fire and read bits from my favourite “Holy War,” which, in the pauses of the storm, she would explain to me.

I was much put to it that night, I recollect, by the questionable morality at one point of Captain Credence, who in general was my favourite hero, dividing that honour with General Boanerges for the most part, but exciting more sympathy by reason of his wound—­so grievously I misread the allegory, or rather saw no allegory at all.  So my mother explained it to me, though all the while, poor creature, her heart was racked with terror for her Mansoul, beaten, perhaps, at that moment from its body by the fury of that awful night.  Then when the fable’s meaning was explained, and my difficulty smoothed away, we fell to talking of father’s home-coming, in vain endeavours to cheat ourselves of the fears that rose again with every angry bellow of the tempest, and agreed that his ship could not possibly be due yet (rejoicing at this for the first time), but must, we feigned, be lying in a dead calm off the West Coast