ith unshorn
beard and tangled, grizzly locks, the iron jaw half open, and his dark,
terrible eyes gleaming with unearthly fire.

"Speak, Harry Cleveland! For the wife you have lost, speak!"

"My dear, dearest friend, do be calm! Why have you been so long away
from me? I wanted you here, but you did not come. Our poor boy has had
_his_ first lesson in this world's grief, and I have felt obliged to
tell him all--yes, every thing! That the grave he has so often wept
over, under the magnolia, does not contain his mother; and that--"

"Merciful God!" said Paul Darcantel, sinking down on his knees, with his
hands clasped together, while the first tears for more than twenty years
streamed from his agonized eyes. "There is a Providence in it all! That
boy is not my son! I saved him from the pirate's grasp, and that woman
must be his mother!"

Lower and lower the lofty head bent till it touched the deck, the bony
hands clasped tight together, and those eyes--ah! those parched eyes--no
longer dry!

"Paul, Paul, what is this I hear? For the love of heaven and those
angels who are waiting for us, speak again!"

"My father--my more than father, I am not illegitimate, then! No such
shame may cause your boy to blush for his mother?"

While strong and loving arms raised the exhausted man from the deck, and
while he becomes once more the same determined Paul Darcantel, and with
hand grasped in hand is rapidly recounting unknown years of his
existence, let us leave the cabin.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

ALL ALIVE AGAIN.

"Among ourselves, in peace, 'tis true,
We quarrel, make a rout;
And having nothing else to do,
We fairly scold it out;
But once the enemy in view,
Shake hands, we soon are friends;
On the deck,
Till a wreck,
Each common cause defends."

Down in the steerage, where a bare cherry table stood, and upright
lockers ranged around, with a lot of half-starved reefers devouring
their dinner--not near so good or well served as the sailors' around
their mess-cloths on the upper decks--with a few urchins utterly
regardless of steerage grub, and a dollar or two in their little fists,
all nicely dressed in blue jackets and white trowsers, waiting for the
hands to be turned to and the boats manned, to go on shore for a lark.

Abaft in the wardroom, two or three of the swabs, the surgeon's mates,
and the jaunty young marine lieutenant were getting into their bu