rower tide
and drifted down effortless on the other side; only an old black brig lay
at anchor, with furled sail and silent deck, in the middle channel down
below the piers, and from her festering and blistering hull it was that
all the heat and loneliness and silence of the scene seemed to exude--for
it was the fever-ship.

It was a different picture on the bright river when that brig entered the
harbor on the return of her last voyage, to receive how different a
welcome! But pestilence raged abroad in the country now, and the people of
the port, who had so far escaped the evil, were loth to let it enter among
them at last, and had not yet recovered from the recoil of their first
shock and shiver at thought of it in their waters--waters than which none
could have fostered it more kindly, full as they were in their shallow
breadth of rotting weeds and the slime of sewers. Perhaps the owner of
some pale face looked through the pane and thought of brother or father,
or, it may be, of lover, and grew paler with pity, and longed to do kind
offices for those who suffered; but the greater part of all the people
hived upon the shores would have scouted the thought of going out with aid
to those hot pillows rocking there upon the tide, and of bringing back
infection to the town, as much as though the act had been piracy on the
high seas. And they stayed at home, and watched their vanes and longed for
an east wind--an east wind whose wings would shake out healing, whose
breath would lay the destroying fever low; but the east wind refused to
seek their shores, and chose rather to keep up its wild salt play far out
on the bosom of its mid-sea billows.

Yes, on that return of the last voyage of the brig the stream had swarmed
with boats, flags had fluttered from housetops and staffs, piers and quays
had been lined with cheering people, all flocking forth to see the broken,
battered little craft; for the brig had been spoken by a tug, and word had
been brought to the wharves, and had spread like wild-fire through the
town, that, wrecked in a tempest and deserted by the panic-stricken crew,
the steadfast master and a boy who stood by him had remained with her, had
refitted her as best they might when the storm abated, and had brought her
into port at last through fortunate days of fair weather and slow sailing.
The town was ringing with the exploit, with praise of the noble
faithfulness of master and boy; and now the river rang again