Monday morning came, and found us standing on the pier as usual awaiting the arrival of the steamer.
We were very anxious indeed to see our new neighbors. A nice little breakfast for four or five people was set out in our little kitchen, and I had gathered a large bunch of dahlias from our garden, to make the table look cheerful and bright. All was ready, and in due time the steamer came puffing up toward the pier; we saw a man standing on the deck, talking to Capt. Sayers, who we felt sure must be the new lighthouse man.
“I don’t see a wife,” said my grandfather.
“Nor any children,” said I, as I held little Timpey up, that she might see the steamer.
“Puff, puff, puff,” she said, as it came up, and then turned round and laughed merrily.
The steamer came up to the landing place, and my grandfather and I went down the steps to meet Capt. Sayers and the stranger.
“Here’s your new neighbor, Sandy,” said the captain. “Will you show him the way to his house, while I see to your goods?”
“Welcome to the island,” said my grandfather, grasping his hand.
He was a tall, strongly built man, very sunburned and weather-beaten.
“Thank you,” said the man, looking at me all the time. “It is pleasant to have a welcome.”
“That’s my grandson Alick,” said my grandfather, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Your grandson,” repeated the man, looking earnestly at me; “your grandson—indeed!”
“And now come along,” said my grandfather, “and get a bit of something to eat; we’ve got a cup of coffee all ready for you at home, and you’ll be right welcome, I assure you.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said the stranger.
We were walking up now toward the house, and the man did not seem much inclined to talk. I fancied once that I saw a tear in his eye, but I thought I must have been mistaken. What could he have to cry about? I little knew all that was passing through his mind.
“By the bye,” said my grandfather, turning round suddenly upon him, “what’s your name? We’ve never heard it yet!”
The man did not answer, and my grandfather looked at him in astonishment. “Have you got no name?” he said. “Or have you objections to folks knowing what your name is?”
“Father!” said the man, taking hold of my grandfather’s hand. “Don’t you know your own lad?”
“Why, it’s my David! Alick, look Alick, that’s your father; it is indeed!”
And then my grandfather fairly broke down and sobbed like a child, while my father grasped him tightly with one hand, and put the other on my shoulder.
“I wouldn’t let them tell you,” he said; “I made them promise not to tell you till I could do it myself. I heard of Jem Millar’s death as soon as I arrived in England, and I wrote off and applied for the place at once. I told them I was your son, Father, and they gave me it at once, as soon as they heard where I had been all these years.”
“And where have you been, David, never to send us a line all the time?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” said my father; “let’s come in, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
So we went in together, and my father still looked at me. “He’s very like HER, Father,” he said, in a husky voice.
I knew he meant my mother!
“Then you heard about poor Alice?” said my grandfather.
“Yes,” he said; “it was a very curious thing. A man from these parts happened to be on board the vessel I came home in, and he told me all about it. I felt as if I had no heart left in me, when I heard she was gone. I had just been thinking all the time how glad she would be to see me.”
Then my grandfather told him all he could about my poor mother. How she had longed to hear from him; and how, as week after week and month after month went by, and no news came, she had gradually become weaker and weaker. All this and much more he told him; and whenever he stopped, my father always wanted to hear more, so that it was not until we were sitting over the watch-room fire in the evening that my father began to tell us his story.
He had been shipwrecked on the coast of China. The ship had gone to pieces not far from shore, and he and three other men had escaped safely to land. As soon as they stepped on shore, a crowd of Chinese gathered round them with anything but friendly faces. They were taken prisoners and carried before some man who seemed to be the governor of that part of the country. He asked them a great many questions, but they did not understand a word of what he said, and, of course, could not answer him.
For some days my father and the other men were very uncertain what their fate would be; for the Chinese at that time were exceedingly jealous of any foreigner landing on their shore. However, one day they were brought out of the wooden house in which they had been imprisoned and taken a long journey of some two hundred miles into the interior of the country. And here it was that my poor father had been all those years when we thought him dead. He was not unkindly treated, and he taught the people there many things which they didn’t know and which they were very glad to learn. But both by day and night he was carefully watched, lest he should make his escape, and he never found a single opportunity of getting away from them. Of course, there was no mail and no railways in that remote place, and he was quite shut out from the world. Of what was going on at home he knew as little as if he had been living on the moon.
Slowly and drearily eleven long years passed away, and then one morning they were suddenly told that they were to be sent down to the coast and put on board a ship bound for England. They told my father that there had been a war, and that one of the conditions of peace was that they should give up all the foreigners in their country whom they were holding as prisoners.
“Well, David, my lad,” said my grandfather, when he had finished his strange story, “it’s almost like getting you back from the dead to have you in the old home again!”