It was Joseph Twitchell, the first to recover from the fever, who finally came to his aid and carried him down to his berth where he lay delirious for days and talked of nothing but the bees among the apple blossoms and the wind stirring the poplar trees. But finally, white, thin and weak and needing the help of two companions, he had crawled up on deck once more to enjoy the cool, fresh evening air. The hot tropical wind had fallen, the Southern Cross that had shone so long in the sky above them had dropped below the horizon and the friendly Northern stars hung serene and clear in the heavens to show them the safe way home.
Gerald was still speaking when the white gate creaked as it opened to admit a visitor. Many and many a person of high and low degree had come and gone that way, but this man was, perhaps, the one whose coming meant the most of all. Yet he was only a common sailor, dressed in rough clothes, who shuffled his feet upon the path and fumbled with his battered hat.
“Please, sir,” he said to Gerald, “I came to ask if, when you sail for China again, you will take me with you.”
“But you did not wish to go before,” Gerald answered.
“Ay, that I know,” replied the sailor, “and I curse my folly now and would give both my eyes to have been among your crew. For the news of your safe return is running like wildfire through the country, it will be all over New England in another day, while here in Hopewell there are already a hundred seafaring men ready for a new voyage. And as for the merchants, there is not one within fifty miles, which is as far as the tale has gone as yet, but is looking through his stock and setting aside the goods that he is going to venture in the new East India trade.”
“But there is only one ship that has gone and come back again,” said Gerald. “Has that been sufficient to convince you all?”
“It is enough,” returned the man; “that has convinced us along with an old saying that, they tell us, was first current in Master Simon’s time and has now begun to go round again. It is that ‘Wherever a Radpath goes, there it is no bad thing to follow!’”
It is many and many a long year now since Gerald and Clotilde walked together down the high-hedged paths, but Master Simon’s garden still blooms green and fair upon the hillside. Ships coming past the rocky headlands of the harbour steer, by night, for the light streaming from that little round window of the great brick mansion, for that is an older landmark than the tall white lighthouse near the entrance of the bay. They are not now the mighty East India merchantmen that luff and tack in the narrow channel, for they, with their tall masts and towering white sails have vanished from the seas forever. Along the shore, nevertheless, you can still see the endless wharves and great, empty warehouses clinging to their rotting piles and almost slipping into the lazy, lapping tide. They manage, somehow, still to stand and tell all people who go by how great was once the trade that brought prosperity back to Hopewell. If you peep within you will see only bare, vacant floors and a long dusty sunbeam or two, dropping from rifts in the sagging roof, but you will sniff a vague scent of fruit and spices as a reminder of the days of the clipper ships of Hopewell, laden with the world’s goods and following Gerald Radpath’s long sea-road to China.