The Mermaid of Druid Lake, and Other StoriesBump, Charles Weathers
Science
The Mermaid of Druid Lake, and Other Stories
Bump, Charles Weathers
Fiction; Short stories
"I never dare visit her grave in Greenmount. I am afraid of myself. But
if you can, to please an old man whose wretched life you have saved
tonight, will you go there some time and see that her resting place has
been tended reverently? I have paid them for it."
I promised him I would, and then I passed out into the starlit night
with a thousand impressions of the terrible tragedy of this man's life
crowding my excited brain. I could not sleep, and I lay in bed for hours
reconstructing the tale and fancying many details he had not supplied.
The next morning I went to the Dunton lot in Greenmount and found it
well cared for. Over his loved Dina's grave was a handsome stone of
Carrara marble, with this inscription:
______________________________
| |
| GERALDINE, |
| Beloved wife of Thomas Bowly |
| Dunton. |
| Passed away suddenly, |
| 1860. |
| Aged 30 years. |
| "God is love." |
|______________________________|
On one side was the grave of the ill-fated Tom. On the other the green
turf waited to be disturbed to make room for the last of the Duntons,
and there, on a raw day in the following March, I saw the body of the
old Doctor laid beside her whom he had loved so long and with such
overwhelming sorrow.
_An Island On A Jamboree_
For three days the shipping of Baltimore, large and small, had been held
in leash by a great storm upon the bay. One of those West India autumn
hurricanes coming suddenly had whipped the Chesapeake into such a fury
with its fierce southeast blow that steamboats and small sailing craft
alike heeded the Weather Bureau warning and remained in Baltimore.
On the third night the gale had spent its fury, and, with a rising
barometer and a favorable Government forecast, Captain Cromwell, eager
to get home, ventured out with his bugeye as soon as the dawn came. The
Patapsco was full of white caps, but the wind had softened and the skies
were clear, and the Tuckahoe met with no misadventure as it passed down.
A hundred other vessels were making ready to follow, but he had the
start of them and the river to himself. In a few hours he would be with
his family at Rock Hall.
But as he rounded Seven-Foot Knoll and headed across the bay he suddenly
grew excited, and shouted the name of his favorite patron, the great
Jehoshaphat.
Then he yelled to his crew:
"What in the devil is that ahead, you lazy loafer?"
The crew rose up en masse--being only one--from its lolling position
beside the mainmast, and looked out over the disturbed waters. And then
it was the crew's turn to become excited.
"Golly, Cap. Jim, I ain't never done seen nuthin' like that afore. What
the debbil am it?"
The commander of the Tuckahoe responded:
"I'll be jiggered if I know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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