Captain John Hardy, Otherwise Ancient Mariner, Otherwise Old Man.

Captain Hardy, or Captain John Hardy, or Captain Jack Hardy, or plain Captain Jack, or simple Captain, as his neighbors pleased to name him, was a famous character in the village. Everybody knew the captain, and everybody liked him. He was a mysterious sort of person, here to-day and there to-morrow, coming and going all the time, until he fairly tired out the public curiosity and people’s patience altogether, so that even the greatest gossips in the town had to confess at length that there was no use trying to make anything of Captain Jack, and they prudently gave up inquiring and bothering their heads about him; but they were glad to see him always, none the less.

The Captain was known as a great talker, and was always, in former years, brimful of stories of adventure to tell to any one he met during his short visits to the village, any one, indeed, who would listen to him; and, in truth, everybody was glad to listen, he talked so well. Many and many a summer evening he spent seated on an old bench in front of the village inn, reciting tales of shipwrecks, and stories of the sea and land, to the wondering people. Of late years, however, he was not disposed to talk so much, and was not so often seen at his favorite haunt. “I’m getting too old,” he would say, “to tarry from home after nightfall.”

He had now grown to be fifty-nine years old, although he really looked much more aged, for he bore about him the marks of much hardship and privation. His hair was quite white, and fell in long silvery locks over his shoulders, while a heavy snow-white beard covered his breast. There was always something in his appearance denoting the sailor. Perhaps it was that he always wore loose pantaloons, white in summer, and blue in winter, and a sort of tarpaulin hat, with long blue ribbons tied around it, the ends flowing off behind like the pennant of a man-of-war.

Captain Hardy was known to everybody as a generous, warm-hearted, and harmless man; but he was thought to be equally improvident. The poor had a constant friend in him. No beggar ever asked the Captain for a shilling without getting it, if the Captain had a shilling anywhere about him. Sometimes he had plenty of money, yet when at home he always lived in a frugal, homely way. Great was the rejoicing therefore, among his friends (and they were many), when it was known that he had fallen in with a streak of good fortune. Having been instrumental in saving the British bark Dauntless from shipwreck, the insurance companies had awarded him a liberal salvage, and it was to secure this that he had gone away on his last voyage. As soon as he came home he went right off and bought the house which we have before described, with the money he brought back; and for once got the credit of doing a prudent thing.

The old man’s happiness seemed now complete. “Here,” exclaimed he, “Heaven willing, I will bring the old craft to an anchor, and end my days in peace.” But after the excitement of fitting up his house and grounds, and getting his little yacht in order, had passed over, he began to feel a little lonely. He was so far away from the village that he could not meet his old friends as often as he wished to. We have seen that he was a great talker; and he liked so much to talk, and thus to “fight his battles over again,” as it were, and he had so much to talk about, that an audience was quite necessary to him. It is not improbable, therefore, that he looked upon his meeting with William and Fred and Alice as a fortunate event for him; and if the children were delighted, so was he. He was very fond of children, and these were children after his own heart. To them the coming story was a great event, how great the reader could scarcely understand, unless he knew how much every boy in Rockdale was envied by all the other boys, big and little, when he was known to have been especially picked out by Captain Hardy to be the listener to some tale of adventure on the sea.