the gray-bearded lips of the pirate.

For one short moment he remained standing at the door with outstretched
arms. Then he took a step toward the beloved being from whom he had been
separated more than two years, and suddenly throwing himself down before
her, while his huge lower limbs covered part of the floor, he stretched
his hands toward the little crooked old woman, who had not strength
to rise from her crouching posture, and seizing her with loving
impetuosity, lifted her as if she were a child, and placing her on his
knees, drew her into a close embrace.

Tabus willingly submitted to this act of violence, and passing her
thin left arm around her son's bull neck with her free hand, patted his
bearded cheeks, wrinkled brow, and bushy, almost white hair.

No intelligible words passed the lips of either the mother or the son
at this meeting; nothing but a confused medley of tender and uncouth
natural sounds, which no language knows.

Yet they understood each other, and Ledscha, who had moved silently
aside, also comprehended that these low laughs, moans, cries, and
stammers were the expressions of love of two deeply agitated hearts, and
for a moment an emotion of envy seized her.

The gods had early bereft her of her mother, while this savage fighter
against the might of the waves, justice, law, and their pitiless,
too powerful defenders, this man, already on the verge of age, still
possessed his, and sunned his rude heart in her love.

It was some time before the old pirate had satisfied his yearning for
affection and placed his light burden down beside the fire.

Tabus now regained the power to utter distinct words, and, difficult
as it was for her half paralyzed tongue to speak, she poured a flood of
tender pet names and affectionate thanks upon the head of her rude son,
the last one left, who had grown gray in bloody warfare; but with the
eyes of her soul she again saw in him the little boy whom, with warm
maternal love, she had once pressed to her breast and cradled in her
arms.

When, in his rough fashion, he warmly returned her professions of
tenderness, her eyes grew wet with tears, and at the question what he
could still find in her, a withered, good-for-nothing little creature
who just dragged along from one day to another, an object of pity
to herself, he again burst into his mighty laugh, and his deep voice
shouted: "Do you want to know that? But where would be the lime that
holds us on the ship