 | CHAPTER III. The Red Rover |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
“Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take then what course thou wilt!”
—Shakspeare.
When the velocity with which the vessel flew before
the wind is properly considered, the reader
will not be surprised to learn, that, with the change
of a week in the time from that with which the
foregoing incidents close, we are enabled to open
the scene of the present chapter in a very different
quarter of the same sea. It is unnecessary to follow
the “Rover” in the windings of that devious and
apparently often uncertain course, during which his
keel furrowed more than a thousand miles of ocean,
and during which more than one cruiser of the King
was skilfully eluded, and sundry less dangerous rencounters
avoided, as much from inclination as any
other visible cause. It is quite sufficient for our
purpose to lift the curtain, which must conceal her
movements for a time, to expose the gallant vessel in
a milder climate, and, when the season of the year is
considered, in a more propitious sea.
Exactly seven days after Gertrude and her governess
became the inmates of a ship whose character
it is no longer necessary to conceal from the reader,
the sun rose upon her flapping sails, symmetrical
spars, and dark hull, within sight of a few, low,
small and rocky islands. The colour of the element
would have told a seaman, had no mound of blue
land been seen issuing out of the world of waters,
that the bottom of the sea was approaching nigher
than common to its surface, and that it was necessary
to guard against the well-known and dreaded
dangers of the coast. Wind there was none; for
the vacillating and uncertain air which, from time to
the vessel, deserved to be merely termed the breathings
of a morning, which was breaking upon the
main, soft, mild, and seemingly so bland as to impart
to the ocean the placid character of a sleeping
lake.
Every thing having life in the ship was already up
and stirring. Fifty stout and healthy-looking seamen
were hanging in different parts of her rigging, some
laughing, and holding low converse with messmates
who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and
others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty
that was the ostensible employment of the moment.
More than as many others loitered carelessly about
the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the
whole wearing much the appearance of men who
were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, more
to escape the imputation of idleness than from any
actual necessity that the same should be executed.
The quarter-deck, the hallowed spot of every vessel
that may pretend to either discipline or its semblance,
was differently occupied, though by a set of beings
who could lay no greater claim to activity or interest.
In short, the vessel partook of the character of the
ocean and of the weather, both of which seemed
reserving their powers to some more suitable occasion
for their display.
Three or four young (and, considering the nature
of their service, far from unpleasant-looking) men
appeared in a sort of undress nautical uniform, in
which the fashion of no people in particular was
very studiously consulted. Notwithstanding the apparent
calm that reigned on all around them, each
of these individuals bore a short straight dirk at his
girdle; and, as one of them bent over the side of
the vessel, the handle of a little pistol was discovered
through an opening in the folds of his professional
frock. There were, however, no other immediate
that this armed precaution was more than the usual
custom of the vessel. A couple of grim and callous
looking sentinels, who were attired and accoutred
like soldiers of the land, and who, contrary to marine
usage, were posted on the line which separated the
resorting place of the officers from the forward part
of the deck, bespoke additional caution. But, still,
all these arrangements were regarded by the seamen
with incurious eyes—a certain proof that use had
long rendered them familiar.
The individual who has been introduced to the
reader under the high-sounding title of “General,”
stood upright and rigid as one of the masts of the
ship, studying, with a critical eye, the equipments of
his two mercenaries, and apparently as regardless of
what was passing around him as though he literally
considered himself a fixture in the vessel. One form,
however, was to be distinguished from all around it,
by the dignity of its mien and the air of authority
that breathed even in the repose of its attitude. It
was the Rover, who stood alone, none presuming to
approach the spot where he had chosen to plant his
light but graceful and imposing person. There was
ever an expression of stern investigation in his quick
wandering eye, as it roved from object to object in
the equipment of the vessel; and at moments, as his
look appeared fastened on some one of the light
fleecy clouds that floated in the blue vacuum above
him, there gathered about his brow a gloom like that
which is thought to be the shadowing of intense
thought. Indeed, so dark and threatening did this
lowering of the eye become, at times, that the fair
hair which broke out in ringlets from beneath a black
velvet sea-cap, from whose top depended a tassel of
gold, could no longer impart to his countenance the
gentleness which it sometimes was seen to express.
As though he disdained concealment, and wished to
wore his pistols openly in a leathern belt, that was
made to cross a frock of blue, delicately edged with
gold, and through which he had thrust, with the same
disregard of concealment, a light and curved Turkish
yattagan, with a straight stiletto, which, by the
chasings of its handle, had probably originally come
from the manufactory of some Italian artisan.
On the deck of the poop, overlooking the rest,
and retired from the crowd beneath them, stood Mrs
Wyllys and her charge, neither of whom announced
in the slightest degree, by eye or air, that anxiety
which might readily be supposed natural to females
who found themselves in a condition so critical as in
the company of lawless freebooters. On the contrary,
while the former pointed out to the latter the
hillock of pale blue which rose from the water, like
a dark and strongly defined cloud in the distance,
hope was strongly blended with the ordinarily placid
expression of her features. She also called to Wilder,
in a cheerful voice; and the youth, who had
long been standing, with a sort of jealous watchfulness,
at the foot of the ladder which led from the
quarter-deck, was at her side in an instant.
“I am telling Gertrude,” said the governess, with
those tones of confidence which had been created
by the dangers they had incurred together, “that
yonder is her home, and that, when the breeze shall
be felt, we may speedily hope to reach it; but the
wilfully timid girl insists that she cannot believe her
senses, after the frightful risks we have run, until, at
least, she shall see the dwelling of her childhood,
and the face of her father. You have often been on
this coast before, Mr Wilder?”
“Often, Madam.”
“Then, you can tell us what is the distant land we
see.”
“Land!” repeated our adventurer, affecting a look
of surprise; “is there then land in view?”
“Is there land in view! Have not hours gone by
since the same was proclaimed from the masts?”
“It may be so: We seamen are dull after a night
of watching, and often hear but little of that which
passes.”
There was a quick, suspicious glance from the
eye of the governess, as if she apprehended, she
knew not what, ere she continued,—
“Has the sight of the cheerful, blessed soil of
America so soon lost its charm in your eye, that you
approach it with an air so heedless? The infatuation
of men of your profession, in favour of so dangerous
and so treacherous an element, is an enigma
I never could explain.”
“Do seamen, then, love their calling with so devoted
an affection?” demanded Gertrude, in a haste
that she might have found embarrassing to explain.
“It is a folly of which we are often accused,” rejoined
Wilder, turning his eye on the speaker, and
smiling in a manner that had lost every shade of reserve.
“And justly?”
“I fear, justly.”
“Ay!” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys, with an emphasis
that was remarkable for the tone of soft and yet bitter
regret with which it was uttered; “often better
than their quiet and peaceful homes!”
Gertrude pursued the idea no further; but her
fine full eye fell upon the deck, as though she reflected
deeply on a perversity of taste which could render
man so insensible to domestic pleasures, and incline
him to court the wild dangers of the ocean.
“I, at least, am free from the latter charge,” exclaimed
Wilder: “To me a ship has always been a
home.”
“And much of my life, too, has been wasted in
one,” continued the governess, who evidently was
pursuing, in the recesses of her own mind, some
images of a time long past. “Happy and miserable,
alike, have been the hours that I have passed upon
the sea! Nor is this the first King's ship in which it
has been my fortune to be thrown. And yet the
customs seem changed since those days I mention;
or else memory is beginning to lose some of the
impressions of an age when memory is apt to be
most tenacious. Is it usual, Mr Wilder, to admit an
utter stranger, like yourself, to exercise authority in
a vessel of war?”
“Certainly not.”
“And yet have you been acting, as far as my weak
judgment teaches, as second here, since the moment
we entered this vessel, wrecked and helpless fugitives
from the waves.”
Our adventurer again averted his eye, and evidently
searched for words, ere he replied,—
“A commission is always respected: Mine procured
for me the consideration you have witnessed.”
“You are then an officer of the Crown?”
“Would any other authority be respected in a
vessel of the Crown? Death had left a vacancy in
the second station of this—cruiser. Fortunately for
the wants of the service, perhaps for myself, I was
at hand to fill it.”
“But, tell me farther,” continued the governess,
who appeared disposed to profit by the occasion to
solve more doubts than one, “is it usual for the officers
of a vessel of war to appear armed among their
crew, in the manner I see here?”
“It is the pleasure of our Commander.”
“That Commander is evidently a skilful seaman,
but one whose caprices and tastes are as extraordinary
as I find his mien. I have surely seen him before;
and, it would seem, but lately.”
Mrs Wyllys then became silent for several minutes.
During the whole time, her eye never averted its
gaze from the form of the calm and motionless being,
who still maintained his attitude of repose, aloof
from all that throng who he had the address to
make so entirely dependant on his authority. It
seemed, for these few minutes, that the organs of the
governess drunk in the smallest peculiarity of his
person, and as if they would never tire of their gaze.
Then, drawing a heavy and relieving breath, she once
more remembered that she was not alone, and that
others were silently, but observantly, awaiting the
operation of her secret thoughts. Without manifesting
any embarrassment, however, at an absence
of mind that was far too common to surprise her pupil,
the governess resumed the discourse where she
had herself dropped it, bending her look again on
Wilder.
“Is Captain Heidegger, then, long of your acquaintance?”
she demanded.
“We have met before.”
“It should be a name of German origin, by the
sound. Certain I am that it is new to me. The time
has been when few officers, of his rank, in the service
of the King, were unknown to me, at least in
name. Is his family of long standing in England?”
“That is a question he may better answer himself,”
said Wilder, glad to perceive that the subject
of their discourse was approaching them, with the
air of one who felt that none in that vessel might
presume to dispute his right to mingle in any discourse
that should please his fancy. “For the moment,
Madam, my duty calls me elsewhere.”
Wilder evidently withdrew with reluctance; and,
had suspicion been active in the breasts of either of
his companions, they would not have failed to note
the glance of distrust with which he watched the
manner that his Commander assumed in paying the
however, in the air of the Rover that should have
given ground to such jealous vigilance. On the contrary,
his manner, for the moment, was cold and abstracted,
and he appeared to mingle in their discourse,
much more from a sense of the obligations of hospitality,
than from any satisfaction that he might have
been thought to derive from the intercourse. Still,
his deportment was kind, and his voice bland as the
airs that were wafted from the healthful islands in
view.
“There is a sight”—he said, pointing towards the
low blue ridges of the land—“that forms the landsman's
delight, and the seaman's terror.”
“Are, then, seamen thus averse to the view of regions
where so many millions of their fellow creatures
find pleasure in dwelling?” demanded Gertrude,
(to whom he more particularly addressed his
words), with a frankness that would, in itself, have
sufficiently proved no glimmerings of his real character
had ever dawned on her own spotless and unsuspicious
mind.
“Miss Grayson included,” he returned, with a
slight bow, and a smile, in which, perhaps, irony was
concealed by playfulness. “After the risk you have
so lately run, even I, confirmed and obstinate sea-monster
as I am, have no reason to complain of your
distaste for our element. And yet, you see, it is not
entirely without its charms. No lake, that lies within
the limits of yon Continent, can be more calm
and sweet than is this bit of ocean. Were we a few
degrees more southward, I would show you landscapes
of rock and mountain—of bays, and hill-sides
sprinkled with verdure—of tumbling whales,
and lazy fishermen, and distant cottages, and lagging
sails—such as would make a figure even in pages
that the bright eye of lady might love to read.”
“And yet for most of this would you be indebted
you north, and show you black and threatening
clouds—a green and angry sea—shipwrecks and
shoals—cottages, hill-sides, and mountains, in the
imagination only of the drowning man—and sails
bleached by waters that contain the voracious shark,
or the disgusting polypus.”
Gertrude had answered in his own vein; but it
was too evident, by her pale cheek, and a slight tremour
about her full, rich lip, that memory was also
busy with its frightful images. The quick-searching
eye of the Rover was not slow to detect the change.
As though he would banish every recollection that
might give her pain, he artfully, but delicately, gave
a new direction to the discourse.
“There are people who think the sea has no
amusements,” he said. “To a pining, home-sick,
sea-sick miserable, this may well be true; but the
man who has spirit enough to keep down the qualms
of the animal may tell a different tale. We have our
balls regularly, for instance; and there are artists on
board this ship, who, though they cannot, perhaps,
make as accurate a right angle with their legs as the
first dancer of a leaping ballet, can go through their
figures in a gale of wind; which is more than can
be said of the highest jumper of them all on shore.”
“A ball, without females, would, at least, be
thought an unsocial amusement, with us uninstructed
people of terra firma.”
“Hum! It might be better for a lady or two.
Then, have we our theatre: Farce, comedy, and
the buskin, take their turns to help along the time.
Yon fellow, that you see lying on the fore-topsail-yard,
like an indolent serpent basking on the branch
of a tree, will `roar you as gently as any sucking
dove!' And here is a votary of Momus, who would
raise a smile on the lips of a sea-sick friar: I believe
I can say no more in his commendation.”
“All this is well in the description,” returned Mrs
Wyllys; “but something is due to the merit of the
—poet, or, painter shall I term you?”
“Neither, but a grave and veritable chronologer.
However, since you doubt, and since you are so
new to the ocean”—
“Pardon me!” the lady gravely interrupted. “I
am, on the contrary, one who has seen much of it.”
The Rover, who had rather suffered his unsettled
glances to wander over the youthful countenance of
Gertrude than towards her companion, now bent his
eyes on the last speaker, where he kept them fastened
so long as to create some little embarrassment in
the subject of his gaze.
“You seem surprised that the time of a female
should have been thus employed,” she observed,
with a view to arouse his attention to the impropriety
of his observation.
“We were speaking of the sea, if I remember,”
he continued, like a man that was suddenly awakened
from a deep reverie. “Ay, I know it was of the
sea; for I had grown boastful in my panegyrics: I
had told you that this ship was faster than”—
“Nothing!” exclaimed Gertrude, laughing at his
blunder. “You were playing Master of Ceremonies
at a nautical ball!”
“Will you figure in a minuet? Shall I honour my
boards with the graces of your person?”
“Me, sir? and with whom? the gentleman who
knows so well the manner of keeping his feet in a
gale?”
“You were about to relieve any doubts we might
have concerning the amusements of seamen,” said
the governess, reproving the too playful spirit of her
pupil, by a glance of her own grave eye.
“Ay, it was the humour of the moment, nor will
I balk it.”
He then turned towards Wilder, who had posted
continued,—
“These ladies doubt our gaiety, Mr Wilder. Let
the boatswain give the magical wind of his call, and
pass the word `To mischief' among the people.”
Our adventurer bowed his acquiescence, and issued
the necessary order. In a few moments, the precise
individual who has already made acquaintance
with the reader, in the bar-room of the “Foul Anchor,”
appeared in the centre of the vessel, near the
main hatchway, decorated, as before, with his silver
chain and whistle, and accompanied by two mates,
who were humbler scholars of the same gruff school.
Then rose a long, shrill whistle from the instrument
of Nightingale, who, when the sound had died away
on the ear, uttered, in his deepest and least sonorous
tones,—
“All hands to mischief, ahoy!”
We have before had occasion to liken these sounds
to the muttering of a bull, nor shall we at present see
fit to disturb the comparison, since no other similitude,
so apt, presents itself. The example of the
boatswain was followed by each of his mates in
turn, and then the summons was deemed sufficient.
However unintelligible and grum the call might
sound in the musical ears of Gertrude, they produced
no unpleasant effects on the organs of a majority
of those who heard them. When the first swelling
and protracted note of the call mounted on the still
air, each idle and extended young seaman, as he lay
stretched upon a spar, or hung dangling from a ratling,
lifted his head, to catch the words that were to
follow, as an obedient spaniel pricks his ears to catch
the tones of his master. But no sonner had the emphatic
word, which preceded the long-drawn and
customary exclamation with which Nightingale closed
his summons, been pronounced, than the low
murmur of voices, which had so long been maintained
and common shout. In an instant, every symptom
of lethargy disappeared in a general and extraordinary
activity. The young and nimble topmen bounded,
like leaping animals, into the rigging of their respective
masts, and were seen ascending the shaking
ladders of ropes as so many squirrels would hasten
to their holes at the signal of alarm. The graver and
heavier seamen of the forecastle, the still more important
quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, the less
instructed and half-startled waisters, and the raw and
actually alarmed after-guard, all hurried, by a sort
of instinct, to their several points; the more practised
to plot mischief against their shipmates, and the
less intelligent to concert their means of defence.
In an instant, the tops and yards were ringing with
laughter and loudly-uttered jokes, as each exulting
mariner aloft proclaimed his device to his fellows, or
urged his own inventions, at the expense of some less
ingenious mode of annoyance. On the other hand,
the distrustful and often repeated glances that were
thrown upward, from the men who had clustered on
the quarter-deck and around the foot of the mainmast,
sufficiently proclaimed the diffidence with
which the novices on deck were about to enter into
the contest of practical wit that was about to commence.
The steady and more earnest seamen forward,
however, maintained their places, with a species
of stern resolution which manifestly proved the
reliance they had on their physical force, and their
long familiarity with all the humours, no less than
with the dangers, of the ocean.
There was another little cluster of men, who assembled,
in the midst of the general clamour and
confusion, with a haste and steadiness that announced,
at the same time, both a consciousness of the entire
necessity of unity on the present occasion, and
the habit of acting in concert. These were the
whom, and the less artificial seamen, there existed
not only an antipathy that might almost be
called instinctive, but which, for obvious reasons,
had been so strongly encouraged in the vessel of
which we write, as often to manifest itself in turbulent
and nearly mutinous broils. About twenty in
number, they collected quickly; and, although obliged
to dispense with their fire-arms in such an amusement,
there was a sternness, in the visage of each of
the whiskered worthies, that showed how readily he
could appeal to the bayonet that was suspended from
his shoulder, should need demand it. Their Commander
himself withdrew, with the rest of the officers,
to the poop, in order that no incumbrance
might be given, by their presence, to the freedom of
the sports to which they had resigned the rest of the
vessel.
A couple of minutes might have been lost in producing
the different changes we have just related.
But, so soon as the topmen were sure that no unfortunate
laggard of their party was within reach of
the resentment of the different groupes beneath,
they commenced complying literally with the summons
of the boatswain, by plotting mischief.
Sundry buckets, most of which had been provided
for the extinction of fire, were quickly seen pendant
from as many whips on the outer extremity of the
different yards descending towards the sea. In spite
of the awkward opposition of the men below, these
leathern vessels were speedily filled, and in the
hands of those who had sent them down. Many
was the gaping waister, and rigid marine, who now
made a more familiar acquaintance with the element
on which he floated than suited either his convenience
or his humour. So long as the jokes were
confined to these semi-initiated individuals, the topmen
enjoyed their fun with impunity; but, the instant
invaded, the whole gang of petty officers and forecastle-men
rose in a body to meet the insult, with a
readiness and dexterity that manifested how much
at home the elder mariners were with all that belonged
to their art. A little engine was transferred
to the head, and was then brought to bear on the
nearest top, like a well-planted battery clearing the
way for the opening battle. The laughing and chattering
topmen were soon dispersed: some ascending
beyond the power of the engine, and others retreating
into the neighbouring top, along ropes, and across
giddy heights, that would have seemed impracticable
to any animal less agile than a squirrel.
The marines were now summoned, by the successful
and malicious mariners, forward, to improve
their advantage. Thoroughly drenched already, and
eager to resent their wrongs, a half-dozen of the soldiers,
led on by a corporal, the coating of whose
powdered poll had been converted into a sort of
paste by too great an intimacy with a bucket of water,
essayed to mount the rigging; an exploit to them
much more arduous than to enter a breach. The
waggish quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, satisfied
with their own success, stimulated them to the
enterprise; and Nightingale and his mates, while they
rolled their tongues into their cheeks, gave forth, with
their whistles, the cheering sound of “heave away!”
The sight of these adventurers, slowly and cautiously
mounting the rigging, acted very much, on the
scattered topmen, in the manner that the appearance
of so many flies, in the immediate vicinity of
a web, is known to act on their concealed and rapacious
enemies. The sailors aloft saw, by expressive
glances from them below, that a soldier was
considered legal game. No sooner, therefore, had
the latter fairly entered into the toils, than twenty
topmen rushed out upon them, in order to make sure
important result was achieved. Two or three of
the aspiring adventurers were lashed where they had
been found, utterly unable to make any resistance in
a spot where instinct itself seemed to urge them to
devote both hands to the necessary duty of holding
fast; while the rest were transferred, by the means
of whips, to different spars, very much as a light
sail or a yard would have been swayed into its place.
In the midst of the clamorous rejoicings that attended
this success, one individual made himself conspicuous
for the gravity and business-like air with
which he performed his part of the comedy. Seated
on the outer end of a lower yard, with as much
steadiness as though he had been placed on an ottoman,
he was intently occupied in examining into the
condition of a captive, who had been run up at his
feet, with an order from the waggish captain of the
top, “to turn him in for a jewel-block;” a name
that appears to have been taken from the precious
stones that are so often seen pendant from the ears
of the other sex.
“Ay, ay,” muttered this deliberate and grave-looking
tar, who was no other than Richard Fid,
“the stropping you've sent with the fellow is none
of the best; and, if he squeaks so now, what will he
do when you come to reeve a rope through him!
By the Lord, masters, you should have furnished the
lad a better outfit, if you meant to send him into
good company aloft. Here are more holes in his
jacket than there are cabin windows to a Chinese
junk. Hilloa!—on deck there!—you Guinea, pick
me up a tailor, and send him aloft, to keep the wind
out of this waister's tarpauling.”
The athletic African, who had been posted on the
forecastle for his vast strength, cast an eye upward,
and, with both arms thrust into his bosom, he rolled
along the deck, with just as serious a mien as though
The uproar over his head had drawn a most helpless-looking
mortal from a retired corner of the
birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch,
where, with a body half above the combings, a skein
of strong coarse thread around his neck, a piece of
bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he
stood staring about him, with just that sort of bewildered
air that a Chinese mandarin would manifest,
were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of
the ballet. On this object the eye of Scipio fell.
Stretching out an arm, he cast him upon his shoulder;
and, before the startled subject of his attack knew
into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed
beneath the waistband of his trowsers, and he was
half way between the water and the spar, on his way
to join the considerate Fid.
“Have a care lest you let the man fall into the
sea!” cried Wilder sternly, from his stand on the
distant poop.
“He'm tailor, masser Harry,” returned the black,
without altering a muscle; “if a clothes no 'trong,
he nobody blame but heself.”
During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun
had safely arrived at the termination of his lofty
flight. Here he was suitably received by Fid, who
raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably
between the yard and the boom, he proceeded
to secure him by a lashing that would give
the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.
“Bouse a bit on this waister!” called Richard,
when he had properly secured the good-man; “so;
belay all that.”
He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner,
and, seizing his lower member as it swung uppermost,
he coolly placed it in the lap of the awe-struck
tailor.
“There, friend,” he said, “handle your needle
knowing handicraft always begins with the foundation,
wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will
stand.”
“The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals,
from an untimely end!” exclaimed Homespun,
gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation,
with a sensation a little resembling that with which
the aeronaut, in his first experiment, regards the prospect
beneath.
“Settle away this waister,” again called Fid; “he
interrupts rational conversation by his noise; and,
as his gear is condemned by this here tailor, why,
you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit.”
The real motive, however, for getting rid of his
pendant companion was a twinkling of humanity,
that still glimmered through the rough humour of the
tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang,
where he did, at some little expense of bodily ease.
As soon as his request was complied with, he turned
to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just
as much composure as though they were both seated
on the deck, or as if a dozen practical jokes, of the
same character, were not in the process of enactment,
in as many different parts of the vessel.
“What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this
port-hole fashion?” commenced the topman. “This
is all water that you see about you, except that hommoc
of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel
of upland in the Bahamas, d'ye see.”
“A sinful and presuming world is this we live in!”
returned the good-man; “nor can any one tell at
what moment his life is to be taken from him. Five
bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety,
and yet am I reserved to meet this disgraceful and
profane end at last.”
“Well, since you've had your luck in the wars,
surge you may have felt in your garments, as they
run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've
known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never
knew when or how they got down again.”
Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend
the allusion of Fid, now regarded him in a way
that announced some little desire for an explanation,
mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with
which his companion maintained his position, without
the smallest aid from any thing but his self-balancing
powers.
“I say, brother,” resumed Fid, “that many a
stout seaman has been whipt up to the end of a yard,
who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has
staid there just as long as the president of a court-martial
was pleased to believe might be necessary to
improve his honesty!”
“It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with
Providence, in the least offending and conscientious
mariner, to take such awful punishments in vain, by
acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce
it in the crew of a ship on which no man
can say at what hour retribution and compunction
are to alight. It seems to me unwise to tempt Providence
by such provocating exhibitions.”
Fid cast a glance of far more than usual significance
at the good-man, and even postponed his reply,
until he had freshened his ideas by an ample
addition to the morsel of weed which he had kept
all along thrust into one of his cheeks. Then, casting
his eyes about him, in order to see that none of his
noisy and riotous companions, of the top, were within
ear-shot, he fastened a still more meaning look on
the countenance of the tailor, as he responded,—
“Hark ye, brother; whatever may be the other
good points of Richard Fid, his friends cannot say
he is much of a scholar. This being the case, he has
coming aboard this wholesome vessel. I suppose,
howsomever, that they can be forthcoming at need,
and that no honest man need be ashamed to be found
cruising under the same.”
“Ah! Heaven protect such unoffending innocents
as serve here against their will, when the allotted
time of the cruiser shall be filled!” returned Homespun.
“I take it, however, that you, as a sea-faring
and understanding man, have not entered into this
enterprise without receiving the bounty, and knowing
the whole nature of the service.”
“The devil a bit have I entered at all, either in
the `Enterprise' or in the `Dolphin,' as they call this
same craft. There is master Harry, the lad on the
poop there, he who hails a yard as soft as a bull-whale
roars; I follow his signals, d'ye see; and it is
seldom that I bother him with questions as to what
tack he means to lay his boat on next.”
“What! would you sell your soul in this manner
to Beelzebub; and that, too, without a price?”
“I say, friend, it may be as well to overhaul your
ideas, before you let them slip, in this no-man's fashion,
from your tongue. I would wish to treat a gentleman,
who has come aloft to pay me a visit, with
such civility as may do credit to my top, though the
crew be at mischief, d'ye see. But an officer like
him I follow has a name of his own, without stop
ping to borrow one of the person you've just seen fit
to name. I scorn such a pitiful thing as a threat
but a man of your years needn't be told, that it is
just as easy to go down from this here spar as it was
to come up to it.”
The tailor cast a glance beneath him into the
brine, and hastened to do away the unfavourable im
pression which his last unfortunate interrogation had
so evidently left on the mind of his brawny associate.
“Heaven forbid that I should call any one but by
he said; “I meant merely to inquire, if you would
follow the gentleman you serve to so unseemly and
pernicious a place as a gibbet?”
Fid ruminated some little time, before he saw fit
to reply to so sweeping a query. During this unusual
process, he agitated the weed, with which his
mouth was nearly gorged, with great industry; and
then, terminating both processes, by casting a jet of
the juice nearly to the sprit-sail-yard, he said, in a
very decided tone,—
“If I wouldn't, may I be d—d! After sailing in
company for four-and-twenty years, I should be no
better than a sneak, to part company, because such
a trifle as a gallows hove in sight.”
“The pay of such a service should be both generous
and punctual, and the cheer of the most encouraging
character,” the good-man observed, in a
way that manifested he should not be displeased
were he to receive a reply. Fid was in no disposition
to balk his curiosity, but rather deemed himself
bound, since he had once entered on the subject, to
leave no part of it in obscurity.
“As for the pay, d'ye see,” he said, “it is seaman's
wages. I should despise myself to take less than
falls to the share of the best foremast-hand in a ship,
since it would be all the same as owning that I got
my deserts. But master Harry has a way of his
own in rating men's services; and if his ideas get
jamm'd in an affair of this sort, it is no marlingspike
that I handle which can loosen them. I once just
named the propriety of getting me a quarter-master's
birth; but devil the bit would he be doing the thing,
seeing, as he says himself, that I have a fashion of
getting a little hazy at times, which would only be
putting me in danger of disgrace; since every body
knows that the higher a monkey climbs in the rigging
of a ship, the easier every body on deck can
fare; sometimes a cut to spare for a friend,
and sometimes a hungry stomach.”
“But then there are often divisions of the—a—a
—the prize-money, in this successful cruiser?” demanded
the good-man, averting his face as he spoke,
perhaps from a consciousness that it might betray an
unseemly interest in the answer. “I dare say, you
receive amends for all your sufferings, when the
purser gives forth the spoils.”
“Hark ye, brother,” said Fid, again assuming a
look of significance, “can you tell me where the
Admiralty Court sits which condemns her prizes?”
The good-man returned the glance, with interest;
but an extraordinary uproar, in another part of the
vessel, cut short the dialogue, just as there was a rational
probability it might lead to some consolatory
explanations between the parties.
As the action of the tale is shortly to be set in motion
again, we shall refer the cause of the commotion
to the opening of the succeeding chapter.
| CHAPTER III. The Red Rover | |