 | CHAPTER VII. The monikins |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
Touching an amphibious animal, a special introduction, and
its consequences.
I SOON took an interest in my new acquaintance.
He was communicative, shrewd, and peculiar; and
though apt to express himself quaintly, it was
always with the pith of one who had seen a great
deal of, at least, one portion of his fellow-creatures.
The conversation, under such circumstances,
did not flag; on the contrary, it soon
grew more interesting by the stranger's beginning
to touch on his private interests. He told me that
he was a mariner, who had been cast ashore by
one of the accidents of his calling, and, by way
of putting in a word in his own favor, he gave me
to understand that he had seen a great deal, more
especially of that caste of his fellow-creatures, who,
like himself, live by frequenting the mighty deep.
“I am very happy,” I said, “to have met with
a stranger who can give me information touching
an entire class of human beings, with whom I
have, as yet, had but little communion. In order
that we may improve the occasion to the utmost,
other at once, and swear an eternal friendship, or,
at least, until we may find it convenient to dispense
with the obligation.”
“For my part, I am one who like the friendship
of a dog better than his enmity,” returned my companion,
with a singleness of purpose that left him
no disposition to waste his breath in idle compliments.
“I accept the offer, therefore, with all my
heart; and this the more readily, because you are
the only one I have met, for a week, who can
ask me how I do, without saying `Come on, dong,
portez-vous.' Being used to meet with squalls, however,
I shall accept your offer under the last condition
named.”
I liked the stranger's caution. It denoted a proper
care of character, and furnished a proof of
responsibility. The condition was therefore accepted
on my part, as frankly as it had been urged
on his.
“And now, sir,” I added, “when we had shaken
each other very cordially by the hand, “may I
presume to ask your name?”
“I am called Noah, and I don't care who knows
it. I'm not ashamed of either of my names, whatever
else I may be ashamed of.”
“Noah —?”
“Poke, at your service”—he pronounced the
word slowly and very distinctly, as if what he
had just said of his self-confidence were true. As
I had afterwards occasion to take his signature, I
shall at once give it in the proper form—“Capt.
Noah Poke.”
“Of what part of England are you a native,
Mr. Poke?”
“I believe I may say, of the new parts.”
“I did not know that any portion of the island
to explain yourself.”
“I'm a native of Stunin'tun, in the state of
Connecticut, in old New England. My parents
being dead, I was sent to sea a four-year-old, and
here I am, walking about the kingdom of France
without a cent in my pocket, a shipwrecked mariner.
Hard as my lot is, to say the truth, I'd about
as leave starve as live by speaking their d—d
lingo.”
“Shipwrecked — a mariner — starving — and a
Yankee!”
“All that, and maybe more, too; though, by
your leave, commodore, we'll drop the last title.
I'm proud enough to call myself a Yankee, but my
back is apt to get up when I hear an Englishman
use the word. We are yet friends, and it may be
well enough to continue so, until some good comes
of it, to one or the other of the parties.”
“I ask your pardon, Mr. Poke, and will not
offend again. Have you circumnavigated the
globe?”
Capt. Poke snapped his fingers, in pure contempt
of the simplicity of the question.
“Has the moon ever sailed round the 'arth!
Look here a moment, commodore”—he took from
his pocket an apple, of which he had been munching
half-a-dozen during the walk, and held it up to
view—“draw your lines which way you will on
this sphere; crosswise, or lengthwise, up or down,
zig-zag or parpendic'lar, and you will not find
more traverses than I've worked about the old
ball!”
“By land, as well as by sea?”
“Why, as to the land, I've had my share of
that, too; for it has been my hard fortune to run
upon it, when a softer bed would have given a
with me, for I am now tacking about among
these Frenchmen in order to get afloat again, like
an alligator floundering in the mud. I lost my
schooner on the north-east coast of Russia—somewhere
hereabouts,” pointing to the precise spot on
the apple; “we were up there trading in skins—
and finding no means of reaching home by the
road I'd come, and smelling salt water down hereaway,
I've been shaping my course westward, for
the last eighteen months, steering as near as might
be directly athwart Europe and Asia; and here I
am at last, within two days' run of Havre, which
is, if I can get good Yankee planks beneath me
once more, within some eighteen or twenty days'
run of home.”
“You allow me, then, to call the planks, Yankee?”
“Call'em what you please, commodore; though
I should prefar to call'em the `Debby and Dolly
of Stunin'tun,' to any thing else, for that was the
name of the craft I lost.—Well, the best of us are
but frail, and the longest-winded man is no dolphin
to swim with his head under water!”
“Pray, Mr. Poke, permit me to ask where you
learned to speak the English language with so
much purity?”
“Stunin'tun—I never had a mouthful of schooling
but what I got at home. It's all homespun. I
make no boast of scholarship; but as for navigation,
or for finding my way about the 'arth, I'll
turn my back on no man, unless it be to leave him
behind. Now we have people with us, that think
a great deal of their geometry and astronomics,
but I hold to no such slender threads. My way is,
when there is occasion to go anywhere, to settle
it well in my mind as to the place, and then to
taking little account of the charts, which are as apt
to put you wrong as right;—and when they do get
you into a scrape, it's a smasher! Depend on
yourself and human natur', is my rule; though I
admit there is some accommodation in a compass,
particularly in cold weather.”
“Cold weather!—I do not well comprehend the
distinction.”
“Why, I rather conclude that one's scent gets
to be dullish in a frost; but this may be no more
than a conceit, after all, for the two times I've been
wrecked were in summer, and both the accidents
happened by sheer dint of hard blowing, and in
broad day-light, when nothing human, short of a
change of wind, could have saved us.”
“And you prefer this peculiar sort of navigation?”
“To all others, especially in the sealing-business,
which is my ra'al occupation. It's the very best
way in the world, to discover islands; and every
body knows that we sealers are always on the
look-out for su'thin' of that sort.”
“Will you suffer me to inquire, Captain Poke,
how many times you have doubled Cape Horn?”
My navigator threw a quick, jealous glance at
me, as if he distrusted the nature of the question.
“Why, that is neither here nor there;—perhaps I
don't double either of the capes, perhaps I do. I get
into the South Sea with my craft, and it's of no great
moment how it's done. A skin is worth just as much
in the market, though the furrier may not happen
to have a glossary of the road it has travelled.”
“A glossary?”
“What matters a signification, commodore, when
people understand each other? This over-land journey
has put me to my wits, for you will understand,
speak a syllable of the homespun; so I brought the
schooner's dictionary with me as a sort of terrestrial
almanac, and I fancied that, as they spoke gibberish
to me, the best way was to give it to them
back again, as near as might be in their own coin,
hoping I might hit on su'thin' to their liking. By
this means, I've come to be rather more voluble
than formerly.”
“The idea was happy.”
“No doubt it was, as is just evinced. But, having
given you a pretty clear insight into my natur'
and occupation, it is time that I ask a few questions
of you. This is a business, you must know, at
which we do a good deal at Stunin'tun, and at
which we are commonly thought to be handy.”
“Put your questions, Capt. Poke; I hope the answers
will be satisfactory.”
“Your name?”
“John Goldencalf—by the favor of His Majesty,
Sir John Goldencalf, Baronet.”
“`Sir John Goldencalf—by the favor of His Majesty,
a Baronet!' Is Baronet a calling? or what
sort of crittur or thing is it?”
“It is my rank, in the kingdom to which I belong.”
“I begin to understand what you mean. Among
your nation, mankind is what we call stationed,
like a ship's people that are called to go about;—
you have a certain birth in that kingdom of yours,
much as I should have in a sealing schooner.”
“Exactly so; and I presume you will allow that
order, and propriety, and safety, result from this
method, among mariners?”
“No doubt—no doubt; we station anew, however,
each v'yage, according to experience: I'm
from father to son, or we might have a pretty mess
of it.”
Here the sealer commenced a series of questions,
which he put with a vigor and perseverance that, I
fear, left me without a single fact of my life unrevealed,
except those connected with the sacred sentiment
that bound me to Anna, and which were far
too hallowed to escape me, even under the ordeal
of a Stunin'tun inquisitor. In short, finding that I
was nearly helpless in such hands, I made a merit
of necessity, and yielded up my secrets, as wood
in a vice discharges its moisture. It was scarcely
possible that a mind like mine, subjected to the action
of such a pair of moral screws, should not yield
some hints touching its besetting propensities. The
Captain seized this clue, and he went at the theory
like a bull-dog at the muzzle of an ox.
To oblige him, therefore, I entered, at some
length, into an explanation of my system. After
the general remarks that were necessary to give a
stranger an insight into its leading principles, I
gave him to understand that I had long been looking
for one like him, for a purpose that shall now
be explained to the reader. I had entertained some
negotiations with Tamaahmaah, and had certain investments
in the pearl and whale-fisheries, it is true;
but, on the whole, my relations with all that portion
of mankind who inhabit the islands of the
Pacific, the north-west coast of America, and the
north-east coast of the old continent, were rather
loose, and generally in an unsettled and vague condition;
and it appeared to me that I had been singularly
favored, in having a man so well adapted to
their regeneration, thrown, as it were, by Providence,
and in a manner so unusual, directly in my
an expedition, that should be partly of trade and
partly of discovery, in order to expand my interests
in this new direction, and to place my new acquaintance
at its head. Ten minutes of earnest explanation
on my part, sufficed to put my companion
in possession of the leading features of the plan.—
When I had ended this direct appeal to his love of
enterprise, I was answered by the favorite exclamation
of—
“King!”
“I do not wonder, Captain Poke, that your admiration
breaks out in this manner; for, I believe,
few men fairly enter into the beauty of this benevolent
system, who are not struck equally with its
grandeur and its simplicity. May I count on your
assistance?”
“This is a new idee, Sir Goldencalf—”
“Sir John Goldencalf, if you please, sir.”
“A new idee, Sir John Goldencalf, and it needs
circumspection. Circumspection in a bargain, is
the certain way to steer clear of misunderstandings.
You wish a navigator to take your craft, let her be
what she will, into unknown seas, and I wish, naturally,
to make a straight course for Stunin'tun.—
You see the bargain is in apogee, from the start.”
“Money is no consideration with me, Captain
Poke.”
“Well, this is an idee that has brought many a
more difficult contract at once into perigee, Sir
John Goldencalf. Money is always a considerable
consideration with me, and I may say, also, just
now it is rather more so than usual. But when a
gentleman clears the way as handsomely as you
have now done, any bargain may be counted as a
good deal more than half made.”
A few explicit explanations disposed of this part
of the subject, and Captain Poke accepted of my
terms in the spirit of frankness with which they
were made. Perhaps his decision was quickened
by an offer of twenty Napoleons, which I did not
neglect making on the spot. Amicable, and in
some respects confidential, relations were now
established between my new acquaintance and
myself; and we pursued our walk, discussing the
details necessary to the execution of our project.
After an hour or two passed in this manner, I
invited my companion to go to my hotel, meaning
that he should partake of my board until we could
both depart for England, where it was my intention
to purchase, without delay, a vessel for the
contemplated voyage, in which I also had decided
to embark in person.
We were obliged to make our way through the
throng that usually frequents the lower part of the
Champs Elysées, during the season of good weather
and towards the close of day. This task was
nearly over, when my attention was particularly
drawn to a group that was just entering the place
of general resort, apparently with the design of
adding to the scene of thoughtlessness and amusement.
But, as I am now approaching the most
material part of this extraordinary work, it will
be proper to reserve the opening for a new chapter.
| CHAPTER VII. The monikins | |