A LARGE aspiration is a rarity; but who has not some small ambition, none the less keen for being narrow—keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette burned to be great by dress; Mr. Fountain, member of a sex with higher aims, aspired to be great in the county.
Unluckily, his main property was in the funds. He had acres in ——shire; but so few that, some years ago, its lord lieutenant declined to make him an injustice of the peace. That functionary died, and on his death the mortified aspirant bought a coppice, christened it Springwood, and under cover of this fringe to his three meadows, applied to the new lord lieutenant as M'Duff approached M'Beth. The new man made him a magistrate; so now he aspired to be a deputy lieutenant, and attended all the boards of magistrates, and turnpike trusts, etc., and brought up votes and beer-barrels at each election, and, in, short, played all the cards in his pack, Lucy included, to earn that distinction.
We may as well confess that there lurked in him a half-unconscious hope that some day or other, in some strange collision or combination of parties, a man profound in county business, zealous in county interests, personally obnoxious to nobody, might drop into the seat of county member; and, if this should be, would not he have the sense to hold his tongue upon the noisy questions that waste Parliament's time, and the nation's; but, on the first of those periodical attacks to which the wretched landowner is subject, wouldn't he speak, and show the difference between a mere member of the Commons and a member for the county?
If anyone had asked this man plump which is the most important, England or ——shire, he would have certainly told you England; but our opinions are not the notions we repeat, and can defend by reasons or even by facts: our opinions are the notions we feel and act on.
Could you have looked inside Mr. Fountain's head, you would have seen ideas corresponding to the following diagrams:
[drawing]
Mr. Fountain courted the stomach of the county.
Without this, he knew, an angel could not reach its heart; and here one of his eccentricities broke out. He drew a line, in his dictatorial way, between dinner and feeding parties. “A dinner party is two rubbers. Four gentlemen and four ladies sit round a circular table; then each can hear what anyone says, and need not twist the neck at every word. Foraging parties are from fourteen to thirty, set up and down a plank, each separated from those he could talk to as effectually as if the ocean rolled between, and bawling into one person's ear amid the din of knives, forks, and multitude. I go to those long strings of noisy duets because I must, but I give society at home.”
The county people had just strength of mind to like the old boy's sociable dinners, though not to imitate them, and an invitation from him was very rarely declined when Lucy was with him.
And she was in her glory. She could carry complaisance such a long way at Font Abbey—she was mistress of the house.
She listened with a wonderful appearance of interest to county matters, i.e., to minute scandal and infinitesimal politics; to the county cricket match and archery meeting; to the past ball and the ball to come. In the drawing-room, when a cold fit fell on the coterie, she would glide to one egotist after another, find out the monotope, and set the critter Peter's, the Place de Concorde, the Square of St. Mark, Versailles, the Alhambra, the Apollo Belvidere, the Madonna of the Chair, and all the glories of nature and the feats of art could not warm. So, then, the fine gentleman began to act—to walk himself out as a person who had seen and could give details about anything, but was exalted far above admiring anything (quel grand homme! rien ne peut lui plaire); and on this, while the women were gazing sweetly on him, and revering his superiority to all great impressions, and the men envying, rather hating, but secretly admiring him too, she who had launched him bent on him a look of soft pity, and abandoned him to admiration.
“Poor Mr. Talboys,” thought she, “I fear I have done him an ill turn by drawing him out;” and she glided to her uncle, who was sitting apart, and nobody talking to him.
Mr. Talboys, started by Lucy, ambled out his high-pacing nil admirantem character, and derived a little quiet self-satisfaction. This was the highest happiness he was capable of; so he was not ungrateful to Miss Fountain, who had procured it him, and partly for this, partly because he had been kind to her and lent her a pony, he shook hands with her somewhat cordially at parting. As it happened, he was the last guest.
“You have won that, man's heart, Lucy,” cried Mr. Fountain, with a mixture of surprise and pride.
Lucy made no reply. She looked quickly into his face to see if he was jesting.
“Writing, Lucy—so late?”
“Only a few lines, uncle. You shall see them; I note the more remarkable phenomena of society. I am recalling a conversation between three of our guests this evening, and shall be grateful for your opinion on it. There! Read it out, please.”
Mrs. Luttrell. “We missed you at the archery meeting—ha! ha! ha!”
Mrs. Willis. “Mr. Willis would not let me go—he! he! he!”
Mrs. James. “Well, at all events—he! he!—you will come to the flower show.”
Mrs. Willis. “Oh yes!—he! he!—I am so fond of flowers—ha! ha!”
Mrs. Luttrell. “So am I. I adore them—he! he!”
Mrs. Willis. “How sweetly Miss Malcolm sings—he! he!”
Mrs. Luttrell. “Yes, she shakes like a bird—ha! ha!”
Mrs. James. “A little Scotch accent though—he! he!”
Mrs. Luttrell. “She is Scotch—he! he!” (To John offering her tea.) “No more, thank you—he! he!”
Mrs. James. “Shall you go the Assize sermon?—ha! ha!”
Mrs. Willis. “Oh, yes—he! he!—the last was very dry—he! he! Who preaches it this term?—he!”
Mrs. James. “The Bishop—he! he!”
Mrs. Willis. “Then I shall certainly go; he is such a dear preacher—he! he!”
“Just tell me what is the precise meaning of 'ha! ha!' and what of 'he! he!'”
“The precise meaning? There you puzzle me, uncle.”
“I mean, what do you mean by them?”
“Oh, I put 'ha! ha!' when they giggle, and 'he! he!' when they only chuckle.”
“Then this is a caricature, my lady?”
“No, dear, you know I have no satire in me; it is taken down to the letter, and I fear I must trouble you for the solution.”
“Well, the solution is, they are three fools.”
“No, uncle, begging your pardon, they are not,” replied Lucy, politely but firmly.
“Well, then, three d—d fools.”
Lucy winced at the participle, but was two polite to lecture her elder. “They have not that excuse,” said she; “they are all sensible women, who discharge the duties of life with discretion except society; and they can discriminate between grave and gay whenever they are not at a party; and as for Mrs. Luttrell, when she is alone with me she is a sweet, natural love.”
“They cackled—at every word—like that—the whole evening!!??”
“Except when you told that funny story about the Irish corporal who was attacked by a mastiff, and killed him with his halberd, and, when he was reproached by his captain for not being content to repel so valuable an animal with the butt end of his lance, answered—ha! ha!”
“So, then, he answered 'Haw! haw!' did he?”
“Now, uncle! No; he answered, 'So I would, your arnr, if he had run at me with his tail!' Now, that was genuine wit, mixed with quite enough fun to make an intelligent person laugh; and then you told it so drolly—ha! ha!”
“They did not laugh at that?”
“Sat as grave as judges.”
“And you tell me they are not fools.”
“I must repeat, they have not that excuse. Perhaps their risibility had been exhausted. After laughing three hours a propos de rien, it is time to be serious out of place. I will tell you what they did laugh at, though. Miss Malcolm sang a song with a title I dare not attempt. There were two lines in it which I am going to mispronounce; but you are not Scotch, so I don't care for you, uncle, darling.
“'He had but a saxpence; he break it in twa,
And he gave me the half o't when he gaed awa.'
“They laughed at that; a general giggle went round.”
“Well, I must confess, I don't see much to laugh at in that, Lucy.”
“It would be odd if you did, uncle, dear; why, it is pathetic.”
“Pathetic? Oh, is it?”
“You naughty, cunning uncle, you know it is; it is pathetic, and almost heroic. Consider, dear: in a world where the very newspapers show how mercenary we all are, a poor young man is parted from his love. He has but one coin to go through the world with, and what does he do with it? Scheme to make the sixpence a crown, and to make the crown a pound? No; he breaks this one treasure in two, that both the poor things may have a silver token of love and a pledge of his return. I am sure, if the poet had been here, he would have been quite angry with us for laughing at that line.”
“Keep your temper. Why, this is new from you, Lucy; but you women of sugar can all cauterize your own sex; the theme inspires you.”
“Uncle, how dare you! Are you not afraid I shall be angry one of these days, dear!!? The gentlemen were equally concerned in this last enormity. Poor Jemmy, or Jammy, with his devotion and tenderness that soothed, and his high spirit that supported the weaker vessel, was as funny to our male as to our female guests—so there. I saw but one that understood him, and did not laugh at him.”
“Talboys, for a pound.”
“Mr. Talboys? no! You, dear uncle; you did not laugh; I noticed it with all a niece's pride.”
“Of course I didn't. Can I hear a word these ladies mew? can I tell in what language even they are whining and miauling? I have given up trying this twenty years and more.”
“I return to my question,” said Lucy hastily.
“And I to my solution; your three graces are three d—d fools. If you can account for it in any other way, do.”
“No, uncle dear. If you had happened to agree with me beforehand, I would; but as you do not, I beg to be excused. But keep the paper, and the next time listen to the talk and unmeaning laughter; you will find I have not exaggerated, and some day, dear, I will tell you how my mamma used to account for similar monstrosities in society.”
“Here is a mysterious little toad. Well, Lucy, for all this you enjoyed yourself. I never saw you in better spirits.”
“I am glad you saw that,” said Lucy, with a languid smile.
“And how Talboys came out.”
“He did,” sighed Lucy.
Here the young lady lighted softly on an ottoman, and sank gracefully back with a weary-o'-the-world air; and when she had settled down like so much floss silk, fixing her eye on the ceiling, and doling her words out languidly yet thoughtfully—just above a whisper, “Uncle, darling,” inquired she, “where are the men we have all heard of?”
“How should I know? What men?”
“Where are the men of sentiment, that can understand a woman, and win her to reveal her real heart, the best treasure she has, uncle dear?” She paused for a reply; none coming, she continued with decreasing energy:
“Where are the men of spirit? the men of action? the upright, downright men, that Heaven sends to cure us of our disingenuousness? Where are the heroes and the wits?” (an infinitesimal yawn); “where are the real men? And where are the women to whom such men can do homage without degrading themselves? where are the men who elevate a woman without making her masculine, and the women who can brighten and polish, and yet not soften the steel of manhood—tell me, tell me instantly,” said she, with still greater languor and want of earnestness, and her eyes remained fixed on the ceiling in deep abstraction.
“They are all in this house at this moment,” said Mr. Fountain, coolly.
“Who, dear? I fear I was not attending to you. How rude!!”
“Horrid. I say the men and women you inquire for are all in this house of mine;” and the old gentleman's eyes twinkled.
“Uncle! Heaven forgive you, and—oh, fie!”
“They are, upon my soul.”
“Then they must be in some part of it I have not visited. Are they in the kitchen?” (with a little saucy sneer.)
“No, they are in the library.”
“In the lib—Ah! le malin!”
“They were never seen in the drawing-room, and never will be.”
“Yet surely they must have lived in nature before they were embalmed in print,” said Lucy, interrogating the ceiling again.
“The nearest approach you will meet to these paragons is Reginald Talboys,” said Fountain, stoutly.
“Uncle, I do love you;” and Lucy rose with Juno-like slowness and dignity, and, leaning over the old boy, kissed him with sudden small fury.
“Why?” asked he, eagerly, connecting this majestic squirt of affection with his last speech.
“Because you are such a nice, dear, sarcastic thing. Let us drink tea in the library to-morrow, then that will be an approach to—”
With this illegitimate full stop the conversation ended, and Miss Fountain took a candle and sauntered to bed.
In church next Sunday Lucy observed a young lady with a beaming face, who eyed her by stealth in all the interstices of devotion. She asked her uncle who was that pretty girl with a nez retrousse.
“A cocked nose? It must be my little friend, Eve Dodd. I didn't know she was come back.”
“What a pretty face to be in such—such a—such an impossible bonnet. It has come down from another epoch.” This not maliciously, but with a sort of tender, womanly concern for beauty set off to the most disadvantage.
“O, hang her bonnet! She is full of fun; she shall drink tea with us; she is a great favorite of mine.”
They quickened their pace, and caught Eve Dodd just as she took a flying leap over some water that lay in her path, and showed a charming ankle. In those days female dress committed two errors that are disappearing: it revealed the whole foot by day, and hid a section of the bosom at night.
After the usual greetings, Mr. Fountain asked Eve if she would come over and drink tea with him and his niece.
Miss Dodd colored and cast a glance of undisguised admiration at Miss Fountain, but she said: “Thank you, sir; I am much obliged, but I am afraid I can't come. My brother would miss me.”
“What—the sailor? Is he at home?”
“Yes, sir; came home last night”; and she clapped her hands by way of comment. “He has been with my mother all church-time; so now it is my turn, and I don't know how to let him out of my sight yet awhile.” And she gave a glance at Miss Fountain, as much as to say, “You understand.”
“Well, Eve,” said Mr. Fountain good-humoredly, “we must not separate brother and sister,” and he was turning to go.
“Perhaps, uncle,” said Lucy, looking not at Mr. Fountain, but at Eve—“Mr.—Mr.—”
“David Dodd is my brother's name,” said Eve, quickly.
“Mr. David Dodd might be persuaded to give us the pleasure of his company too.”
“Oh yes, if I may bring dear David with me,” burst out the child of nature, coloring again with pleasure.
“It will add to the obligation,” said Lucy, finishing the sentence in character.
“So that is settled,” said Mr. Fountain, somewhat dryly.
As they were walking home together, the courtier asked her uncle rather coldly, “Who are these we have invited, dear?”
“Who are they? A pretty girl and a man she wouldn't come without.”
“And who is the gentleman? What is he?”
“A marine animal—first mate of a ship.”
“First mate? mate? Is that what in the novels is called boatswain's mate?”
“Haw! haw! haw! I say, Lucy, ask him when he comes if he is the bosen's mate. How little Eve will blaze!”
“Then I shall ask him nothing of the kind. Do tell me! I know admirals—they swear—and captains, and, I think, lieutenants, and, above all, those little loves of midshipmen, strutting with their dirks and cocked hats, like warlike bantams, but I never met 'mates.' Mates?”
“That is because you have only been introduced to the Royal Navy; but there is another navy not so ornamental, but quite as useful, called the East India Company's.”
“I am ashamed to say I never heard of it.”
“I dare say not. Well, in this navy there are only two kinds of superior officers—the mates and the captain. There are five or six mates. Young Dodd has been first mate some time, so I suppose he will soon be a captain.”
“Uncle!”
“Well.”
“Will this—mate—swear?”
“Clearly.”
“There, now. I do not like swearing on a Sunday. That wicked old admiral used to make me shudder.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Fountain, playing upon innocence, “he swore by the Supreme Being, 'I bet sixpence.'”
“Yes,” said Lucy, in a low, soft voice of angelic regret.
“Ah! he was in the Royal Navy. But this is a merchantman; you don't think he will presume to break into the monopoly of the superior branch. He will only swear by the wind and weather. Thunder and squalls! Donner and blitzen! Handspikes and halyards! these are the innocent execrations of the merchant service—he! he! ho!”
“Uncle, can you be serious?” asked Lucy, somewhat coldly; “if so, be so good as to tell me, is this gentleman—a—gentleman?”
“Well,” replied the other, coolly, “he is what I call a nondescript; like an attorney, or a surgeon, or a civil engineer, or a banker, or a stock-broker, and all that sort of people. He can be a gentleman if he is thoroughly bent on it; you would in his place, and so should I; but these skippers don't turn their mind that way. Old families don't go into the merchant service. Indeed, it would not answer. There they rise by—by—mere maritime considerations.”
“Then, uncle,” began Lucy, with dignified severity, “permit me to say that, in inviting a nondescript, you showed—less consideration for me than—you—are in the habit—of doing, dearest.”
“Well, have a headache, and can't come down.”
“So I certainly should; but, most unfortunately, I have an objection to tell fibs on a Sunday.”
“You are quite right; we should rest from our usual employments one day-ha! ha! and so go at it fresher to-morrow—haw! ho! Come, Lucy, don't you be so exclusive. Eve Dodd is a merry girl. She comes and amuses me when you are not here, and David, by all accounts, is a fine young fellow, and as modest as a girl of fifteen; they will make me laugh, especially Eve, and it would be hard at my age, I think, if I might not ask whom I like—to tea.”
“So it would,” put in Lucy, hastily; she added, coaxing, “it shall have its own way—it shall have what makes it laugh.”
Long before eight o'clock the Fountains had forgotten that they had invited the Dodds.
Not so Eve. She was all in a flutter, and hesitated between two dresses, and by some blessed inspiration decided for the plainest; but her principal anxiety was, not about herself, but about David's deportment before the Queen of Fashion, for such report proclaimed Miss Fountain. “And those fine ladies are so satirical,” said Eve to herself; “but I will lecture him going along.”
Dinner time, and, by consequence, tea time, came earlier in those days; so, about eight o'clock, a tall, square-shouldered young fellow was walking in the moonlight toward Font Abbey, Eve holding his hand, and tripping by his side, and lecturing him on deportment very gravely while dancing around him and pulling him all manner of ways, like your solid tune with your gamboling accompaniment, a combination now in vogue. All of a sudden, without with your leave or by your leave, the said David caught this light fantastic object up in his arms, and carried it on one shoulder.
On this she gave a little squeak; then, without a moment's interval, continued her lecture as if nothing had happened. She looked down from her perch like a hen from a ladder, and laid down the law to David with seriousness and asperity.
“And just please to remember that they are people a long way above us—at least above what we are now, since father fell into trouble; so don't you make too free; and Miss Fountain is the finest of all the fine ladies in the county.”
“Then I am sorry we are going.”
“No, you are not; she is a beautiful girl.”
“That alters the case.”
“No, it does not. Don't chatter so, David, interrupting forever, but listen and mind what I say, or I'll never take you anywhere again.”
“Are you sure you are taking me now?” asked David, dryly.
“Why not, Mr. David?” retorted Eve, from his shoulder. “Didn't I hear you tell how you took the Combermere out of harbor, and how you brought her into port; she didn't take you out and bring you home, eh?”
“Had me there, though.”
“Yes; and, what is more, you are not skipper of the Combermere yet, and never will be; but I am skipper of you.”
“Ashore—not a doubt of it,” said David, with cool indifference. He despised terrestrial distinction, courting only such as was marine.
“Then I command you to let me down this instant. Do you hear, crew!”
“No,” objected David; “if I put you overboard you can't command the vessel, and ten to one if the craft does not founder for want of seawomanship on the quarterdeck. However,” added he, in a relenting tone, “wait till we get to that puddle shining on ahead, and then I'll disembark you.”
“No, David, do let me down, that's a good soul. I am tired,” added she, peevishly.
“Tired! of what?”
“Of doing nothing, stupid; there, let me down, dear; won't you, darling! then take that, love” (a box of the ear).
“Well, I've got it,” said David, dryly.
“Keep it, then, till the next. No, he won't let me down. He has got both my hands in one of his paws, and he will carry me every foot of the way now—I know the obstinate pig.”
“We all have our little characters, Eve. Well, I have got your wrists, but you have got your tongue, and that is the stronger weapon of the two, you know; and you are on the poop, so give your orders, and the ship shall be worked accordingly; likewise, I will enter all your remarks on good-breeding into my log.”
Here, unluckily, David tapped his forehead to signify that the log in question was a metaphorical one, the log of memory. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. “So this is your log, is it?” cried she, tapping it as hard as she could; “well, it does sound like wood of some sort. Well, then, David, dear—you wretch, I mean—promise me not to laugh loud.”
“Well, I will not; it is odds if I laugh at all. I wish we were to moor alongside mother, instead of running into this strange port.”
“Stuff! think of Miss Fountain's figure-head—nor tell too many stories—and, above all, for heaven's sake, do keep the poor dear old sea out of sight for once.”
“Ay, ay, that stands to reason.”
By this time they were at Font Abbey, and David deposited his fair burden gently on the stone steps of the door. She opened it without ceremony, and bustled into the dining-room, crying, “I have brought David, sir; and here he is;” and she accompanied David's bow with a corresponding movement of her hand, the knuckles downward.
The old gentleman awoke with a start, rubbed his eyes, shook hands with the pair, and proposed to go up to Lucy in the drawing-room.
Now, it happened unluckily that Miss Fountain had been to the library and taken down one or two of those men and women who, according to her uncle, exist only on paper, and certain it is she was in charming company when she heard her visitors' steps and voices coming up the stairs. Had those visitors seen the vexed expression of her face as she laid down the book they would have instantly 'bout ship and home again; but that sour look dissolved away as they came through the open door.
On coming in they saw a young lady seated on a sofa.
Apparently she did not see them enter. Her face happened to be averted; but, ere they had taken three steps, she turned her face, saw them, rose, and took two steps to meet them, all beaming with courtesy, kindness and quiet satisfaction at their arrival.
She gave her hand to Eve.
“This is my brother, Miss Fountain.”
Miss Fountain instantly swept David a courtesy with such a grace and flow, coupled with an engaging smile, that the sailor was fascinated, and gazed instead of bowing.
Eve had her finger ready to poke him, when he recovered himself and bowed low.
Eve played the accompaniment with her hand, knuckles down.
They sat down. Cups of tea, etc., were brought round to each by John. It was bad tea, made out of the room. Catch a human being making good tea in which it is not to share.
Mr. Fountain was only half awake.
Eve was more or less awed by Lucy. David, tutored by Eve, held his tongue altogether, or gave short answers.
“This must be what the novels call a sea-cub!” thought Miss Fountain.
The friends, Propriety and Restraint, presided over the innocent banquet, and a dismal evening set in.
The first infraction of this polite tranquillity came, I blush to say, from the descendant of John de Fonte. He exploded in a yawn of magnitude; to cover this, the young lady began hastily to play her old game of setting people astride their topic, and she selected David Dodd for the experiment. She put on a warm curiosity about the sea, and ships, and the countries men visit in them. Then occurred a droll phenomenon: David flashed with animation, and began full and intelligent answers; then, catching his sister's eye, came to unnatural full stops; and so warmly and skillfully was he pressed that it cost him a gigantic effort to avoid giving much amusement and instruction. The courtier saw this hesitation, and the vivid flashes of intelligence, and would not lose her prey. She drew him with all a woman's tact, and with a warmth so well feigned that it set him on real fire. His instinct of politeness would not let him go on all night giving short answers to inquiring beauty. He turned his eye, which glowed now like a live coal, toward that enticing voice, and presently, like a ship that has been hanging over the water ever so long on the last rollers, with one gallant glide he took the sea, and towed them all like little cockle-boats in his wake. From sea to sea, from port to port, from tribe to tribe, from peril to peril, from feat to feat, David whirled his wonderstruck hearers, and held them panting by the quadruple magic of a tuneful voice, a changing eye, an ardent soul, and truth at first-hand.
They sat thrilled and surprised, most of all Miss Fountain. To her, things great and real had up to that moment been mere vague outlines seen through a mist. Moreover, her habitual courtesy had hitherto drawn out pumps; but now, when least expected, all in a moment, as a spark fires powder, it let off a man.
A sailor is a live book of travels. Check your own vanity (if you possibly can) and set him talking, you shall find him full of curious and profitable matter.
The Fountains did not know this, and, even if they had, Dodd would have taken them by surprise; for, besides being a sailor and a sea-enthusiast, he was a fellow of great capacity and mental vigor.
He had not skimmed so many books as we have, but I fear he had sucked more. However, his main strength did not lie there. He was not a paper man, and this—oh! men of paper and oh! C. R. in particular—gave him a tremendous advantage over you that Sunday evening.
The man whose knowledge all comes from reading accumulates a great number of what?—facts? No, of the shadows of facts; shadows often so thin, indistinct and featureless, that, when one of the facts themselves runs against him in real life, he does not know his old friend, round about which he has written a smart leader in a journal and a ponderous trifle in the Polysyllabic Review.
But this sailor had stowed into his mental hold not fact-shadows, but the glowing facts all alive, O. For thirteen years, man and boy, he had beat about the globe, with real eyes, real ears, and real brains ever at work. He had drunk living knowledge like a fish, and at fountainheads.
Yet, to utter intellectual wealth nobly, two things more are indispensable the gift of language and a tunable voice, which last does not always come by talking with tempests.
Well, David Dodd had sucked in a good deal of language from books and tongues; not, indeed, the Norman-French and demi-Latin and jargon of the schools, printed for English in impotent old trimestrials for the further fogification of cliques, but he had laid by a fair store of the best—of the monosyllables—the Saxon—the soul and vestal fire of the great English tongue.
So he was never at a loss for words, simple, clear, strong, like blasts of a horn.
His voice at this period was mellow and flexible. He was a mimic, too; the brighter things he had seen, whether glories of nature or acts of man, had turned to pictures in this man's mind. He flashed these pictures one after another upon the trio; he peopled the soft and cushioned drawing-room with twenty different tribes and varieties of man, barbarous, semi-barbarous, and civilized; their curious customs, their songs and chants, and dances, and struts, and actual postures.
The aspect of famous shores from the sea, glittering coasts, dark straits, volcanic rocks defying sea and sky, and warm, delicious islands clothed with green, that burst on the mariner's sight after rugged places and scowling skies.
The adventures of one unlucky ship, the Connemara, on a single whaling cruise on the coast of Peru. The first slight signs of a gale, seen only by the careful skipper. The hasty preparations for it: all hands to shorten sail; then the moaning of the wind high up in the sky. All hands to reef sail now—the whirl and whoo of the gale as it came down on them. The ship careening as it caught her, the speaking-trumpet—the captain howling his orders through it amid the tumult.
The floating icebergs—the ship among them, picking her way in and out a hundred deaths. Baffled by the unyielding wind off Cape Horn, sailing six weeks on opposite tacks, and ending just where they began, weather-bound in sight of the gloomy Horn. Then the terrors of a land-locked bay, and a lee shore; the ship tacking, writhing, twisting, to weather one jutting promontory; the sea and safety is on the other side of it; land and destruction on this—the attempt, the hope, the failure; then the stout-hearted, skillful captain would try one rare maneuver to save the ship, cargo, and crew. He would club-haul her, “and if that fails, my lads, there is nothing but up mainsail, up helm, run her slap ashore, and lay her bones on the softest bit of rock we can pick.”
Long ere this the poor ship had become a live thing to all these four, and they hung breathless on her fate.
Then he showed how a ship is club-hauled, and told how nobly the old Connemara behaved (ships are apt to when well handled—double-barreled guns ditto), and how the wind blew fiercer, and the rocks seemed to open their mouths for her, and how she hung and vibrated between safety and destruction, and at last how she writhed and slipped between Death's lips, yet escaped his teeth, and tossed and tumbled in triumph on the great but fair fighting sea; and how they got at last to the whaling ground, and could not find a whale for many a weary day, and the novices said: “They were all killed before we sailed;” and how, as uncommon ill luck is apt to be balanced by uncommon good luck, one fine evening they fell in with a whole shoal of whales at play, jumping clean into the air sixty feet long, and coming down each with a splash like thunder; even the captain had never seen such a game; and how the crew were for lowering the boats and going at them, but the captain would not let them; a hundred playful mountains of fish, the smallest weighing thirty ton, flopping down happy-go-lucky, he did not like the looks of it.
“The boat will be at the mercy of chance among all those tails, and we are not lucky enough to throw at random. No; since the beggars have taken to dancing, for a change, let them dance all night; to-morrow they shall pay the piper.” How, at peep of day, the man at the mast-head saw ten whales about two leagues off on the weather-bow; how the ship tacked and stood toward them; how she weathered on one of monstrous size, and how he and the other youngsters were mad to lower the boat and go after it, and how the captain said: “Ye lubbers, can't ye see that is a right whale, and not worth a button? Look here away over the quarter at this whale. See how low she spouts. She is a sperm whale, and worth seven hundred pounds if she was only dead and towed alongside.”
“'That she shall be in about a minute,' cried one; and, indeed, we were all in a flame; the boat was lowered, and didn't I worship the skipper when he told me off to be one of her crew!
“I was that eager to be in at that whale's death, I didn't recollect there might be smaller brutes in danger.
“Just before the oars fell into the water, the skipper looked down over the bulwarks, and says he to one of us that had charge of the rope that is fast to the boat at one end and to the harpoon at the other, 'Now, Jack you are a new hand; mind all I told you last night, or your mother will see me come ashore without you, and that will vex her; and, my lads, remember, if there is a single lubberly hitch in that line, you will none of you come up the ship's side again.'
“'All right, captain,' says Jack, and we pulled off singing,
“'And spring to your oars, and, make your boat fly,
And when you come near her beware of her eye,'
till the coxswain bade us hold our lubberly tongues, and not frighten the whales; however, we soon found we wanted all our breath for our work, and more too.” Then David painted the furious race after the whale, and how the boat gradually gained, and how at last, as he was grinding his teeth and pulling like mad, he heard a sound ahead like a hundred elephants wallowing; and now he hoped to see the harpooner leave his oar, and rise and fling his weapon; “but that instant, up flukes, a tower of fish was seen a moment in the air, with a tail-fin at the top of it just about the size of this room we are sitting in, ladies, and down the whale sounded; then it was pull on again in her wake, according as she headed in sounding; pull for the dear life; and after a while the oarsmen saw the steerman's eyes, prying over the sea, turn like hot coals. The men caught fire at this, and put their very backbones into each stroke, and the boat skimmed and flew. Suddenly the steersman cried out fiercely, 'Stand up, harpoon! Up rose the harpooner, his eye like a hot coal now. The men saw nothing; they must pull fiercer than ever. The harpooner balanced his iron, swayed his body lightly, and the harpoon hissed from him. A soft thud—then a heaving of the water all round, a slap that sounded like a church tower falling flat upon an acre of boards, and drenched, and blinded, and half smothered us all in spray, and at the same moment away whirled the boat, dancing and kicking in the whale's foaming, bubbling wake, and we holding on like grim death by the thwarts, not to be spun out into the sea.”
“Delightful!” cried Miss Fountain; “the waves bounded beneath you like a steed that knows its rider. Pray continue.”
“Yes, Miss Fountain. Now of course you can see that, if the line ran out too easy, the whale would leave us astern altogether, and if it jammed or ran too hard, she would tow us under water.”
“Of course we see,” said Eve, ironically; “we understand everything by instinct. Hang explanations when I'm excited; go ahead, do!”
“Then I won't explain how it is or why it is, but I'll just let you know that two or three hundred fathom of line are passed round the boat from stem to stern and back, and carried in and out between the oarsmen as they sit. Well, it was all new to me then; but when the boat began jumping and rocking, and the line began whizzing in and out, and screaming and smoking like—there now, fancy a machine, a complicated one, made of poisonous serpents, the steam on, and you sitting in the middle of the works, with not an inch to spare, on the crankest, rockingest, jumpingest, bumpingest, rollingest cradle that ever—”
“David!” said Eve, solemnly.
“Hallo!” sang out David.
“Don't!”
“Oh, yes, do!” cried Lucy, slightly clasping her hands.
“If this little black ugly line was to catch you, it would spin you out of the boat like a shuttlecock; if it held you, it would cut you in two, or hang you to death, or drown you all at one time; and if it got jammed against anything alive or dead that could stand the strain, it would take the boat and crew down to the coral before you could wink twice.”
“Oh, dear!” said Lucy; “then I don't think I like it now; it is too terrible. Pray go on, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Well, Miss Fountain, when a novice like me saw this black serpent twisting and twirling, and smoking and hissing in and out among us, I remembered the skipper's words, and I hailed Jack—it was he had laid the line—he was in the bow.
“'Jack,' said I.
“'Hallo!” said he.
“'For God's sake, are there any hitches in the line?' said I.
“'Not as I knows on,' says he, much cooler than you sit there; and that is a sailor all over. Well, she towed us about a mile, and then she was blown, and we hauled up on the line, and came up with her, and drove lances into her, till she spouted blood instead of salt water, and went into her flurry, and rolled suddenly over our way dead, and was within a foot of smashing us to atoms; but if she had it would only have been an accident, for she was past malice, poor thing. Then we took possession, planted our flagstaff in her spouting-hole, you know, and pulled back to the ship, and she came down and anchored to the whale, and then, for the first time, I saw the blubber stripped off a whale and hoisted by tackles into the ship's hold, which is as curious as any part of the business, but a dirtyish job, and not fit for the present company, and I dare say that is enough about whales.”
“No! no! no!”
“Well, then, shall I tell you how one old whale knocked our boat clean into the air, bottom uppermost, and how we swam round her and managed to right her?”
“And went back to the ship and had your tea in bed and your clothes dried?”
“No, Eve,” replied David, with the utmost simplicity; “we got in and to work again, and killed the whale in less than half an hour, and planted our flag on her, and away after another.”
Then he told them how they harpooned one right whale, and by good luck were able to make her fast to the stern of the ship. “And, if you will believe me, Miss Fountain, though there was just a breath on and off right aft, and the foresail, jib and mizzen all set to catch it, she towed the ship astern a good cable's length, and the last thing was she broke the harpoon shaft just below the line, and away she swam right in the wind's eye.”
“And there was an end of her and your nasty, cruel, harpoon, and—oh, I'm so pleased!”
“No, there wasn't, Eve; we heard of both fish and harpoon again, but not for a good many years.”
“Mr. Dodd!”
“Yes, Miss Fountain. It is curious, like many things that fall out at sea, but not so wonderful as her towing a ship of four hundred tons, with the foresail, mizzen, and jib all aback. Well, sir, did you ever hear of Nantucket? It is a port in the United States; and our harpooner happened to be there full four years after we lost this whale. Some Yankee whalers were treating him to the best of grog, and it was brag Briton, brag Yankee, according to custom whenever these two met. Well, our man had no more invention than a stone; so he was getting the worst of it till he bethought him of this whale; so he up and told how he had struck a right whale in the Pacific, and she had towed the ship with her sails aback, at least her foresail, mizzen, and jib, only he didn't tell it short like me, but as long as the Red Sea, with the day and the hour, the latitude (within four or five degrees, I take it), and what we had done a week before, and what we had not done, all by way of prologue, and for fear of weathering the horn—tic, tic—the point of the story too soon. When he had done there was a general howl of laughter, and they began to cap lies with him, and so they bantered him most cruelly, by all accounts; but at last a long silent chap, weather-beaten to the color of rosewood, put in his word.
“'What was the ship's name, mate?'
“'The Connemara,' says he.
“'And what is your name?' So he told him, 'Jem Green.'
“The other brings a great mutton fist down on the table, and makes all the glasses dance. 'You stay at your moorings till I come back,' says he. 'I have got something belonging to you, Jem Green,' and he sheered off. The others lay to and passed the grog. Presently the long one comes back with a harpoon steel in his hand; there was Connemara stamped on it, and also 'James Green' graved with a knife. 'Is that yours?' 'Is my hand mine?' says Jem; 'but wasn't there a broken shaft to it!”
“'There was,' says the Yankee harpooner; 'I cut it out.'
“'Well!' says Jem, 'that is the harpoon we were fast by to this very whale. Where did you kill her?'
“'In the Greenland seas.' And he whips out his private log. 'Here you are,' says he; 'March 25, 1820, latitude so and so, killed a right whale; lost half the blubber, owing to the carcass sinking; cut an English harpoon out of her.'
“'Avast there, mate!' cried Jem, and he whips, out his log; 'overhaul that.' The other harpooner overhauled it. 'Mates, look, here,' says he; 'I reckon we hain't fathomed the critters yet. The Britisher struck her in the Pacific on the 5th of March, and we killed her off Greenland on the 25th, five thousand miles of water by the lowest reckoning.' By this time there were a dozen heads jammed together, like bees swarming, over the two logs. 'She got a wound in the Pacific! “Hallo!” says she; “this is no sea for a lady to live in;” so she up helm, and right away across the pole into the Atlantic, and met her death.'”
“Your story has an interest you little suspect, young gentleman. If this is true, the northwest passage is proved.”
“That has been proved a hundred times, sir, and in a hundred ways; the only riddle is to find it. The man that tells you there is not a northwest passage is no sailor, and the fish that can't find it is not a whale; for there is not a young suckling no bigger than this room that does not know that passage as well as a mid on his first voyage knows the way to the mizzen-top through lubber's hole. How tired you must be of whales, ladies?”
“Oh no.”
“Kill us one more, David. I love bloodshed—to hear of.”
“Well, now, I don't think that can be Miss Fountain's taste, to look at her.”
Then David told them how he had fallen in with a sperm whale, dead of disease, floating as high as a frigate; how, with a very light breeze, the skipper had crept down toward her; how, at half a mile distance the stench of her was severe, but, as they neared her, awful; then so intolerable that the skipper gave the crew leave to go below and close the lee ports. So there were but two men left on the brig's deck, and a ship's company that a hurricane would not have driven from their duty skulked before a foul smell; but such a smell! a smell that struck a chill and a loathing to the heart, and soul, and marrow-bone; a smell like the gases in a foul mine; “it would have suffocated us in a few moments if we had been shut up along with it.” Then he told how the skipper and he stuffed their noses and ears with cotton steeped in aromatic vinegar, and their mouths with pig-tail (by which, as it subsequently appeared, Lucy understood pork or bacon in some form unknown to her narrow experience), and lighted short pipes, and breached the brig upon the putrescent monster, and grappled to it, and then the skipper jumped on it, a basket slung to his back, and a rope fast under his shoulders in case of accident, and drove his spade in behind the whale's side-fin.”
“His spade, Mr. Dodd?”
“His whale-spade; it is as sharp as a razor;” and how the skipper dug a hole in the whale as big as a well and four feet deep, and, after a long search, gave a shout of triumph, and picked out some stuff that looked like Gloucester cheese; and, when he had nearly filled his basket with this stuff, he slacked the grappling-iron, and David hauled him on board, and the carcass dropped astern, and the captain sang out for rum, and drank a small tumbler neat, and would have fainted away, spite of his precautions, but for the rum, and how a heavenly perfume was now on deck fighting with that horrid odor; and how the crew smelled it, and crept timidly up one by one, and how “the Glo'ster cheese was a great favorite of yours, ladies. It was the king of perfumes—amber-gas; there is some of it in all your richest scents; and the knowing skipper had made a hundred guineas in the turn of the hand. So knowledge is wealth, you see, and the sweet can be got out of the sour by such as study nature.”
“Don't preach, David, especially after just telling a fib. A hundred guineas!”
“I am wrong,”' said David.
“Very wrong, indeed.”
“There were eight pounds; and he sold it at a guinea the ounce to a wholesale chemist, so that looks to me like 128 pounds.”
Then David left the whales, and encouraged by bright eyes and winning smiles, and warm questions, sang higher strains.
Ships in dire distress at sea, yet saved by God's mercy, and the cool, invincible courage of captain and crew—great ships run ashore—the waves breaking them up—the rigging black with the despairing crew, eying the watery death that tumbled and gaped and roared for them below; and then little shore boats, manned by daring hearts, launched into the surf, and going out to the great ship and her peril, risking more life for the chance of saving life. And he did not present the bare skeletons of daring acts; those grand morgues, the journals, do that. There lie the dry bones of giant epics waiting Genius's hand to make them live. He gave them not only the broad outward facts—the bones; but those smaller touches that are the body and soul of a story, true or false, wanting which the deeds of heroes sound an almanac; above all, he gave them glimpses, not only of what men acted, but what they felt: what passed in the hearts of men perishing at sea, in sight of land, houses, fires on the hearth, and outstretched hands, and in the hearts of the heroes that ran their boats into the surf and Death's maw to save them, and of the lookers on, admiring, fearing, shivering, glowing, and of the women that sobbed and prayed ashore with their backs to the sea, just able to risk lover, husband, and son for the honor of manhood and the love of Christ, but not able to look on at their own flesh and blood diving so deep, and lost so long in cockle-shells between the hills of waves.
Such great acts, great feelings, great perils, and the gushes that crowned all of holy triumph when the boats came in with the dripping and saved, and man for a moment looked greater than the sea and the wind and death, this seaman poured hot from his own manly heart into quick and womanly bosoms, that heaved visibly, and glowed with admiring sympathy, and fluttered with gentle fear.
And after a while, though not at first, David's yarns began to contain a double interest to one of the party—Miss Fountain. Those who live to please get to read character at sight, and David, though in these more noble histories he scarcely named himself, was laying a full-length picture of his own mind bare to these keen feminine eyes. As for old Fountain, he was charmed, and saw nothing more than David showed him outright. But the women sat flashing secret intelligence backward and forward from eye to eye after the manner of their sex.
“Do you see?” said one lady's eyes.
“Yes,” replied the other. “He was concerned in this feat, though he does not say so.”
“Oh, you agree with me? Then we are right,” replied the first pair of speakers.
“There again: look; this sailor, whom he describes as a fellow that happened to be ashore at that foreign port with nothing better to do, and who went out with the English smugglers to save the brig when the natives durst not launch a boat?”
“Himself! not a doubt of it.”
And so the blue and hazel lightning went dancing to and fro; ay, even when the tale took a sorrowful turn, and dimmed these bright orbs of intelligence, the lightning struggled through the dew, and David was read and discussed by gleams, and glances, and flashes, without a word spoken. And he, all unconscious that he sat between a pair of telegraphs, and heating more and more under his great recollections and his hearers' sympathy, inthralled them with his tuneful voice, his glowing face, his lion eye, and his breathing, burning histories. Heart to dare and do, yet heart to feel, and brain and tongue to tell a deed well, are rare allies, yet here they met.
He mastered his hearers, and played on their breasts as David played the harp, and perhaps Achilles; Bochsa never, nor any of his tribe. He made the old man forget his genealogies, his small ambition, his gout, his years, and be a boy again an hour or two in thought, and blood, and early fire. He made the women's bosoms pant and swell, and seem to aspire to be the nests and cradles of heroes, and their eyes flash and glisten, and their cheeks flush and grow pale by turns; and the four little papered walls that confined them seemed to fall without noise, and they were away in thought out of a carpeted temple of wax, small talk, nonentity, and nonentities, away to sea-breezes that they almost felt in their hair and round their temples as their hearts rose and fell upon a broad swell of passion, perils, waves, male men, realities. The spell was at its height, when the sea-wizard's eye fell on the mantel-piece. Died in a moment his noble ardor: “Why, it is eight bells,” said he, servilely; then, doggedly, “time to turn in.”
“Hang that clock!” shouted Mr. Fountain; “I'll have it turned out of the room.”
Said Lucy, with gentle enthusiasm, “It must be beautiful to be a sailor, and to have seen the real world, and, above all, to be brave and strong like Mr. ——,. must it not, uncle?” and she looked askant at David's square shoulders and lion eye, and for the first time in her life there crossed her an undefined instinct that this gentleman must be the male of her species.
“As for his courage,” said Eve, “that we have only his own word for.”
David grinned.
“Not even that,” replied Lucy, “for I observed he spoke but little of himself.”
“I did not notice that,” said Eve, pertly; “but as for his strength, he certainly is as strong as a great bear, and as rude. What do you think? my lord carried me all the way from the top of the green lane to your house, and I am no feather.”
“No, a skein of silk,” put in David.
“I asked the gentleman politely to put me down, and he wouldn't, so then I boxed his ears.”
“Oh, how could you?”
“Oh, bless you, he never hits me again; he is too great a coward. And the great mule carried me all the more—carried me to your very door.”
“I almost think—I believe I could guess why he carried you, if you will not be offended at my assuming the interpreter,” said Lucy, looking at Eve and speaking at David. “You have thin shoes on, Miss Dodd; now I remember the gravel ends at green lane, and the grass begins; so, from what we know of Mr. Dodd, perhaps he carried you that you might not have damp feet.”
“Nothing of the kind—yes, it was, though, by his coloring up. La! David, dear boy!”
“What is a man alongside for but to keep a girl out of mischief?” said David, bruskly.
“Pray convert all your sex to that view,” laughed Lucy.
So now they were going. Then Mr. Fountain thanked David for the pleasant evening he had given them; then David blushed and stammered. He had a veneration for old age—another of his superstitions.
Her uncle's lead gave Lucy an opportunity she instantly seized. “Mr. Dodd, you have taken us into a new world of knowledge; we never were so interested in our lives.” At this pointblank praise David blushed, and was anything but comfortable, and began to back out of it all with a curt bow. Then, as the ladies can advance when a man of merit retreats, Lucy went the length of putting out her hand with a sweet, grateful smile; so he took it, and, in the ardor of encouraging so much spirit and modesty, she unconsciously pressed it. On this delicious pressure, light as it was, he raised his full brown eye, and gave her such a straightforward look of manly admiration and pleasure that she blushed faintly and drew back a little in her turn.
“Well, Davy, dear, how do you like the Fountains?”
“Eve, she is a clipper!”
“And the old gentleman?”
“He was very friendly. What do you think of her?”
“She is an out-and-out woman of the world, and very agreeable, as insincere people generally are. I like her because she was so polite to you.”
“Oh, that is your reading of her, is it?”
The rest of the walk passed almost in silence.
“Uncle, I am not sleepy to-night.”
“Who is? that young rascal has set me on fire with his yarns. Who would have thought that awkward cub had so much in him?”
“Awkward, but not a cub; say rather a black swan; and you know, uncle, a swan is an awkward thing on land, but when it takes the water it is glorious, and that man was glorious; but—Da—vid Do—dd.”
“I don't know whether he was glorious, but I know he amused me, and I'll have him to tea three times a week while he lasts.”
“Uncle, do you believe such an unfortunate combination of sounds is his real name?” asked Lucy, gravely.
“Why, who would be mad enough to feign such a name?”
“That is true; but now tell me—if he should ever, think of marrying with such a name?”
“Then there will be two David Dodd's in the world, Mr. and Mrs.”
“I don't think so; he will be merciful, and take her name instead of she his; he is so good-natured.”
“Ordinary sponsors would have been content with Samuel or Nathan; but no, this one's must, call in 'apt alliteration's artful aid,' and have the two 'd's.'”
Lucy assented with a smile, and so, being no longer under the spell of the enthusiast and the male, the genealogist and the fine lady took the rise out of what Miss Fountain was pleased to call his impossible title,
Da—vid Dodd.
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