Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 18

The cruise before, we had a black cat on board, that the sailors looked upon as a bird of evil omen, for we got no luck, caught no slavers, ran three times on sh.o.r.e, and were once on fire. This cruise, we had lots of prize-money, and never a single mishap, and the men put it all down to "the surgeon's pet," as they called my bird. He was a pet, too. I made him a nest in a leathern hat-box, where he went when the weather was rough. He was tame, loving, and winning in all his ways, and always scrupulously white and clean.

The first place we ran into was Delagoa Bay. How sweetly pretty, how English-like, is the scenery all around! The gently undulating hills, clothed in clouds of green; the trees growing down almost to the water's edge; the white houses nestling among the foliage, the fruit, the flowers, the blue marbled sky, and the wavelets breaking musically on the silvery sands--what a watering-place it would make, and what a pity we can't import it body bulk! The houses are all built on the sand, so that the beach is the only carpet. In the Portuguese governor's house, where we spent such a jolly evening, it was just the same; the chair-legs sank in the soft white sand, the table was off the plane, and the piano all awry; and a dog belonging to one of the officers, a monster boarhound, with eyes like needles, and tusks that would have made umbrella handles, sc.r.a.ped a hole at one end of the room, and nearly buried himself. That dog, his owner told me, would kill a jackal with one blow of his paw; but he likewise caught mice like winking, and killed a c.o.c.kroach wherever he saw one. His owner wrote this down for me, and I afterwards translated it.

Next morning, at eleven, the governor and his officers came off, arrayed in scarlet, blue, and burnished gold, c.o.c.ked-hats and swords, all so gay, and we had tiffin in the captain's cabin; Carlo, the dog, came too, of course, and seated himself thoughtfully at one end, abaft the mess table. There we were, then, just six of us--the captain, a fiery looking, wee, red man, but not half a bad fellow; the governor, bald in pate, round-faced, jolly, but incapable of getting very close to the table because of the rotundity of his body; his _aide-de-camp_, a little thin man, as bright and as merry as moonshine; his lieutenant, a jolly old fellow, with eyes like an Ulmer hound, and nose like a kidney potato; myself, and Carlo.

Our conversation during tiffin was probably not very edifying, but it was very spirited. You see, our captain couldn't speak a word of Portuguese, and the poor Portuguese hadn't a word of English. I myself possessed a smattering of Spanish, and a little French, and I soon discovered that by mixing the two together, throwing in an occasional English word and a sprinkling of Latin, I could manufacture very decent Portuguese. At least, the foreigners themselves seemed to understand me, or pretended to for politeness sake. To be sure they didn't always give me the answer I expected, but that was all the funnier, and kept the laugh up. I really believe each one of us knew exactly what he himself meant, but I'm sure couldn't for the life of him have told what his neighbour was driving at. And so we got a little mixed somehow, but everybody knew the road to his mouth, and that was something. We got into an argument upon a very interesting topic indeed, and kept it up for nearly an hour, and were getting quite excited over it, when somehow or other it came out, that the Portuguese had all the while been argle-bargling about the rights of the Pope, while we Englishmen had been deep in the mystery of the prices of yams and sucking pig, in the different villages of the coast. Then we all laughed and shook hands, and shrugged our shoulders, and turned up our palms, and laughed again.

Presently I observed the captain trying to draw my attention un.o.bserved: he was squinting down towards the cruet stand, and I soon perceived the cause. An immense c.o.c.kroach had got into a bottle of cayenne, and feeling uncomfortably warm, was standing on his hind-legs and frantically waving his long feelers as a signal of distress. I was just wondering how I could get the bottle away without letting the governor see me, when some one else spotted that unhappy c.o.c.kroach, and that was Carlo.

Now Carlo was a dog who acted on the spur of the moment, so as soon as he saw the beast in the bottle he flew straight at it. That spring would have taken him over a six-barred gate. And, woe is me for the result! Down rolled the table, crockery and all; down rolled the governor, with his bald pate and rotundity of body; down went the merry little thin man; over rolled the fellow with the nose like a kidney potato. The captain fell, and I fell, and there was an end to the whole feast.

When we all got up, Carlo was intent upon his c.o.c.kroach, and looking as unconcerned as if nothing out of the common had occurred.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

BLUE-JACKETS' PETS.

"Hard is the heart that loveth nought."

Sh.e.l.ley.

"All love is sweet, Given or returned.

Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever."

Idem.

Blue-jackets, as Her Majesty's sailors are sometimes styled, are pa.s.sionately fond of pets. They must have something to love, if it be but a woolly-headed n.i.g.g.e.r-boy or a c.o.c.kroach in a 'baccy-box. Little n.i.g.g.e.r-boys, indeed, may often be found on board a man-o'-war, the reigning pets. Young n.i.g.g.e.rs are very precocious. You can teach them all they will ever learn in the short s.p.a.ce of six months. Of this kind was one I remember, little Freezing-powders, as black as midnight, and shining all over like a billiard ball, with his round curly head and pleasant dimply face. Freezing-powders soon became a general favourite both fore and aft. His master, our marine officer, picked him up somewhere on the West coast; and although only nine years of age, before he was four months in the ship, he could speak good English, was a perfect little gymnast, and knew as many tricks and capers as the cook and the monkey. s...o...b..ll was another I knew; but s...o...b..ll grew bad at an early age, lost caste, became dissipated, and a gambler, and finally fled to his native jungle.

Jock of ours was a seal of tender years, who for many months retained the affection of all hands, until washed overboard in a gale of wind.

This creature's time on board was fully occupied in a daily round of duty, pleasure, and labour. His duty consisted in eating seven meals a day, and bathing in a tub after each; his pleasure, to lie on his side on the quarter-deck and be scratched and petted; while his labour consisted of earnestly endeavouring to enlarge a large scupper-hole sufficiently to permit his escape to his native ocean. How indefatigably he used to work day by day, and hour after hour, sc.r.a.ping on the iron first with one flipper, then with another, then poking his nose in to measure the result with his whiskered face! He kept the hole bright and clear, but did not sensibly enlarge it, at least to human ken. Jock's successor on that ship was a youthful bear of Arctic nativity. He wasn't a nice pet. He took all you gave him, and wanted to eat your hand as well, but he never said "Thank you," and permitted no familiarity. When he took his walks abroad, which he did every morning, although he never went out of his road for a row, he walked straight ahead with his nose downwards growling, and gnawed and tore everything that touched him--not at all a pet worth being troubled with.

Did the reader ever hear of the sailor who tamed a c.o.c.kroach? Well, this man I was "shipmates" with. He built a little cage, with a little kennel in the corner of it, expressly for his unsavoury pet, and he called the creature "Idzky"--"which he named himself, sir," he explained to me. Idzky was a giant of his race. His length was fully four inches, his breadth one inch, while each of his waving feelers measured six. This monster knew his name and his master's voice, hurrying out from his kennel when called upon, and emitting the strange sound which gained for him the cognomen Idzky. The boatswain, his master, was as proud of him as he might have been of a prize pug, and never tired of exhibiting his eccentricities.

I met the boatswain the other day at the Cape, and inquired for his pet.

"Oh, sir," he said, with genuine feeling, "he's gone, sir. Shortly after you left the ship, poor Idzky took to taking rather much liquor, and that don't do for any of us, you know, sir; I think it was that, for I never had the heart to pat him on allowance; and he went raving mad, had regular fits of delirium, and did nothing at all but run round his cage and bark, and wouldn't look at anything in the way of food. Well, one day I was coming off the forenoon watch, when, what should I see but a double line of them 'P' ants working in and out of the little place: twenty or so were carrying a wing, and a dozen a leg, and half a score running off with a feeler, just like men carrying a stowed mainsail; and that, says I, is poor Idzky's funeral; and so it was, and I didn't disturb them. Poor Idzky!"

Peter was a pet mongoose of mine, a kindly, cosy little fellow, who slept around my neck at night, and kept me clear of c.o.c.kroaches, as well as my implacable enemies, the rats. I was good to Peter, and fed him well, and used to take him on sh.o.r.e at the Cape, among the snakes. The snakes were for Peter to fight; and the way my wary wee friend dodged and closed with, and finally throttled and killed a cobra was a caution to that subtlest of all the beasts of the field. The presiding Malay used to clap his brown hands with joy as he exclaimed--"Ah! sauve good mongoose, sar, proper mongoose to kill de snake."

"You don't object, do you," I modestly asked my captain one day, while strolling on the quarter-deck after tiffin--"you don't object, I hope, to the somewhat curious pets I at times bring on board?"

"Object?" he replied. "Well, no; not as a rule. Of course you know I don't like your snakes to get gliding all over the ship, as they were the other day. But, doctor, what's the good of my objecting? If any one were to let that awful beast in the box yonder loose--"

"Don't think of it, captain," I interrupted; "he'd be the death of somebody, to a dead certainty."

"No; I'm not such a fool," he continued. "But if I shot him, why, in a few days you'd be billeting a boar-constrictor or an alligator on me, and telling me it was for the good of science and the service."

The awful beast in the box was the most splendid and graceful specimen of the monitor lizard I have ever seen. Fully five feet long from tip to tail, he swelled and tapered in the most perfect lines of beauty.

Smooth, though scaly, and inky black, tartaned all over with transverse rows of bright yellow spots, with eyes that shone like wildfire, and teeth like quartz, with his forked tongue continually flashing out from his bright-red mouth, he had a wild, weird loveliness that was most uncanny. Mephistopheles, as the captain not inaptly called him, knew me, however, and took his c.o.c.kroaches from my hand, although perfectly frantic when any one else went near him. If a piece of wood, however hard, were dropped into his cage, it was instantly torn in pieces; and if he seized the end of a rope, he might quit partnership with his head or teeth, but never with the rope.

One day, greatly to my horror, the steward entered the wardroom, pale with fear, and reported: "Mephistopheles escaped, sir, and yaffling [rending] the men." I rushed on deck. The animal had indeed escaped.

He had torn his cage into splinters, and declared war against all hands.

Making for the fore hatchway, he had seized a man by the jacket skirts, going down the ladder. The man got out of the garment without delay, and fled faster than any British sailor ought to have done. On the lower deck he chased the cook from the coppers, and the carpenter from his bench. A circle of Kroomen were sitting mending a foresail; Mephistopheles suddenly appeared in their midst. The n.i.g.g.e.rs unanimously threw up their toes, individually turned somersaults backwards, and sought the four winds of heaven. These routed, my pet turned his attention to Peepie. Peepie was a little Arab slave-la.s.s.

She was squatting by a calabash, singing low to herself, and eating rice. He seized her c.u.mmerbund, or waist garment. But Peepie wriggled clear--natural--and ran on deck, the innocent, like the "funny little maiden" in Hans Breitmann. On the c.u.mmerbund Mephistopheles spent the remainder of his fury, and the rest of his life; for not knowing what might happen next, I sent for a fowling-piece, and the plucky fellow succ.u.mbed to the force of circ.u.mstances and a pipeful of buck-shot. I have him yonder on the sideboard, in body and in spirit (gin), bottle-mates with a sandsnake, three centipedes, and a tarantula.

With monkeys, baboons, apes, and all of that ilk, navy ships, when homeward bound, are ofttimes crowded. Of our little crew of seventy, I think nearly every man had one, and some two, such pets, although fully one-half died of chest-disease as soon as the ship came into colder lat.i.tudes. These monkeys made the little craft very lively indeed, and were a never-ending source of amus.e.m.e.nt and merriment to all hands. I don't like monkeys, however. They "are so near, and yet so far," as respects humanity. I went shooting them once--a cruel sport, and more cowardly even than elephant-hunting in Ceylon--and when I broke the wrist of one, instead of hobbling off, as it ought to have done, it came howling piteously towards me, shaking and showing me the bleeding limb.

The little wretch preached me a sermon anent cruelty to animals that I shall not forget till the day I die.

We had a sweet-faced, delicate, wee marmoset, not taller, when on end, than a quart bottle--Bobie the sailors called him; and we had also a larger ape, Hunks by name, of what our Scotch engineer called the "ill-gett.i.t breed"; and that was a mild way of putting it. This brute was never out of mischief. He stole the men's tobacco, smashed their pipes, spilled their soup, and ran aloft with their caps, which he minutely inspected and threw overboard afterwards. He was always on the black list; in fact, when rubbing his back after one thrashing, he was wondering all the time what mischief he could do next. Bobie was arrayed in a neatly fitting sailor-costume, cap and all complete; and so attired, of course could not escape the persecutions of the ape. Hunks, after contenting himself with c.o.c.kroaches, would fill his mouth; then holding out his hand with one to Bobie, "Hae, hae, hae," he would cry, then seize the little innocent, and escape into the rigging with him.

Taking his seat in the maintop, Hunks first and foremost emptied his mouth, cramming the contents down his captive's throat. He next got out on to the stays for exercise, and used Bobie as a species of dumb-bell, swinging him by the tail, hanging him by a foot, by an ear, by the nose, etc, and threatening to throw him overboard if any sailor attempted a rescue. Last of all, he threw him at the nearest sailor.

On board the _Orestes_ was a large ape as big as a man. He was a most unhappy ape. There wasn't a bit of humour in his whole corporation.

"He had a silent sorrow" somewhere, "a grief he'd ne'er impart."

Whenever you spoke to him, he seized and wrung your hand in the most pathetic manner, and drew you towards him. His other arm was thrown across his chest, while he shook his head, and gazed in your face with such a woe-begone countenance, that the very smile froze on your lips; and as you couldn't laugh out of politeness, you felt very awkward. For anything I know, this melancholy ape may be still alive.

Deer are common pets in some ships. We had a fine large buck in the old _Semiramie_. A romping, rollicking rascal, in truth a very satyr, who never wanted a quid of tobacco in his mouth, nor refused rum and milk.

Whenever the steward came up to announce dinner, he bolted below at once; and we were generally down just in time to find him dancing among the dishes, after eating all the potatoes.

I once went into my cabin and found two Liliputian deer in my bed. It was our engineer who had placed them there. We were lying off Lamoo, and he had brought them from sh.o.r.e.

"Ye'll just be a faither to the lammies, doctor," he said, "for I'm no on vera guid terms wi' the skipper."

They were exactly the size of an Italian greyhound, perfectly formed, and exceedingly graceful. They were too tender, poor things, for life on shipboard, and did not live long.

In the stormy lat.i.tudes of the Cape, the sailors used to amuse themselves by catching Cape pigeons, thus: a little bit of wood floated astern attached by a string, a few pieces of fat thrown into the water, and the birds, flying tack and half-tack towards them, came athwart the line, by a dexterous movement of which they entangled their wings, and landed them on board. They caught albatrosses in the same fashion, and nothing untoward occurred.

I had for many months a gentle, loving pet in the shape of a snow-white dove. I had bought him that I might make feather-flowers from his plumage; but the boy brought him off alive, and I never had the heart to kill him. So he lived in a leathern hat-box, and daily took his perch on my shoulder at meal-times [see page 178].

It was my lot once upon a time to be down with fever in India. The room in which I lay was the upper flat of an antiquated building, in a rather lonely part of the suburbs of a town. It had three windows, close to which grew a large banyan-tree, beneath the shade of whose branches the crew of a line-of-battle ship might have hung their hammocks with comfort. The tree was inhabited by a colony of crows; we stood--the crows and I--in the relation of over-the-way to each other. Now, of all birds that fly, the Indian crow most bear the palm for audacity. Living by his wits, he is ever on the best of terms with himself, and his impudence leads him to dare anything. Whenever, by any chance, Pandoo, my attendant, left the room, these black gentry paid me a visit.

Hopping in by the score, and regarding me no more than the bed-post, they commenced a minute inspection of everything in the room, trying to destroy everything that could not be eaten or carried away. They rent the towels, drilled holes in my uniform, stole the b.u.t.tons from my coat, and smashed my bottles. One used to sit on a screen close by my bed every day, and scan my face with his evil eye, saying as plainly as could be--"You're getting thinner and beautifully less; in a day or two, you won't be able to lift a hand; then I'll have the pleasure of picking out your two eyes."

Amid such doings, my servant would generally come to my relief, perhaps to find such a scene as this: Two or three pairs of hostile crows with their feathers standing up around their necks, engaged in deadly combat on the floor over a silver spoon or a tooth-brush; half a dozen perched upon every available chair; an unfortunate lizard with a crow at each end of it, getting whirled wildly round the room, each crow thinking he had the best right to it; crows everywhere, hopping about on the table, and drinking from the bath; crows perched on the window-sill, and more crows about to come, and each crow doing all in his power to make the greatest possible noise. The faithful Pandoo would take all this in at a glance; then would ensue a helter-skelter retreat, and the windows be darkened by the black wings of the flying crows, then silence for a moment, only broken by some apologetic remark from Pandoo.

When at length happy days of convalescence came round, and I was able to get up and even eat my meals at table, I found my friends the crows a little more civil and respectful. The thought occurred to me to make friends with them; I consequently began a regular system of feeding them after every meal-time. One old crow I caught, and chained to a chair with a fiddle-string. He was a funny old fellow, with one club-foot.

He never refused his food from the very day of his captivity, and I soon taught him a few tricks. One was to lie on his back when so placed for any length of time till set on his legs again. This was called turning the turtle. But one day this bird of freedom hopped away, fiddle-string and all, and a whole fortnight elapsed before I saw him again. I was just beginning to put faith in a belief common in India--namely, that a crow or any other bird, that has been for any time living with human beings, is put to instant death the moment he returns to the bosom of his family; when one day, while engaged breakfasting some forty crows, my club-footed pet reappeared, and actually picked the bit from my hand, and ever after, until I left, he came regularly thrice a day to be fed.

The other crows came with surprising exactness at meal-times; first one would alight on the shutter outside the window, and peep in, as if to ascertain how nearly done I happened to be, then fly away for five or ten minutes, when he would return, and have another keek. As soon, however, as I approached the window, and raised my arm, I was saluted with a chorus of cawing from the banyan-tree; then down they swooped in dozens; and it was no very easy task to fill so many mouths, although the loaves were Government ones.

These pets had a deadly enemy in a brown raven--the Brahma kite; swifter than arrow from bow he descended, describing the arc of a great circle, and carrying off in his flight the largest lamp of bread he could spy.

He, for one, never stopped to bless the hand of the giver; but the crows, I know, were not ungrateful. Club-foot used to perch beside me on a chair, and pick his morsels from the floor, always premising that two windows at least must be open. As to the others, their persecutions ended; they never appeared except when called upon. The last act of their aggression was to devour a very fine specimen of praying mantis I had confined in a quinine bottle. The first day the paper cover had been torn off, and the mantis had only escaped by keeping close at the bottom; next day, the cover was again broken, and the bottle itself capsized; the poor mantis had prayed in vain for once. Club-foot, I think, must have stopped all day in the banyan-tree, for I never went to the window to call him without his appearing at once with a joyful caw; this feat I used often to exhibit to my shipmates who came to visit me during my illness.

One thing about talking-birds I don't remember ever to have seen noticed--namely, the habit some birds have of talking in their sleep.

And, just as a human being will often converse in his dream in a long-forgotten language, so birds will often at night be heard repeating words or phrases they never could remember in their waking moments. A starling of mine often roused me at night by calling out my dog's name in loud, distinct tones, although by day his attempts to do so were quite ineffectual. So with a venerable parrot we had on board the saucy _Skipjack_. Polly was a quiet bird in daylight, and much given to serious thought; but at times, in the stillness of the middle watch at sea, would startle the sailors from their slumbers by crying out: "Deen, deen--kill, kill, kill!" in quite an alarming manner. Polly had been all through the Indian mutiny, and was shut up in Delhi during the sad siege, so her dreams were not very enviable.

Do parrots know what they say? At times I think they do. Our parson on board the old _Rumbler_ had no more attentive listener to the Sabbath morning service than wardroom Polly; but there were times when Polly made responses when silence would have been more judicious. There was an amount of humour which it is impossible to describe, in the sly way she one day looked the parson in the face, as he had just finished a burst of eloquence both impa.s.sioned and impressive, and uttered one of her impertinent remarks. For some months, she was denied access to church because she had once forgotten herself so far as to draw corks during the sermon--this being considered "highly mutinous and insubordinate conduct." But she regained her privilege. Poor Poll!

I'll never forget the solemn manner in which she shut her eyes one day at the close of the service, as if still musing on the words of the sermon, on the mutability of all things created, and remarked: "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, says--says:" she could say no more--the rest stuck in her throat, and we were left to ponder on her unfortunate loss of memory in uttering the admonitory sentiment.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.