Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 10

"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 carca.s.s 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 G.o.d's mercy, and the cool, invincible courage of captain and crew--great ships run ash.o.r.e--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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e 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 c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls 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 n.o.ble 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 s.e.x.

"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 ash.o.r.e 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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, nonent.i.ty, and nonent.i.ties, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.suming 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 gra.s.s 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 s.e.x 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 superst.i.tions.

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 pa.s.sed 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?"