Rattlin the Reefer Part 14

The officer was a little moved--he went to the gangway, hailed the boat, and when she came near enough, he told the old farmer, kindly, that his orders to prevent personal communication were strict; that any parcel or letter should be handed up, but that he would do well not to let his reprobate son have any money. During this short conference, Reuben had placed himself within sight of his relatives, and the sacred words of "My father," "My son," were, in spite of all orders, exchanged between them. By this time the tide had turned, the wind had risen, and precisely from the right quarter; so the hands were turned up, "up anchor." The orders for the boat to keep off were now reiterated in a manner more imperative; but it still hung about the ship, and after we were making way, as long as the feeble attempts of the boatman could keep his little craft near us, the poor old man and his daughter, with a constancy of love that deserved a better object, hung upon our wake, he standing up with his white hair blown about by the wind, to catch a last glimpse of a son whom he was destined to see no more, and who would, without doubt, as the Scripture beautifully and tenderly expresses it, "bring down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave."

Long, long after the stolid and sullen son had ceased, apparently, to interest himself about the two that were struggling after us, in their really frail boat, I watched from the taffrail the vain and loving pursuit; indeed, until the darkness and the rapidly-increasing distance shrouded it from my view, I did not leave my post of observation, and the last I could discern of the mourners still showed me the old man standing up, in the fixed att.i.tude of grief, and the daughter with her face bent down upon her knees. To the last, the boat's head was still towards the ship--a touching emblem of unswerving fatherly love.

I could not away with the old man's look, it was so wretched, so helpless, yet so fond--and was typed to my fancy so strongly by his little boat pursuing, with a hopeless constancy over waves too rough for it, the huge and disregarding ship; so, with my breast full, even to suffocation with mingled emotions, I went down to my berth, and, laying my head upon the table, and covering my face with my hands, I pretended to sleep. The cruel torture of that half-hour! I almost thought the poacher, with all his misery, still blessed in having a father's love--'twas then that I felt intensely the agony of the desertion of my own parent--the love that had been denied to me to give to my own father, I lavished upon the white-headed old man. In imagination I returned with him to his desolate home; I supported his tottering steps over the threshold, no longer musical with an only son. I could fancy myself placing him tenderly and with reverence in his accustomed chair, and speaking the words of comfort to him in a low voice, and looking round for his family Bible--and the sister, doubtless she had many sources of consolation; youth was with her--life all before her--she had companions, friends, perhaps a lover; but,--for the poor old man! At that moment, I would have given up all my antic.i.p.ations of the splendid career that I fancied I was to run, in order to have gone and have been unto the bereaved sire as a son, and to have found in him a father.

But n.o.body could make a sailor of Reuben Gubbins, and Reuben had no idea of making a sailor of himself. It was in vain that the boatswain's mate docked the long tails of his blue coat (such things were done in the navy at that time), razeed his top-boots into seamen's shoes, and that he had his smock-frock reduced into a seaman's shirt. The soil hung upon him, he slouched over the deck, as if he were walking over the furrows of ploughed land, and looking up into the rigging, as if he saw a c.o.c.k-pheasant at roost upon the rattlins. Moreover, he could talk of nothing else excepting "feyther," and "our Moll," and he really ate his bread (_subintellige_ biscuit) moistened with his tears (if tears can moisten such flinty preparations), for he was always whimpering. For the sake of the fit of romance that I felt for his father, I took some kind notice of this yokel afloat. I believe, as much as it lay in his nature, he was grateful for it, for to everyone else on board he was the constant b.u.t.t.

Mr Farmer, our first-lieutenant, was a smart and somewhat exacting officer. He used to rig the smoke-sail some twelve feet high, across the mizzen-mast, and make the young gentlemen just caught, and the boys of the ship, lay out upon it, in order that they might practice furling after a safe method. At first, nothing could persuade Reuben to go a single step up the rigging--not even the rope's-end of the boatswain's mate. Now this delicacy was quite at variance with Mr Farmer's ideas; so, in order to overcome it by the gentlest means in the world, Reuben had the option given him of being flogged, or of laying out on the smoke-sail yard, just to begin with, and to get into the way of it. It was a laughable thing to see this huge clown hanging with us boys on the thin yard, and hugging it as closely as if he loved it. He had a perfect horror of getting to the end of it. At a distance, when our smoke-sail yard was _manned_; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, too, ben't Christian loike."

But his troubles were soon to cease. He was made a waister, and, at furling sails stationed on the main yard. I will antic.i.p.ate a little that we may have done with him. The winter had set in severely, with strong gales, with much frost and snow. We were not clear yet of the chops of the Channel, and the weather became so bad, that it was found necessary to lie-to under try-sails and close-reefed main-top sail.

About two bells in the first dog-watch the first-lieutenant decided upon furling the main-sail. Up on the main-yard Reuben was forced to go; he went to leeward, and the seamen, full of mischief; kept urging him further and further away from the bunt. I was with one of the oldsters in the maintop; the maintop-sail had just been close-reefed. I had a full view of the lads on the main-yard, and the terror displayed in Reuben's face was at once ludicrous and horrible. It was bitterly cold, the rigging was stiffened by frost, and the cutting north-east wind came down upon the men on the lee-yard-arm out of the belly of the topsail with tremendous force, added to which, the ship, notwithstanding the pressure of the last-mentioned sail, surged violently, for there was a heavy though a short sea. The farmer's son seemed to be gradually petrifying with fear: he held on upon a fold of the sail instinctively, without at all a.s.sisting to bundle it up. He had rallied all his energies into his cramped and clutching fingers. As I looked down upon him, I saw that he was doomed. I would have cried out for a.s.sistance, but I knew that my cry would have been useless, even if I had been able, through the roar of the winds and the waters, to have made it heard.

But this trying situation could not last long. The part of the sail on which Reuben had hung, with what might be truly termed his death-clutch, was wanted to be rolled in with the furl, and, by the tenacity of his grasp, he impeded the operation.

"Rouse up, my lads, bodily, to windward," roared the master's mate, stationed at the bunt of the sail.

"Let go, you lubber," said the sailor next to windward of Reuben, on the yard.

Reuben was now so lost, that he did not reply to the man even by a look.

"Now, my lads, now: one, two, three, and a ---." Obedient to the call of the officer, with a simultaneous jerk at the sail, the holdfast of the stupid peasant was plucked from his cracking fingers; he fell back with a loud shriek from the yard, struck midway on the main rigging, and thence bounding far to leeward in the sea, disappeared, and for ever, amid the white froth of the curling wave, that lapped him up greedily.

He never rose again. Perhaps, in her leeway, the frigate drifted over him--and thus the violated laws of his country were avenged. I must confess, that I felt a good deal shocked at the little sensation this (to me) tragical event occasioned. But we get used to these things, in this best of all possible worlds; and if the poacher died unwept, unknelled, unprayed for, all that can be said of the matter is--that many a better man has met with a worse fate.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

SYMPTOMS OF SICKNESS, NOT OF THE SEA, BUT OF THE LAND BEYOND IT--OUR M.D. WISHES TO WRITE DIO, AND PREPARES ACCORDINGLY--RALPH IS ABOUT TO REAP HIS FIRST MARINE LAURELS ON THE ROCKS OF COVE.

I do not get on with this life at all. I have not yet reached the Cove of Cork. Clap on more sail. It is bitterly cold, however, and here we are now safely moored in one of the petals of the "first flower of the sea."

In making this short pa.s.sage, Captain Reud was very affable and communicative. He could talk of nothing but the beautiful coast of Leghorn; the superb bay of Naples; pleasant trips to Rome; visits to Tripoli; and other interesting parts on the African coast; and, on the voluptuous city of Palermo, with its amiable ladies and incessant festivities--he was quite as eloquent as could reasonably be expected from a smart post-captain of four-and-twenty.

We were all in a fool's paradise. For myself; I was enraptured. I was continually making extracts from Horace, Virgil, and other school-books, that I still carried with me, which referred, in the least, to those places that we were at all likely to see. But visions of this land of promise, of this sea, flowing with gentle waves and rich prizes, were soon dispersed before a sad reality, that, without the aid of the biting weather, now made most of the officers and men look blue, so soon as our anchors had nipped the ground of the Green Island. We found ourselves in the middle of a convoy of more than two hundred vessels of all descriptions, that the experienced immediately knew to be West Indiamen.

The sarcastic glee with which Captain Reud rubbed his skinny, yellow hands, when he ordered additional sentries, and a boat to row guard round the ship from sunset to sunrise, weather permitting, to prevent desertion, gave me a strong impression of the malignity of his disposition. Certainly, the officers, from the first lieutenant downwards, looked, when under the influence of the first surprise, about as sage as we may conceive did those seven wise men of Gotham, who put to sea in a bowl. Some of them had even exchanged into the ship, for certain unlawful considerations, because she was so fine a frigate, and the captain possessed so much interest, being a very near and dear relation of the then treasurer of the navy. With this interest they thought, of course, that he would have the selection of his own station.

And so he had. They either did not know, or had forgotten, that Captain Reud was a West Indian creole, and that he had large patrimonial estates in Antigua.

"Not loud but deep," were the curses in the gun-room, but both "loud and deep" were those in the midshipman's berth, for the denizens thereof were never proverbial for the niceties of their expressions, when the apalling certainty broke on the comminators, of three years' roasting in the West Indies, with accompaniments of misgivings about Yellow Jack, and the palisades, merely because the captain wished to go and see why the n.i.g.g.e.rs did not make quite so much sugar and rum as they used to do.

But, after all, we had a sage ship's company, officers included, for there was scarcely a man in the ship, who, after our destination was ascertained, did not say, "Well, I thought as much;" and they derived much consolation from the consciousness of their foresight.

The knowledge of our station had a most decided effect upon two of our officers, the master and surgeon; the former of whom, a weather-beaten, old north-countryman, who had been all his life knocking about the north sea, and our channels at home, immediately gave himself up for lost. He made his will, and took a decidedly serious turn.

But there was another person, who viewed the West India station not religiously like our master, or joyously like our captain, or grumblingly like the marine officer, or despitefully like all the lieutenants, or detestedly like my messmates, or indifferently like myself. He took the matter into consideration discreetly, and so, in order to enjoy a long life, he incontinently fell sick unto death. Of course he knew, more than any man on board, how ill he was, for he was the doctor himself. He was not merely a naval surgeon, but a regular M.D., and with an English diploma. He could appreciate, as much as any man, the value of life; and hard indeed did he struggle to preserve the means of prolonging it. He was a short, round, and very corpulent person, with a monstrously large and pleasantly-looking face, with a very high colour--a colour not the flush of intemperance, but the glow of genuine health. This vast physiognomy was dug all over with holes; not merely pock-marks, but pock-pits. Indeed, his countenance put you in mind of a vast tract of gravelly soil on a sunny day, dug over with holes; it was so red, so cavernous, and withal, so bright. I need not mention that he was a _bon vivant_, a most joyous, yet a most discreet one. Even on board of ship he contrived to make his breakfasts dinners, his dinners feasts, and his suppers, though light delicacies. He was no mean proficient in the culinary art, and as refined a gourmand as the dear departed Dr Kitchener--a man, to whose honour I have a great mind to devote an episode, and would do so, were not my poor shipmate, Dr Thompson, just now waiting for me to relieve him from his illness.

No sooner did our clever medical attendant understand his destination, than he sent away his plate untouched at dinner--refused his wine-- talked movingly of broken const.i.tutions, a predisposition to anasarea, and the deceitful and dangerous appearances of florid health. At supper, he p.r.o.nounced himself a lost man, held out his brawny fist to whomsoever would choose to feel his pulse, and sent for the first a.s.sistant-surgeon to make him up a tremendous quant.i.ty of prescriptions, to be exhibited the ensuing night--to whatever fish might be so unfortunate as to be swimming alongside. After this display, and whilst he was languidly sipping a tumbler of barley-water, the Honourable Mr B, our junior luff, was loud in his complaints of being, what he called, fairly entrapped; when Dr Thompson, in a feeble and tremulous voice, read him a long lecture on patriotism, obedience to the dictates of duty, and self-devotion, finishing thus:--"By Heaven, show me the man that flinches from his duty, and I'll show you whatever may be his outward bearing, a craven at heart! I am very ill--I feel that I am fast sinking into a premature grave--but what of that. I should be but too happy if I could make my dying struggles subservient to my country.

My body, Mr Farmer--Mr Wade, this poor temple of mine contains an insidious enemy--a strange, a dreadful, and a wasting disease. It is necessary for the sake of medical science, for my country's good, for the health of the world at large, that my death, which will speedily happen, should take place in England, in order that after dissolution I may be dissected by the first operators, viewed by the most intelligent of the faculty, and thus another light be placed on the present dark paths of curative knowledge. My symptoms are momentarily growing worse.

Gentlemen, messmates, friends, I must leave you for the night, and too soon, I fear, for ever; but never shrink your duty. If they be the last words that I shall utter to you--humble though I be--I may venture to hold myself up to you as a pattern of self-devotion. G.o.d bless you all--good night--and never shirk your duty."

Of course, the company to whom this was addressed, were infinitely amused at this display, and the third-lieutenant observed mournfully, "Now there's no chance for me. The fat rogue is going to invalid himself. I suppose that I need not trouble my liver to be diseased just now, for the hypocrite won't allow another man in the ship to be sick but himself."

The gentlemen guessed rightly. All the next day Dr Thompson kept his cot, and was duly reported to the captain as dangerously ill. Now, our first-lieutenant was a n.o.ble, frank, yet sensible and shrewd fellow, and the captain was as mischief-loving, wicked little devil, as ever grinned over a spiteful frolic. They held a consultation upon the case, and soon came to a more decided opinion on it, than the gentlemen of the faculty generally do on such occasions. Now, whilst the doctor is plotting to prove himself desperately and almost hopelessly sick, and the captain and Mr Farmer, to make him suddenly well, in spite of himself I shall take the opportunity of displaying my own heroic deeds, when placed in the first independent command ever conferred upon me.

Jason, with his Argonauts, went to bear away the Golden Fleece; Columbus, and his heroes, to give a world to the sovereign of Spain; and I, with two little boys, pushed out of the Cove perilously to procure some sand in the dingy. Nothing elevates a biography like appropriate comparison. But I doubt whether either Jason or Columbus felt a more enthusiastic glow pervade their frames when each saw himself fairly under sail for unknown seas than I did when I seized the tiller of the dinghy, which was, by the bye, a stick not at all bigger than that which I had, not many months before, used in trundling my hoop.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

A LITTLE BOAT WITH A LARGE CARGO--WORSE THAN THE DRIFT OF A DULL ARGUMENT, RALPH FINDS DRIFTING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC--HE MEETS WITH LAND AT LENGTH, AND A REAL IRISH WELCOME--POTATOES AND POTEEN, AND MUCH MORE FUR THAN FURNITURE.

But this little boat, as it so often bore Caesar and his fortunes, and our surgeon and his fat, deserves and shall have a more than pa.s.sing notice. It was perhaps one of the smallest crafts that ever braved the seas. Such a floating miniature you may have conceived Gulliver to be placed in, when he was sighed across the tub of water by his Brobdignag princess. Woefully and timorously, many's the time and oft did the obese doctor eye it from the gangway; when asking for a boat, the first-lieutenant, smiling benignantly, would reply, "Doctor, take the dinghy." It was all that the dinghy could do, to take the doctor. Then the care with which he gently deposited himself precisely in the centre of the very small stern-sheets, would have afforded a fine moral lesson to those who pretend to watch over the safety of states. As the little craft, laden with this immense pharmacopoeian depositary, hobbled over the seas, it seemed almost to progress upright, and "walked the waters like a thing of life;" for it had a shrewd likeness to a young monkey learning to go upright, with its two long arms steadying its uncertain gait, the oars making all this resemblance. Indeed, it was so diminutive, that it often kept up the two boys that belonged to it from the fresh as well as the salt water, they clapping it over their heads, by way of an umbrella, whenever the clouds poured down a libation too liberal. To those curious in philology I convey the information, that in the word _dinghy_, the g was p.r.o.nounced hard. This explanation is also necessary to do justice to the pigmy floater, as it was always painted in the gayest colours possible. It was quite a pet of the first-lieutenant's. Indeed, he loved it so much, that he took care never to oppress it with his own weight.

The Cove of Cork is a fine harbour, entered by the means of a somewhat narrow straight. I have forgotten the names of all the headlands and points, and I am so sick of Irish affairs that I do not choose to go into the next room and get the map to refer to, for on it there is scarcely a spot that could meet my eye, that would not give rise to disagreeable a.s.sociations. So I prefer writing from memory, magic memory, that gives me now the picture of five-and-twenty years ago, all green, and fresh, and beautiful.

On entering the Cove, there were on the left hand of the strait fortifications and military barracks. Beyond these, to the seaward, and just on the elbow of the land that formed the entrance to the strait, our first-lieutenant discovered from the taffrail of the frigate, a white patch of sand. The rest of the sh.o.r.e was rocky, iron-bound, and unapproachable from the sea. Mr Farmer took me aft, pointed out to me the just visible spot, told me to fetch off as much sand as the dinghy could bear, and return with all expedition. Proud of the commission, about four p.m., the tide running out furiously, I ordered the _dinghies_ to be piped away, and walking down the side with due dignity, with a bucket and a couple of spades, we pushed off, and soon reached the spot. The boat was loaded, but in the meantime the tide had left, and, light and small as she was, three little boys could not launch her till almost all the sand had been returned to its native soil. All this occupied much time. It was nearly dusk when we got her afloat, and the wind had got up strongly from off the land. It came on to rain, and we had not got far from the sh.o.r.e before the tide swept us clean out into the Atlantic. We were shortly in a situation sufficiently perilous for the heroic. There we were, three lads, whose united years would not have made up those of a middle-aged man, in a very little boat, in a very high sea, with a strong gale that would have been very favourable for us, if we had wished to steer for New York. As we could not make head at all against the combined strength of an adverse wind, tide, and sea, we left off pulling, and threw all the sand out of the boat. We knew the tide would turn, we hoped that the sea might go down, and trusted that the wind would change. Before it was quite dark we had lost sight of the land, and I began to feel a little uncomfortable, as my boat's crew from stem to stern (no great distance) a.s.sured me that we should certainly be swamped. In this miserable position of our affairs, and when we should have found ourselves very cold, if we had not been so hungry, and very hungry if we had not been so cold, an Hibernian mercantile vessel pa.s.sed us, laden with timber and fruit, viz. potatoes and birch-brooms, and they very kindly and opportunely threw us a tow-rope. This drogher, that was a large, half-decked, cutter-rigged vessel, made great way through the water, and, as we were dragged after her, we were nearly drowned by the sea splashing over us, and, had it not been for our sand-bucket, it is probable that we should have filled.

In the state of the sea, to get on board the drogher from the dinghy, was an operation too dangerous to be attempted.

But before this a.s.sistance came, what were my feelings? No situation could be more disconsolate, and, apparently, more hopeless. Does not the reader suppose that there was a continual fishing through my bosom of agonised feelings? Can he not understand that visions of my lately-forsaken green play-ground came over the black and ma.s.sive waves, and seemed to settle on them as in mockery? But were I to dilate upon these horrors, would he not weary of them? Had I been the son of a king thus situated, or even the acknowledged offspring of a duke, there might have been sympathy. But the newly-emanc.i.p.ated schoolboy, drowned with two lads just drafted from the Marine Society, in a small boat off the Irish coast, may be thought a melancholy occurrence, but involving nothing of particular interest. I see my error: if I wish to create an effect, I must first prove that I am the son of a duke or a king. I have begun at the wrong end.

However, let the reader sneer as he will at my predicament, there was something sublime in the scene around me. The smallness of the craft magnified the greatness of the waves. I literally enjoyed the interesting situation which naval writers, who are not nautical, of "seas running mountains high," so rejoice to describe. One wave on either hand bounded my horizon. They were absolutely mountain waves to me; and when our little walnut-sh.e.l.l got on the top of one, it is no great stretch of metaphor to say, that we appeared ascending to the clouds. We could not look down upon one wave, until we were fairly on the back of another. Now, in a vessel of tolerable size, let the sea rage at its worst, from the ship's decks you always look down upon it, excepting now and then, when some short-lived giant will poke up its overgrown head. But I must remember that I am in tow of the potato craft.

Though she lay well up for the harbour's mouth, she could not fetch it, so she tacked and tacked again, until nearly ten o'clock, at which time we in the dinghy were half frozen, and almost wholly drowned. The moon was now up, though partially obscured by flying rack, and in making a land board, the honest Pat, in the command of the sloop, shortened the tow-rope, and hailed us, telling us when we were well abreast of a little sandy bight, to cast off, pull in, and haul up our boat above high-water mark. We took his advice, and, without much difficulty, found ourselves once more on terra firma.

I cannot help, in this place, making the reflection of the singular events that the erratic life of a sailor produces. Here were evidently three lives saved, among which was that of the future paragon of reefers, and neither the saved nor the saviours knew even the names, or saw distinctly the faces of each other. How many good and brave actions we sailors do, and the careless world knows nothing about them. The sailor's life is a series of common-place heroisms.

Well, here we are, landed on the coast of Ireland, but in what part we knew not, and with every prospect of pa.s.sing the night under the grandest, but, in winter, the most uncomfortable roof in the world. The two lads begged for leave to go up and look for a house; but, as I had made up my mind that if a loss took place, we should be all lost together, I would not run the risk of _losing_ my boat's crew, and _finding_ myself--alone. I refused my consent, telling them that it was my duty to stay by my boat, and theirs to stay by me. Now this was tolerably firm, considering the ducking that I had enjoyed, and the hunger, cold, and weariness that I was then enjoying--enjoying? yes, enjoying. Surely I have as much right to enjoy them if I like as the ladies and gentlemen of this metropolis have to enjoy bad health.

But this epicene state of enjoyment was not long to last. A fresh-coloured native, with a prodigious breadth of face, only to be surpa.s.sed by his prodigious breadth of shoulders, approached, and addressed us in a brogue so strong, that it would, like the boatswain's grog, have floated a marlin-spike, and in a stuttering so thick, that a horn spoon would have stood upright in it. The consequence was, that though fellow-subjects, we could not understand each other. So he went and brought down with him a brawny brother, who spoke "Inglis illigantly anyhow." Well, the proverbial hospitality of the Irish suffered no injury in the persons of my Irish friends. A pressing invitation to their dwelling and to their hospitality was urged upon us in terms, and with looks, that I felt were the genuine offspring of kindness and generosity of soul. But I still demurred to leave my boat. When they understood the full force of my objection, my frieze-coated friend, who spoke the "illigant Inglis," explained.

"O, by Jasus, and ain't she welcome intirely? Come along ye little undersized spalpeen with your officer, won't you?"

And, before I could well understand what they were about, the two "jontlemen" had taken up his Majesty's vessel under my command, had turned it bottom up with several shakes, to clear it of the water and sand, and with as little difficulty as a farmer's boy would have turned upside down a thrush's cage, in order to cleanse it. After this operation had been performed, they righted it, and one laying hold of the bow, and the other the stern, they swung it between them, as two washerwomen might a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command treated thus slightingly, which mortification was not a little increased by an overture that they kindly made to me, saying, that if I were at all tired, they would, with all the pleasure in the world, carry me in it. I preferred walking.

Officer, boat's crew, guides, boats and oars, proceeded in this manner for more than half a mile up into the country. At length, by the moonlight, I discovered a row of earthy mounds, that I positively, at first, thought was a parcel of heaps such as I had seen in England, under which potatoes are buried for the winter.

I was undeceived, by being welcomed to the town of some place, dreadful in "as," and "ghas," and with a name so difficult to utter, that I could not p.r.o.nounce it when I attempted, and which, if I had ever been so fortunate to retain, I should, for my own comfort, have made haste to forget.

I hope that the "finest pisintry in the world" are better located now than they were a quarter of a century ago, for they are, or were, a fine peasantry, as far as physical organisation can make them, and deserve at least to be housed like human beings; but what I saw, when on that night I entered the mud edifice of my conductors, made me start with astonishment. In the first place, the walls were mud all through, and as rough on the inside as the out. There was actually no furniture in it of any description; and the only implement I saw, was a large globular iron pot, that stood upon spikes, like a carpenter's pitch-kettle, which pot, at the moment of my entrance, was full of hot, recently boiled, unskinned, fine mealy praties. Round this there might have been sitting some twelve or fourteen persons of both s.e.xes, and various ages, none above five-and-twenty. But it must be remembered, that the pot was upon the earth, and the earth was the floor, and the circle was squatted round it. At the fire-place, each on a three-legged stool, sat an elderly man and woman. These stools the fastidious may call furniture if they please; but were any of my readers placed upon one of them, so rough and dirty were they, that he or she must have been very naughty, did not the stool of repentance prove a more pleasant resting-place.

Among the squatted circle there were a bandy-legged drummer, and a blotched-faced fifer, from the adjacent barracks, both in their regimentals. They rose, and capped to my uniform. We were welcomed with shouts of congratulations. My boat was brought in, and placed bottom-up along one side of the hovel, and immediately the keel was occupied by a legion of poultry, and half a score of pigs, little and big, were at the same time to be seen dubbing their snouts under the gunnel, on voyages of alimentary discovery. I was immediately pulled down between two really handsome la.s.ses in the circle; and, with something like savage hospitality, had my cheeks stuffed with the burning potatoes.

Never was there a more hilarious meeting. I and my Tom Thumb of a boat, and my minikin crew, I could well understand, though my hosts spoke in their mother tongue, were the subjects of their incessant and uncontrollable bursts of laughter. But with all this, they were by no means rude, and showed me that sort of respect that servants do to the petted child of their master: that is to say, they were inclined to be very patronising, and very careful of me, in spite of myself; and to humour me greatly. My two boys, whom I have so often dignified with the imposing t.i.tle of my boat's crew, though treated with less or no respect at all, were welcomed in a manner equally kind.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

RALPH FIGURETH AT A BALL, EXCELLETH, AND AFTERWARDS SLEEPETH--HE RETURNETH ON BOARD, AND HATH BOTH HIS TOILS AND HIS SAND UNDERVALUED, AND THUS DISCOVERETH THE GRAt.i.tUDE OF FIRST-LIEUTENANTS.

Not yet having sufficiently Hibernised my taste to luxuriate on Raleigh's root, plain, with salt, I begged them to procure me something more placable to an English appet.i.te. I gave money to my hosts, and they procured me eggs and bacon. I might also have had a fowl, but I did not wish to devour guests to whom on my boat's keel I had given such recent hospitality. They returned me my full change, and, though there was more than enough of what they cooked for me to satisfy myself and boys, they would not partake of the remains, until I a.s.sured them, that if they did not I would throw them away. At this intimation they disappeared in a twinkling.